"You are nothing more than slaves to a god, cowards willing to cast aside eternal power..."
Imotekh the Stormlord had always despised those Necrontyr who were willing to abandon everything merely to restore their flesh and souls.
Above all, he despised the Lord of Hope, a being with no military achievements who manipulated faith in a god to seize political power.
"Do you truly believe that launching a surprise attack against the Dais of Dominion is enough to make you a true king?
"How is such foolishness any different from the thinking of insects made of flesh?
"You are too weak. Perhaps I should never have considered you an opponent. Doing so was a disgrace!"
Imotekh looked down upon Eden with undisguised contempt. His entire demeanor seemed to declare that he was about to teach the Lord of Hope a lesson.
What?
Eden stared speechlessly at the Stormlord.
What was this man babbling about?
He could not be bothered to respond. Instead, he stepped back slightly and continued examining the sensor data, confirming whether the core region concealed any traps.
He had no intention of falling for some scheme devised by that treacherous old bastard, the Silent King.
"Slaves to a god, faith is nothing but a crutch for the weak! Living metal is the true power that will allow the Necrontyr to rule the galaxy!"
When Imotekh saw Eden retreat, his contempt for the so-called Lord of Hope only deepened.
"My followers, destroy these slaves to a god and traitors to the Necrontyr..."
No longer interested in challenging Eden to a duel, the Stormlord led the high-ranking Phaerons in a sudden charge.
Imotekh only wanted to destroy his opponent as quickly as possible, venting his fury while earning even greater prestige.
As for a duel?
Eden's posture had already told him everything he needed to know.
The so-called Lord of Hope knew nothing about combat and possessed no profound martial skill.
He was unworthy!
"Ha! So even you can feel fear. Unfortunately, your struggle is nothing more than the final resistance of a dying coward."
Imotekh watched with growing disdain as Eden and the others used phase translocation to move farther away.
Space split apart everywhere the Stormlord passed. Even the black tombstone beneath his feet, tougher than auramite, was silently cleaved by spatial blades.
Such power was enough to terrify any warrior in the galaxy.
The ancient bladed staff in his hands could slice through almost anything.
The Stormlord had a terrifying record of directly cleaving high-ranking tomb ships apart. Even humanity's Titans were little more than children's toys before him.
That astonishing destructive power was the foundation of his ambition to conquer the stars.
It was why he was regarded as one of the few beings capable of challenging the Silent King.
"Coward! Is running all you can do?"
Imotekh was growing impatient with Eden's repeated use of phase translocation.
Such attempts were meaningless.
He easily calculated where the Lord of Hope would emerge from his next phase jump, then hurled a spatial relic into the air.
"Unfortunately for you, even escape is impossible in my presence."
As the Stormlord finished speaking, the spatial relic enveloped the surrounding region and disrupted every phase-translocation system within its range.
The interdiction affected friend and foe alike.
It completely eliminated Eden's ability to evade the coming attack and extinguished his final hope of escape.
Imotekh tightened his grip upon the humming Staff of the Destroyer as it continuously sliced through the surrounding space.
His presence grew even more overwhelming.
He advanced toward Eden one step at a time, unleashing a spatial storm that swept forward around him.
The nine high-ranking Phaerons surrounding him lent him the bearing of a true king.
Barring some unforeseen accident, the Lord of Hope and traitors such as Zahndrekh would all fall beneath his staff.
"Coward, face me!"
Imotekh slowly raised his bladed staff and pointed it at Eden. His voice brooked no refusal.
His opponent had nowhere left to run.
He could only face the future Storm... King!
"Lord of Hope, kneel before the great Imotekh! Perhaps he will allow you to survive!"
"Die, traitors!"
The nine high-ranking Phaerons were even more aggressive, shouting continuously to undermine the authority of the Lord of Hope and his followers.
They were extremely loud.
The scene stunned the uninformed Necrontyr within the core region.
They had never imagined that the Stormlord could be so powerful. With only a handful of Phaerons, he had moved to intercept the seemingly unstoppable Lord of Hope.
He was even berating Eden to his face.
What incredible majesty!
"Perhaps the Lord of Hope's advance will end here, and he will fall to Imotekh," one Phaeron thought.
After seeing the Lord of Hope break into the core region with unstoppable momentum, he had already begun wondering whether he should flee or simply surrender and join Eden's forces.
Yet the moment Imotekh appeared, the Stormlord suppressed Eden with an apparently irresistible presence, forcing the Lord of Hope to retreat and evade him.
The other Phaerons and nobles reached similar conclusions.
Imotekh's arrival gave them a glimmer of hope that the situation could still be salvaged.
"What extraordinary courage!
"Can the Stormlord defeat that usurper and arch-traitor by himself?"
The Phaerons and nobles who remained loyal to the Silent King saw hope once more, and their thoughts began racing.
