"Hiss... all that money spent on medical treatment earlier was for nothing."
Eden looked at Dorn lying unconscious on the floor and felt a little numb inside.
It seemed the old Emperor's psychic attack was even fiercer than he had imagined. Even a body as absurdly tough as that stubborn mule's couldn't withstand it.
He hurriedly ordered the Custodes to come in at once and drag the wretched Dorn away to the ICU.
That would also make it easier for him to pull back.
The veteran Custodes did not hesitate in the slightest. They quickly came in, carried off the Lord of the Mountain Fortress, and then withdrew from the Throne Room.
Then they sealed the great doors shut.
They knew very well that they were incapable of taking part in an incident of this level.
Interfering with the Savior rashly would only make things worse.
"My lord, has your pain worsened again?"
The commander of the Throne Guard stared at the sealed Throne Room with deep worry.
The Emperor had lost control before, but never this badly.
Now the Throne Room was shaking, and rubble kept raining down.
Rumble!
Rampaging psychic energies crashed against one another. Brilliant golden light poured through the cracks of the doors, and faint black arcs of electricity could be seen within it.
It was a fierce psychic struggle involving a higher dimension.
The veteran Custodes were on edge. All they could do was hope the Savior could suppress the out-of-control power of the Golden Throne.
And let the Emperor, the Master of Mankind, regain his calm.
As for Dorn, the Emperor's Primarch son, the Custodes had dumped him on the ground. His face was planted against the floor, and he was "sleeping" very soundly.
The Custodes regarded Dorn as the one responsible for this loss of control, so naturally they had no intention of treating him well.
Fortunately, the Sisters from the Sanctuary Sanatorium's emergency response team arrived quickly.
After injecting Dorn with a universal medicament, they placed him on a mechanical stretcher and carried him away for treatment.
The Savior's medical resources were now extremely abundant. As long as you still had a breath left in you, or your body retained a trace of vitality, they could patch you up thoroughly.
Inside the Throne Room.
The Savior's psychic power and the Emperor's psychic power clashed violently, grinding against each other.
Their golden psychic avatars fought in midair, every punch unleashing violent shockwaves.
They even manifested countless golden angels, chariots, and soldiers, all charging and battling one another.
This place had become like a miniature divine realm, with both gods sending their creations into war.
In truth, this was effectively a conceptual struggle between them, one that had spread from reality into a higher dimension.
Once Dorn had been dragged out, Eden, no longer restrained, immediately sank his consciousness into the clone body seated upon the miniature throne mechanism.
That allowed him to draw on even more psychic power to resist the Golden Throne's runaway energies.
"This is bad..."
Eden sat on the miniature mechanical throne, facing the Emperor's Golden Throne from afar.
He and the old Emperor were essentially sitting on toilets face-to-face while locked in combat.
Whether it was because the psychological trauma caused by that little horse was too severe, or for some other reason, the Emperor's loss of control this time ran extremely deep.
More intense than ever before.
Unless Eden could completely suppress that out-of-control power, it would be hard for him to disengage.
It was obvious to the naked eye that the angels and soldiers the old Emperor had manifested were already starting to carry the feel of Warp-born daemonic life.
That proved the Emperor had taken another great step down the path toward the Dark King.
Maybe one day the old man would suddenly spring up from the Golden Throne, punch the Warp, kick the Imperium, and beat both the gods of Chaos and Eden until they howled.
"The Emperor really is a natural-born overpowered hero. A giant among men in life, a mighty spirit in death.
Even when he goes dark, he's still this overwhelming. Absolutely unstoppable."
Eden swallowed and sighed with feeling. He felt a deep sense of darkness and pressure.
Inside the Throne Room, that holy psychic force mixed with black lightning was pressing closer, while his own power was steadily being pushed back.
His defensive line was about to collapse.
If he failed to hold the line, the miniature mechanical throne would most likely be destroyed under the pressure.
The Emperor's runaway energy would erupt even further, worsening the damage to the Golden Throne and perhaps triggering unknown disasters on top of that.
The future Dark King was terrifying beyond measure!
Even so, there was not much fear on Eden's face. Instead, it was full of fighting spirit.
As if he weren't a dark god himself.
His fists weren't exactly weak either.
He was the great Savior. No matter what, he was still humanity's second-strongest existence, humanity's future second god of ruin:
Diablo, Lord of Terror!
The Emperor's sacred psychic power had a particularly devastating effect on Chaos daemons, but it could not affect him.
