(Bonus) 17: Chapter 17: Wait, Humanity Has Star-System Teleportation Tech?!
— “Forefather…
is this the child you birthed with one of the xenos?!” General Dhrost stared down at the small, dark-skinned alien infant shoved into his arms, then looked up at Vane in absolute shock.
The Forefather had vanished out of thin air, only to pop back into existence a few minutes later holding a species of infant alien he had never seen before and immediately handing it off to him.
It was genuinely hard not to draw wild conclusions.
Vane’s face turned completely black.
He felt an intense, burning desire to speed-dial the Inquisition to brutally sanction Dhrost for absolute heresy.
“I am not Rick Sanchez.
I don’t sleep with absolutely anything that breathes.” “Who is Rick Sanchez?” Dhrost asked, deeply confused.
“A completely unhinged old man.
If the multiverse ever aligns, he might drop by for a visit,” Vane casually spouted absolute nonsense.
“If he does, remember to give him plenty of booze, and whatever you do, don’t bully his grandson.” Pivoting away from the alien baby drama, Vane asked for Dante’s whereabouts.
“Lord Dante followed your command.
He is currently coordinating with Anrakyr the Traveller to reactivate the Magnifican Prism,” Dhrost replied.
“Got it.
You take care of the kid.
I’m going to find Dante.” Vane pointed a stern finger at the tiny Necrontyr infant in Dhrost’s arms, his tone dead serious.
“Keep that little guy safe.
He is a high-value hostage.
He is the ultimate leverage we hold against those metal skeletons.” “Huh?” Dhrost sounded completely bewildered.
He looked down at the tiny, pitch-black alien baby and frowned.
“How is something this small and ugly supposed to threaten an entire race of emotionless Necrons?” “What, you doubt me?” Vane shot him a sharp glare.
Dhrost instantly flinched and nodded frantically.
“O-of course I believe you, Forefather!
It just sounds a little unbelievable, that’s all.
The Necrons are infamous for being cold-blooded calculating machines.
How could they possibly care about a hostage?” Vane patted Dhrost heavily on the shoulder.
“Trust me, I’m not lying to you.
Just keep the little guy alive and healthy.
Do not let him die.” He was fully banking on using this biological Necrontyr infant to extort C’tan Shards directly out of the Necrons’ cold, dead hands.
Heh heh heh…
Szarekh.
You don’t want the absolute extinction of your original biological species to be on your hands, do you?
Therefore…
pay up.
With the baby situation handled, Vane set off to find Dante.
At this exact moment, Dante and his Blood Angels were currently locked in vicious combat alongside Anrakyr the Traveller deep within Hive Phodia’s industrial sector.
Their primary objective was to secure the massive Mechanicus spire anchoring the sector, thereby granting them direct override control of the Magnifican Prism.
The industrial zone had been completely terraformed by Hive Fleet Leviathan.
Colossal Capillary Towers pierced the polluted clouds, aggressively pumping processed biomass straight up to the bio-ships in high orbit.
The central plazas of the city were now dominated by gargantuan Digestion Pools, overflowing with the dissolving corpses of Imperial guardsmen and civilians.
To protect their critical biomass-harvesting infrastructure, the Hive Mind had deployed a terrifying concentration of heavy bio-forms.
As Vane approached the sector, he saw the Blood Angels and Necron Phalanxes completely surrounded by a suffocating ocean of Tyranids, locked in a brutal war of attrition.
“That’s a lot of bugs.
I should probably swap my loadout first.” Assessing the sheer density of the swarm, Vane used his onboard resources to craft an entirely new set of endgame armor and weaponry.
He equipped the Ignis Elytra Set ported from a high-fantasy Cataclysm mod, and the demonic katana, Enigma [Death’s Will], from an apocalyptic endgame expansion.
The Ignis Elytra Set didn’t just grant him flight; it passively projected a localized aura of catastrophic heat, constantly applying severe burn damage to any hostile entity within range.
It was the absolute undisputed king of AoE crowd-control armor.
The katana, Enigma [Death’s Will], was an Abyssal-forged demonic blade.
It possessed the terrifying ability to infinitely devour the life-force of anything it killed, eventually upgrading itself into the supreme Bloodletter [Carnage].
Against a Tyranid swarm made entirely of biological mass?
This blade was practically a hard counter.
Fully equipped, Vane leaped into the air.
The Elytra wings snapped open, propelling him high into the sky.
A moment later, he aggressively angled downwards, diving straight toward the earth like a blazing meteor.
BOOM!
Vane slammed into the ground with catastrophic kinetic force, unleashing a deafening shockwave.
A surging wave of infernal flames erupted outward, washing over the Tyranid swarm and setting countless bio-forms ablaze, leaving them shrieking in absolute agony.
