This is the bonus chapter for reaching 250 Powerstones.
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The conference room instantly erupted into a cacophony of agreement and grievances, loud and chaotic as a fish market.
Sanguinius closed his eyes, his finger lightly tapping against the armrest.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The rhythm was soft, yet it completely overpowered the noise.
The crowd gradually fell silent.
"Are you finished?"
Sanguinius opened his eyes, his amber-gold gaze sweeping across every single face.
No one dared to speak.
"First, the attackers were not deployed by the Imperium. I have confirmed this." Sanguinius's voice remained calm, but the temperature in the room plummeted. "Second, the Departmento Munitorum issued no such order. The archive classifications were forged."
He paused.
"Therefore, I have already given you the answer. This is a premeditated, coordinated pillaging of Aurelian IV's resource network. The attackers disguised themselves as Astartes, but their true identities remain unknown."
Achil opened his mouth. "Then... then who could it be? Who has the capability to mimic them so perfectly?!"
"On Aurelian IV, aside from... who has the capability to sweep through thirteen hive cities in five days?" Sanguinius shot him a look.
It was a flat, emotionless stare, but it made Achil instantly snap his mouth shut, a cold sweat breaking out down his spine.
"That is exactly what you should be investigating." Sanguinius stood up, his three-point-seven-meter frame exuding a terrifying, suffocating pressure. "You have governed this planet for eighty years. You control every hive city. You possess hundreds of thousands of armed personnel. Now, someone has broken into your house, stolen your property, and murdered your people, and you ask me—someone who arrived mere days ago—who it was?"
His voice remained gentle, but every word felt like jagged ice.
"Where is your reconnaissance? Your intelligence networks? Your contingency plans?"
The conference room was dead silent.
"Listen closely," Sanguinius said, his gaze sweeping the room. "I will give you three days. Utilize every resource, every contact, and every method at your disposal. Find a lead on these imposters. Find where they went. Find even a single trace. If, in three days, there is no progress..."
His gaze fell on Magos Occus, swept past Achil and Greave, and finally lingered for half a second on Garrison Conmo, who had his head bowed.
"I would not object to personally investigating every single one of your actions over the past eighty years. Tax ledgers, mineral distribution routes, private militias, and any potential contact with xenos or Warp entities... I will scrutinize them all, one by one."
Sanguinius leaned forward slightly, the shadow of his wings blanketing half the room.
"Let us see just how many among you are truly... innocent. If there are still no answers by then, I will show you the true meaning of judgment. The true meaning of purification."
With that, he turned and strode out of the room.
Azkaellon and the Sanguinary Guard followed silently behind him.
Only when the roar of the Thunderhawk's engines echoed once more did the men in the conference room collapse into their chairs, as if all the bones had been ripped from their bodies. Their faces were deathly pale, their opulent clothes soaked in cold sweat.
"Three... three days..." Achil muttered to himself, his eyes vacant.
Greave smashed his fist onto the table. This time, no one tried to stop him. "Investigate?! How the hell are we supposed to investigate?! Those bandits appeared out of nowhere and vanished without a trace! They killed, they looted, and they disappeared, leaving absolutely nothing behind!"
Magos Occus's mechanical eye flashed frantically, streams of data scrolling rapidly.
He suddenly turned to the continuously silent Garrison Conmo. "Patriarch Conmo. Did your psychic perception... fail to notice any anomalies at the time?"
Garrison raised his head, a gloomy, almost sinister smile playing on his pale lips. "Psychic perception? Hah... By the time I rushed to Dylan Hive—the closest target to the City of the Holy Anthem—all I could sense were eight masses of life energy burning as hot as stars, accompanied by an overwhelming, apocalyptic bloodlust. The oppressive weight of it was like standing on the edge of an erupting volcano. I didn't even dare get close. How was I supposed to notice any anomalies?"
The leaders were plunged back into utter helplessness.
But in the fraction of a second that Garrison Conmo lowered his eyelids, a faint, mutating purple light flickered deep within his pupils.
--
In orbit, aboard the Thunderhawk gunship.
Sanguinius sat in his personalized throne, his eyes closed in deep thought.
"Father, are we heading to Kent Hive next?" Azkaellon asked.
"Yes," Sanguinius opened his eyes. "According to Occus's report, Kent Hive's losses were equally devastating. Yet, I harbor a distinct, lingering intuition about that place. I must observe it for myself to be certain. Furthermore..."
He recalled the fleeting, jarring sense of dissonance he had felt from the patriarch named Garrison Conmo back in the conference room.
Though it had been cleverly masked, how sharp was Sanguinius's psychic perception? That pale blue psychic undertone, reeking of a thirst for knowledge and a restless, mutating agitation...
