This is the bonus chapter for reaching 700 Powerstones
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Aru Industrial Zone, Edge of the Crater.
The battle between Paul and the Great Unclean One entered its second round.
All of his attention was locked onto the putrid colossus ahead, which was currently raising a giant palm to swat at him.
The Great Unclean One's palm crashed down, a hand the size of a Leman Russ tank hull. It was covered in a thick carrion carapace, the pus dripping from its fingertips trailing yellowish-green streaks through the air. The wind pressure from the palm sent dust and debris flying.
Paul didn't dodge.
He gripped the Watcher's Axe tightly with both hands, five-colored lightning frantically converging onto the blade as he injected Gamma-class psychic power at maximum output.
Then, he swung upward in a rising cleave!
The instant the axe blade collided with the giant palm...
A ring-shaped shockwave, a mixture of gold and five-colored light, erupted with the point of impact at its center!
The ground within a fifty-meter radius was entirely uprooted; chunks of concrete, metallic wreckage, and daemon corpses were all pulverized into fine powder!
In the distance, a few unlucky Beasts of Nurgle were directly launched by the shockwave, their obese bodies tumbling through the air a dozen times before smashing heavily into the ground.
And at the epicenter of the collision...
RIIIP!!!
The teeth-aching sound of tearing finally rang out.
The blade of the Watcher's Axe bit deeply into the humus-like carapace on the Great Unclean One's palm!
The instant the disruption field and the five-colored psychic lightning coalesced on the blade touched the carapace, it disintegrated it at the molecular level. The twenty-plus-centimeter-thick humus layer peeled back on both sides, exposing the rotting flesh teeming with maggots and fungi beneath.
Yellowish-green pus-blood spewed like a waterfall, but before it could hit the ground, it was evaporated and purified by the psychic field surrounding Paul.
The Great Unclean One let out an agonized roar, the sound carrying a trace of genuine fury. It abruptly retracted its palm, attempting to fling Paul away along with his axe.
But Paul was faster.
The instant the giant palm's force slackened, he wrenched the axe and twisted his body, executing a secondary burst of power!
RIIIP!!!
The axe blade sliced laterally through the rotting flesh, violently carving a three-meter-long gash across the palm, deep enough to expose bone!
More pus-blood spewed forth, mixed with shattered bone fragments and writhing internal tissue.
Retreating to a safe distance, Paul immediately pushed his personal defenses to the absolute limit.
Atomic forcefield, maximum output. Iron Halo, activated. Psychic shield, reinforced.
The three commands were executed instantaneously through his neural interface.
The thickness of the pale golden energy plating surrounding Paul doubled, and intricate geometric runes began to surface on his armor. That was the telltale sign of the atomic forcefield generator running at maximum capacity.
The instant the Iron Halo activated, the air within a ten-meter radius around him began to warp and refract light, forming a visual blur field.
Then, he initiated his charge once again.
The Great Unclean One seemed enraged. It threw its head back and let out a murky roar, all the carrion tentacles dangling from its abdomen raising simultaneously to lash at Paul like whips.
Simultaneously, it opened its maw and spewed a thick, dark green breath.
Wherever that breath passed, the air hissed with corrosion, and the rubble on the ground rapidly softened and dissolved.
This was the Great Unclean One's Plague Breath. Nurgle's corrosive energy, potent enough to melt ceramite armor within ten seconds.
Paul didn't choose to evade.
He raised the storm shield on his left arm, the Aquila emblem in the center blazing with blinding golden light.
"In the name of the Emperor—"
He charged forward, holding the storm shield high.
A dark gold psychic barrier unfurled before the shield, colliding head-on with the dark green Plague Breath.
Sizzle-crackle-hiss!!!!
The shrieking sound of energy annihilation echoed across the battlefield.
Gold and green intertwined, annihilated, and detonated.
The shockwave blasted all daemon remains and building fragments within a fifty-meter radius into the air.
Paul advanced steadily through the breath weapon.
Cracks began to appear on the psychic barrier coating the storm shield, but he was also getting closer and closer to the Great Unclean One.
Twenty meters, fifteen meters, ten meters.
