In the perpetually dim Nightmare Paradise, the sun was rising.
It carried an unimaginable pressure, along with a scorching wave of heat.
The ever-present mist melted away like winter snow in spring.
A man clad in golden armor and shrouded in light slowly approached from afar.
A Raven stood on his shoulder.
"Is this the nightmare space? Interesting. I wonder what the ketchup and fries taste like here."
The players were somewhat startled to see the Raven speak.
Yet when they looked away, they no longer remembered anything about the Raven.
"Who are you? There shouldn't be anyone like you in this paradise."
Nightmare looked at the Emperor. His usual madness had vanished, replaced by shock and unease.
The Emperor said nothing and merely raised the Longsword in his hand.
Golden flames surged along the blade, radiating rolling waves of heat.
The Longsword came down, and blazing fire swept forth.
The masked Nightmare instantly became a burning torch.
It let out a hysterical scream of pain amid the flames.
Before long, it turned to ashes in the inferno and vanished completely.
What the Raven saw differed slightly from what the players saw.
In his eyes, Nightmare had not turned to ashes.
Instead, it became countless strands of black-and-red binary code that scattered through the air.
"Even in a virtual world made of code, he was this powerful. As expected of the Omnissiah Big Guy."
Although the origin of the Adeptus Mechanicus was the Void Dragon sealed within the Eternal Night Labyrinth,
the Emperor clearly possessed authority over machinery and technology as well.
The eerie, terrifying town burned as the Emperor advanced.
The surrounding space visibly warped, and cracks appeared one after another.
Nightmare Paradise was like a crystal sphere struck by a heavy blow, with horrifying fissures spreading across it.
Intrusion, intrusion, warning, intrusion~!@#! Intrusion IG*P]0VRBT
Players in various instances and rest areas discovered that their panels were constantly flashing red warnings and garbled text.
"What happened?"
"Nightmare Paradise has been invaded? Is it collapsing?"
The players revealed shock and unease.
In their minds, Nightmare Paradise had been an exceedingly terrifying place.
The one controlling it from behind the scenes enslaved those dreadful nightmare creatures.
It treated the players as toys, tossing them into all kinds of horrifying instances and games.
It made them die again and again, only to revive them again and again.
The players could not imagine what kind of terrifying existence could create a world that overturned physical laws and ignored the laws of life and death.
And now, this place had been invaded by another force.
The SSS-rated City of Eldritch Tales was regarded as one of the most terrifying instances.
All manner of nightmare creatures wandered within it, along with countless absurd eldritch rules.
Players forced to enter it could die horribly with the slightest misstep.
And now, the city was collapsing.
Blazing fire descended from the heavens, burning everything to ashes.
Nightmare creatures scattered amid screams, while twisted rules were forcibly corrected.
The players watched with their own eyes as a golden sun thundered through the city.
Wherever it passed, golden flames surged up, and a vast sea of fire devoured everything.
The eldritch creatures the players considered invincible
did not even amount to ants before the golden sun.
Simply passing by was enough to reduce every one of those eldritch creatures to ashes.
Instances collapsed one after another.
Space was continuously stretched and twisted.
The cracks grew larger and larger, and all of Nightmare Paradise was on the verge of collapse.
"You do not belong here."
A twisted black shadow appeared before the Emperor, intending to stop him.
It had no fixed form. Scarlet eyes like glowing coals were embedded in its ink-black, distorted body.
The Emperor said nothing. His gaze was as cold and unyielding as iron.
Anger rose in the black shadow's heart. The other man's silence was the greatest contempt toward him.
It pounced at the Emperor, intending to drag him into an eternal abyss of fear.
"This is my world. I am a god, an omnipotent god. Whoever you are, you have no right to challenge me."
The surrounding scene changed rapidly.
Nightmarish phenomena emerged without end, transforming into a hell of nightmares.
It intended to use such horrifying scenes to shake the Emperor's mind and crush him.
The Emperor's expression remained unchanged, unaffected by those blasphemous and frenzied scenes.
He stared at it and spoke in an icy voice.
"There are no gods in this world. There were none in the past, there are none now, and there never will be any in the future."
With that, he swung his Longsword at it, and golden flames swept out.
The black shadow was swallowed by fire and let out a piercing scream of pain.
It wanted to flee, but there was nowhere to escape.
Its body rapidly crumbled beneath the burning golden flames.
The Raven saw the black-and-red code churning within the shadow turn into zeroes and ones before dispersing into the air.
The black shadow's collapse triggered a chain reaction, and Nightmare Paradise began to fall apart.
Many terrifying instances were swallowed by flames and ultimately reduced to ashes.
Painful screams echoed from the depths of the nightmare space.
A piece of evil code filled with the corrupting power of Chaos disintegrated.
It released an unimaginable Warp fluctuation, destroying Nightmare Paradise.
On the real Planet Senuus III, a terrifying burst of energy also erupted.
After the energy shockwave swept through, the mechanical forces that had still been resisting ceased all activity.
