The noble coalition launched its assault soon enough.
Their vanguard smashed headlong into Deshya's defenses, and before long they were locked in brutal close-quarters combat with the rebel army inside the city.
At first, the rebels managed to hold the line with their soaring morale and the advantage of fighting on home ground. But very quickly, both Angron and Bruce realized something was badly wrong.
The enemy's combat power was absurdly high.
They were all high riders, yet the coalition's riders fought as though they were cheating. Two or three exchanges were all it took for them to cut down the high riders who had defected to Bruce's side.
Their equipment was the same. Their size was the same. Yet Bruce's side simply could not beat them.
What the hell was this?
"They're definitely not normal!" Bruce shouted as he barely managed to kill one high rider, then called out to Angron in warning.
"What… is going on?" Angron stared at a rider who kept fighting for a few moments even after having his head chopped off, and immediately understood the severity of the problem.
Not only that, he also sensed that his own formations were beginning to fall apart. The rebel army was descending into chaos, becoming more bloodthirsty, more savage.
It was as though some unseen force was turning the entire city into an arena.
And the more battle-hungry someone was, the madder they became. Those who still retained their reason, by contrast, were quickly killed off.
Worse, once those frenzied slaves ran out of enemies, they began attacking their own side.
"Didn't I tell you already?" Bruce snapped as he fought. "There's something seriously wrong with this planet. The way they're changing has everything to do with some local faith!"
"Don't tell me this is more Warp nonsense?" Angron growled. "Where's the enemy sorcerer? Can you pinpoint him? I'll go carve him apart!"
"Forget it. This isn't the sort of thing a single sorcerer could pull off," Bruce said grimly. "This whole planet is basically an altar built to feed slaughter and blood to someone."
"And I already sent people to take down those temples in secret, but it takes time. By the look of things, though, we probably won't last that long."
Angron said nothing more. He simply hefted his axe and threw himself at the coalition troops.
As if I care what's behind it. If I kill them all, doesn't that solve the problem?
But the moment that thought crossed his mind, the Nails in his skull flared with pain. Driven by the stimulation of bloodshed, he grew less and less rational. Even though he knew this state was wrong—
—I just can't control it.
Kill, kill, kill! If I butcher every last one of them, then the problem will be gone. What else is there to say?!
I'll use my own way to defend everyone's efforts… and our victory!
Bruce could only sigh as he watched Angron become a slave to the Butcher's Nails all over again.
All he could do was gather the few combat-effective troops he still could, trying to keep them from completely losing themselves. But aside from a handful of high riders who still obeyed orders, the rest only cared about fighting to their hearts' content.
This was no longer a city.
It was a paradise for berserkers.
A gladiatorial pit.
Everywhere in the city, there was slaughter and screaming. Soldier or civilian, it made no difference. Everyone was being dragged into the revel.
As the death toll rose, Bruce heard that whisper again—tempting him to surrender to the killing, while at the same time using some unknown power to sap his senses and drain his strength.
In the end, he could not even keep hold of the knight squad he had struggled to gather. They fought to the last by his side.
"One against eight? That's a little unfair, don't you think?" Bruce muttered, leveling his boltgun at the enormous high riders advancing on him.
These men looked as if they had just climbed out of a blood-soaked pool. Their eyes shone with a crimson light. Bruce even had the uneasy feeling that the eight of them had received Khorne's blessing.
At this point they were clearly trying to drag him down with them.
Bruce backed away, firing as he moved, but the rounds that should have flown straight at them suddenly veered off at the last moment.
Or else they were simply battered aside with weapons and shields. Even when struck by the blast wave, the riders came charging out of the smoke without slowing down.
"Damn you, Khorne—go screw yourself!" Bruce cursed, forced to ditch the gun and draw his lightning claws.
You bastards are absolutely blessed by Khorne!
Otherwise there was no way you could be this strong!
Once they closed to melee, Bruce discovered something even more infuriating: stripped of all his tricks, his combat ability as an Astartes was actually this low.
He slashed twice with his claws and not only failed to force one of them back, he got hammered away by a single parry. Even when he managed to roll and scramble clear in time, he still ate several heavy kicks.