Right at the critical moment, Paul suddenly lowered the shield.
Without obstruction, the Plague Breath blasted straight toward his faceplate.
But the instant he lowered the shield, he simultaneously executed three motions: side-stepping, crouching, and lunging.
The breath attack grazed past his pauldron, corroding a deep crater into the ground behind him.
And Paul had already lunged to within five meters of the Great Unclean One.
For a behemoth nineteen meters tall, this distance was practically point-blank range.
The Great Unclean One attempted to raise its hooved foot to trample him, but Paul's speed was greater.
He drove power into his legs, the anti-grav suspensors and jump pack activating simultaneously, launching him vertically like a rocket.
His target this time was the Great Unclean One's chest.
There, his Wisdom trait had marked a second red dot: a slowly pulsating pustule half a meter in diameter.
That was the external manifestation of its rotting heart, one of the energy cores of this Great Unclean One.
The Watcher's Axe was raised high once again.
This time, what coalesced on the blade wasn't just the disruption field and Gamma-class psychic energy. It was also infused with the power of the five traits.
The blade brimmed with five-colored radiance.
"Have at it!"
Paul swung his arm mid-air.
The power of his entire body converged into this single strike.
The axe blade fell.
It struck the pustule.
BOOM!!!!
The pustule on the Great Unclean One's chest violently exploded.
The myriad of powers carried on the axe blade broke down and cleaved through the pustule, causing it to detonate from the inside.
Yellowish-green pus spewed out like a waterfall, mixed with shredded carrion tissue and severed fungal mycelium. Along with some sort of fragment that flickered with a foul light.
The Great Unclean One let out its most harrowing roar since the battle began.
The sound was no longer a benevolent whisper, but pure agony and fury.
Its massive body stumbled backward, its hooves plowing two deep trenches into the ground.
The blown-open crater in its chest exceeded two meters in diameter, reaching deep into its thoracic cavity. The writhing internal organs and beating heart inside were even visible.
Paul landed and looked up at the result of his strike.
This time, the Great Unclean One's wound didn't heal immediately.
The disruption field was breaking down its bodily tissues, while the erosion of the dark gold psychic energy and the five trait energies sizzled along the edges of the wound, constantly destroying any newly formed tissue.
The healing rate had been slowed by at least seventy percent.
Paul stood up, spinning the Watcher's Axe in his hand to flick off the clinging pus.
He looked at the Great Unclean One.
For the first time, a look of... wariness appeared in the Great Unclean One's murky yellow eyeball.
The Great Unclean One slowly stood up. It didn't attack immediately; instead, it looked down at Paul.
The rune of Nurgle slowly rotated within its murky eyeball.
It slowly opened its mouth.
Its voice echoed directly in Paul's ears. It was a profane sound blending the moans of tens of millions of diseases and the breeding of billions of microbes.
"Golden... bug... You... hurt... me... So... I will... give you... the Grandfather's... embrace..."
"Why the hell are you talking so much trash!" Paul's voice from beneath his golden faceplate carried a hint of nonchalance. "Right now, I just want to hack you to death quickly, you disgusting freak."
The Great Unclean One didn't respond further.
It simply raised its arms slowly, all the carrion tentacles on its abdomen lifting simultaneously as an even thicker green mist began to permeate around its body...
Then, its right hand violently slammed into its own abdomen.
Squish!
The hand pierced into the rotting flesh of its belly, reaching deep inside and churning.
Then, it pulled something out.
It was a clump... of living plague.
It was the size of a fist, the surface covered in constantly opening and closing fungal blooms, with billions of microbes visibly writhing and breeding inside. It emanated a putrid psychic energy that made the air across the entire battlefield turn viscous.
That was the most quintessential origin-plague brewing within the Great Unclean One's body.
"Guaaaargh... The Grandfather's... gift..."
Roaring, the Great Unclean One slapped the clump of plague onto the wound on its chest.
HUM!
The green, rotting psychic energy violently erupted!
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Comeon we slipped from Rank 14 to 15!
Don't stop giving Powerstones, even if we reach a goal keep giving I will post the bonus chapters as soon as I can.