By now, the Sun of Hope had absorbed a vast ocean of Imperial faith. Surely it was strong enough to trade blows with the Sacred Sun.
Of course, that was assuming the old Emperor didn't blow apart the Golden Throne beneath his rear and ascend fully into the Dark King first.
If that happened, and Eden had not yet ascended himself, the old man would most likely pin him down and beat his head in.
But for now, the Sun of Hope could still hold!
"Yeah!
Come forth, my infernal power of darkness!"
With a roar, Eden drew upon even more of the Sun of Hope's power.
He released the dark infernal energy of Diablo's shadowed side, strengthening both his combat ability and his suppressive force.
That was divine power!
In an instant, arcs of dark red lightning spread across Eden's psychic avatar. His body swelled further, becoming more massive and powerful, and was clad in flame-stained armor.
At that moment, the state and size of his avatar had nearly risen to match the Emperor's out-of-control psychic avatar.
The two faced one another head-on, and Eden's momentum was not weaker in the slightest.
Their psychic avatars profoundly affected the Throne Room.
The vast chamber shook violently.
Yet any falling rubble was almost instantly shredded apart by the interwoven psychic forces.
Eden did not waste words. He drove his psychic avatar forward, his fist blazing with dark red flames.
"Infernal Golden... Big Punch!"
The Savior's techniques were just that plain, direct, and powerful!
Boom!
The Emperor's psychic avatar took the punch, then struck back in return. Their fists became a web of afterimages.
Their speed was such that even high-ranking warriors would struggle to follow it, and each blow carried incomparably immense power.
Outside the Throne Room.
The veteran Custodes felt the impact of the psychic forces and heard the thunderous pounding against the great doors. Anxiety filled them.
They could not intervene. All they could do was pray that this loss of control would come to an end.
Yet this was only a projection of their authority in reality. The true battlefield was elsewhere.
In the higher dimensions of the Warp.
The concepts of the Sun of Hope and the Sacred Sun were slamming against one another, and the energy tides they produced spread toward the distant void.
Even the Chaos Gods sensed this sudden clash, and almost immediately turned their full attention toward it.
They could not interfere in such a distant struggle, but they still became tense at this conflict between the Savior and the Cursed One.
What the gods cared about was not who won or lost, but what crucial information the conflict revealed.
"Darkness draws near..."
Khorne, the Blood God, his colossal body formed of molten blood-flame, spoke slowly. Every word he uttered spat crimson fire.
This god of blood and slaughter, the father of war, was showing fear for one of the rare times in his existence. His pupils trembled slightly.
He could sense the horrifying power in the Warp that was on the verge of emerging. Even lingering souls and evil spirits were wailing in terror.
The Cursed One's power could no longer be contained. It was on the verge of transforming into something even more dreadful.
That being would become the shadow of death, darkness itself:
The Dark King!
He would become a grave threat to every existence in the Warp, especially to the Chaos Gods themselves.
That would mean a terrifying wolf would enter their back garden, and the delicious faith on which they fed in the galaxy, along with the human race itself, would face a terrible catastrophe.
Humanity's population would plummet, becoming an endangered species like the Aeldari.
"No..."
It was not only Khorne who was troubled. The other three gods were equally uneasy.
Nurgle in particular let out a frightened murmur in the midst of a nightmare.
He had personally experienced how terrifying the Cursed One was. Even his beloved Plague Garden had been burned away by nearly half.
"Gwah!"
As for Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways was desperately searching through the threads of fate for a path forward.
He was trying to see whether there was still some way to escape the threat posed by the Cursed One.
He was frantically divining the future, trying to determine whether things could still turn out well, because once the Cursed One ascended, he himself would become a pitiful roasted bird.
The Changer of Ways did not want his true self to suffer such a dreadful fate.
Before long, the energy ripples from the distant void gradually weakened, then disappeared altogether.
That region returned to its former depth and silence. The void-whales that had scattered in terror resumed their original migratory paths.
The Chaos Gods knew that the Savior had temporarily curbed the Cursed One's loss of control.
But that changed nothing. The countdown to chaotic darkness had already begun.
Time was running out. The situation was urgent.
These bringers of turmoil and disaster were now fearing an even greater chaos and catastrophe, fearing the loss of the territory and power that belonged to them.
The Chaos Gods exchanged glances and became even more determined in their cooperation.
They had to completely eliminate the hidden danger posed by the Cursed One!
Hum...
The Changer of Ways projected a blue planet into the void, astonishingly lifelike.