“If the heavens had not birthed me, Vane, the path of the sword would remain forever in darkness.” “With civilization teetering on the brink of annihilation, I alone hold the demonic blade to hold back the collapsing sky!” Indulging completely in his own internal chuunibyou monologue, Vane moved at blurring speeds, wildly swinging Enigma [Death’s Will].
During his thirteen years stranded alone in the Minecraft universe, he had no companions.
He could only stave off the crushing isolation by constantly acting out dramatic scenarios in his head to entertain himself.
The hyper-sharp demonic blade effortlessly cleaved through the thick Tyranid chitin, cleanly severing limbs and bisecting torsos.
In mere moments, the ground he walked across was carpeted in severed limbs and charred, foul-smelling alien gore, transforming the sector into a literal slaughterhouse.
Any Termagant, Hormagaunt, or Genestealer foolish enough to lunge at him was mercilessly executed, their life force instantly drained to feed the demonic katana.
“It’s the Forefather!” First Captain Karlaen, completely drenched in Tyranid blood, pointed toward Vane, his eyes wide with absolute awe.
Hearing this, Dante quickly looked up.
His pupils shrank in sheer shock.
Vane was literally wreathed in roaring, magical flames.
Any Tyranid bio-form that even stepped within ten feet of him instantly burst into fire.
The katana in his hand glowed with an eerie, freezing light, casually slicing through Tyranid heavy armor like a hot knife through butter.
“Incredible power,” Mephiston murmured softly.
“If we were to face him in combat, he would likely slay us in a single strike.” “Rally to the Forefather’s position!
We must link up with him!” Dante forced down his awe and immediately issued new tactical orders.
“For the Emperor!
For Sanguinius!
For the Forefather!” (TL/N: Lol, I feel like this is going to spread everywhere from here on) The Blood Angels roared their war cries in unison, unleashing their fury upon the Tyranid swarm.
A torrential storm of mass-reactive bolter rounds tore through the advancing swarm and shattered the Spore Mine clusters blocking their path.
Dante spearheaded the charge, his power axe dancing in a blur of lethal arcs while his inferno pistol roared, dropping heavy Tyranid bio-forms with every step.
Finally, they managed to carve a path through the meat grinder and reached Vane.
“Forefather.” Dante offered a crisp salute.
“You guys are moving a bit slow.
But considering how primitive your gear is, I suppose it’s acceptable.” Dante: “…” For a second there, I genuinely couldn’t tell if that was a compliment or an insult.
“Let’s move.
We’re burning daylight.” Vane strode forward confidently.
He swung the demonic katana so fast it blurred into an afterimage.
Absolutely no bio-form could halt his advance; everything in his path was reduced to a soul-drained husk.
Roar!
A massive, winged Hive Tyrant plummeted from the sky, unleashing a terrifying psychic screech as it dive-bombed straight for Vane.
Vane didn’t even flinch.
He triggered his Elytra and engaged the monstrous synapse creature in a high-speed aerial dogfight.
Every single bone-sword strike and scythe-claw slash the Tyrant threw was effortlessly parried by Enigma [Death’s Will].
The barrage of bio-plasma and spore mines it launched from its dorsal vents were entirely absorbed by the forcefield projected by the Ring of the Guardian.
After a brief, intense exchange, Vane found his opening.
Enigma [Death’s Will] pierced straight through the Tyrant’s heavily armored thorax with zero resistance, instantly violently siphoning its life force and plunging the monster into a crippling state of weakness.
With a final, brutal backhand swing, Vane decapitated the Hive Tyrant, permanently ending the synapse creature.
As he touched back down on the ground, cheers erupted from the Blood Angels in the distance.
They had successfully breached the primary blast doors of the industrial sector.
Now, they only needed to secure the central Mechanicus Spire to complete the objective.
“I certainly did not calculate that you primitives would breach the perimeter faster than I.” Anrakyr the Traveller, having led his Necron Phalanxes in a pincer attack from the opposite flank, finally punched through the swarm and arrived at the Spire, heavily relying on the raw, reality-warping power of his captive C’tan Shard to do so.
“Humanity is the undisputed master of the galaxy.
It’s only natural we’re faster than you,” Vane shot back, completely refusing to coddle the Overlord’s ego.
Anrakyr opened his vocalizer to retort, but the words died in his throat.
He had personally experienced the sheer toxicity of this human’s tongue.
If they got into an argument, he knew he was statistically guaranteed to lose.
Take a step back.
Compromise is the peak of diplomacy.
Take a step back.
The broader strategic victory is what matters.
Take a step back…
No, wait, the more I think about it, the angrier I get!
I should just vaporize him right now!
Forcibly suppressing his mounting rage, Anrakyr aggressively changed the subject.
“Let us proceed.
We must reactivate the Magnifican Prism’s control spire.” The combined force advanced into the mechanical spire.
