Chapter 911 - 910

The stars burned.

Across this vast theater of war, tens of thousands of armies intertwined. Battles raged simultaneously upon the surfaces and in the orbital spaces of tens of thousands of planets.

Endless reinforcements continued to arrive. In many regions, the combatants had been consumed by bloodlust, and the fighting had reached its most intense stage.

Necron tomb fleets were far from the only forces involved. Humanity, the Aeldari, the Orks, the Tyranids, and numerous other species had joined the war.

They fought around the factions of the Silent King and the Stormlord, though many also attacked one another, transforming the entire region into a chaotic free-for-all.

Without question, however, the Necrons suffered the greatest number of attacks and the heaviest losses.

After all, they were the dominant power in this theater.

This situation had arisen because Eden had done more than summon the armies under his direct command. Through careful maneuvering, he had drawn the forces of numerous xenos and heretical species into the war as well.

The Steeltoof Ork Empire, for example, had begun provoking rivals throughout the galaxy and named this war zone as the location for their next great brawl.

Da Big Steeltoof informed the other Ork empires that an exceptionally Waaagh-worthy war was being fought there.

Only the strongest and fiercest Orks could survive it and become the most Waaagh Orks of all.

“WAAAGH!”

Wild, excited roars filled the sea of stars.

A million rusted warships covered in rivets and crude graffiti poured from the void without the slightest trace of organization, rapidly filling the surrounding space.

The ships possessed no elegant prows or orderly armor plating. Their hulls were crooked, their gun barrels crudely constructed, and some even carried the half-eaten remains of enemy vessels bolted to their sides.

Yet the ships were so vicious in appearance that the sight of them was almost suffocating.

Their engines thundered and belched thick smoke, producing an appalling quantity of cosmic pollution.

The Ork fleets charged in every direction, smashing straight into the Necron defensive lines.

“Humies! Tinboyz! Gork and Mork are da strongest! Boss Eden’s got nothin’!”

Around a dozen Ork empires arrived in high spirits. Their immense fleets poured into the war zone in a green tide and began smashing everything they saw.

They quickly forgot that they had come to challenge the Steeltoof Empire and instead enjoyed themselves fighting the Necrons and every other enemy they encountered.

Da Big Steeltoof had been right.

This place was extremely Waaagh.

Before long, another dangerous force arrived.

Patches of twisted darkness spread among the stars.

They were neither clouds of cosmic dust nor asteroid fields, but writhing living organisms that devoured everything in their path with unstoppable momentum.

Eden’s Hive Fleet Leviathan had arrived.

Hive Fleet Kraken and several other Tyranid hive fleets followed in its wake.

Countless limbs, tendrils, fangs, and pulsing sac-like organs writhed in the darkness, gathering and swelling into impossible biological masses.

They were living catastrophes.

Fortress-sized hive ships unfurled their bodies in the void, their biomass carapaces reflecting the cold light of the stars.

Hundreds of thousands of spore vessels clustered around them like egg sacs. They were packed so densely and extended so far that no one could see their end.

Tentacle-like splinter fleets stretched in every direction like the limbs of deep-sea leviathans.

With the slightest sweep, they coiled around tomb ships and orbital platforms, crushing and devouring them while greedily draining the energy within.

The hive ships of Kraken and the other fleets had detected an exceptionally powerful biomass signal.

Driven by biological instinct, they had followed it into the war zone and plunged directly into the Necron positions.

The fighting erupted around them with even greater intensity.

When the blackstone pylons in several regions were destroyed, new spatial disturbances appeared.

The readings displayed by human auspex arrays and Necron sensor systems twisted and fractured. Malevolent energies seemed to leak directly from the screens.

Living wounds tore through reality.

Their colors were an unclean mixture of purple and brown that no rational mind could properly describe. Waves of energy churned around their edges like rotting flesh.

The madness and stench of the Warp poured through the ruptures, contaminating the cold vacuum of space.

Armies of abominations stepped through the void.

They were the legions of the Chaos Gods.

Enormous spikes of bone pierced the darkness. Rotten banners fluttered unnaturally in the airless void.

Metal and flesh had grown together into grotesque unions. Wails and roars became almost tangible.

The great war engines of Chaos resembled malformed monsters shaped from pain, death, and blasphemy.

Eden had not merely summoned the Chaos forces under his own control.

He had created an opportunity for the Chaos Gods themselves to send their armies into the material galaxy.

They wanted to destroy the Silent King’s rule even more urgently than humanity did.

No matter how effectively humanity defended itself, humans remained fundamentally connected to the Warp. The Chaos Gods could always claim at least some portion of the feast.

The Necrons were different.

They possessed almost no connection to the Warp.

Worse still, Szarekh intended to use his blackstone network to sever the galaxy from the Warp entirely, placing it forever beyond the gods’ reach.

He was effectively overturning the Chaos Gods’ dining table.

How could they possibly tolerate that?

In short, the Chaos Gods cared even more about this war than the Savior did. They were terrified that humanity might lose.

