"There is no other way."
Inside the black mansion within Nurgle's Garden.
Nurgle sat silently, His heart heavy. That bloated, rotting divine form, constantly oozing pus, actually looked somewhat hunched at this moment.
He was truly out of options. As the Lord of Plagues, the master of decay and rebirth, He had been pushed to such a state by a mere human. No, it was unlikely that he was a human; perhaps he was another existence similar to the Emperor from ten thousand years ago...
However, there was no point in agonizing over that now. The opponent's moves were fast and precise, striking exactly where it hurt, leaving Nurgle unable to devise a proper countermeasure in the short term.
Launching a direct attack on Terra to break the siege was impossible. In the current galaxy, the Great Rift had not yet opened, and the veil between the material universe and the Warp remained relatively stable. Even as a Chaos Great Power, Nurgle's influence over the real universe was still limited. He could not yet perform maneuvers like manifested seven plague-infected Void Whales above the hospital world of Iax, as He would in the future.
Even if He could, Nurgle could never forcibly exert such power while His Warp domain was being continuously dismantled by the Legion of the Damned under the Dark King's command. Furthermore, Nurgle knew perfectly well that He could not count on the other Chaos Powers to rescue Him. The Chaos Gods would never rashly commit their strength or daemon primarchs to the real universe when they were not personally threatened and their rival in the Great Game was at a disadvantage.
Moreover, two Primarch-level combatants now stood before the Imperial Palace. Even if a Daemon Primarch joined the fray, the situation would likely remain unchanged. Of course, the Grandfather understood that if He waited a moment longer, that individual [Note: Slaanesh] might act impulsively, sending the Daemon Primarch Fulgrim into the battlefield just to see a more spectacular drama. After all, the friction between those two Primarchs and Slaanesh's fixation on the Iron Hands Chapter were open secrets in the galaxy.
But the Grandfather could wait no longer. His children suffered casualties every second, while the Legion of the Damned under the Dark King seemed infinite! He had to respond.
Fortunately, He had one last resort.
Outside the mansion.
"Yes, exactly like that."
Adam still held his sword, his posture calm and composed, as if this confrontation could last for eternity.
At a certain moment, as if sensing something, a smile appeared on Adam's face, though his eyes remained locked onto the mansion without a hint of carelessness. His intuition screamed a warning. It was an indescribable sense of crisis, as if all of Nurgle's Garden held its breath at this moment, as if the core of this divine realm was brewing a power sufficient to overturn everything.
The space around Adam began to warp. His Class IV Reality Bending power, triggered by his battle-ready will, spontaneously formed visible screens of light around his body. These screens looked like crumpled paper, with various strange Chaos visions flickering within the folds.
On the other side of Nurgle's Garden.
Ku'gath's bloated body suddenly stiffened. His murky eyes bulged, and the sores on his face burst from excitement, gushing large amounts of pus.
"Grandfather... Grandfather is going to act!" His voice trembled with uncontrollable ecstasy.
The Rainfather also looked up, his form fluctuating violently, seemingly excited by the impending miracle. The Grandfather was invincible! Every child of Nurgle believed this without doubt!
Simultaneously—deep within the Warp.
Tzeentch unhesitatingly diverted His attention from the Lords of Change dying on Terra. On His ever-shifting faces, a meaningful smile appeared simultaneously. Countless eyes, in multiples of nine, opened and closed across His body, each reflecting the scenes within Nurgle's Garden.
Khorne sat upon His Brass Throne, His gaze piercing the endless void to fix upon the human holding the longsword in the Garden.
"Kill! Kill! Kill!" He roared, His voice full of fanatical excitement.
Slaanesh let out a melodious giggle. That perfect body, surpassing all imagination, twisted slightly as seductive whispers drifted out.
The gazes of the three Great Powers turned toward Nurgle's Garden at the same time. They were all curious to see what kind of change had occurred with this Dark King to make Nurgle suffer so much.
On Terra.
Countless psykers with Warp-vision looked up in unison. Their gazes pierced the veil of reality, the chaos of the Warp, and the endless distance to see that garden, those infinite black warriors, the silent black mansion, and the figure holding the sword facing a Chaos Great Power.
Am I dreaming? What am I seeing?
Everyone widened their eyes, as if seeing the most incredible sight in the world. Many even began to doubt if they had been corrupted by Chaos and were experiencing a mad hallucination.