They exchanged messages, offering the Stormlord their respect and encouragement while eagerly awaiting the death of the Lord of Hope.
They could hardly be blamed.
The Stormlord's presence was simply too overwhelming. He had dared to charge the Lord of Hope with so few followers.
Who would do such a thing without absolute confidence in victory?
Hadn't even the Lord of Hope retreated before his advance?
What?!
Imotekh had already tightened his grip upon his staff and was about to strike. Then he received the messages from the Phaerons and nobles and hesitated.
What did they mean by "a handful"?
What did they mean by "charging alone"?
Didn't his side possess more high-ranking combatants?
The next moment, Imotekh wondered whether his optical arrays were malfunctioning.
Why were more Phaerons appearing beside the Lord of Hope?
Their numbers continued to increase until an immense crowd stood behind Eden.
There were at least a hundred fully armed, high-ranking Phaerons.
The Lord of Hope and the vast host behind him stared directly at the beings who had just attempted to charge them.
Their gazes were distinctly unfriendly.
"..."
Imotekh and his nine Phaerons fell silent.
Their cranial plating tingled with dread.
Then they remembered that the spatial interdiction field had already been fully activated and that they could no longer escape through phase translocation.
A suffocating sensation seized them. Their logic matrices nearly began smoking.
The spatial relic Imotekh had activated was designed specifically to trap and surround prey. It prevented reverse phase translocation.
The region it covered functioned as a one-way corridor.
Others could phase-transport inside, but no one could phase-transport out.
In other words, with no reinforcements available, the Stormlord and his nine high-ranking Phaerons would have to face the Lord of Hope and more than a hundred beings of equivalent rank by themselves.
They... were about to be mobbed.
Worse still, they had created the trap themselves.
"Finally. The rest of the Necrontyr have arrived."
Eden sighed with relief.
He had merely been waiting for his main force to reach him. He had not expected the Stormlord to be brave enough to deliver himself directly into their hands.
To be honest, even Eden would not have dared charge so many high-ranking Phaerons at once.
Yet the Stormlord had done exactly that.
Who could look at such a courageous warrior without giving him a thumbs-up?
Imotekh and his nine Phaerons stood frozen in place, uncertain what they should do.
Continuing the charge would lead to certain death.
No matter how powerful they were, they could not fight more than a hundred high-ranking Phaerons simultaneously.
Yet with the spatial interdiction field active, they could not flee either.
No rational Necrontyr would act rashly under such circumstances, particularly after Imotekh realized that the Silent King had set him up.
"Sza-rekh!"
Imotekh's living-metal body trembled as he roared the name within his mind.
The Silent King had sealed off information and fed him false intelligence, luring him here to die.
But now that the situation had reached this point, the Stormlord could do nothing except remain silent.
If Imotekh and the others had still possessed noses, they would probably have turned bright red.
The silence became unbearably awkward.
This was particularly true for the nine high-ranking Phaerons.
They suddenly realized that they had been speaking a little too loudly.
Several moved their lips as though they wished to say something.
Perhaps reconciliation would not be such a terrible option?
Others secretly gathered energy, preparing for one desperate attack.
If they captured or destroyed the Lord of Hope, perhaps they could still win a narrow chance of survival.
Before they could make a move, however, an irresistible pressure descended upon them.
It came from the Lord of Hope.
What terrified the high-ranking Phaerons even more was how familiar it felt.
They had experienced this overwhelming suppression from the C'tan in the distant past.
Even the faintest trace of such power was terrifying.
The Phaerons who had been preparing to resist immediately abandoned their plans. Their final thoughts of desperate defiance vanished beneath the pressure.
Imotekh stared at Eden in alarm and uncertainty.
He could not determine whether the presence came from a C'tan Shard or from the Lord of Hope himself.
It felt exactly like the power of the C'tan.
Even so, what remained of the Stormlord's dignity forced him to straighten his body and continue blocking Eden's path.
With so many Necrontyr watching, he could not allow himself to appear submissive.
His own stubborn pride had trapped him from both directions.
Eden did not care about any of that.
Now that his main force had arrived, he led the vast host forward.
He looked at the Stormlord and his followers blocking the way, then politely raised a hand.
"Would you mind moving? You're blocking the road..."
Such dismissive words made Imotekh tighten his grip upon the Staff of the Destroyer.
Never before had he suffered such humiliation.
He clenched his teeth and prepared to respond, only to discover that the space behind him was empty.
He now stood alone before the immense host of high-ranking Phaerons.
The nine Phaerons had slunk off to the side the moment the Lord of Hope spoke, clearing the road.
They stood there obediently, looking more like an honor guard welcoming Eden's arrival.
They were respectful.
They were even smiling.
In truth, the nine Phaerons had been overjoyed when they heard the Lord of Hope's seemingly ultimate insult.
