The ancient beast Yog-Sothoth emerged from the Room of Requirement and did nothing.
Its sheer, unimaginable size alone warped the entirety of space and completely overturned the laws of physics.
Before it, even stars were nothing more than insignificant little orbs.
On the bridge of the Red Tear, every scanning device simultaneously let out ear-splitting alarms.
The data obtained from the augur instruments was extremely chaotic and utterly unacceptable.
The needle of the gravity gradiometer struck the limit mark again and again, then snapped with a sharp sound.
The tech-specialists responsible for monitoring the instruments stared with wide eyes and expressions of disbelief.
The appearance of this gigantic celestial body had thrown the gravitational field of the entire galaxy into disorder.
Even the stars themselves were being pulled by this gravity and trembling.
The sight left many Imperial Navy commanders and Chapter Masters belonging to the fleet speechless with shock.
It was simply because Yog-Sothoth's body was too large.
The Glory Queen-class battleship Red Tear was like a speck of dust falling at the foot of a mountain standing before Yog-Sothoth.
Even if the entire fleet were lined up in a straight line, its length would amount to only a tiny fraction of this gigantic hull.
"How did the nameless one tame this behemoth?"
Sanguinius's voice contained an instinctive awe.
The moment this gigantic monster appeared, the outcome of the battle was already decided.
This was not a military conclusion that required analysis or judgment.
Anyone with eyes could see the ending.
Even with Magnus's extraordinary abilities, he had sacrificed his only remaining eye to transform Prospero into a gigantic summoning array.
Summoning a creature capable of fighting Yog-Sothoth had already become impossible.
The enemy's overwhelming physique was more than enough to drive a Primarch into despair.
"Had the ancient era… not already vanished forever?"
Inside the Crystal Labyrinth deep in the Warp,
Tzeentch let out a cry of surprise upon seeing Yog-Sothoth appear in the Prospero system.
Everyone's gazes simultaneously contracted to the size of a needle tip, and everyone turned toward Prospero.
The knowledge obtained from the Well of Eternity contained ancient information.
They had been the rulers of the galaxy before the ancient sages.
In the era before the ancient sages left their homeworlds, and before the Chaos Gods were born,
the ancient races had already ruled the entire galaxy.
They dominated the stars with their gigantic bodies and unparalleled spiritual power.
Their attendants were scattered across every corner of the galaxy.
Afterwards, the ancient existences expanded their influence and fought the Great Old Ones for dominion over the stars. In the end they were defeated, banished into eternal nothingness, and never permitted to return.
Who would have imagined that that nameless person had actually been keeping one in storage?
Damn it, this guy really keeps all kinds of weird things!
Does this man intend to resurrect all the old clans in the future?!
In that case, the authority and influence of these Chaos Gods will inevitably decline drastically.
The moment Yog-Sothoth appeared, it stretched out a gigantic tentacle and seized the nine-headed serpent Magnus had summoned.
Its movement looked slow, but that was merely a visual illusion. The speed at the tip of the tentacle was already approaching a fraction of the speed of light.
The nine-headed serpent had been summoned by Magnus.
Each serpent head, formed from pure Warp energy, symbolized a specific destructive force.
Its size was also rather exaggerated, yet it still fell far short of Yog-Sothoth and amounted to only a single tentacle.
The nine-headed serpent let out a despairing roar, and all of its heads simultaneously lunged at Yog-Sothoth's tentacle.
Nine different kinds of destructive force were unleashed at once against the tentacle stretching through the void.
However, the attack was meaningless. In a mere instant, Yog-Sothoth tore its body apart and ripped off the nine heads.
The entire procedure was swift and efficient; there was no actual struggle whatsoever.
The corpse of the nine-headed serpent lay in the void.
After a few breaths, it began to collapse from the edges and transformed into tiny particles of light.
It peeled away layer by layer and vanished layer by layer.
Next, Yog-Sothoth headed toward the planet Prospero.
