NABC Chapter 795 - 795: 794
Chapter 795 - 795: 794
Eden frowned, paying close attention to the movements of Horus and the other fallen Primarchs to ensure they would not ruin his plan to assault New Dragonlin.Those powerful beings could cause enormous trouble for the Imperial armies in galactic reality. Even Eden found them deeply troublesome.
That was especially true of Horus, the Dark Emperor. The Chaos Gods had practically bled Themselves dry to bless him, raising his strength to a level close to that of a god of reality.
Aside from Eden himself, there was probably no Primarch capable of stopping him.
Even more troublesome was the fact that Horus and the other fallen Primarchs could use the dark rifts to travel at high speed, allowing them to reach almost any region of the Sol System.
The Imperial armies would find it extremely difficult to intercept them.
"Your Majesty, we have detected the location of Horus and the other traitors. They are still some distance from New Dragonlin, approximately one hundred and thirty light-minutes away.
"At the same time, we have transmitted the enemy coordinates to the nearest Imperial allied forces. Interception operations are now underway."
The Redemption Legion lieutenant lowered his head slightly in salute and gave his report.
"They're moving pretty fast. Looks like they're getting desperate."
Eden browsed through the intelligence that had been transmitted over, and his mood eased considerably.
Now the roles of attack and defense had reversed. He was preparing to cut off the Chaos coalition's rear, so of course Horus and the others were anxious.
More importantly, those bastards were still within an interceptable region. Eden could buy himself more time to attack New Dragonlin.
Dong.
Suddenly, a burst of dazzling light erupted, drawing Eden's attention.
It was a flaming meteor fragment. More precisely, it was a fragment of a star.
Dragging a tail of flame behind it, the fragment smashed toward the Chaos veil around New Dragonlin's near orbit, setting off brilliant ripples mixed with plasma fire and Chaos sorcery.
The attack fired by the Necron legacy, the Æonic Orb, was terrifying enough to destroy any planetary target.
The attack contained the might of a star, and it made the Chaos veil around New Dragonlin shake violently.
Under normal circumstances, the Imperium would need to gather vast fleets and overwhelming firepower, then spend several days or even dozens of days, before it could break through the Chaos veil protecting New Dragonlin.
That was also why this Chaos fortress world had acted so brazenly, even sending all its escort fleets and Chaos void creatures to attack Holy Terra without leaving any air-defense forces behind.
They knew that with the Imperium's technology and armed strength, it could not harm this planet in the short term.
Even Horus had not been too worried, despite the Savior's suspected return and approach toward the planet.
However, once Eden brought out this Necron superweapon and fired a hard shot with it, the Chaos beings immediately panicked.
They realized that at the current attack intensity, the Savior, the Emperor of the Imperium, would soon be able to pierce through the Chaos veil and attack the body of the planet itself.
He now had the ability to threaten the Chaos coalition's rear, putting them at risk of losing their final safeguard.
If the Savior occupied New Dragonlin and coordinated with the Imperial allied forces to attack, then their entire army might be annihilated, and the Chaos Gods would lose everything down to Their last coin.
"Sigh. Some people are probably going to be completely liquidated," Eden said, quite expectantly.
He knew very well how much manpower, material, and resources were needed to create a planetary fortress of this scale.
Moreover, New Dragonlin also contained a relic artifact and another smaller half of Vashtorr's authority.
It was luxury upon luxury.
Even if Eden wanted to build something of this level, he would have to smash the pots and sell the iron. Just thinking about it made his kidneys feel a little hollow.
To tell the truth, Eden himself had previously wanted to make one of these big things. He had been thinking about it for quite a while.
But the relevant proposal had been talked down by the administrative department and the Forge Department. Even those machine-oil fanatics who loved building wonders thought making something this huge was a little too aggressive.
After all, forging such an enormous planetary mobile fortress would require the resources of at least a dozen wealthy sectors. Meanwhile, the Imperium was still advancing its grand infrastructure projects, while also running so many other gold-devouring programs at the same time.
How were they supposed to keep living?
If Eden really had that many idle resources, it would be better to use them to build warships or invest in infrastructure.