For one awful moment, Bruce felt like a stray dog.
What the hell? A few hours ago I was noble old Bruce. How did I suddenly become dog-Bruce?
Fortunately, the eight Khorne-chosen were at least bound by one mercy: they were slower than Bruce. And their weaknesses were still obvious enough—destroy the head or the heart, and they died all the same.
By contrast, Bruce, protected by power armor, was like a medieval knight with an infinite stamina bar. Dying was actually hard.
"Bruce… why… run…"
"Stop… and fight us…"
"You are a warrior…"
The high riders pursued him while releasing a strange psychic murmur that made his mind shudder.
Bruce ignored it and kept running when running was smart. Then he'd duck into a corner, leap a straggler from the shadows, carve him up in a flurry of blows, and bolt again before the others regrouped.
This wasn't fleeing. This was a tactical withdrawal.
That was how the Night Lords fought, all right.
And the tactic worked.
After several rounds of harassment, Bruce finally got the measure of them. Exploiting their openings with careful footwork and timing, he managed to tear out the heart of one of the chosen riders—then ran again.
But during that whole process, he also realized that the rebel army was completely finished.
The coalition forces that had entered the city were slaughtering everything in sight. There was no longer any formation, no longer any army, only chaos.
He even saw several people who had fought at his side earlier that very day.
If reason had not kept reining him in, he would have turned around and thrown himself back into the killing several times over.
No matter how stubborn he was, Bruce had lost. The moment they lost control of the city and their army's cohesion collapsed, the outcome had already been decided.
He was still excellent at guerrilla fighting, but his routes and freedom of movement were being compressed with every passing minute. And because he refused to let the battle spread further into innocent districts, he eventually found himself pinned down.
Several hundred high riders surrounded him in an open square. There was nowhere left to hide, nowhere to exploit his mobility.
Bruce sighed. "Well, if that's how it is…"
He downed a Transformation Drink. The instant he became Konrad Curze, he charged straight into the high riders' formation.
If Astartes-level stats weren't enough, then Primarch-level stats would have to do.
"Mercy" and "Forgiveness" became a pair of living harvesters, mowing through the enemy ranks. And every time a killing blow came his way, Bruce slipped past it in time.
Less than three minutes later, at the cost of only a small tear in his cloak, Bruce annihilated them all.
Then he immediately headed for the next place.
Because in his foresight, he had already seen Angron fall.
At an arena.
With a Primarch's senses now at his disposal, Bruce suddenly understood why Curze could play the Second Imperium like a toy in the original timeline. His awareness swept across the entire city like a radar grid.
The power was absurd. If he really committed to a guerrilla war in this state, then even if Khorne himself descended, Bruce felt like he could at least fight him for a while.
Meanwhile, Angron was making his final stand in an arena, fighting alongside the last of the slave soldiers.
His situation was dire.
Although his sheer battle power still let him hold back several hundred high riders, those foes only grew stronger the longer the fighting went on. Worse, Angron had already been struck by a specially prepared narcotic neurotoxin.
To drug a Primarch sounded ridiculous.
But on Nuceria, that sort of thing genuinely existed.
The first time Angron had been captured by the slavers, they had done it with anesthetics. He had still been young then—but even now, as a fully grown Primarch, he could only barely resist it.
As time wore on, his condition worsened. He could hardly stay standing. Even the axe in his hands was starting to slip.
"RAAAAHHHHH!"
Watching slave soldiers die one after another to shield him, Angron could only roar, trying to keep himself moving, to stop himself from falling.
"Lord Angron! Go!"
"We'll hold them here!"
"As long as you live, there's still hope!"
"Quick! Get Lord Angron out of here!"
"Get lost!" Angron shoved away a slave trying to support him and bellowed, "I, Angron, will die fighting! I will never surrender!"
"If death is what comes, then I'll face it with you!"
I won't suffer the humiliation of two hundred years ago a second time. Even if I die, I will not abandon you again!
"Release the toxin! Wipe them out!" the high rider commander barked once he judged the battle nearly over.
Several canisters were hurled into the crumbling defensive ring. Angron saw instantly what they were and tried to throw them back—but the enemy launched a simultaneous assault, preventing him from doing so cleanly.
