This is the bonus chapter for reaching 400 Powerstones.
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Seven minutes after the three Greater Daemons descended.
The intensity of the war across Aurelian IV visibly escalated to planetary extinction-crisis levels.
The blue-purple pollution clouds above the City of the Holy Anthem churned with a violent Warp storm.
The instant Mist-Weaver Calidus unfurled its iridescent mist-wings, the fabric of reality within a five-kilometer radius let out a tearing wail.
Light distorted into profane runes, and the silhouettes of buildings twisted and swayed.
Five hundred meters away, a Solar Auxilia squad was in the process of relocating their position.
In just three seconds after stepping into that distorted zone, horrifying mutations began to take hold.
Ever-changing patterns surfaced on the soldiers' skin, their eyeballs were violently stretched until they ruptured, and the bones beneath their flesh warped and mutated.
Some tried to scream, but their vocal cords could produce no sound.
Ten seconds later, this ten-man squad had been reduced to a mass of profane creations squirming on the ground.
Cinder-Burner Ignis, on the other hand, opted for a more direct approach.
It raised its magma-like arm and pointed at a defensive line in the upper hive that was still resisting.
Warp fire spewed from its fingertips.
The instant the crimson-gold stream of fire struck the outer shell of the defensive line, it completely melted the defensive plating right before their eyes.
"Fire! Every weapon that can shoot! Fire!" Tobias Fane roared in the comms channel. The remaining one thousand nine hundred-odd Blood Angels of the Second Company leveled their bolters, meltaguns, and plasma cannons. "Pour everything we've got left into those two abominations standing over the ruins!"
Bolter rounds struck the Mist-Weaver's translucent mist-wings, only stirring up a single ripple before vanishing without a trace.
Melta beams shot toward the Cinder-Burner's crimson-gold carapace, but the high-temperature plasma was annihilated by searing Warp fire half a meter from its surface.
"Futile." Mist-Weaver Calidus's voice echoed directly in the minds of all the warriors, sounding like tens of millions of people whispering simultaneously. "Your next shot will hit. You never owned this gun. You are actually already dead; this is just a pre-death hallucination."
Three Blood Angels warriors froze simultaneously, their faces beneath their helmets twisting from cognitive dissonance.
Some dropped their weapons and screamed, clutching their heads; some fired wildly into empty air; others simply turned their weapons on the brothers beside them.
"Maintain your sanity! It's an illusion!" Tobias Fane cleaved down a warrior who was about to accidentally injure a comrade, but more and more warriors were falling into chaos.
Cinder-Burner Ignis let out a screech, its wings flapping violently, shedding hundreds of cinder-feathers.
Every single one detonated mid-air into a fireball several meters in diameter, crashing into the Blood Angels' defensive line like a meteor shower.
"Evade!"
Tobias Fane only had time to shout that single word before at least ten warriors took direct hits from the fireballs.
The Warp fire ignored the ceramite protection of their power armor, seeping in through the joints and directly igniting their souls.
The struck warriors didn't scream. They merely froze in place, the eyes behind their helmet visors rapidly losing their luster as the bodies inside the power armor were reduced to hollow, burning husks.
"Retreat! Fall back to the second defensive line!" Tobias Fane ordered through gritted teeth. This was the first time the entire Second Company had proactively retreated since the battle began.
But right at that moment!
A golden flash of light, like a rising sun tearing through dark clouds, pierced through from the Noble District of the hive!
The Great Angel of the Imperium, Sanguinius, had arrived.
His wings were completely purified, every feather flowing with pale golden Primarch psychic energy.
Wherever he passed, twisted light was smoothed out, and profane whispers were purged.
The Blade Encarmine hummed in his hand, the psychic light coalescing on the blade melting away the Warp energy within a hundred-meter radius.
Sanguinius didn't spare a single glance at his gene-sons embroiled in the bitter fight below.
His amber-gold slit pupils locked dead onto the two newly descended Greater Daemons of Tzeentch.
"Mist of Knowledge... Fire of Unmaking..." Sanguinius's voice was as freezing as the wind at the peak of Terra's highest snowy mountain. "Who permitted you Warp entities... to set foot on the Emperor's domain?"
The instant his words fell, his figure blurred.
He didn't bother with further probing or verbal sparring. After being trapped for the past few days, Sanguinius had gained a crystal-clear understanding of the nature of these entities.
Every word they spoke was a trap, laced with corruption.
Therefore, the only response to these Warp entities was the purest, most absolute violence.
Sanguinius raised the Blade Encarmine high and slashed at Mist-Weaver Calidus!
The speed of this strike surpassed the limits of the laws of physics, the blade's trajectory through the air even leaving behind a brief vacuum fracture.
The Mist-Weaver attempted to mist-form and evade, but the instant the Warp mist surrounding it touched the pale golden psychic energy on the blade, it violently boiled and evaporated as if meeting its absolute bane!
Sizzle!
A piece of the iridescent mist-wing was cleaved off!
The moment the mist-wing detached from the main body, it didn't dissipate, but rather solidified into a hand-sized crystal constantly shifting in color.
It fell to the ground.
The Mist-Weaver let out a shriek mixed with pain and astonishment, its stellar-vortex eyes freezing for the very first time.
This sword strike fell completely outside of the billions of future simulations it had calculated; in countless possibilities, there was not a single one where it couldn't dodge this strike.
"You are not in the plan..." the Mist-Weaver hissed.
"I, Sanguinius, have never been a part of anyone's plan."
Sanguinius's second strike arrived, this time aiming for Cinder-Burner Ignis.
The Cinder-Burner roared, crossing its arms to block. The crimson-gold veins on its magma carapace erupted with blinding light, attempting to use the fire of order disintegration to counteract Sanguinius's pale golden psychic energy.
But the Blade Encarmine was imbued with a power forged personally by the Emperor, specifically born to purify the filth of the Warp.
Blade and carapace collided!
Unleashing an earth-shattering tear.
The crimson-gold veins on the Cinder-Burner's arms rapidly dimmed and crumbled, centering outward from the point of impact.
"You can actually... destroy... the rules..." The Cinder-Burner stumbled backward, its hooved claws plowing deep trenches into the ground.
"I am the rule, and I am the Judge of the Filth."
Sanguinius's wings flapped, his figure instantly appearing between the two Greater Daemons. The Blade Encarmine drew a perfect arc of light, forcing both of them back simultaneously.
Fighting one against two, the Great Angel of the Imperium and Ninth Primarch, Sanguinius, unexpectedly seized the upper hand in a single exchange.
However, the Mist-Weaver and Cinder-Burner didn't panic.
They exchanged a glance, calculating light flashing simultaneously within the stellar vortexes and burning fireballs of their eyes.
"Delay," the Mist-Weaver whispered.
"Consume," the Cinder-Burner screeched.
The two Greater Daemons stopped trying to clash head-on with Sanguinius. Instead, they began to move and harass him, unleashing large-scale abilities that affected reality.
The Mist-Weaver whipped up a Warp mist that blanketed several city blocks, while the Cinder-Burner ignited inextinguishable Warp fires.
They were stalling for time, burning through the Primarch's psychic energy, while also... waiting.
Waiting for the Great Unclean One in the Aru Industrial Zone to thoroughly crush the defensive line, allowing the green plague and the blue-purple trickery to converge on this planet.
That moment would be the true activation of their killing blow.
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Nice! We went from Rank 20 to 17.
Let's continue this pace and in 1 to 2 days we will easily reach Top 10!
Anyway only around 40 more powerstones before the next bonus, keep the stones coming.