While he didn't yet understand exactly what that dissonance meant, it wouldn't stop him from remembering it and conducting a thorough investigation into Garrison later.
Sanguinius spoke calmly, "Before brother Ferrus departed, he specifically mentioned this organization known as Crimson Dawn, and their Governor Cage."
Azkaellon tightened his grip on his sword hilt. "Shall we inform them in advance to prepare a reception?"
"No," Sanguinius said, looking out the viewport. "Only a surprise inspection reveals the unvarnished truth."
The Thunderhawk gunship pierced through the cloud layer, banking toward Kent Hive.
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Kent Hive, three hundred meters below the Governor's Palace, inside a deep subterranean sanctum.
Paul sat cross-legged atop a meditation dais carved from a single block of obsidian. His dark grey power armor rested on a metal armature nearby, leaving him clad only in simple grey training fatigues.
His eyes were tightly shut.
But deep within those dark golden pupils, the pentagram pattern forged from the five great traits was spinning furiously: Hope, Compassion, Resolve, Pioneering, Wisdom.
Five colors of light intertwined within the dark gold.
The Pan-Psychic Spectrum. One of the exclusive privileges of a Champion.
This meant he could manipulate every known branch of psychic discipline: Biomancy, Telepathy, Divination, Telekinesis, and Pyromancy.
Therefore, Sanguinius was not the only one capable of precognition. Paul could similarly perceive vague glimpses of unrealized possibilities within the river of time.
At this very moment, those precognitive possibilities were flooding into his consciousness like shards of shattered glass.
In the vision, Two crimson and gold Thunderhawks tore through the cloud layer, the roar of their engines sounding like the herald of divine retribution.
Sanguinius was the first to step down the ramp, his pristine white wings radiating a divine luminescence under the artificial lighting of the hive's dome.
Thirty Sanguinary Guard Terminators followed closely behind, the synchronized footfalls of their crimson and gold artificer plate echoing like tolling death knells.
In the grand hall of the Governor's Palace, the Cogboy, dressed in his dark red robes, stepped forward to welcome them with a perfectly practiced, obsequious Imperial bureaucrat's smile.
Sanguinius merely looked at him calmly before speaking slowly: "Governor Cage Lawrence, you have done well... but it is not enough."
The Great Angel's gaze pierced straight through the floorboards, locking directly onto Paul far below. "I am searching for a soul. One masquerading as an Astartes Champion of the War Hounds Legion. A soul that slaughtered seventy thousand garrison troops and pillaged fifty-eight billion Thrones' worth of supplies in just five days."
The alloy blast doors of the secret sanctum were slagged open by a devastating melta blast.
Sanguinius walked in, his wings folded neatly behind his back.
Paul stood up. The servo-motors of his dark grey power armor engaged as the automated dressing sequence completed.
"The Emperor's Angels of Death do not rob His own subjects." Sanguinius's voice was gentle, yet every syllable carried the weight of a mountain. "Whatever your justifications, impersonating the Legions, massacring garrison troops, and plundering supplies... these are all high treason."
Paul's visor retracted, revealing his dark golden eyes. "Then allow me to ask you, Lord Sanguinius: in the eighty years the Imperium has ruled this world, what is the value of the supplies embezzled by the four major factions? How many miners have been tortured to death under their lash? How many children have starved in the gutters because they couldn't pay the Tithe...?"
"Sin cannot be washed clean by further sin." Sanguinius interrupted him, a flash of pity crossing his amber-gold slit pupils. "You could have chosen a gentler path."
"Gentler?" Paul laughed, the sound laced with a bitter fury. "Like what Lord Ferrus Manus did eighty years ago?! Orbital bombardment! The dropping of Dawn City's! Millions screaming as they burned in steel and fire! Hundreds of millions plunged into the flames of war! Billions left homeless, wandering the wastes to die! Is that what you call gentle?!"
Sanguinius's wings trembled slightly, but he did not engage in verbal debate. In his eyes, the Imperium and his father, the Emperor, were absolute.
The Emperor's Great Crusade was the ultimate liberation of humanity across the cosmos. Any who obstructed it were heretics, and all heretics must face judgment.
The battle erupted instantly.
Paul's psychic power exploded like a hurricane, his pale golden psychic ripples clashing violently against Sanguinius's pristine white psychic field.
The walls of the subterranean sanctum fractured and crumbled under the strain of two demigod-tier powers colliding.
The two fought from the underground depths to the surface, battling from the Governor's Palace all the way to the central plaza.
Paul pushed the five great traits to their absolute limits.
Hope granted him the sheer, unyielding courage to fight to the death, even against Sanguinius, the Great Angel of the Imperium.
Compassion allowed him to somehow defend against the devastating strikes of the Blade Encarmine wielded by Sanguinius.
Resolve fortified his physical form and stoked his fighting spirit to a fever pitch.
Pioneering manipulated his psychic energy into the most unpredictable, unorthodox combinations, unleashing an endless barrage of bizarre combat techniques.
Wisdom relentlessly calculated and predicted Sanguinius's every move.
Relying on these abilities and burning through his psychic reserves at a terrifying rate, he even managed to briefly suppress Sanguinius.
He landed a solid punch against the Emperor's Great Angel's resplendent armor, forcing Sanguinius back three steps, a flash of shock in the Primarch's eyes.
"Do you see this?!" Paul roared, gasping for breath, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "This is the wrath of the oppressed! This is the power of the mortals you claim need to be judged and purged!"
But elsewhere, the battle was completely one-sided.
Thirty Sanguinary Guard Astartes clad in artificer plate were thirty unstoppable killing machines.
The roar of their bolters merged into a continuous thunder, while high-energy blasts from their melta weapons reduced the newly constructed community centers into bubbling slag.
Players surged out of the respawn points in the Governor's Palace in an endless tide.
Screaming "For Crimson Dawn!", they charged with lasrifles and rocket launchers, pitting flesh and bone against genetically forged superhumans.
But the disparity in power was simply too vast.
A Sanguinary Guard warrior swung his power sword, cleaving through the torsos of three players in a single strike. The disruption field along the blade instantly carbonized the wounds before a single drop of blood could even spray.
Another warrior swept his bolter across the plaza, the six-hundred-round-per-minute fire rate turning an entire squad of players into a bloody mist.
Azkaellon was like a god of war. Every swing of his master-crafted power sword brought a fresh rain of blood. The Sanguinary Guard Commander had fought for over three centuries; his experience, skill, and wargear utterly crushed these players who had only been in the Warhammer universe for two or three months.
Tax Bro, White Scars, G Bro, and the rest of the seven Astartes finally received the emergency alerts and logged online.
They rushed to the plaza from all corners of the hive, only to find the ground carpeted with the corpses of players and the city in flames.
"MOTHERFUCKERS!!!"
Tax Bro's furious roar blasted through his Imperial Fists armor's external vox-casters. He hefted his chainsword and charged straight at the nearest Sanguinary Guard.
He actually managed a successful ambush.
Tax Bro's chainsword bit deeply into the joint between the Sanguinary Guard's pauldron and backplate. The revving teeth tore through the ceramite, shredding the synthetic muscle bundles and hydraulic cables beneath.
Riding the momentum, he wrenched the blade downward, splitting the warrior's chest cavity wide open.
The Sanguinary Guard fell to his knees, his power sword dropping from his grasp.
White Scars flashed past like a bolt of white lightning. His power tulwar carved a sapphire arc, plunging with lethal precision straight into another warrior's neck joint.
But that was where their success ended.
More Sanguinary Guard swarmed them, followed rapidly by an entire Blood Angels company deploying from orbit.
Over a thousand Astartes rained down from the sky and flooded into Kent Hive.
Seven against one thousand.
Even though Tax Bro and the others sat on a mountain of Imperial Coins and could revive infinitely...
The sheer disparity in numbers was insurmountable.
After countless respawns...
G Bro was impaled through the chest plate by three power swords simultaneously, the deep blue of his Ultramarines armor turning black with his own blood.
White Scars's pristine white armor was riddled with cratered bolt impacts. One of his legs had been completely severed by a melta blast. He knelt on one knee, still desperately trying to raise his storm bolter.
Tax Bro was the last to fall.
The Imperial Fists Astartes stood atop a small mountain of dead players. More than half the teeth on his chainsword had been sheared off, and his bolter had run dry.
His visor was shattered, revealing a face caked in blood and grime.
"Crimson Dawn..." Tax Bro rasped hoarsely. "...forever..."
Then, he was struck by five mass-reactive bolts simultaneously, his bright yellow armor detonating into shrapnel.
Paul's own battle was rapidly deteriorating; his psychic reserves were running completely dry.
Compared to Sanguinius—a Primarch who had lived for countless years and fought in thousands of campaigns—Paul's combat experience was simply too shallow.
No matter how powerful the five traits were, they required psychic energy to function, and his reserves... had hit rock bottom.
Sanguinius seized the opening.
The Great Angel's wings flared, and the psychic luminescence flowing across the pristine white feathers instantly magnified tenfold.
Sanguinius swung his blade, the sheer force of the strike causing microscopic fractures in reality itself.
Paul's arms, raised in a desperate block, were severed cleanly and fell to the ground.
The second strike slammed into his chest, entirely cleaving open the dark grey chest plate and sending him crashing face-first into the dirt.
The third strike...
The visions flooding Paul's mind abruptly terminated.
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Goal = 500 Powerstones.
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