Terra time, year 29,377 AD.
Julius watched calmly as his allied commanders argued nearby over how to respond to the Emperor's offensive.
Since his narrow escape the first time he met the Emperor, Julius had known full well he stood no chance in a straight fight. He had avoided any further direct contact and instead given up much of his territory, drawing nearby warlords into the fray to spread the Imperial pressure thin. That maneuver had bought him more than a century.
But the Thunder Warrior legions were growing steadily. Their average combat quality, honed through long campaigns, had improved significantly. Julius judged that in at most ten years those ragged alliances would begin to crumble under the Emperor's pressure. Once the Emperor smashed them and absorbed their resources, Julius would have nowhere left to run.
He tapped the table, thinking.
Soon he turned to the gathered warlords and proposed, "Our troops are exhausted. Since we've all assembled, let us hold a feast for the men — raise morale, bind our forces."
The other leaders exchanged glances and, finding no fault with the idea, agreed. With the frontlines in the red, restoring morale with food and drink seemed sensible.
A few days later, after supplies had been gathered, the two-day banquet began.
Halfway through the revelry, a single scream pierced the crowd: "The food is poisoned!"
What followed was chaos — screams, people collapsing, pandemonium. Then silence. Many were dead.
Julius had once served the Crimson King; he was not above betraying his allies. The poisoning had been a simple secret order from him — nothing elaborate, just poison mixed into the food. Over the years he had kept a low profile and concealed both his true strength and the method by which he fed himself—the power that grew each time he killed. His followers did not know.
Julius quickly set about slaughtering the incapacitated warlords and their followers. Those who had thought him a turncoat now understood there was more to him than simple treachery — and many wondered if their leader had gone mad.
As the slaughter continued for nearly a week, tens of millions of fighters from the various Terra warlords were butchered like livestock. The crimson blood seeping from the corpses began to behave strangely.
The streams of blood flowed, unnaturally, upward and converged at the center of the field, pooling into a yawning, bottomless black void. From its depths came a muffled thumping, like a heartbeat. Even hearing that sound induced dizziness, blurred vision, and ringing in the ears among Julius's men.
Julius himself felt nothing but bliss. Something inside the void called to him.
Under that inexplicable compulsion, and with his followers glaring in fear, he stretched both hands toward the abyss as if receiving a reward from a sovereign.
When his hands vanished into the darkness, a cloud of blood mist rose; even from a distance, Julius's men imagined the flesh-rotting corrosive sting on his hands and swallowed hard.
After a while, Julius pulled from the pit a fist-sized mass of living flesh: a writhing bundle covered in thousands of tiny eyes and twitching tentacles. Simply seeing it from hundreds of meters away sickened the soldiers.
Julius cradled the mass and, overcome with elation, swallowed it whole.
The instant it passed his lips, countless filaments of living muscle wove from that heart of flesh into him, remaking his body and soul and granting him fresh power.
Julius' face broke into a satisfied grin. He felt strength surging through him — but before he could revel, a blinding purple lightning bolt struck from the brooding clouds and hit him, hurling him hundreds of meters.
He had no time to land. A golden-armored figure appeared at his fall point and, without hesitation, swung a longsword.
The Emperor's blade, suffused with psychic energy, sliced through matter with the ease of a knife through paper; the strike induced a nuclear-fusion reaction at the point of impact. In one clean, brutal stroke the Emperor cleaved Julius in two.
The Emperor's sword tip ignited with golden flame, intent on burning Julius's remains to ash. The maneuver was surgical: no theatrics, no lingering — an execution.
Julius, who had not expected such swift retribution, watched the Emperor's strike with shock. He could not devise a counter.
Unknown to Julius, the Emperor's forces had already begun a fierce assault on the flanks. They were near breaking Julius's defensive ring.
Then, as the Emperor's golden flame bore down, the crimson mass lodged in the stump of Julius's torso sprang to life. It erupted in a blood-red radiance that swallowed the incoming fire and, within an instant, regenerated Julius's lower body.
The flesh was a Mutagenic Bio-Mass: it could cause the consumer's body to mutate or evolve and granted an extreme regenerative capacity. Even loss of heads or hearts ceased to be fatal.
When that information — the innate trait of the creature — registered in his mind, Julius snarled. He realized he had been granted a second chance and, crucially, a foundation from which to stand toe-to-toe with the Emperor.
...
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