"Throw them away! Hurry!" Angron roared, forcing himself to hurl aside two or three even as he shoved back the riders swarming him.
But it was too late. The poison mist had already begun to spread.
The slaves wore no protective masks.
The instant they inhaled it, their nervous systems shut down and they died on the spot. Angron, as a Primarch, could resist the poison far better—but his limbs grew heavier and heavier, until they barely moved at all.
At last, after cutting down dozens of empowered high riders, Angron could no longer stand.
Once they were certain, the commander gave the order.
"Restrain him! Inject the anesthetic!"
Several high riders rushed in with specially made chains, pinning first one of Angron's arms, then the other, then both legs and finally his neck. Only after he had been fully immobilized did several white-armored riders carrying metal canisters approach.
They intended to drive the anesthetic directly into his body.
Once they did, the Primarch would be utterly helpless.
"NO! NO—DON'T COME NEAR ME!"
In that moment, Angron was dragged back to the past.
Back to his days as a gladiator.
This was exactly how they had done it before—pinned him down, then forced the drugs into his bloodstream.
It was as though the substance had been designed specifically to imprison a demigod. It sank into the bones, locked the nerves, shut down control over body and senses alike. Even his healing would fail under it.
Angron still remembered what it had felt like the last time.
A few seconds, that was all.
A few seconds and everything would go black.
And when he woke, that damned Nail would already have been buried in his brain. From then on, even something as ordinary as breathing would feel like knives scraping across his skull.
"It'll all be over soon."
One high rider approached and drove a thick, spike-like needle into the blood vessel in Angron's arm.
Just as he was about to inject the drug, his movement froze.
Then his body jerked—and his head came off cleanly, tumbling across the ground.
"Above!" the high rider commander shouted. "Take him too! Don't let h—"
He never finished.
Before he died, he finally saw what had come down on them from above—
another high rider, already broken and mangled like a rag doll.
Bruce had thrown the corpse.
His lightning claw punched through the commander's chest. In the next instant, he used the body to smash into the other riders trying to complete the injection.
The men pinning Angron flew apart like bowling pins.
Then Bruce began killing.
Lightning crackled from his claws. The high riders didn't even have time to react before he tore through them one by one.
"They used toxins that numb the nerves!" Angron shouted in warning.
As his opponent, he naturally recognized who had arrived. Aside from Bruce, there was no one else who could kick these monstrous high riders around like strays.
"You think I'm you?" Bruce snapped back, tearing apart the chains binding him.
Angron stared in disbelief as something lifted him.
His eyes widened as Bruce hoisted him onto his back.
And only then did he realize something else.
Bruce was wearing a helmet.
That was why the anesthetic toxins hadn't entered through his breathing. That was why they hadn't taken effect yet.
"The reason you ended up like this is because you refuse to wear a helmet," Bruce muttered as he strapped the chains around himself and used them to secure Angron to his back. "Of course, I know your War Hound armor never had one. Hell, it barely has any technology in it at all."
He wasn't wrong.
Angron's armor barely counted as power armor. It was closer to a slab of iron, because he had always believed that no machine-made suit could compare to the gladiator gear he'd once worn on Nuceria.
"Run…" Angron growled. "You can't beat these things…"
He knew Bruce could get away if he were alone.
But carrying him? That was a different matter entirely.
For all that he still hated this infuriatingly scheming Astartes, Angron could no longer deny that Bruce was a dependable comrade.
"You looked down on me the same way before, and then you lost our duel. Have you forgotten already?" Bruce shot back.
Then he twisted the chains tight around both of them, binding them together.
The surviving high riders, their commander dead, tightened into formation. Well-trained to the last, they instinctively fell into battle order and waited for the right moment to strike.
That, too, was one of the reasons Angron had failed.
What kind of troops had he led? What kind did the rulers possess? If he had ever thought he could win cleanly, that had always been fantasy.
"Bruce! If it comes to it… call in reinforcements!"
At last, Angron bit out the words, surrendering on this point.
"I'll agree to it. I won't destroy this world anymore. As long as these nobles are purged, I'll go back with you and face the Warmaster. I swear it!"
