More than a decade later.
In a hidden laboratory, Malcador watched as a towering figure—nearly 2.8 meters tall—slowly stepped out of a recovery pod.
There was no need for additional testing.
From the sheer density of his marble-like muscles alone, Malcador could feel the immense power coursing through the man.
Only ten days earlier, this warrior had been a normal human, barely two meters tall. Now, his transformation was undeniable.
At that moment, Malcador felt as though he were seeing once again the soldiers of the Golden Age. Excited, he asked:
"How should I address them?"
"Thunder Warriors. That is the name I have given them."
Rā—or rather, the Emperor—watched the newly reborn Thunder Warrior with a trace of nostalgia in his eyes. Though crude by comparison, these warriors bore faint echoes of Golden Age humanity. They were far beyond the degenerated, mutated remnants of Terra's ordinary people.
Through dozens of complex surgeries and experimental drugs, he had awakened dormant ancestral genes in carefully chosen loyalists, allowing them to partially revert to their more perfect human forebears. To this, he added engineered organs, granting specialized functions that pushed them even closer to Golden Age standards.
Yet despite the achievement, flaws remained:
The failure rate was brutally high. Hundreds of subjects might yield only one viable warrior.
Lifespans were drastically shortened—barely a century, often less.
Worse, since part of the research relied on warp-borne materials once gifted by Tzeentch, the Thunder Warriors' minds were not always stable. At times, the warp's taint bled into them.
For all these reasons, the Emperor knew the Thunder Warriors were, at best, consumables—temporary weapons, never a lasting foundation. Too many of them could even destabilize human society.
He betrayed none of this in his expression, but a flicker of cold calculation passed through his eyes.
Why not simply recreate the Golden Age human template—or even the gene-lords of old? The reasons were simple:
1. His technology had limits.
2. The facilities of this age could not support such precise demands.
In the Golden Age, the Gene Optimization Program had long surpassed the capacity of human scholars. What began with scientists quickly became dominated by advanced AIs and cybernetic savants, because the sheer scale of data was beyond any biological brain. Even the Emperor himself—though far beyond ordinary men—could not memorize or process trillions upon trillions of genetic variables. He could only master fragments of their work.
Now, the freshly reborn Thunder Warrior finally steadied himself. No longer stumbling, though still heavy-footed, he approached the Emperor. With a smile and visible reverence, he knelt on one knee.
"Your Majesty, Thunder Warrior Arik Taranis pays you homage!"
A decade earlier, when Rā had stepped into public life and assumed leadership from Malcador, he had adopted the title Emperor. It carried an aura of mystery and authority, elevating him above mortal rulers.
Through tireless speeches, his unmatched charisma, and sheer force of will, he had gathered countless followers and loyalists. Among them, Arik Taranis was one of the finest—strong, steadfast, and intelligent. In the Emperor's plans, he was destined to become commander, or perhaps vice-commander, of the First Legion of Thunder Warriors.
The Emperor returned the salute with a flawless smile.
"You have done well. But you have only just completed your transformation. Too much strain will harm you. Rest now."
His voice was warm, his manner reassuring. It radiated trust and kindness. Yet behind those words, the Emperor had already consigned Taranis to the role of expendable pawn.
Was it cruel? Of course. Even the Emperor himself admitted as much. But what choice did he have?
Humanity needed a strong army to unify Terra, no matter the cost. Only through unification could he gather the resources to push the Human Revival Project forward.
Compared to the survival of an entire species, the fate of individuals—even loyal ones—was secondary.
The Emperor could be gentle, even loving, to individual humans. But the only thing he truly loved was Humanity itself—the civilization, not the person. For that, he would commit any deed, whether called noble or vile. His threshold for compromise was far lower than others could imagine.
Arik Taranis, of course, knew none of this. To him, the Emperor's words were kindness itself. Deeply moved, he answered with renewed loyalty:
"As you command."
His heart swelled with devotion.
After the warrior departed, the Emperor turned to Malcador.
