The threat of the Tyranids was indeed immense.
However, as long as Axis was present, even if he did not lift a finger, Sanguinius was confident he could repel them, no matter how many came!
At that moment, earth-shaking cheers erupted from the ordinary mortal sailors of the human fleet.
The mortal crew members embraced one another in excitement, their eyes filled with hot tears.
They had originally prepared themselves for inevitable death. They had readied themselves to be sacrificed for the Imperium and the Emperor, their souls destined to return to the Golden Throne.
But the legendary Son of the Emperor, the fabled Great Angel Sanguinius, had suddenly descended.
He brought hope, casting a brand-new light upon this war that had been filled with haze and despair.
Sanguinius did not fail their expectations. Leading his sons, along with the Emperor's most loyal daughters, he won the war.
"Did you see that? Did you see how Lord Sanguinius thrashed those Tyranids?"
"Cheer! We are in a historical moment. We stand within history itself; this very second is the history of the Imperium."
"Long live the God-Emperor! Long live Lord Sanguinius!"
"It is not yet the time to cheer. How can we let Lord Sanguinius fight alone?" A mortal commander roared.
"Brothers, full power! Charge forward! Thrash these damned bugs! Let us take vengeance for our devoured kin, for our brothers brutally murdered!"
His words ignited the fires of vengeance in everyone's hearts. Who else knew the heavy burden these Imperial Navy officers carried?
When the Hive Fleet advanced toward the Baal System, exterminatus orders were executed on at least several dozen Imperial worlds. These innocent human populations were slaughtered by their own hands.
Because they were beyond saving. The human armada had decided to make their final stand against the Tyranids in the Baal System. If the Tyranids reached other places, they would absorb massive amounts of biomass to create more Bio-ships and Hive Ships.
A Tyranid fleet even more massive than the current one would arrive at Baal, making the war even harder to fight.
Thus, Lord Dante made the difficult decision. He ordered them to execute Exterminatus, destroying their own kin with their own hands.
They established an absolute dead zone, void of all life, around the homeworld of Baal. According to Imperial Inquisition intelligence, the Tyranids were a species that advanced solely to feed.
theoretically, as long as there was no food along the path, the Tyranids would not advance in that direction and would turn toward another.
Furthermore, Tyranids did not perform Warp jumps. Therefore, creating a theoretical dead zone should have been an effective defense against their invasion.
But this was only theoretical. Lord Dante executed the plan, yet the result was that the Tyranids disregarded it completely, leading their fleet to pounce straight for the homeworld, Baal.
Now they had more detailed intelligence.
When other sectors of the Imperial Navy faced the Tyranids in the future, they could learn from the experience of this war.
"Lord Dante, please give the order! Let us follow the Primarch and defeat these damned bugs," the commander of the mortal naval fleet said, standing before Chapter Master Dante of the Blood Angels.
"Your request is denied, Commander. The Father's instructions were clear: we are to hold our position. Our objective is to eliminate the bugs that enter our line of sight, but those that retreat are not our targets," Dante said after glancing at the mortal commander.
He knew morale within the Imperium of Man was high right now; all the soldiers yearned to thrash the Tyranids and wipe out the disgusting creatures.
The problem was, while the Father handled them with ease, Dante knew after actually exchanging blows with the Tyranids that these things were the most formidable enemies he had faced to date.
Bar none. In some ways, even Chaos Daemons were not as terrifying as these things. The Necrons were at least an intelligent species; as long as you left their systems and their Tomb Worlds alone, the Necrons wouldn't necessarily bother you.
But the Tyranids were different. The Tyranids would devour everything and destroy everything.
The mortal navy that had previously intercepted the Tyranids had already suffered severe losses.
Charging in now would result in being battered by the Tyranid Bio-ships, potentially leading to total annihilation.
You do not possess the terrifying combat prowess of a Primarch, Dante thought. Be clear on this: you are just a group of mortals.
In the void of space, Sanguinius was slaughtering his enemies. Almost no Tyranid unit could withstand Sanguinius's attacks.
Powerful psychic energy was useless against this Warp deity.
In close-quarters combat, be it a Hive Tyrant, Tyrant Guard, Executioner-beasts, Norn Queens, Norn Emissaries, or Norn Assimilators, none could stand against him.