His words meant they had been given an opportunity for mercy.
They were saved!
They had expected the Lord of Hope to destroy them as enemies.
Who would have imagined that he was such a kind ruler?
Several of the Phaerons simply joined his procession.
After all, this was clearly where history was headed.
Now only Imotekh remained in the middle of the road, standing rigidly in place.
The Stormlord was beginning to sweat, at least metaphorically.
Eden did not acknowledge him.
He led the immense group of high-ranking Phaerons past Imotekh without so much as glancing in his direction, as if the Stormlord were nothing more than a stray dog by the roadside.
"Lord of Hope!"
Imotekh could no longer endure the humiliation.
He whirled around and snarled through clenched teeth, gathering power for an attack.
"Stop him!"
"What outrageous treason! How dare you disrespect the King of Hope?!"
Zahndrekh and the other high-ranking Phaerons had been prepared for precisely this.
They reacted even faster, throwing themselves upon the Stormlord and pinning him down on the spot.
More than ten high-ranking Phaerons formed an encirclement that blocked the spatial blade's attack.
Every eruption of destructive energy was compressed within a confined pocket of space.
One Phaeron used his scepter to generate a miniature black hole that absorbed all the escaping energy, preventing the slightest shock wave from reaching Eden.
It was an extraordinary display of respect.
Although Eden had not yet ascended the Dais of Dominion, the Phaerons and nobles beneath him already regarded him as the King of Hope and the true sovereign of the Necrontyr.
Inside the compressed space, multicolored energies, dimensional shields, and lightning fields erupted wildly.
The void itself seemed on the verge of tearing apart.
Zahndrekh and the other high-ranking Phaerons had already suppressed Imotekh.
They bombarded him with high-energy arcs, stellar rays, neutron clusters, and every other weapon they possessed.
The collective beating was so vicious that the Stormlord howled in pain.
It was a brutal sight.
Imotekh cursed Zahndrekh and the others for launching such a dishonorable group attack.
Then he cursed the Silent King, Szarekh.
He cursed the sovereign who had so shamelessly deceived him.
"Szarekh, you disgraceful coward! Do you intend to flee again? The Lord of Hope will take your place!"
"You are unworthy of the Dais of Dominion! Without your bloodline, you would be nothing!"
Even while being beaten, Imotekh opened a channel and unleashed a furious tirade against the Silent King, publicly exposing how Szarekh had deceived his allies with false intelligence.
At this moment, he hated the Silent King's merciless betrayal even more than he hated Eden.
The Stormlord finally understood that Szarekh had used him as a disposable pawn to buy time.
He now hoped that the Lord of Hope would replace the Silent King and cast that shameless coward down from his throne.
When Zahndrekh and the others heard this, they simultaneously reduced the intensity of their attacks.
They were no longer in any hurry to defeat the Stormlord.
It would be better to let him continue cursing Szarekh and humiliating the Silent King as viciously as possible.
Under the present circumstances, anyone willing to curse the Silent King was practically one of them.
"The situation cannot be salvaged. What should we do?"
"No one can stop the Lord of Hope now. He will ascend the Dais of Dominion."
"Ah, our great King of Hope has arrived..."
The Phaerons and nobles within the core region had originally hoped that the courageous Stormlord could stop the usurper.
They had never expected Imotekh to shit the bed so spectacularly.
He had been pinned down before the battle even began and was now angrily denouncing the Silent King's deception.
The pitiful sight filled them with dread at the downfall of one of their own.
Several Phaerons decided there was no point in hesitating any longer and immediately rolled out the red carpet to welcome the rightful king.
Upon the Dais of Dominion, Hapthatra the Radiant and Mesophet the Shadowed Hand sank into a profound silence, particularly after hearing the Stormlord curse the Silent King.
They could vaguely sense that the situation had been lost.
Who could have expected the Stormlord to rush forward and deliver himself directly to the enemy?
Worse still, the deep-space route leading beyond the galaxy had not yet been cleared, while the Lord of Hope had already reached the region surrounding the Dais of Dominion.
A final confrontation with Eden was now unavoidable.
The two mouthpiece Phaerons looked toward the towering figure upon the throne and waited for his response.
"Then we shall meet them in battle.
"Let the defiant ones learn why I have won victory after victory.
"Let them witness the true meaning of supreme power..."
The Silent King slowly raised his head.
He had decided to remain and defeat the Lord of Hope.
Only one of them could survive this confrontation.
That survivor would be him, the great Szarekh!
Emerald runes flowed into life, radiating an aura of impossible antiquity.
With a deep mechanical hum, the Dais of Dominion rose from the ground and advanced toward the Lord of Hope and his followers.
The throne itself was an immensely powerful Catacomb Command Barge!
(End of Chapter)
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