"In the coming days, I will select more volunteers for transformation. I will be occupied in the laboratory nearly without pause. The administration of our territory, and the training of the new Thunder Warriors, I leave to you."
Malcador bowed. "As you wish."
Five years later.
Terra — the ruins of the former British Isles.
After long years of brutal warfare, the region had fallen under the dominion of a city-state known as Albayun.
At the heart of this stronghold stood its ruler, a bald giant named Julius. He personally oversaw his men as they executed captives and crippled mutants, their fresh blood channeled through carefully carved trenches into a massive pit prepared beforehand.
Before long, the pit brimmed with blood, becoming a crimson pool.
Julius summoned one of his guards, who handed him a glass vessel filled with a murky violet fluid. As he uncorked it, a strange, faintly sweet fragrance drifted into the air.
The instant he inhaled, a violent thrill surged through his body, an overwhelming desire for slaughter rising unbidden. Alarmed, Julius—an experienced psyker—immediately reined in his mind, resisting the urge to take another breath.
With a hiss of corrosion, the purple liquid spilled into the blood-filled pit.
The once-still surface rippled unnaturally, and within seconds grotesque creatures—amorphous, headless serpents of liquid—slithered into being.
"—Hsss…"
The surrounding soldiers gasped and instinctively retreated. Even Julius hesitated, unnerved by what he had unleashed.
But at last, with grim resignation, he shut his eyes and began chanting in an alien tongue:
"Great Crimson King, your humble servant offers this sacrifice. May your gaze fall upon us, that we may be bathed in your glory…"
This ritual, as profane as it seemed, had been recovered from a sealed cache dating back to the Golden Age. According to its inscriptions, it had once belonged to an alien race annihilated by the Human Federation.
Its promise was simple: call upon a warp god, and receive treasures or power in exchange for sacrifice.
Julius understood little beyond that. Under other circumstances, he would never have dared to attempt such a thing. But with the so-called Emperor advancing across Terra with his invincible giant warriors beneath banners of lightning and the aquila, Julius's defeat was inevitable.
Better to gamble on damnation than face certain ruin.
As the chanting continued, an oppressive aura settled over the battlefield.
Seconds stretched into minutes.
The liquid abominations in the pit thrashed and screamed in shrill unison, their cries piercing the ears of man and machine alike. Defense servitors blared alarms, warning of corruption.
Finally, with a thunderclap, the creatures burst apart into scarlet mist. A blood-red vortex formed above the pit, crackling with lightning. A coppery wind swept outward, filling Julius's lungs with its intoxicating tang.
And then—
"Terra? …It has been some time since I last looked upon this place."
The words resounded faintly in his mind.
A flash of crimson light engulfed him. Julius felt his very soul ripped from his body and hurled through a tunnel, as though he were a liquid rushing through narrow pipes. His vision filled with endless scarlet.
At last he was expelled like a ragdoll, crashing hard onto cold stone.
Before he could rise, a voice cut into him:
"Your wish. Speak it."
His body moved on its own, forcing him onto one knee in supplication.
Through streaming blood he looked up—only to see a crimson figure, roughly two meters tall.
Agony seared his eyes, as if invisible hands were gouging them out. Blood gushed from his sockets, his eyeballs writhing and mutating into squirming tendrils like veins and nerves, spilling from his skull.
The being before him—Orsaga, in his true form—watched Julius's torment with mild disappointment.
"You are too weak," he said flatly.
The mutation subsided; Julius's eyes painfully reformed. Trembling, he dared not raise his gaze again. At last, he understood—before higher beings, one must never look directly.
The Crimson King's tail swept idly across the stone floor as he continued, voice calm but cold:
"Now, back to the matter at hand. Tell me your wish. I will grant it. In return, I will claim payment—measured by the weight of what you ask."
For even as a Chaos God, Orsaga had never abandoned his roots as an abyssal demon—one who bartered, tempted, and profited from desperate mortals.