Even the immensely powerful Bio-ships were pierced in a single strike by the being before them. Sanguinius's combat style and terrifying physical attributes greatly piqued the interest of the Hive Mind.
Before retreating, the Tyranids decided to dispatch a batch of Genestealers. The human Primarch was of great research value; perhaps their genetic sequence could make the Tyranid race even stronger.
During the battle, which lasted for seven days and seven nights, Sanguinius did not eat, drink, or sleep, frantically slaughtering the Tyranids.
Although the Imperial Navy could not go to support Sanguinius, they could position themselves in Baal's orbit and use their Macro-cannons to bombard the Tyranid beasts on the ground.
Over the full seven days, the Tyranid ground forces were also thoroughly wiped out. Although these bugs were vast in number, without command or discipline, they had little resistance against the encirclement of human forces.
In fact, humans only had to drive them into a specific range, and these lower-level Tyranid creatures would begin to slaughter one another.
At the edge of the Baal System, Sanguinius watched the few escaping Tyranid Hive Ships with a triumphant expression.
"This isn't over. You disgusting bugs, for daring to invade the Milky Way, I will certainly wipe you out completely," Sanguinius declared. Leaving behind this threat, he flapped his wings and returned to the homeworld. En route, he switched from the War Angel form back to his Golden Holy Archangel state.
Upon returning to Baal, Sanguinius received an unimaginably enthusiastic welcome. The entire planet, every living human, paid their highest respects to the Primarch.
Sanguinius accepted their cheers, then commended the ordinary mortal soldiers and praised his genetic sons.
He conducted a brief post-war summary, leaving the reconstruction, battlefield cleanup, and other tasks entirely to Dante.
Having fought continuously for seven days and seven nights, even he was slightly fatigued. He only wanted to return and rest for a moment, and incidentally, contact Axis.
After resting in his room for a few hours, Sanguinius's soul entered the Warp.
As soon as he entered, he saw a blood-red figure flying toward him.
"A truly magnificent battle. It made my blood boil just watching. It is a pity I have no body to use, otherwise, I would have wanted to join the fight just like you," said the blood-colored angel Sanguinius of this world.
To be honest, he hadn't expected himself to be this strong. If he had possessed this power during the Great Heresy, it wouldn't have even come down to a duel between his Father and Horus.
He would have killed Horus first.
The strength of himself from this other world far exceeded Sanguinius's imagination.
"Even if you possessed a body, you could not achieve this level. My body has completely transcended the concept of a Primarch," Sanguinius explained to the version of himself from this world. "I am now a complete Warp deity, and my body matches my soul. My current combat power is far beyond what a Primarch can imagine; I can even navigate freely within both the Warp and realspace."
How strong was a Warp deity, especially one who had obtained a suitable body and fully awakened?
It seemed like a difference of one level, but in reality, it was a difference of a hundred thousand miles. For the current Sanguinius, dealing with Primarchs and dealing with Space Marines was almost no different.
"Your power shocks me. You can control this bloodthirsty power, can't you? Can you tell me how it is done?" the blood-colored Sanguinius asked.
"This frenzied, bloodthirsty power is originally the Power of War. If you can accept your Warp nature, accept your true power, then you can control it. I once turned into something like you, but later, due to certain events, I underwent a change." Sanguinius candidly told his other self how to overcome the bloodthirsty power and transform it into his own strength.
"What exactly must be done? Why is your body so powerful?" Blood Sanguinius asked. "By reason, the Primarch bodies created by Father should already be the most powerful flesh in realspace. It is almost impossible for an existence to have a body stronger than a Primarch."
"The reason my body is so powerful is that I consumed a Divine Fruit called the Fruit of the Tree of Might," Sanguinius said. "Theoretically, as long as a Primarch consumes ten of these fruits and undergoes Ki energy modification for one hundred years, they can upgrade into a physical Warp deity."
He had once believed that the Primarch's body was the toughest in the universe, but the facts proved otherwise. Aside from Axis, there were others.
The top-tier Warbosses of the Orks had physical attributes no worse than a Primarch; in some aspects, they were even slightly stronger.
Then there was Axis's son, Kratos. Although he had undergone some genetic enhancement surgeries, he was not a Primarch and could not establish his own Astartes bloodline.
Yet, even so, his combat power far exceeded that of an ordinary Primarch.