"This time… I mean it!"
At this stage, Angron had nothing left to say. He understood now: whether two hundred years ago or now, the slaves had never had a chance of winning without outside help.
And if the Emperor had taken him away back then, maybe it truly had been because there was no victory to be had…
Maybe the Emperor had already known what these people would become. Maybe short of Exterminatus, there had never been a real way to win in close combat.
Everything about this planet—its people, its customs, all of it—was too damn wrong.
Bruce gave him a sideways look. "You'd better still remember saying that when you wake up. Didn't I tell you already? You really think the Emperor didn't want to help you?"
"It wasn't that he didn't want to. It was that he couldn't. This isn't even the worst of it. Believe me, these bastards could still get stronger."
"What… do you mean…"
Bruce answered while scanning the battlefield. "Every bit of fighting, every drop of blood, every death strengthens them. If the Emperor had sent the Custodes into this fight back then, it would only have made the enemy stronger."
"That's why we can't do that either. There's no winning that way."
"Then how do you plan to win? How?!"
Angron truly hated that he had left off the helmet. If he'd kept one, he could at least still fight beside Bruce instead of hanging there like dead weight.
Bruce answered him quietly.
"Leave it to me."
"I told you already. When you fall, you get back up where you fell."
"We can still win."
Then he asked, "Angron… ready?"
The instant the words left his mouth, Bruce flung out a storm of Nostraman throwing knives—all the ones he had left.
Then he became a blur and charged.
Even with an entire Primarch strapped to his back, Bruce did not slow down.
Of course, that was not Bruce's own strength.
It was Curze's.
So yes—Primarchs really were monsters.
"AAARRRGHH! DON'T LOOK DOWN ON ME!"
Angron poured every ounce of strength he had left into whipping the chains wrapped around his arms.
The chains spun like a storm, smashing aside the high riders lunging at Bruce and forming a moving wall around them.
Bruce laughed. "Now that's more like it. A real hot-blooded combo attack!"
He took a spear through the side even as he shouted it.
"Shut the hell up! I can't keep this up much longer! Run!" Angron barked.
"I am thinking! Stop rushing me!"
Even as he fought, Bruce kept calculating the best path out. But he knew they would never escape cleanly unless the roadblock in front of them was broken first.
"Angron!"
"What?"
"Are you scared of pain?"
"What kind of stupid question is that?"
"Good. That's all I needed."
Then Bruce opened the comms and shouted into Magnus's channel:
"Old Mag! Drop the psychic barrage on my coordinates!"
Angron froze.
He hadn't even had time to process who exactly Bruce meant by "Old Mag" when the stars over the Fedanmor Mountains began to descend in a rushing storm of light.
The speed was incredible.
By the time Angron realized what he was seeing, the psychic brilliance had already swallowed him, the arena, and everything around it whole.
Bruce Wayne.
You complete lunatic.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 165)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter220)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter125)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter250)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 220
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 185
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass Volume2/20
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 248
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 230
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player Volume4/40
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 125
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 145
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 120
I Can Copy Unique Skills 115
Summoning an Evil God, but the 75
Supernatural Multiverse 110
My Harem Is Indescribable 100
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 105
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 67
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 105
Still playing traditional Honk 80
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 85
What Should I Do After Switchi - Volume2/3
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 78
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 55
Transmigrated as Sukuna 80
Checking In in Demon Slayer 85
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 100
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 85
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 80
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 90
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 75
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 80
Why did they assign me to Uma 75
MYGO Beauties 70
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 70
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 80
Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 80
Emiya Shirou, Determined to Slay Every Curse and Evil Spirit 57
The Uma Musume Who Became 55
I'm Definitely Not the King of 60
After Maxing Out Every Class 45
Naruto: I'm Konoha's Local Men 35
Honkai: World Modulation Mode 34
I, the Elden Sword Saint 27
Dio Brando Is Challenging FGO 24
No One Knows Pokémon Better 18
I, Sakazuki, Won't Go Down Tha 20
My patreon : patreon.com/queen_sin
My patreon : patreon.com/queen_sin
My patreon : patreon.com/queen_sin