It was not mere greed. It was amusement. Watching mortals twist in fear, bargain in despair, and pay with their ruin—that was his joy.
Thus his name spread far and wide under many titles. Among them, the mortals of Terra whispered of him as the Crimson King.
In this, he was no different from the other four Chaos Gods. Each delighted in cruelty and irony, taking pleasure in the downfall of mortals.
It was a shared trait that had cursed countless worlds with endless tragedy.
For those unlucky enough to dwell within this universe, existence under the gaze of the Chaos Gods was nothing short of catastrophic
Orsaga waited patiently after speaking.
Yet Julius only shivered on the ground, too consumed by terror to answer.
Orsaga did not raise his voice. Instead, he said evenly, with the same calm he would use to discuss the weather:
"If you don't answer within ten seconds, I'll peel the skin from your body."
There was no malice in his tone—just unshakable certainty.
Orsaga had always been like this. Even when he destroyed worlds, he did it with the same unsettling serenity. Why would he waste emotion on something so trivial?
But Julius did not see serenity. He saw death.
His psychic senses betrayed him with visions of his own skin being stripped away, his corpse dangling like dried meat.
Heart pounding, he forced a crooked smile and lowered his head, stammering out:
"...In truth… I only face an enemy too powerful. I wish for the strength to defeat him…"
Orsaga's vertical eye flicked casually through the void, tracing Julius's timeline. In doing so, he caught a glimpse of Terra—where another figure rose.
Not Rā.
The Emperor.
'So… that is the path he chose.'
The future sprawled in infinite branches, most even Orsaga could not capture. But one truth remained constant: the Emperor would be thrust to the crest of destiny's wave.
Seeing him now, standing openly beneath that title, Orsaga quietly adjusted his plans.
As for the trembling mortal kneeling before him? After a brief pause, Orsaga decided to play along.
If Julius, bolstered by his aid, somehow struck down the Emperor and inherited the destiny meant for him, then so be it. One pawn could always be exchanged for another.
In Orsaga's eyes, the game would proceed regardless.
With a low chuckle, he finally answered:
"Very well. I'll give you a chance."
Before Julius could rejoice, Orsaga's tail whipped forward, piercing his skull and driving deep into his brain. Something alien flooded inside.
The agony was indescribable—boiling acid poured into every nerve. Julius barely had time to scream before Orsaga flung him back into the mortal plane.
Watching from afar as the Emperor fought against a warlord's army on Terra, Orsaga smiled cruelly.
"A one-man play is dull. I've given you a rival worth watching~"
---
Back in Albayun, Julius convulsed in torment.
Every nerve spasmed violently. Blood erupted from his pores like a fountain. Steam hissed from his skull as though his very brain were boiling.
Howling, he staggered forward and threw himself into the sacrificial blood pool, thrashing violently.
His followers panicked, rushing to his aid. Some came with genuine loyalty. Others, hungry for power, saw their chance—if Julius died here, they could seize his throne.
But as they drew closer, Julius's metamorphosis neared completion.
One soldier, feigning concern, leaned close with outstretched hands.
"My lord, let me pull you out—"
He never finished. Julius's screams had stopped. His eyes now burned with murderous fury.
"My lord, I only meant—"
A torrent of psychic lightning burst from Julius's hands, vaporizing the man instantly. His armor crumbled to ash, the blast gouging a crater meters wide and dozens deep into the ground.
Julius turned his gaze on the others. He could feel their hidden malice, their treachery. With a flick of his hand, more arcs of warp lightning leapt out, annihilating each betrayer in turn.
The rest froze in fear.
Julius had always been powerful—an elite psyker capable of ripping tanks apart with a single blast, of burning towns to ash with fire conjured from the warp. On a world without heavy weapons, he was a catastrophe incarnate.
Now, empowered further, his might had grown beyond comprehension.
And Julius knew it.
Each death filled him with a surge of strength—palpable, permanent.
