As the ascension to daemonhood was completed, a rift leading straight into the Garden of the Warp was torn open.
A swarm of Nurgle spirits came charging out of it bearing Plague Beasts, though because a vast quantity of souls had been consumed as fodder for the ascension, no Great Unclean One emerged.
As the saying goes, enemies meeting glare all the redder; with their respective masters having reached no consensus, the two sides were foes the instant they laid eyes on one another.
Because human souls were fodder to them both, almost in an instant the war between Nurgle and Khorne heated up rapidly.
The two sides were near enough evenly matched in power, and the war erupted practically in a blink.
Both wished to swallow up every soul on this planet for themselves alone, so neither would yield an inch to the other.
……
Meanwhile, over on the other side.
“What a lively scene.”
At this moment Heydrich too was watching the war in the distance and couldn’t help but snipe at it.
He really hadn’t expected things to develop into such an utter clusterfuck of a situation.
Sure enough, an utter clusterfuck was the base coat of Warhammer.
Now that he’d already come, there really was no stopping it.
“Prepare to head back to the spire-top.
Right now the entire main force of the space Necrons is inside this mustard-seed dimension.”
Of course, with things having come to this step, Heydrich’s heart was a touch constipated as well.
He had originally only wanted to coast along while walking his Path on the side, yet somehow it had turned out like this.
If this planet were dragged into the Warp, he wouldn’t fare well either; the present Heydrich, both for public duty and private interest, needed to deal with it.
But fortunately the scene right now was simply too chaotic, so not a single side cared in the least about the handful of them.
What’s more, the Khorne cultists had already thoroughly wrecked the under-hive, and now their target was the hive itself.
The several of them quickly slipped into the lower-hive through a hidden passage prepared in advance, and after passing identity authentication, swiftly made their way toward the spire-top.
…….
Within the lavish palace of the spire-top, the atmosphere at this moment was oppressive to a rather terrifying degree.
“It has already been confirmed that two relatively large-scale sacrifices were carried out; we anticipate that at the very least a Greater Daemon or a Daemon Prince will appear.”
Looking at the intelligence before him, the Inquisitor’s expression had already turned as grim as it could possibly get.
There was one piece of good news right now, and that was that the two sides were currently locked in a frenzied slaughter.
Their forces within the hive were still passable—at the very least they could hold out for the time being.
“Have the Imperial Cult priests continue praying to His Majesty, and have each of them keep a close watch on the corruption.”
At this moment the Inquisitor also looked toward an old man at his side; this was the Ecclesiarch of the sector’s Imperial Cult.
As the headquarters of this sector’s Imperial Cult, they had a vast number of priests, along with an ample supply of fanatic-bones—all of these were sharp weapons for combating the corruption of Chaos.
Or rather, they used the Emperor’s corruption to paper over the corruption of the other Dark Gods; but at least for the time being they still had a means to stabilize this planet.
Only this was merely temporary.
One had to understand that the planet Kuent had four continents in all, and upon each continent there stood a hive.
This Chaos corruption was still confined to this one continent of theirs; if it were left unchecked and the corruption spread to the other three hives, the outcome would be anything but certain.
Kuent had three hundred billion people in total, with roughly over a hundred billion situated in Hive No.
1.
The rest were distributed across the other three hives and the wastelands—and those other three hives possessed no such defensive force.
If those three hives fell as well, just imagining what sort of things these souls might summon was enough to make one’s scalp crawl.
The war by then might not be something a single Space Marine Chapter could handle, yet they were somewhat powerless to do anything about it.
Within the hive they could still combat the corruption of the Warp through the Imperial Cult, but charging out into the wastelands under those conditions would be an entirely different matter.
What’s more, both Bloodthirsters and a Daemon Prince might come out—this was already a matter that required the Astartes to act.
“Report!
The great demigods have returned!!!”
Just as the crowd was at their wits’ end, several towering figures strode in from outside.
