The air inside the base tent vibrated violently.
Helovia sat cross-legged on the straw mat, her palms facing upward. The crimson psychic halo, which had started out the size of a candlelight, had expanded to the size of a basketball.
The light wasn't static; it rotated slowly above her palm like a living entity, with patterns resembling flowing magma faintly visible inside.
"Keep breathing, Helovia."
Blood Angel's voice was soft, but fine beads of sweat were already forming on his forehead.
He could feel it—the psychic energy inside this child was increasing exponentially.
It wasn't a gradual progression. It was like a volcano that had been suppressed for years, finally erupting all at once.
"Teacher... I can't control it..."
Helovia's voice carried a crying tone, her tender face contorting from the sheer effort.
The crimson orb of light in her palm began to expand and contract irregularly. Fine sparks sprayed from its edges, instantly burning charred holes the moment they touched the straw mat.
The temperature inside the tent spiked at a speed visible to the naked eye. The air distorted from the intense heat, and the fabric of the tent began to curl and scorch.
"Hold steady!"
Blood Angel let out a low shout. He formed a mudra with his hands, and a pale blue psychic barrier surged from his body, attempting to envelop the out-of-control psychic flames.
But the instant the two connected—
BOOM!
The crimson psychic torrent erupted like a burst dam, instantly shattering Blood Angel's barrier.
The canvas roof of the tent was blown clean off. A scorching shockwave of heat blasted outward with Helovia at the epicenter, sweeping away all the grass clippings, dust, and gravel within a ten-meter radius.
Blood Angel was thrown to the ground by the impact. He struggled to raise his head, and his pupils violently constricted.
Helovia was floating in mid-air, her entire body engulfed in crimson psychic energy. Her eyes had completely turned the color of molten magma, and her long white hair danced wildly amidst the turbulent psychic currents.
The straw mat beneath her had long since been reduced to ashes, and a scorched, blackened circle three meters in diameter had been burned into the ground.
But what was even more terrifying—
In the dimension of the Warp, this erupting burst of psychic energy was as blindingly bright as a lighthouse in the dead of night.
"??!"
Deep within the Warp, Lucian's energy body shot up from its lazy lounging posture.
He had been happily absorbing the pure emotional energy radiating from the mining pit battlefield and the base, when he suddenly sensed an abnormally pure and powerful psychic pulse erupting from the surface of Aurelian IV in the material universe.
The intensity of that light...
"A-Rank? No, this is at least S-Rank! Primarch-initiate level psychic talent!"
The ripples on the surface of Lucian's energy body vibrated violently.
He pulled up a projection of reality and locked onto the source of the light. It was the little girl, Helovia, right in the center of the Crimson Dawn base.
Right now, from the perspective of the Warp, Helovia's psychic light looked like a newborn star. While not yet stable, its essence was astonishingly pure.
More importantly, this light had absolutely no trace of Chaos corruption. It was pure, unadulterated human psychic talent.
"This is bad..."
Lucian immediately realized the problem.
In the Warhammer universe, powerful psykers are like bonfires in a dark forest—they attract every predator around.
Tzeentch would want to corrupt her into a pawn; Khorne would want to turn her into a sacrifice on an altar of blood; Nurgle would want to rot her purity with plagues; and Slaanesh would want to drag her into the ultimate sensory experience.
And that wasn't even counting the Daemons roaming the Warp. Who wouldn't want to take a bite out of such a delicious soul?
"I have to block it!"
Lucian didn't hesitate. He pulled up the System interface, his cursor flying across the screen.
[Initiate Warp Shielding]
[Target: Specific psychic entity (Helovia Elnor) at coordinates on the surface of Aurelian IV (Crimson Dawn Base)]
[Shielding Intensity: Four Gods Level]
[Duration: Continuous effect until manually deactivated by the Host]
[Estimated Energy Consumption: 1,000,000 units of physical energy]
"A million units to buy the life of an S-Rank psychic genius—worth it!"
[Command Confirmed]
[1,000,000 units of physical energy deducted]
[Warp Shielding Field generating...]
Back in the material universe, at the Crimson Dawn base.
Just as Helovia's psychic energy was about to completely lose control and potentially tear open a Warp rift—
An invisible membrane silently wrapped around her.
The membrane was entirely imperceptible in the physical dimension. It absorbed every single psychic fluctuation Helovia emitted, converting it into harmless background noise.
Tentacles reaching out from Tzeentch's demonic realm flailed aimlessly in the void for a few moments, having lost their target.
The gazes cast from Khorne's domain of blood swept over the area in annoyance, finding absolutely nothing.
In Nurgle's Garden, a plague bud that had just turned toward the direction of the spike tilted its head in confusion, then went back to sleep.
And inside Slaanesh's palace, a seductive melody that had just begun to play abruptly stopped.
Shielding complete.
The psychic flames surrounding Helovia began to slowly recede. The magma-like color faded from her eyes, and her body gently drifted down from mid-air. The moment her feet touched the ground, her legs gave out, and she collapsed.
"Helovia!"
Blood Angel rushed forward and checked her vitals.
Her breathing was steady, her heart rate slightly fast but stable. It was just a coma induced by psychic overexertion.
He looked up at the sky. In that brief instant earlier, he clearly felt some kind of gaze peering down from the Warp, but then it immediately vanished, as if the connection had been forcibly severed by something.
"Was that the game System? Or..."
Blood Angel muttered to himself, then shook his head. He scooped Helovia up and sprinted toward the medical tent.
Whatever it was, the kid survived.
And her talent... it far exceeded anyone's expectations.
Meanwhile, at the mining pit to the northeast.
The battle ended even faster than expected.
A hundred and thirty-seven Razorhounds—Tax Bro counted them up during the post-battle tally. Under the saturated fire coverage of over two thousand players, the pack lasted less than eight minutes.
Laser beams, black powder bullets, and even a few player-crafted Molotov cocktails rained down on the horde like a torrential downpour.
A Razorhound's bone plating could stop a bullet or two, but it couldn't stop the concentrated fire of dozens of guns firing simultaneously.
Standing on the roof of a transport truck, Zeke watched the last Razorhound drop dead after taking three laser blasts to the head at the same time. He raised his hand and issued an order over the regional channel:
"Cease fire! Scavenger teams, move up!"
Hundreds of players instantly rushed out from behind cover, holding [Portable Scavenging Devices] redeemed from the shop—which were essentially just power tools with cutting functions—and swiftly began dismantling the corpses.
"Hound pelt, 70% integrity, salvage price 85 Coins!"
"Pair of fangs, 32 Coins!"
"Crystal shard from a psychically mutated specimen. It's shattered, but there's still residual energy—142 Coins!"
Prices were shouted out one after another.
The System Shop's salvage mechanics were highly intelligent. It could appraise materials in real-time based on their integrity, residual energy, and special properties, directly depositing the funds into the Chapter's account.
Zeke hopped off the truck and walked over to the edge of the pit.
This open-pit mine was even larger than he had imagined. It looked to be over two kilometers in diameter, and the bottom was nowhere in sight.
The walls of the pit spiraled downward, with five pitch-black mine shaft entrances visible at different elevations along the descent.
"Chapter Master, how are we playing this?"
Tax Bro walked over, resting his modified stubber shotgun on his shoulder. The barrel was still smoking. Compared to shotguns, he much preferred bolters, but unfortunately, they couldn't afford them right now.