Then, a whisper burned into his mind:
[Heart of Slaughter]: Every time you slay a living being with your own hands, you will permanently absorb ten percent of their strength. Let us see how far you can rise. —The Crimson King
For a heartbeat, Julius froze. Then manic laughter tore from his throat.
"Hahaha! Hahaha!"
The Crimson King had not lied. He had been granted the power to stand against the Emperor himself.
What Julius failed to consider was the missing piece—
If he kept ten percent of each kill… where did the other ninety percent go?
Orsaga, of course, would have only smiled. A king always collects his tribute
Several months later.
Inside the war command chamber, the Emperor studied a marked position on the strategic map. His brows furrowed slightly as he asked Malcador at his side:
"Is there something about this faction that warrants particular attention?"
Malcador now wore many hats. Beyond overseeing logistics and maintaining order on the home front, he also directed intelligence gathering.
The Emperor, in contrast, focused primarily on warfare, spreading his ideology, and creating the Thunder Warriors. Each oversaw their own domain, complementing the other.
"This time," Malcador replied, "our opponent is a city-state known as Albayun. Their territory covers what was once the British Isles. The ruler there is a psyker called Julius."
"He's said to be capable of leveling entire mountain ranges with his psychic power. Cruel by nature, he thrives on plunder."
The Emperor's eyes narrowed. "That's all?"
A psyker who could flatten mountains was indeed formidable—impressive, even. In the Golden Age such ability would have been notable. But compared to the enemies they had already faced, it hardly seemed extraordinary.
After all, some rival warlords still commanded Golden Age combat automatons. Driven by antimatter engines, these machines could move at tens of thousands of times the speed of sound, their motion alone birthing nation-shattering storms. Armed with near-lightspeed autocannons, they were nightmares incarnate.
Even the Emperor had required sacrifice to overcome them.
Shaking his head, Malcador continued:
"If it were only that, then yes, he'd be no cause for special concern. But according to our latest intelligence, something unusual has happened to Julius."
"It began with a ritual. Since performing it, his bloodlust has grown uncontrollable. He's even developed a perverse craving: he drinks blood. Any kind—though he favors human blood."
He paused, his tone darkening.
"I suspect he has been corrupted by a power from the Warp."
Corruption was a common affliction in this age of chaos—especially among psykers.
All things in realspace cast shadows into the Warp. For ordinary mortals without psychic gifts, that shadow was a dim spark, fleeting and weak. But psykers, by the magnitude of their power, blazed like lanterns and torches, illuminating swathes of the Immaterium.
And light in the endless dark inevitably drew attention.
When a psyker's projection in the Warp grew tainted, they risked possession, mutation, or worse—becoming a host for Warp entities. In the direst cases, they themselves could serve as summoners, tearing open the veil and unleashing daemons into realspace.
Unchecked, such corruption could annihilate entire worlds—or even star systems.
"Corruption…"
The Emperor's eyes hardened. This was not a threat that could be allowed to fester.
"Then we'll resolve this swiftly. A decapitation strike. We eliminate Julius at once before he can summon daemons into realspace."
Malcador nodded in agreement. Though daemons were weaker once they crossed into the material universe, their persistence made them endlessly troublesome.
Under their orders, more than one hundred thousand Thunder Warriors, supported by several million auxiliaries, began their march—an unstoppable tide rolling toward Albayun.
---
Meanwhile, in Albayun itself…
Their target, Julius, was reveling in a grand feast.
Since gaining the Heart of Slaughter, that power of limitless escalation, Julius had butchered every prisoner in his dungeons. Then he hurled his armies into battle against neighboring factions, seeking constant conflict.
On the battlefield, he himself slaughtered without restraint. Friend, foe, strong, weak—it mattered not.
The carnage left mountains of corpses in his wake, but his strength soared. In only a few months, his power had multiplied several times over.
Now, Julius was certain: he could kill the man he once was in mere seconds.
Staring into the black night sky, drinking blood from a chalice, he smirked with satisfaction.
"With my power as it is now… surely I can handle this so-called Emperor."