At this moment, with their appearance, the original oppressiveness dissipated by more than half in an instant.
The great demigods would surely, by their wisdom, lead them out of this crisis.
It was plain to see that toward the Astartes, the vast majority of the people of the Imperium held a kind of frenzied superstition.
Only at this moment, Inquisitor Gers’s pupils contracted, for he discovered that the ones who had returned were not the three he had sent out.
Rather it was an existence he had never laid eyes on before—a can clad in deep blue power armor with a white eagle upon its chest.
Especially that white eagle…
As an Inquisitor of extremely high standing, he understood all too well what this meant—an existence that could be traced back to the very dawn of the Human Imperium.
That was the sort of existence whose counsel even the Custodes, holders of supreme magisterial authority, would have to heed; and for it to be recognized as such by his own Astartes meant that its identity absolutely could not be false.
Combining this with the earlier conversation that one had had with him, Inquisitor Gers did not dare to sit down at all, but instead rose to his feet at this moment and immediately performed an obeisance toward this existence.
“Inquisitor Gers of the Imperial Order of Outward Defence pays his respects to the Ancient Sage.
The Kuent of today may have need of your wisdom.” Inquisitor Gers bent his body into an angle far too humble for one of his station; the rosette upon his chest swayed faintly, forming an absurd contrast with the scratches across his power armor that were still dripping with cultist blood.
The cluster of scribes and attendant swordsmen behind him exchanged glances—they had followed the Grand Inquisitor for over a decade, and had never once seen him bow before any Astartes.
Silence……
As the Inquisitor’s words fell, the scene went utterly quiet.
Even the Planetary Governor was at this moment staring dumbstruck at everything before him, for one had to understand that the Inquisition and the Space Marines were in fact equal in rank, or even pitted against one another.
The Inquisitors of the Inquisition were qualified to pass judgment upon Space Marines—of course, merely qualified.
Whether they could actually do so depended on the pedigree of each individual Inquisitor.
Gers was the Grand Inquisitor of their sector, and an existence like that needed to perform an obeisance to a single Astartes.
To them this was utterly unheard of, and so….
Clink!!!
A cup, of all things, had fallen to the floor from someone’s hand, and the cup’s owner, fearing that his own discourtesy might have disturbed the great existence before him—which would surely be blasphemy and disgrace—at this moment went limp all over and dropped straight to his knees.
Thud!!!
And it seemed to set off a chain reaction; almost in the blink of an eye, a dense throng of people knelt before Heydrich.
“Oh, hell!!!”
Seeing this, Heydrich cursed under his breath.
Though he had a way to handle this incident, looking at the great crowd of people prostrating themselves before him flat on the ground…
Mm, it was a little awkward.
“Rise.
You are the Inquisitor, then.
One of the last gifts that the great Rune-Sigil Chancellor Malcador left to the Human Imperium—the mouthpiece of the Golden Throne, are you?”
“I am.”
Upon hearing Heydrich’s words, Inquisitor Gers’s heart gave a twitch as well.
As a high-ranking Inquisitor he naturally knew the origins of the Inquisition, as well as that unspeakable yet supremely loyal Chapter…..
The Grey Knights.
The one before him was indeed an ancient existence; it seemed he knew of certain matters that were secrets even to the Inquisition.
“Very good.
Children of the Imperium, straighten your backs.
With a great foe descending and the situation urgent, now is no time for empty ceremony.”
“Yes…..”
Upon hearing Heydrich’s words, the crowd straightened themselves up as well.
Whatever rites and audiences there might be could wait until later; the main thing now was to deal with the Chaos corruption.
Only at just this moment….
“You are—could it be that you are…..?”
At this moment the Sector Governor’s gaze too fell upon the Irena who had entered following the several Astartes, and combined with what had happened earlier, he had a terrifying thought.
Could it be that the one who had taken Wells’s identity was this very Space Marine before him?
____
👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: A Martial Arts Master Will Never Be Humiliated
Let’s hit these goals: