“Blood for the Blood God, skulls for the Skull Throne!!!”
Accompanying roar after roar, chaotic slaughter filled the entire ruin.
“Perfect!!!”
Watching that utterly chaotic scene, Heydrich couldn’t help but smile.
Relying on his power of perception-shielding and alteration, he had successfully blended in among this band of World Eaters.
This also let him breathe a sigh of relief—an ordinary person couldn’t possibly see through him.
But if it were those psykers or Chaos sorcerers, that would be hard to say; as for whether these Khorne Space Marines could see through him, Heydrich didn’t know.
So he chose to borrow the power of the Path of Enigmata to grant himself the identity of Alpharius.
As long as this identity wasn’t seen through, there would be no problem.
What’s more, just in case, he had layered another shell of World Eater over the top.
So you think I’m a World Eater, but actually I’m Alpharius.
You think I’m Alpharius, but actually I’m Heydrich!!!
Of course, this was all just for mixing in for the moment.
If he really followed them back, then he’d surely be discovered before long.
After all, he was just an ordinary man, with no nails hammered into his skull.
Even that little squad leader of the World Eaters had sensed a trace of something off, and it was at this moment that he directly made his move and muddied the waters first.
Based on his understanding of Khorne, these people were a pack of lunatics.
Once they got worked up in the heat of battle, they’d even kill their own; what’s more, these World Eaters were merely suppressing the agitation of the Butcher’s Nails.
“The first step of the plan was a great success, so now it’s time to begin the second plan.”
The main reason Heydrich could be discovered was that this band of World Eaters numbered eight men—now, with one more, that made nine.
Clearly, after all his stirring, combined with the cooperation of the Path’s power, he had directly detonated the inner madness of these Khorne Space Marines.
So since that was the case…
Thinking of this, Heydrich looked toward the weakest of the eight World Eaters.
At this moment the latter hadn’t realized where the problem lay, but had charged alone into a cluster of monster-creature nests.
He had even broken away from the main body of the force, which gave Heydrich an opportunity.
“Blood for the Blood God, skulls for the Skull Throne!!!”
Accompanying yet another roar, this World Eater suddenly went rigid all over.
He tried to twist his body to the limit to evade something, but it was still a step too late.
Because it was right then that a blood-red figure appeared behind him at some unknown moment, and the next instant a chainsaw dagger—actually the chainsword for mortal use that Heydrich had brought along.
It only looked like a dagger because of an Astartes’ height.
It directly and precisely pierced through his chest, destroying the gene-seed within, and then with another stroke severed his head.
Giving him no chance to react at all, he took his head out of the helmet and smashed it to pieces.
“Phew…”
Looking at the World Eater before him who had completely lost all life, Heydrich let out a breath.
It was his first time taking action against a Space Marine.
To say he wasn’t nervous would be a lie, but nervous as he was, his hand had been quick.
“Very good, now your identity is mine.
Otherwise, constantly running the Path’s power to forcibly manifest as a World Eater would be rather a waste of time.”
After casually hiding the corpse, the Space Marine armor on Heydrich’s body also underwent subtle changes, making it look exactly like the World Eater he had killed.
Although the Path of Enigmata could forcibly weave an identity and rewrite history—
it still needed to make others believe you were a certain someone, so the simplest, most brutal method was to kill a certain person and replace them, just like his previous identity.
Of course, that person hadn’t been killed by him; rather, he had run into a firefight at the time of his transmigration.
That person had been killed, and using the information he knew, he had temporarily woven an identity and mixed his way up to the spire-top.
“That captain just said they were going to transport it to Holy Terra, so it must be for the Battle of the Lion’s Gate.
It seems there’s a Chaos artifact here—let’s go take a look at what it is first.”
After casually taking that man’s weapon into his hand, Heydrich chose to follow the main body of the force.
These mutated creatures of the under-hive were utterly terrifying to ordinary people; their level of danger was even considerably greater than the xenomorphs from movies in his past life.
But to Space Marines they were nothing, so they quickly cleared out these creatures buried deep underground at the outer perimeter.
They entered this dilapidated ruin.
As for that band of World Eaters, after experiencing the slaughter just now, their minds had barely managed to calm down.
Mixed in among the squad, Heydrich secretly surveyed his surroundings.
He saw that the walls of this tomb were entirely composed of a dark green metal, the surface so smooth it bore not a single seam, as if the whole block of metal had been cast directly into shape.
Engraved upon the walls were unrecognizable hieroglyphs, and under the illumination of the World Eaters’ helmet tactical lamps those characters gave off a faint green glow, as though some living thing that had slumbered for hundreds of millions of years was being faintly roused to open its eyes by the light’s stimulation.
The air was suffused with a dryness pushed to the extreme, a deathly silence—no spores, no fungi, none of the damp, moldy smell that the lowest levels of a hive ought to have, as if this space itself rejected the existence of all organic life.
“This is the ancient nest of a xenos.”
Soon the captain of the World Eaters spoke with a bit of astonishment, and then his eyes swept toward his battle-brothers, that sense of wrongness vanishing completely.
His seven brothers were all present, and they were about to complete their mission.
Stored here was an ancient Warp artifact; with the slumber of the Necron dynasty, this Warp artifact too had been buried deep here.
“This Hive City Kuent really is a place of outstanding people and spirited land…”
Only at this moment Heydrich was somewhat at a loss for words, namely that he couldn’t understand—with such an enormous hive city slapped right here, how had they never discovered a Necron tomb?
As far as he knew, there was a whole batch of Genestealers lurking at the boundary between the under-hive and the lower-hive, and the planet’s local PDF had carried out numerous suppression campaigns against them.
But they had never been completely rooted out—though, of course, those Genestealers weren’t enough to attract a Hive Fleet.
Now there were Necrons here too.
Was the next thing going to be Dark Eldar appearing in the webway tunnels, and Ork spores sprouting from the soil?
“Forget it, let’s just take it one step at a time.”
Casting his thoughts to the back of his mind, Heydrich cautiously followed them in.
He had originally worried about whether they’d be attacked by the Tomb World’s protective mechanisms, but evidently he had been overthinking it.
Humanity had built such an enormous hive city upon this planet and still hadn’t woken them up; this thing clearly had a rather worrying quality of sleep.
In any case, after they blasted open the great gate with explosives, the entire Tomb World showed no reaction whatsoever.
Then the group, following the intelligence this squad leader had previously obtained from the Chaos sorcerer, made their way all along toward the depths of the tomb.
After realizing there were no problems for the time being, Heydrich at this moment was once again brimming with wicked schemes.
“The first part of the plan was perfect, so now it’s time for the second step.
I absolutely must sow discord between these Khorne devotees and the Slaanesh devotees, and make them go at each other like dogs.”
Watching as they drew closer and closer to their destination, Heydrich chose to continue acting according to his own plan.