Once, he had been counted among Terra's strongest. Now, with his strength multiplied manyfold, he considered himself unstoppable.
...
Two more months passed.
The battlefield was a graveyard of corpses.
Countless soldiers fought with rifles, chain-swords, chain-axes, and other brutal weapons. Above, storms of psychic lightning and flame raged across the sky, turning the sky into a rain of molten fire and murderous bolts that incinerated all below.
Among the chaos strode the Thunder Warriors, towering giants clad in their uniform power armor.
Next to them, mortal soldiers looked like children—barely chest-high.
Their speed, strength, stamina, reflexes, and regeneration far surpassed human limits. Weapons that normal men required two hands to lift, they wielded in one, while their free hand swung chain-blades to cleave through all who approached.
Encased in armor of unparalleled resilience, they moved like living war machines—more flexible, more lethal, more terrifying than any tank.
From the rear lines, Julius observed the carnage as the Thunder Warriors carved their way across the battlefield.
His expression was cold, but not despairing.
He had received intelligence in advance and already understood, at least roughly, the combat capabilities of these warriors. He knew full well that relying on his own troops alone could never win him this war—at best, they could only delay the inevitable.
That was why he had resorted to that ritual.
Now, watching the Thunder Warriors tear through his armies, the corner of Julius' lips curved into a thin smile.
In the past, he might have worried. But now, with the Heart of Slaughter, things had changed. To him, these warriors—powerful as they were—were no true threat. They were, in fact, the perfect nourishment.
Difficult enough to provide a challenge, yet not so great that he could not kill them. And every death would feed his strength.
Tens of thousands of such foes filled the battlefield.
The thought of slaying them all, his power soaring with each kill, thrilled him.
When that day comes… unifying Terra, even the entire Solar system, will no longer be a dream.
As for conquering the entire galaxy? Julius had never even entertained such a fantasy.
This was an age without faster-than-light travel. Beyond Solar system lay only endless, futile journeys—long enough that one would die of old age before ever arriving.
The very notion was pointless.
He licked his lips, throat parched, and took a long draught of blood from the chalice in his hand. The restlessness within him ebbed.
Blood-drinking was a habit he had acquired since gaining the Heart of Slaughter.
According to scraps of lore he had unearthed, the being known as the Crimson King delighted in blood. His rituals demanded rivers of it, and alien legends claimed he drained whole worlds of life to slake his thirst.
Julius believed that imitating this practice might curry the god's favor. In time, he found the taste not only tolerable but strangely pleasing. Now, it was no longer mere ritual—it had become his vice.
He drained the cup and lowered it—when suddenly, his instincts screamed. A stabbing pain raced across his nerves.
Without hesitation, he hurled himself forward, psychic power propelling his body dozens of meters across the chamber.
A heartbeat later, the space he had just occupied disintegrated.
A sound like shattering glass filled the air as everything in that zone—living and dead alike—was pulverized to dust. A black rift in reality tore open, wind howling through it.
From the breach stepped a towering figure clad in resplendent golden armor, a crown upon his brow, a greatsword in hand.
The moment Julius laid eyes on him, primal dread consumed him.
There was no question. He could not win.
"Damn it… how can anyone be this strong…"
He did not need to guess. The armor, the crown, the sword—this could only be one man.
The Emperor.
Once, Julius had dismissed tales of his power as exaggerated myths. Now, he realized the truth was far worse—the rumors had understated it.
Could such power have existed even in the Golden Age? He wasn't sure.
The Emperor, for his part, sensed immediately the taint of Chaos within Julius' psychic essence. His suspicion was confirmed.
"For the sake of avoiding greater troubles," the Emperor murmured, voice calm, "I will end you here."
Though his soldiers needed the crucible of war to hone themselves, leaving Julius alive was a danger too great.
He raised his sword.
Bathed in psychic might, the blade blazed like a star. Light spilled forth, multiplying—one into two, two into four, four into eight—until it veiled the sky itself in radiant arcs.
All across the battlefield, warriors paused to stare.