Inside the black mansion.
Nurgle slowly stood up. His indescribable divine form trembled slightly as He raised His arm, gently reaching toward the cauldron before Him. Inside the cauldron, the plague soup that should have been utterly spoiled and ruined now regained a vibrant vitality, breaking free from the silence of decay to glow with a clear green light.
New Life — Decay — Death.
This was His essence as the Lord of Plagues, the eternal cycle He controlled. Mortals only knew He represented decay and stagnation, but they forgot—without new life, how can there be decay? Without decay, how can there be death? Without death, how can there be new life?
This was the Triple Cycle. Because of this, in addition to "7," "3" was also Nurgle's hidden sacred number. Even death was but a link in Nurgle's domain.
Nurgle's fingers dipped into the pot. The clear green soup boiled at that moment, countless bubbles rising from the bottom. Every time a bubble burst, it released a super-plague capable of exterminating a civilization instantly.
But this was only the beginning. As Nurgle's fingers gently stirred, the pot of plague soup began to emit a light that transcended dimensions. Wherever the light reached, everything decayed. The barriers of space began to melt like paper licked by flames, twisting and wrinkling into incomprehensible turbulence. The flow of time became erratic; past, present, and future wove together into chaotic whirlpools. Even concepts themselves collapsed; the boundary between existence and non-existence shattered, and the opposition between life and death annihilated.
Everything—organic or inorganic, time or space—began to rot completely, incorporated into the Grandfather's Triple Cycle.
This was the wrath of a God!
Outside the mansion.
Adam still watched the black mansion silently. He could sense a power so vast it was unimaginable brewing within.
Yet, Adam remained calm, merely raising the Solomon Ritual Sword in his hand.
A God? Even if it is a God, so what?
In the buried, distant history of Terra, the earliest legends had no seats for gods. Instead, there was the farmer who decided to move the mountain that blocked his way, the little girl who vowed to fill the sea that drowned her, the hunter who shot arrows at the sun that scorched him, and the old man who stole soil from the gods to control the floods.
Human history was never written by gods; it was forged by countless humans.
The wrath of a God? What does that have to do with me?
Radiance flowed across the blade, infinite and unending. At this moment, Adam seemed to experience a hallucination; he could clearly feel the power of faith emitted by all humanity in the Empire, rising like a torrent and pouring into the sword.
Countless visions unfolded before his eyes. Workers diligently laboring in hive cities, a Knight lord patrolling his family's domain like a lion, an Ecclesiarchy priest preaching seriously to a group of nobles, Battle Sisters plunging into the enemy while shouting martyring oaths, an Administratum official dying at his post from exhaustion, Imperial Navy crewmen dying with their warships...
That was faith. It was humanity's faith in itself, in unyielding will, and in the future.
The light grew stronger and brighter, as if it would ignite the entirety of Nurgle's Garden.
Just then—the doors of the black mansion burst open.
The green soup in Nurgle's pot suddenly boiled and surged, turning into a hideous torrent condensed from endless plague, decay, and death. Carrying an aura of world-ending destruction, it lunged toward Adam. Wherever it passed, everything rotted. The ground of the garden decayed instantly; vibrant sores and molds grew frantically, only to wither and turn to ash in a heartbeat. Space was stained with a viscous green tint, groaning under the burden, seemingly ready to collapse into primordial chaos at any moment.
A cold glint flashed in Adam's eyes, and he brought the raised longsword down in a heavy, sweeping strike!
It was like the Milky Way reversing, like the void tearing apart. A crimson light flared. Wherever the sword-light reached, the green plague receded like melting snow, the decayed earth re-solidified, and the shattered space was forcibly smoothed out, as if an invisible hand were reshaping order.
Finally, the two streaks of light collided!
There was no world-shaking roar. No sound. No vibration. There was not even a sight that could be called an "explosion."
There was only light. Infinite, unending light.
Centering on the point of impact, the light expanded in all directions. Wherever it went, everything was annihilated. Two completely different powers frantically negated each other and were constantly reborn. Under the immense pressure of both, the entirety of Nurgle's Garden shook violently, like a small boat in a thunderstorm.
The humus and fungal mats that grew eternally were now, under the interplay of light and plague, sometimes turned into brilliant stardust and sometimes solidified into foul-smelling crystals.
The infinite brilliance finally swallowed everything.