That celestial body blocked the light of the stars, created a shadow covering the surface of Prospero, and enveloped the entire planet in darkness.
A planet that was gigantic to humans appeared as small as a glass marble in Yog-Sothoth's eyes.
Prospero was a rocky planet more than 12,000 kilometers in diameter, its surface covered in deserts, mountain ranges, and other terrain.
Its crust was hundreds of kilometers thick, and its core was a planet composed of iron and nickel.
It had witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations and the birth and death of countless lives.
But before Yog-Sothoth, such things did not matter.
The overflowing aura alone made countless daemons cry out in pain, shatter into pieces, or twist out of shape.
Yog-Sothoth had not deliberately launched an attack; at first it had not even noticed the existence of the daemons.
"Were they made by that toad?"
Yog-Sothoth sensed the aura of those daemons, and a color of contempt floated in its gigantic eyes.
In the era when the Old Ones ruled the galaxy, such ridiculous things did not exist.
They were the unmistakable absolute rulers; no living being could challenge their authority.
Just as no race can challenge the fundamental laws of the universe.
Both the real universe and the subspace had to obey them.
At that time the Warp was not called the Warp; it was known as the Dream World.
At that time the Dream World was merely a habitat of the ancient races, and at the same time a means of communication and travel among various races.
At that time, the concept of technology did not exist; most civilizations were in primitive and backward eras.
Communication and travel among various races were conducted through the Dream World, which belonged to a primitive and fantastical age.
The adventure stories of various warriors were inexhaustible, and therefore often became topics of conversation.
The ancient clans would occasionally answer the calls of their kin, but most of the time they were absorbed in their own worlds and paid almost no attention to the outside.
These eras continued until the ancient sages rose.
Those ancient sages possessed extraordinary inspiration and were born with the ability to perceive the existence of the Dream World.
They studied the Dream World and used its power to manipulate the Dream World according to their own will.
When the ancient races first noticed the ancient existences, they paid them no attention whatsoever — just as humans are indifferent to ants at their feet.
However, the speed of development of the ancient sages far exceeded the expectations of the ancient races.
They systematically developed technology, borrowed the power of the highest heavens, and used the echoes of various races existing in the Warp to strengthen themselves.
According to the studies of the ancient scriptures, every time an intelligent life-form in the real universe experienced intense emotional fluctuations —
for example, large-scale wars, global pandemics, the rise and fall of civilizations —
these fluctuations would leave traces in the underlying dimension.
Just as a stone thrown into water produces ripples, the collective emotions of countless people continue to resonate constantly in a lower dimension.
The ancient sages learned how to capture those echoes and transform them into their own power.
They extracted this reverberation, solidified it onto specially designed carriers, and created Warp weapons.
The ancient saints seized power at an extremely rapid rate, and many former attendants who had once served the ancient saints joined their ranks, acquiring technology and psychic abilities.
Thus, a long and brutal war began between the two camps, and the entire galaxy was reduced to ruins.
The magnificent structures once built by the low-dimensional ancient races collapsed one after another in the flames of war.
Most stars and galaxies shattered into pieces, and the entire Milky Way was on the verge of becoming a land of death.
Afterwards, the ancient sages created the eight-pointed star based on the characteristics of Chaos, and thereby ushered in the great age of spiritual energy.
The eight-pointed star is not merely a geometric symbol. It is a law carved into the structure of the Warp, possessing the ability to function and evolve on its own.
It classifies specific energy frequencies formed in the Warp through repeated erosion by war, plague, conspiracy, and desire, and gives them stable forms and callable pathways.
From then on, the ancient sages and their followers no longer needed to start from zero in order to explore the power of the Warp.
By learning the mechanism of the eight-pointed star and guiding energy along the prescribed path, you… it unleashed powerful spells.
The ancient sages, based on the eight-pointed star, created various magnificent spoils of war at extremely low cost.
They also constructed a network connecting various star systems under the old dominion, allowing fleets to travel safely between the stars.