Those with psychic sensitivity reeled, crushed beneath the weight of the power pouring forth.
Julius felt as though he were a rat drowning in a mire. His body, once lithe and strong enough to wrestle mutants barehanded, now strained under the crushing force.
Had he not multiplied his power in recent months, the pressure alone would have killed him.
Yet even as the blazing sword descended, Julius did not despair.
He smiled.
Had one looked closely, one would have seen the glimmer of micro-mechanical systems within his pupils. They had, during this brief exchange, completed their targeting calculations.
The Emperor frowned.
Instead of striking Julius, he turned and slashed into the Sky.
An instant later, from a ridge hundreds of kilometers away, a colossal beam erupted, several hundred meters wide. It tore through mountains, air, and cloud alike—hurtling toward him.
The Emperor recognized it immediately.
The XLLK-6447 Beam Cannon.
A strategic anti-orbital weapon from the Golden Age. Fully charged, a single shot could pierce even small stars.
Against such a strike, he had no choice but to respond with his full power.
His sword clashed with the beam. At the point of contact, a void bloomed—a perfect black sphere. In an instant it collapsed, then expanded in a cataclysmic release.
Heat and radiation surged outward like a solar storm, threatening to engulf the battlefield.
The Emperor's will clamped down. With sheer psychic might, he forced the energy inward, containing it before it could annihilate his armies.
Julius watched. He thought for a mere fraction of a second—then abandoned the idea of exploiting the distraction.
Instead, he gestured sharply to his men. Retreat.
And without hesitation, he turned and fled.
As a warlord who had ruled for centuries, Julius still held other trump cards—even beyond the beam cannon, which was now cooling and unable to fire again so soon.
Terra, after all, had been the heart of the Federation. Even in ruin, caches of its ancient legacy remained. He had his share of them.
But none of them, not all of them combined, gave him the confidence to face the Emperor.
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.
Just as the First Legion Commander of the Thunder Warriors—the man known as the Lightning Knight, Arik Taranis—was about to strike down his enemy and sever his head, a blast of seven-colored radiance erupted beside him, sweeping past like the shockwave of an explosion.
The violent gust that followed roared like a hurricane traveling at several thousand kilometers per hour, kicking up a storm of flying sand and debris.
Caught off guard, even Arik, with all his strength, was nearly blown off his feet.
The vast ranks of mortal auxiliary troops, lacking both power and weight, were far less fortunate.
At least several hundred thousand were swept into the sky amid terrified screams, only to plummet helplessly back down—crashing into the ground like countless blood-soaked scraps of flesh.
The barren and bone-dry land was instantly dotted with blood-red marks.
Faced with such a horrific sight, Arik Taranis dared not hesitate. Shocked and enraged, he immediately tried to use his psychic power to save as many soldiers as he could.
But their numbers were far too great. He could not possibly reach them all.
He could only watch helplessly—as many of those soldiers, some even trained by his own hand, died miserably before his eyes.
The frustration and anger of being unable to save them gnawed at his heart like swarming ants.
When he turned his gaze toward the source of the shockwave, he could barely make out two blurred figures of different colors clashing at a speed far beyond his ability to perceive.
Lightning and flame intertwined—golden light and crimson brilliance swirling around them—making the two combatants appear like battling gods and demons.
Every gesture, every movement, tore mountains and split valleys, sending out wave after wave of tremors and raging winds.
The surrounding mortals, Thunder Warriors, and psykers were thrown stumbling in all directions—some crushed by shockwaves, others simply blown away to their deaths.
In the face of such overwhelming power—enough to reshape the land itself—every nearby existence was no more than a fragile ant, doomed to be crushed if caught in the aftermath.
After only a few glances, Arik Taranis understood with absolute clarity:
he had no qualification to intervene.
If he forced his way in, he would only hinder the Emperor—nothing more.
With no choice, he swallowed his frustration and returned to fighting the enemy before him.
---
Far in the distance, Malcador, cloaked in black robes, watched the scene with a deep frown.