If humanity were defeated, the Silent King would conquer the galaxy, use his blackstone network to shut out the Warp, and suppress the souls of all living beings.

Humanity and countless other species would eventually perish.

The Chaos Gods and the Warp itself would slowly wither away.

Previously, the blackstone network had prevented the gods from breaching the boundary between the Warp and reality.

They had been able to do nothing but rage impotently.

Now the Savior had not only destroyed numerous blackstone pylons but also used sorcerous formations to create paths into reality for them.

He had personally shown the Chaos Gods the way.

Naturally, they wasted no time cobbling together a Chaos army from whatever forces they could find and sent it to assist the human Imperium.

The Chaos Gods even offered the Savior their warmest greetings and urged him to win the war at any cost.

To those ravenous deities, survival took priority over everything else.

They were willing to pay any price to preserve themselves.

“Metal shells! Ka’Bandha will split you apart!”

“Tell your Silent King that only after he defeats the Exalted Bloodthirster will he be worthy of challenging the Savior!”

The cloak of chains behind Ka’Bandha drifted through the void, bearing countless skulls.

He roared his challenge, though his voice lacked some of its former certainty.

He did not even mention the Savior being his lifelong rival.

Ka’Bandha swung his immense axe and shattered a tomb ship, then charged aboard a gigantic command vessel and began slaughtering everything in sight.

The Exalted Bloodthirster was as ferocious as ever.

Unfortunately, his trophy rack had become rather heavy and slightly reduced his speed.

“Ah, my good brother is as mighty as ever. What a pity that our stations are no longer the same.”

After Hive Fleet Leviathan arrived, Eden used the swarm’s senses to observe the entire battlefield.

The Tyranids’ biological signal network was even more convenient and comprehensive than the Necrons’ pulse communications.

Eden watched Ka’Bandha rampage through the tomb ship and felt a moment of melancholy.

He and his brother no longer stood on the same level. A tragic barrier of status now separated them.

Nevertheless, the sight of his good brother fighting so fiercely on his behalf still warmed Eden’s heart.

He almost missed the old days when they had fought side by side.

As the human Imperium continued its advance, the armies of even more species arrived. The theater was divided into countless isolated war zones.

Humanity’s pulse-jamming celestial installations disrupted the communications of the Silent King and other high-ranking Necrons, forcing the Necron forces in each region to fight independently.

The war had become so chaotic that even the Silent King could no longer make sense of it.

That significantly weakened the Necrons’ natural strategic advantages.

The tomb fleets under Szarekh’s command were being destroyed at an accelerating rate.

Life-signals from countless Tyranid organisms converged upon the Leviathan hive ships. After cerebral bioforms analyzed the data, Eden gained a general understanding of the battlefield.

There could be no doubt.

He had secured the advantage.

The Infinite Empire’s battle lines were retreating.

“Silent King, what good is understanding command? Wars are won through macro and logistics…”

Eden sighed.

The supposed godslayer and supreme ruler had simply been far too confident.

Szarekh had overreached so badly that he had practically torn his groin.

The Silent King had not unified the Necrons or eliminated the Stormlord, yet he had rushed to expand the blackstone network. He believed he could personally suppress the chaos within his empire and every species in the galaxy.

He had even delivered an enormous slap to the Chaos Gods and overturned their dining table.

In other words, Szarekh had personally antagonized nearly every significant power in both the galaxy and the Warp.

Being surrounded and attacked by all of them was the inevitable result.

In truth, aside from species such as the Orks and Tyranids that were almost impossible to negotiate with, most intelligent civilizations were delighted to participate in the attack.

They had remained silent before because the Silent King was too powerful. None dared reveal themselves and risk annihilation.

But once the human Imperium charged forward and created an opportunity, the others rushed in without any need for coordination.

It was an unspoken understanding shared by the galaxy’s living species.

None wished to see the Blackstone Veil continue expanding until their civilizations were destroyed.

In short, the Silent King had almost completely ruined his own plan and was now being dogpiled by everyone.

Had Eden been in Szarekh’s position, he would never have acted so aggressively.

He would have advanced slowly and methodically.

Sometimes personality truly determined destiny.

That had been evident in the Silent King’s disastrous decisions throughout history.

Szarekh had always been extraordinarily arrogant. After becoming the Silent King, he had wanted to end the Necrontyr’s internal divisions as quickly as possible.

To redirect those internal tensions, he had led the Necrontyr in a war against the Old Ones, the dominant species of that age.

The result was a catastrophic defeat.

The entire Necrontyr race had been beaten bloody.

Later, in his desperation for survival, Szarekh allied with the C’tan. He believed he could manipulate the gods of the material universe and use them to win the war.

In reality, the C’tan enslaved the Necrontyr and deceived them completely, stripping away even their souls.

The Necrontyr had suffered unimaginable misfortune under such a ruler.

At every critical moment, Szarekh had chosen the worst possible option.

This time was no different.

Yet he still regarded himself as the Necrontyr’s great savior. He believed the species would have perished without him, never realizing that he was the source of its greatest catastrophes.