That would be more worthwhile.
A planetary fortress of this size was ferocious, unstoppable, and could serve as a super-mobile base for the army, far stronger than an Aeldari craftworld many times over.
But if it were seized by the enemy or blown up, the losses would be enough to make someone cough blood.
"The lesson of the Galactic Empire's Death Star really does make people cautious."
Eden recalled the plot of a certain classic work from his homeworld.
A Death Star the size of a moon had been taken out by a small assault craft. That was an enormous loss.
Of course, a planetary fortress was far larger than the Death Star, and destroying it would not be so easy.
But once it fell, destroying it would merely be a matter of several waves of Cyclonic Torpedoes and planet-killer weapons.
So constructing a planetary fortress was not especially cost-effective unless the Imperium's resources were so abundant that it could squander them at will.
Eden looked toward New Dragonlin, surrounded layer upon layer by Imperial fleet groups, and felt rather emotional.
In this galaxy and Immaterium, aside from himself and the Silent King, perhaps only the Chaos Gods had both the ability and the determination to build such a thing.
That was an investment made without reservation.
Of course, Eden could understand why the Chaos Gods had been willing to make such a brutal investment. To deal with the old man Emperor, They were willing to do anything.
Unfortunately, this planetary fortress would soon no longer belong to Them.
"How nice."
Eden's eyes were full of anticipation. Forging a fortress of this level himself would be painful, but picking up a ready-made one for free was completely different.
It was simply delightful.
Moreover, it also contained other rare resources, artifacts, and a fully organized team of black machine-oil technicians.
Even the Chaos Gods would have to expend great effort to piece together such a complete planetary fortress package.
Since the Chaos Gods had thrown New Dragonlin into his territory, Eden could only tearfully pick it up.
Then he would modify it into a super war fortress suitable for his own use and make a massive profit.
"This will be one of the Imperium's key construction projects for the next stage. I can't let the Chaos beings destroy it."
Eden lowered his head and looked at the system map. He had already started treating New Dragonlin as his own asset.
He did not want Horus and the other fallen Primarchs to return and ruin his looting plan, or destroy it if they reached the point of no return.
Soon, Eden found the position of Horus and the others. They happened to be inside a dark rift near the Edork Mega-Fort.
He turned his head and looked over.
In the void, the Edork Mega-Fort's sky-piercing drill was still lodged in the Rotting Void Whale in a sight that was painful to look at, pointed directly toward the fallen statue of Nurgle.
From the perspective of the followers of excess, this was practically space art. Slaanesh would be ecstatic.
The Edork icon had violently slammed into the Rotting Void Whale, while Grandfather Nurgle's statue lay prostrate with its back to the giant drill, as if something unspeakably blasphemous was about to happen at any moment.
Blasphemy. Utter blasphemy.
Even more absurd was that all kinds of excessive messages were spreading. Eden could already imagine what kind of ridiculous nonsense those followers of excess would come up with.
"Hiss. So the gutter literature really didn't spare me after all?!"
Eden was starting to understand how the old man Emperor felt when attacked by obscene gutter rumors.
Truly, fortune turned like a wheel.
No matter how he looked at it, the image of Edork getting entangled with Grandfather Nurgle was a bit too much. Even swapping in Khorne, the Blood God, would be slightly better.
Of course, in Eden's case, this counted as active gutter literature. The Emperor's case was even more tragic. His counted as passive gutter literature.
Legend had it that in order to obtain the genetic authority of the Primarchs, the old man Emperor had no choice but to undergo unspeakable treatment at the hands of the Chaos Gods.
Then, in order to obtain the Golden Throne, the Webway, and so on, the old man Emperor had supposedly spent an unspeakable period of time with the Drukhari in Commorragh.
In any case, the Emperor had left gutter literature all across the galaxy. All one could say was that the followers of excess were blasphemous and twisted enough. They would ship anything and invent any wild rumor.
They truly had no fear of death.
"Is everyone this twisted? It makes me look way too conservative."
Eden was rather emotional.