As a high-level psyker who had lived since the Golden Age, his sight surpassed that of Arik Taranis by far.
Yet even he had rarely seen anyone comparable to Julius as he was now.
Powerful enough to dominate even the peak era of the Human Federation—his current psychic strength was on a completely different level from what he displayed over a century ago.
The sheer rate of his growth was… unreasonable.
Recalling certain secrets the Emperor had once shared with him, a chilling thought surfaced in Malcador's mind:
'Could someone from the Warp have intervened?'
Even the Emperor treated some Warp entities with grave caution—Malcador could not ignore the possibility.
Troubled by the thought, he fell into deep contemplation.
As for the Emperor's current situation, he felt little worry.
Among everyone present, only the Emperor and Julius surpassed him. He could clearly judge: the Emperor held the upper hand.
Julius was maintaining the stalemate largely through raw vitality.
Unless something interfered, his defeat was inevitable.
But that assumption didn't last long.
---
Only a few dozen minutes passed before Malcador sensed something wrong.
Julius was… getting stronger—fighting with increasing vigor.
Without hesitation, Malcador acted.
In a flash of psychic light, he traversed hundreds of kilometers, unleashing a spiraling ripple of invisible force from his body.
Julius, who had never expected another opponent as powerful as the Emperor, was caught entirely off guard.
Malcador's psychic strike drilled straight into Julius's mind, briefly blocking blood flow in part of his brain.
The sudden dizziness caused him to stumble—
—and in that instant, he took a full force blow from the Emperor.
A towering pillar of golden flame—tens of meters high—erupted from Julius's body, dyeing half the sky in gold.
Within a heartbeat, one-third of his body was burned away.
And the golden psychic fire showed no signs of stopping—it was still spreading.
Without hesitation and gritting through the agony, Julius severed the burning portion of his body, blood spraying like a fountain.
With his current power, losing more than ninety percent of his body would cripple him beyond recovery.
Thus, compared to wasting vast energy to extinguish the Emperor's psychic flames, he chose to cut his losses immediately.
Yet before he could heal, Malcador had already completed a telepathic exchange with the Emperor—so swiftly it was nearly imperceptible.
In perfect synchrony, the two attacked Julius from opposite sides.
Every strike was meant to kill.
Already at a disadvantage, Julius could no longer keep up—his defense faltered, and he grew increasingly overwhelmed.
Furious yet powerless, he roared inwardly.
The opponents before him had no sense of honor!
The Emperor had ambushed him upon arrival.
Malcador appeared later and struck with another vicious sneak attack.
If not for the strength of the Flesh Mutation Form, he would have died long ago.
But now, even that strength could no longer save him.
In the end, under Julius's eyes full of unwilling rage—
The Emperor's blade severed his head and burned his body to ash.
Malcador caught the head and incinerated it with a burst of searing psychic lightning, reducing it to charcoal.
In the final moment of consciousness, Julius remembered the first time he met the Emperor.
That, too, had begun with a miserable ambush.
'...Damn it… every time it's a sneak attack…'
With this resentful thought, Julius, the Warlord of Terra, met his end—
burned to ashes on the spot
After eliminating Julius, the leading warlord, the Emperor immediately led his forces to sweep up the remaining scattered enemies in the region.
It took several hours before the battlefield finally returned to silence.
Standing at the edge of a massive fissure carved into the ground, Malcador glanced at the Emperor's freshly bandaged right hand and asked:
"Is your hand all right?"
The Emperor looked toward the Thunder Warriors who were collecting the bodies of their fallen comrades. He shook his head lightly and replied:
"It's nothing serious. It will heal in a few days."
As a high-level psyker, Julius' desperate counterattack had naturally left injuries on both the Emperor and Malcador.
The bones in the Emperor's right arm had been shattered by nearly eighty-five percent.
For an ordinary human, such damage would mean permanent disability.
But for the Emperor, while inconvenient, it was far from severe. A few days of purging the lingering psychic energy within the wound would be enough.