The superiority brought by technology and psychic power allowed the ancients to win the war.
The ancient ones were defeated one by one, banished into nothingness, sealed, and forbidden to ever return.
The current Chaos Gods and daemons are nothing more than products created by the eight-pointed star.
Over a long period, the octagonal law absorbed far too many negative emotions from the Warp.
The anger and slaughter produced by war, the despair and numbness brought by plague, the suspicion and betrayal produced by conspiracy, and the obsession and madness caused by desire.
These feelings of despair accumulated in the Warp and eventually transformed into existences possessing independent will — namely the Chaos Gods and numerous daemons.
It is perfectly ordinary for Yog-Sothoth to call daemons the creations of the Old Ones.
...
On Prospero, the one-eyed Magnus and his many Thousand Sons sorcerers and slaves stood on the surface, staring blankly at Yog-Sothoth floating in the void.
This… this is far too huge!
The aura radiating from it had existed far longer than the auras of the Chaos Gods and the many other existences in the Warp.
They had absolutely no chance of defeating such a gigantic opponent.
The orbital defense systems designed to withstand an invasion fleet crumbled before the ancient gigantic weapon.
Prospero's orbital defense system had been constructed over thousands of years by Cyclops Magnus.
Each orbital platform was a fusion of Warp sorcery and dark technology — a creation born for slaughter.
The moment Sanguinius's fleet arrived, these defense systems activated simultaneously.
The entire orbit of the planet was illuminated by a dense network of beams and shielding, like a spider's web.
However, Yog-Sothoth made no particularly deliberate movement; it simply passed by them.
Those creations were caught in the spatial tides caused by the other side, triggering catastrophic explosions and transforming into burning wreckage and ruins in the void.
Yog-Sothoth grasped Prospero with a tentacle and tried to crush it.
It had done so many times in its wars against the ancient sages.
"Don't do that."
Datch stopped Yog-Sothoth. His purpose was to show the young Magnus the foolish acts committed by the future Magnus.
They had not come here to destroy Prospero.
He did not want a notification to appear later.
Yog-Sothoth withdrew its tentacle and floated quietly in the void.
Taking this opportunity, Sanguinius's fleet easily broke through Prospero's space defense network and reached planetary orbit.
While the warships circled around Yog-Sothoth's body, each bridge was wrapped in death-like silence.
Everyone gazed at that gigantic creature, Yog-Sothoth, with awe.
"Conduct orbital bombardment of the surface and eliminate the enemy's anti-aircraft guns."
Once in orbit, Sanguinius's voice broke the silence of the Red Tear's bridge.
"Prepare for airborne operations and seize the ground."
The Archangel calmly issued various orders and assigned missions.
The fleet moved rapidly. All of the warships' gigantic cannons were aimed at the surface of Prospero.
First came repeated indiscriminate bombardment.
The Red Tear fired first; hundreds of large cannons simultaneously spat burning flames.
The shells descended from orbit toward the ground trailing bright contrails, like a meteor shower.
Immediately afterward, the other warships of the fleet joined the chorus.
Tens of thousands of shells rained down on Prospero simultaneously; the light was so intense that from the ground the entire sky appeared to be burning.
The shells struck, and terrifying explosions occurred.
Bright flames rose one after another from the ground, forming an endlessly spreading sea of orange-red fire.
Shockwaves blew the surrounding rocks, sand, and even the daemons and traitors unfortunate enough to be within the blast range into the air; they rained down on the ground as a rain of burning fragments.
The descendants of the Sacred Blood either boarded attack craft or headed for teleportation matrices, preparing to land.
Inside the hangars, the engines of the attack craft were already preheated; the heat waves erupting from the nozzles distorted and deformed the air.
Blood Angels clad in red power armor ran in formation up the boarding ramps; every time their boots struck the metal plates, a heavy drum-like roar echoed.
Inside the teleportation matrix chambers, Tech-Priests desperately pounded the control panels, inputting sets of coordinates into the teleportation systems.