He thought of the internet back on his homeworld, those obscene fanworks about the Emperor, and that heaven-defying gutter literature about Dong Zhuo and Lü Bu as a pair of tragic lovers. He could not help drawing in a sharp breath.
Throw those netizens into the domain of excess, and not a single one of them would be wronged. At minimum, each of them would be a talented servant of excess.
Of course, Eden also knew why this situation had appeared. The Prince of Excess had lost too much faith born from pleasure and was now desperately using every possible method to make up the deficit and recover energy.
The Savior himself was one of the best targets. Of course the other side would seize him and spread excessive messages as hard as possible.
Right now, the one being slandered was only the Ork Edork. Before long, it would probably be his true body, the Savior and Emperor of the Imperium.
While Eden was thinking about how to ban those rumor-mongering messages of excess, thereby preserving his mighty, sacred, pure, and flawless image, the plague beings who had received the relevant information completely broke down.
Grandfather Nurgle's image had suffered serious damage, and His divine majesty weakened further.
They suspected Grandfather Nurgle had been set up by the Savior and the Prince of Excess.
Waaagh!
On the Edork Mega-Fort, the big Orks had long since launched boarding attacks onto the Rotting Void Whale.
They used blackstone hammers and alloy weapons to smash apart the heads of Chaos daemons.
Even the Death Guard warriors found it difficult to withstand their encirclement and assault.
"Damn it, filthy Orks!"
The Death Guard captain was surrounded by Orks, and then the Ork warboss smashed him hard across the head, leaving him dizzy and dropping to one knee.
These Ironteeth Orks seemed stronger than any Orks recorded by the Imperium, and far more cunning as well.
They did not even bother with duels. They simply surrounded a target and beat it down.
In truth, the Ironteeth Ork Empire had inherited Edork's battle philosophy.
They often drowned enemies beneath saturated numbers, while also using all kinds of cunning and vicious methods to strike the enemy's morale and secure victory.
Through this, the Ironteeth Ork Empire had defeated many other Ork branches and rapidly expanded into a vast xenos empire.
They had also captured large numbers of other Orks, sending them as forced labor into the Dawnlight City Webway to support the maintenance and construction of the relevant Webway routes.
"Stinkin' tin can tryin' ta sneak me?"
The Ork warboss suddenly knocked away the Death Guard captain's poisoned dagger.
A cunning light flashed in his eyes, and he looked faintly disdainful.
This stinking tin can's sneak attack was far too crude. How could it possibly harm him, a follower of Edork?
He was the cunnin'est one!
The Ork warboss raised a hand and issued a certain order.
The next instant, a crimson squig strapped with a special bomb charged out from the mass of Ork Boyz, howling as it rushed at the Death Guard captain.
The other side was caught entirely off guard.
After the crimson squig slammed into the Death Guard captain, it rapidly swelled, then erupted in a green-hot explosion.
It was a squig bomb made by a Mekboy, powerful enough to grievously injure certain high-ranking beings when used in an ambush.
The Death Guard captain cried out miserably and collapsed. His armor was cracked in several places.
He struggled to climb back up, only to discover that the Ork warboss's spiked club was attacking from a vicious angle.
Under the Death Guard captain's furious gaze, the spiked club struck him heavily in the rear, and his wretched scream made the other plague beings feel a mournful sense of shared doom.
What humiliation. What blasphemy.
Yet no matter how furious and grief-stricken they were, there was nothing they could do. They had no way to stop the Ork assault.
"Edork... go ta da passage an' stop da big stinkin' tin can?"
After beating down the Death Guard captain, the Ork warboss still wanted to continue looting, but he received new orders.
They were to enter the dark rift and hold back Horus and the other fallen Primarchs, keeping them away from New Dragonlin as much as possible.
"Back!"
The Ork warboss let out a howl and ordered the big Orks to return to the Edork Mega-Fort. They had a new target now.
Soon, the Orks returned inside the fortress. After that, the sky-piercing giant drill suddenly launched, tearing apart and destroying both the Rotting Void Whale and Nurgle's statue.
They turned into rancid wreckage drifting through space.
"Edork... krumped it!"