Any Tyranid vanguard units attempting to ambush them in the corridors were instantly pulverized into dust beneath their boots.
Arriving at the massively fortified internal blast doors of the control sanctum, Anrakyr casually waved a metallic hand.
His advanced engrams effortlessly shattered the crude Mechanicus encryption protocols in a microsecond, forcing the heavy doors open.
Executing the override, Anrakyr turned to look at Vane, fully expecting to see the human staring at him in profound awe and terror.
He wanted to unequivocally prove that Necron technology was vastly superior to Imperial engineering, forcing the human Forefather to recognize who the true masters of the galaxy were.
Instead, Anrakyr found Vane completely ignoring him.
The absolute microsecond the door cracked open, Vane and the Blood Angels simply walked right past him and pushed into the sanctum.
Anrakyr: “…” The most agonizing insult in the universe isn’t verbal humiliation…
it’s being completely, utterly ignored.
You damned ape… Vane led Dante and the Astartes in clearing out the remaining Tyranid stragglers inside the sanctum, finally reaching the Magnifican Prism’s central control terminal.
The terminal was a highly advanced relic of the Mephrit Dynasty, serving as the absolute master override for the Magnifican Prism array.
When humanity first colonized the Cryptus System millennia ago, they had inadvertently jury-rigged the xeno-tech, repurposing it to provide limitless solar energy to the system’s colonies.
Following the establishment of the Imperium, the Adeptus Mechanicus had taken control of the artifact, constructing the towering spire around it to protect and study it.
The moment Vane reached out and touched the control terminal, a system prompt popped up.
[Congratulations!
New Crafting Recipe Unlocked: Magnifican Prism – Core Control Unit] Looks like I’ll need to manually touch the other external components to unlock the full recipe before I can hand-craft a true Magnifican Prism.
Vane noted mentally.
Anrakyr finally arrived.
He interfaced his consciousness directly into the core control system, overriding the crude Imperial blockades and initiating the reactivation sequence.
He was preparing to forcefully command the Prism to siphon the star’s energy and direct the catastrophic thermal beam into the gas giant Aeros, triggering the shockwave that would cripple the Leviathan Fleet.
But just as they were prepping the firing sequence, disastrous tactical updates flooded the vox-net.
The Flesh Tearers Chapter, deployed to the planet Lysios, was critical to securing the Magnifican Prism’s orbital energy-relay nodes.
However, the Tyranid counter-offensive on Lysios was overwhelmingly brutal.
The sheer carnage was triggering the Black Rage and Red Thirst across the Flesh Tearers’ ranks, plunging their defense into a catastrophic crisis.
Simultaneously, the situation at the Void Domes of Tartaros was equally disastrous.
The local Imperial defenders had completely routed the moment the invasion began.
The Necron vanguard forces dispatched to secure the Domes were currently bogged down in a massive Tyranid counter-assault and were failing to secure the objective.
“So this is your ‘meticulously calculated grand design’?” Vane mocked Anrakyr the moment he heard the tactical reports.
“I gotta admit, it’s pretty full of holes.” The Necrons’ inherent contempt for humanity was hardcoded into their metal bones.
Even when forced into an alliance, they maintained an insufferably arrogant, condescending posture.
As a supreme Necron Overlord, hearing a biological ape mock his strategic planning caused Anrakyr’s logic circuits to nearly short out in sheer fury.
“If you dare utter another word of insolence, you had best prepare to suffer my absolute wrath.” “Oh, did I hit a nerve?” Vane completely shrugged off the threat.
“Whatever.
I don’t have time to argue with an incompetent Overlord.
Humanity is taking operational command of this plan.
From this second forward, your forces will follow our orders.” “On what authority?!” Anrakyr’s optical sensors flared violently.
What do you mean ‘incompetent Overlord’?!
What do you mean ‘humanity is taking command’?!
Refusing to waste another breath arguing, Vane rapidly pulled out Ender Pearls, Gold Ingots, and Amethyst Shards, quickly synthesizing a Waystone.
He then pulled out Obsidian blocks and quickly constructed a massive 23×23 Nether Portal frame, placing the Waystone directly in the center.
Punching in the exact coordinates for the Flesh Tearers’ position on Lysios, Vane activated the massive gateway.
The portal instantly ignited, swirling with the mesmerizing, violet glow of teleportation particles.
“Dante, we’re jumping to Lysios to reinforce the Flesh Tearers first.
Then we’ll deploy to Tartaros and secure the Void Domes ourselves,” Vane ordered Dante directly.
Anrakyr, who was practically shaking with rage just a second ago, stared at the actively humming teleportation portal in absolute, logic-defying shock.
Since when did humanity possess instantaneous, star-system-wide teleportation technology?!
I thought these primitive apes could only travel via highly unstable, short-range Warp jumps!