It was humanity's homeworld, Terra, and the place where the Emperor's broken body remained.
That was the Cursed One's vital point, and also the only place where they could strike.
After that, more energy-phantoms appeared. Countless threads connected themselves to that planet.
Then they extended outward and intertwined.
Any movement in a single thread could affect the thoughts, decisions, and actions of some being on Terra.
Naturally, doing such a thing under the eyes of the Cursed One and the Savior was extremely difficult.
But they had to pour all their power into accomplishing it, altering Terra's fate bit by bit and weakening its defenses.
They would draw away those whose presence could affect the future, pulling them from that region, and then launch the final decapitation strike.
The Daemon Primarchs would attack together, using the Shadow of Light to completely seal away the power of their father, the Cursed One.
That was the only opportunity to change the fate of the Warp.
"The Savior."
Slaanesh, the Dark Prince, stared at the brightest point in Terra's projected image apart from the Cursed One and spoke slowly:
"He must leave that place. He must be restrained..."
The Savior was the strongest being at the Cursed One's side.
If they failed to lure him away from Terra, the Daemon Primarchs might not be able to defeat that despicable man.
And that would cause their plan to fail.
No one had expected that the Savior, once unworthy of notice, would one day become like the Cursed One himself, a being they had to watch carefully.
He was even slowly digging away at the roots of their power through false faith!
"He will leave."
The Changer of Ways' shifting body glimmered faintly as he made a promise to the other gods.
He would devote everything to shaping a plan so perfect and so difficult to detect that the Savior would leave Terra without even realizing it.
And once he left, he would find it difficult to return.
Everything was going according to plan!
As the Chaos Gods prepared with mounting urgency, the dark machinery of New Dragon Forest Star roared ever more violently, filled with ceaseless clamor.
Then, one after another, the forms of the Daemon Primarchs appeared upon that loathsome planet.
...
Holy Terra.
"Finally over. Good thing I ran fast, or that throne would've sucked me in too."
Eden let out a breath, cold sweat all over him, then dropped onto the floor in exhaustion.
The heavy blackstone armor smashed cracks into the floor, and the surrounding area was already a complete wreck.
By now, the violent shaking within the Throne Room had fully subsided, and the Golden Throne's loss of control had stopped.
He had put an end to it.
The process had been extremely difficult. The Sun of Hope had almost used its full strength, crashing head-on into the Sacred Sun gone out of control.
Even if it had not been a battle to the death, it had still been highly dangerous.
More importantly, Eden had used too much of the Sun of Hope's power, which meant he had nearly become too deeply entangled with the mechanical throne to get back down.
That had been the most dangerous part.
He had come within a hair's breadth of walking the same road as the Emperor, ending up seated side by side with the old man on a mechanical throne of his own.
Clang!
Eden removed the ruined blackstone armor, and his body felt much lighter.
The old Emperor had already regained control, so there was no longer any need for that thing to protect his body in reality.
He got up and walked toward the Throne, grumbling as he went.
"Can you still hold out or not? That almost got me killed this time, and Dorn got blasted into that state too."
Above the Golden Throne, the Emperor's psychic avatar appeared once more, now fully calm.
This time he appeared as an aged monarch in golden armor.
That was clearly the old Emperor's bright-side persona.
He looked a little stooped, full of self-reproach.
"Eden, I do not know how much longer I can endure, nor do I know whether the next loss of control will..."
The Emperor raised his head and spoke slowly. An indescribable exhaustion filled his face.
This immortal, the Master of Mankind, clearly understood what sort of dreadful disaster would occur if he completely lost control.
"That won't happen."
Eden paused slightly, then added, "The suppression facility is already taking shape, and the research has reached a critical stage.
This problem can be solved."
He looked at the Emperor, his gaze firm. "Humanity can solve every problem. Our fate should not end here!"
"There is no time left."
For one of the rare times, tears appeared in the Emperor's eyes. He had never seemed this weak before.
"I can no longer see the future. And now, you cannot even kill me anymore. His arrival can no longer be avoided."
The final plan this Master of Mankind had once held was for a Primarch, or the Savior, to kill him before he fully lost control.
That was meant to prevent the coming destruction.
Yet the Emperor had discovered that, at some unknown point, he had already fused with the Warp itself, existing in a state of eternal simultaneity.
He now existed in the past, present, and future all at once.
Now he was like those hateful gods of the Warp: eternal, undying, impossible to erase completely.
And that also meant the prophecy had already come true. Humanity's doom could no longer be changed.
(End of Chapter)
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