A gradually louder roar issued from the gigantic teleportation devices; electric arcs began to leap between the metal rings of the devices, and the air was filled with the pungent smell of ozone.
Fully armed soldiers stood on the teleportation platforms, gripping their weapons tightly, ready for the start of combat.
Resistance on the surface was fierce; despite the orbital bombardment, they continued to resist stubbornly.
Intense gunfire tore through the sky; anti-aircraft shells burst among the attack-craft formations.
In an instant, fragments flew in every direction and sparks scattered everywhere.
When they reached low altitude, the hatches opened, and the Blood Angels warriors leapt out before the gunships had completely stopped.
Flames erupted from jump packs; they flew through the air in arcs and landed on enemy positions on the ground.
Power halberds and chainswords activated in mid-air.
The moment they landed, they plunged into fierce combat with the nearest enemy units.
The sounds of metal colliding, roars, and screams mixed together.
At Magnus's strong request, he was also permitted to join the battle from the air.
He wanted to punish with his own hands the culprits who had reduced Prospero to this state.
Datch had the astrologer Orikan forge a full set of armor suitable for Magnus from the Room of Requirement.
He also took an ancient relic staff from the vault of Trazyn the Infinite and handed it to the other party as a weapon.
Sanguinius assigned Magnus a squad of Blood Angels and instructed them to travel directly to the ground using a teleportation matrix.
Under the control of the Tech-Priests, the teleportation device roared; the metal rings surrounding the teleportation platform began to rotate at an ever-increasing speed.
Dazzling white light sprayed from the gaps in the rings and tore space.
In a mere instant, they were teleported to the ground.
Magnus realized he was standing at the edge of a vast ritual ground surrounded by uneven gray rock.
Twisted tentacles of blue, maroon, and purplish-red wriggled among the pebbles.
They were neither plants nor animals, but the disordered overflow of Warp energy into the real universe. They were a sign that, as a result of Prospero having been corrupted for far too long, even the earth itself had begun to show symptoms of disease.
From bulbous objects quietly nestled among the colorful crystals, alluring jet-black pupils of varying sizes peered out.
From the tops and sides of the bulbs, crystal masses grew in disorder. They were extremely sharp and could easily cut even power armor.
Their target was not far away. On the horizon, an emerald-glass pyramid soared, and around it stood nine obelisks of crimson stone engraved with runes.
Each was nearly twenty meters high; their surfaces were densely covered with runes and emitted light.
The moment they landed, they were attacked by a group of Thousand Sons, Scarlet Warriors, and daemons.
The thousand sorcerers were each masters of Warp sorcery and had sworn absolute loyalty to Magnus.
Even facing the overwhelmingly superior Imperial forces, they felt no fear, prepared to sacrifice themselves for the Crimson King.
However, the moment they saw the young Magnus, they all lost their words and stood frozen.
The young Magnus wore brand-new armor engraved with pure runes and held a sacred staff that emitted pure light.
He had not lost the eye he would lose when he made a pact with Tzeentch, nor had horns or daemonic wings grown. He retained the beauty they had remembered from ancient times.
"That cannot be."
The voice of a sorcerer among the Thousand Sons was filled with pain.
He told himself that this was all an Imperial conspiracy.
However, the aura radiating from the other party clearly told them…
This is Magnus — the Magnus who never fell.
Every immortal fox would lose its life at the hands of the Crimson King to whom they had sworn loyalty. Perhaps this was the punishment of their fate.
"Traitors, shameful traitors to humanity, filthy insects who blaspheme Prospero."
Magnus, holding the sacred staff, released a dazzling beam of light and instantly felled several Thousand Sons sorcerers.
Yet they did not resist until death; they merely watched Magnus weep and quietly accepted their fate.
"Why? Why didn't you resist? Why were you crying?"
Using telekinesis, Magnus seized a Thousand Sons sorcerer who was kneeling and not trying to resist, and began the interrogation.
…