If necessary, he could even sever the entire arm and regrow a new one within a month.
Once he confirmed the Emperor's injuries were not significant, Malcador nodded—clearly relieved. With genuine satisfaction, he reported the results he had compiled:
"Almost all major warlord factions in this region perished in this campaign. After a few years of consolidation—digesting our gains and reorganizing our strength—we should possess enough power to unify the entirety of Terra in one decisive effort!"
Although the progress was slower than originally planned, Malcador still felt deeply pleased.
But while he allowed himself this joy, the Emperor remained calm.
Watching the Thunder Warriors repair their equipment, the Emperor spoke without looking back:
"Good. Soon, I will travel to Mars and Luna to lay the groundwork for the Great Crusade…And with the resources gained from this victory, we can finally accelerate the Astartes Project."
Hearing this, Malcador stiffened slightly and glanced toward the Thunder Warriors celebrating their hard-fought victory. A sigh escaped him:
"…Yes."
As the Emperor's most trusted confidant, he understood perfectly:
to the Emperor, the Thunder Warriors were always temporary—emergency creations, meant to be used and eventually replaced.
Once their purpose ended, so would their place in history.
In this matter, Malcador possessed more humanity than the Emperor. A weight of guilt settled in his heart.
---
Meanwhile, still on the battlefield, Arik Taranis searched for survivors.
While rummaging through scattered debris, he suddenly noticed a strange piece of flesh—about a centimeter in size, with tiny eye-like structures—crawling slowly across the ground.
Instinctively disgusted, Arik raised his hand to evaporate it with a blast of searing psychic lightning—
—but the moment the light formed in his palm, the creature vanished.
One instant it had been there.
The next, it was gone—without a trace.
No matter how much he searched, it was nowhere to be found.
Puzzled, he eventually gave up, wondering whether he had simply imagined it…
---
**Several decades later —
The Himalayas**
Deep within a hidden laboratory, the Emperor stood before twenty incubation pods arranged in perfect order.
Even he could not suppress a faint smile.
Inside those pods lay the pinnacle of his biological mastery.
He named them—
the Primarchs.
As superhuman artificial beings, much of their genetic and spiritual makeup came directly from the Emperor himself.
But their unique attributes were forged from Warp-derived materials and forbidden knowledge of Chaos.
These elements elevated them far beyond humanity—granting strength, charisma, intellect, and potential worthy of being called demigods.
Even the proud Aeldari could not ignore such prodigious talent.
The Emperor never intended for the Primarchs to serve merely as soldiers.
In his grand design, each would lead a Legion and become one of the cornerstones of humanity's rebirth—his future generals, advisers, and trusted lieutenants.
They would enable the coming Golden Age to unfold smoothly.
By this time, not only were the infant Primarchs developing steadily, but the enhanced successors to the Thunder Warriors—the Space Marines (Astartes)—had reached technological maturity.
Compared to the unstable and short-lived Thunder Warriors, the Astartes possessed:
Longevity — lifespans potentially reaching tens of thousands of years
Strength — slightly below Thunder Warriors, but far more reliable
Stability — carefully selected candidates with superior mental resilience
Lower cost and failure rate — easier to produce in sustainable numbers
Furthermore, through extensive searching, the Emperor had located descendants of the Golden Age "Perpetual Humans"—the legendary Ten Thousand, known in this era as the Custodians.
Although their Golden Age genetic code had degraded over millennia, traces still endured.
By activating those dormant genetic markers, the Emperor created the third and most elite human super-soldier caste:
The Custodian Guard.
While not equal to the absolute peak of the Golden Age, they surpassed both Thunder Warriors and Astartes in every measurable aspect.
If not for the difficulty and strict requirements of their creation, the Custodians would have rendered the other warrior types obsolete.
As usual, the Emperor inspected each Primarch's incubation chamber one more time.
Seeing that everything remained stable, he finally left the laboratory to attend to the many duties awaiting him.