“Wait, that’s a good thing!”

Eden felt deeply grateful that the Necrontyr had produced such a brilliant “genius.”

Otherwise, how could humanity ever have found the opportunity to prosper?

Necron technology was already terrifying. If they also possessed a wise ruler capable of uniting every dynasty, how could humanity possibly fight them?

Of course, Imperial history proved that humanity had produced plenty of similar “geniuses.”

Fortunately, human lives were short.

When humans were killed, they died.

Unlike the Silent King, humanity’s brilliant fools could not rule forever. Before long, they would die of old age, be thrown from power, or fall to an assassin.

Humanity also reproduced quickly and possessed enormous numbers, allowing the species to absorb extraordinary losses without collapsing.

“Now we’ll see how the Silent King responds.”

Eden studied the incomprehensibly chaotic strategic map.

The armies of the Silent King and Stormlord were both trapped within the war zone. Their lines were continuously retreating toward the Xendu System, where Szarekh himself was located.

In theory, this was the perfect opportunity for Eden to launch the final offensive, striking from two directions with the human armies and the forces of the Lord of Hope.

Eden nevertheless chose to play it safe and wait a little longer.

He still did not know what the Silent King’s final trump card might be.

He could not recklessly begin the decisive battle only for Szarekh to wipe out all his forces in a single strike.

The Silent King might be a brilliant fool, but the power at his command remained terrifying.

Otherwise, he could never have suppressed so many species in both the galaxy and the Warp at once.

That was the true horror of the Infinite Empire.

Even while severely divided, the Necrons could resist the combined attacks of countless species.

Had Eden not incited a rebellion within the empire and drawn away a large number of Necron dynasties, humanity might not have won the war at all.

While he waited, Eden traveled to the Cryptek experimental facility aboard his tomb flagship.

The moment he entered, he saw an immense and extraordinarily luxurious Catacomb Command Barge.

Ghostly green light flowed across the vessel. Numerous ancient relics and ornaments decorated its hull, while thirteen blackstone obelisks floated around it.

“Finally, I’m moving up in the world. I won’t have to hide my equipment whenever I go out anymore…”

Eden was delighted.

According to Necrontyr tradition, a Catacomb Command Barge was the public face of a Phaeron or Overlord and a symbol of status and authority.

When two armies confronted one another, their rulers would bring out their command barges and parade them before their forces to raise morale.

If Eden intended to call for the final battle, he needed to display an appropriately imposing presence.

Only then could he attract more high-ranking Necrons to his side.

He reached out and ran his hand across the command barge’s hull. Ripples spread through the living metal beneath his fingers.

He could feel the divine powers contained within it.

They were remnants of the C’tan’s authority over reality.

Not long ago, after conquering the Szarekhan crownworld, Eden had plundered the Silent King’s ancestral treasury.

As expected, it had contained an astonishing quantity of treasure.

Alongside rare ancient relics, weapons, and materials, he had discovered several C’tan Shards.

There was a shard of Aza’gorod the Nightbringer, which possessed authority over slaughter and death.

There was a shard of Mephet’ran the Deceiver, master of lies and conspiracy.

There was also a shard of the Depleter, which possessed the power to devour energy.

In truth, far more C’tan had existed than most people imagined.

Like the Warp’s pantheon, however, only a handful had been truly powerful. Most of the others had been lesser gods.

Regardless, the C’tan’s ability to exercise their powers without restriction in the material galaxy would provide Eden with enormous assistance.

Under the suppression of the Blackstone Nexus Veil, he could draw very little power from the Warp during a battle against the Silent King.

These C’tan powers would help narrow the gap between his living-metal clone body and Szarekh.

At the very least, they would prevent the Silent King from killing him the moment they met.

If that happened, every plan Eden had prepared for the later stages of the war would collapse.

“I poured almost half my fortune into this Catacomb Command Barge. I hope it proves worth the cost…”

The core of this magnificent machine was a shard of Mag’ladroth the Void Dragon, which Eden had personally excavated from beneath the surface of Mars.

It also incorporated shards of the Burning One, the Nightbringer, the Depleter, and several other C’tan.

Eden had used nearly every C’tan Shard he could find, along with an enormous quantity of exceptionally rare materials.

Many of those materials had come from the vaults beneath the Savior’s Sanctum.

The command barge combined Necron technology with replicated Imperial technology acquired by the Crypteks of the Kalozasa Dynasty.

It was the most advanced technological creation Eden was currently capable of producing.

For now, every C’tan Shard within the vessel remained sealed.

Only when construction was fully complete and their powers were released would the luxurious Catacomb Command Barge reveal its true strength.

Suddenly, Eden felt an intense palpitation in his chest.

He spun around and stared into a distant region of the void.

It was the direction of the Xendu System.

The Silent King was there.

Space throughout the surrounding region had begun to convulse with extraordinary violence.

“So it’s finally beginning?”

Eden murmured, concern flickering in his eyes.

The Silent King’s long-prepared counterattack had begun.

The decisive battle was coming.

(End of Chapter)

“Zaelum”]