The Ork warboss looked at the scene in the void, as if he had captured some kind of message from excess.
He raised his spiked club toward the sky and roared. The other Orks cheered along with him, and their morale surged.
They had been influenced by the image formed from excessive sorcery and gained a new understanding of Edork's might.
The grots wearing robes, who looked rather refined, took out crude writing tools and began writing and drawing on beast hide, recording something.
They were priests of the Ironteeth Empire, responsible for recording the legendary miracles of great, mighty, and cunning Edork.
In the crude drawing, the muscular Edork was fighting the Chaos Gods. After defeating Them, he inflicted an unspeakable humiliation upon Them.
The scene involving the beautiful Prince of Excess in particular was so intense that it made one involuntarily draw in a sharp breath.
This further increased Edork's authority of virility. He was an unmatched Ork god. Not even Gork and Mork could do such a thing.
After that, the Edork Mega-Fort abruptly turned around and rushed toward a nearby dark rift, moving with impossible smoothness.
It was as if inertia did not exist, and their engines needed no acceleration.
The Orks' power of "I reckon" was enough to make any Imperial physicist's coffin lid rattle loose. Even Chaos was astonished by it.
At the same time, inside the Sol System, where artillery fire interwove across space, a Rotting Void Whale had rolled belly-up. It had stopped breathing entirely and become a corpse in the void.
Even more terrifyingly, countless writhing black shadows crawled across it. Huge, octopus-like bioforms were using their tentacles to tear it apart.
They were the eighth Tyranid splinter tendril under the Savior's hive will, Bladewing.
Eden affectionately referred to the swarm leader of that splinter tendril as Old Eight.
The Old Eight Tyranid splinter tendril cultivated personally by Eden had a unique palate. It was practically the bane of corrupted sorcery.
Now they had grown and expanded until they were no weaker than any hive fleet. No matter how much corrupted matter there was, they could happily devour it all.
Plague-corrupted matter in particular was a delicacy in their eyes.
This was one of the reasons Eden had not only developed human armies, but also spent effort controlling and cultivating more xenos forces.
Such diversified armies could adapt to more war environments. They could also serve as cannon-fodder troops without damaging the main species, thereby preserving longer-lasting war potential.
For example, the former T'au Empire had done this, possessing many cannon-fodder races and using an extremely small territory to withstand the Imperial army's attacks.
Simply put, these xenos armies were auxiliaries of the new Imperium. They were often deployed as vanguard forces into the most dangerous battlefields.
"Grandfather, these damned bugs!"
On the back of the Rotting Void Whale, a Great Unclean One struggled amid the swarm, deep fear in his eyes.
In the past, enemies had always feared his rancid pus and vomiting attacks, wishing they could stay as far from him as possible.
But now, these Tyranid bugs were not only unafraid, they kept pouncing forward, licking his vomited attacks clean.
That caused all his attack methods to fail. How terrifying was that for a daemon?
Not only that, they were greedily coveting the flesh of a Great Unclean One. How disgusting was that?
That was right. Even the Great Unclean One found the bugs under Old Eight somewhat disgusting and repulsive.
To say nothing of the other Chaos daemons.
The Tyranids' vast numbers and greedy nature were troublesome even for the supreme Bloodthirster Ka'Bandha, who wished he could stay far away from these voracious creatures.
"No!"
Soon, that Great Unclean One, that staggering mountain of rotten flesh, was tackled and swallowed by the swarm.
The flesh on his body was eaten clean, leaving only a skeleton behind.
Under normal circumstances, the swarm would not even spare the bones. But right now, there was too much rotten biomass. To collect faster, they often devoured only the flesh that contained the most biomass.
Before long, the entire Rotting Void Whale, along with the Chaos daemons inside it, was devoured completely.
After the swarm brought back the biomass, the hive ship endured Chaos cannon fire and slowly glided through space.
It followed behind the Ork Edork Mega-Fort, heading toward the dark rift.
According to the hive will's command, the swarm needed to join the other lifeforms in blocking Horus and the other fallen Primarchs.
They had to hold the targets back for at least one planetary rotation cycle!
(End of Chapter)
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