The lights in their eyes went out, and every defense system went offline.
The Imperial forces seized the opportunity and destroyed all those mechanical troops.
They rewrote the defense systems' code and seized control.
Nightmare Paradise, constructed from virtual code, shattered completely and became a realm of chaos.
As that dark code collapsed, the black shadow returned to its original form.
It was a frail, withered man wearing an ornate robe.
He lay amid unstable ruins constantly flickering with binary code.
His form was blurred, and he was barely alive, on the verge of death.
The Emperor walked over and looked at him with pity.
"What did I do?"
The man asked himself, his voice weak as a thread.
"I wanted to save them. Why did it turn out like this?"
Tears slid from the corners of the man's eyes, filled with regret.
The Emperor said, "This was not your fault. Chaos always twists people's beautiful wishes and turns them into terrifying hells."
The man looked at the Emperor, tears streaming down his face.
"Stranger, please... end all of this."
The Emperor nodded. "I will. Rest in peace."
He raised his sword, and when it fell, it pierced the man's body.
Golden flames spread out, engulfing the man's body.
The man revealed a relieved smile and turned to ashes amid the flames.
The Raven watched the scene and lightly shook his head.
There was a reason the Emperor regarded Chaos as an enemy with whom no compromise could ever be made.
It could always corrupt and twist things that should have been beautiful.
"May you reach a happy afterlife, where there is endless delicious ketchup and fries."
As Nightmare Paradise collapsed, the human consciousnesses imprisoned in the virtual world returned to their bodies.
Those who had remained in nutrient pods since birth awoke one after another.
They discovered in shock that Nightmare Paradise was a virtual world made of code.
The world they had lived in before entering Nightmare Paradise had also been fake.
Some people with fragile minds could not accept it and chose suicide.
The rest accepted reality and rebuilt their homeland with the Empire's help.
Terra Glorious was an enormous battleship more than twenty kilometers long, equivalent to a magnificent megacity.
The one responsible for commanding the warship was the captain of the Adeptus Custodes Shield Guard, Dacri.
He led a force of Adeptus Custodes across the stars to recover the Primarchs who had been scattered abroad.
The mission had been completed beautifully. They had successfully recovered Number One and Number Six.
They were now preparing to return and report their success.
They would rendezvous with the expeditionary fleet where the Emperor was located.
Inside the combat chamber,
two giants were fighting.
The terrifying power they unleashed left the Adeptus Custodes stunned.
The two giants were Leman Russ of Fenris and Lion El'Jonson of Caliban.
No one knew what was wrong with them.
The moment they met, they disliked each other on sight.
Lion thought Russ was too barbaric, drank himself senseless every day, and never bothered with his appearance.
Russ thought Lion was rigid, like an unawakened blockhead, and always put on the airs of a lofty knight.
The two could never get along. They would start fighting before exchanging three sentences.
"For the Allfather."
Russ let out a low roar and swung the battle-axe in his hand at Lion.
"For the honor of knights."
Lion held his Longsword and met the attack without expression.
Compared to Lion, Russ was considerably more powerfully built.
Thus, he could always use his advantage in weight and strength to swing his battle-axe with savage force.
Lion surpassed him in agility and skill.
He could always force Russ onto the defensive with nimble, tricky blocks and thrusts.
Russ brought his axe down. Lion raised his sword to block, leaving an opening.
Russ seized the chance and kicked Lion in the chest, sending him flying.
"Drop that superior attitude, you idiot knight. If you admit defeat now, I might consider hitting you a little lighter."
Lion rose with a dark expression and charged at Russ.
After finding an opening to knock aside the battle-axe, he drove an elbow into Russ's face, leaving him dazed.
"You overenergetic barbarian, always sticking out your tongue. Stop calling yourself the giant wolf of Fenris. You should be called the husky of Fenris instead."
"Lion of Caliban! That soft, powerless attack of yours is nothing like a lion's. You're more like a little kitten."
The two Primarchs traded insults as they fought.
Eventually, they threw aside their weapons, damaged by the battle, and fought with nothing but their fists.
They grappled tightly, wrestling each other to the ground.
Russ grabbed Lion by the head and smashed it fiercely into the floor.
The marble slabs shattered on impact.
Lion broke free of Russ's grip, seized his legs, and hurled him away.
Bang!!
A nearby statue was shattered by the flying Russ.
The combat arena became a ruined wasteland under their battle.
The fight continued for a long time, until both were covered in wounds and bruised beyond recognition.
Every muscle in their bodies ached painfully.
Even so, neither was willing to concede or back down.
Russ slipped up and was thrown to the ground by Lion, who then pinned him down and began beating him.
But after only a few punches, Russ found an opportunity to roll over and kicked Lion in the chest, knocking him down.
After getting back up, he swung his fist into the Lord of Caliban's face.
As they fought, Russ suddenly remembered why they had dueled in the first place—it was only because they had locked eyes when entering the arena.
Such an absurd reason had made them fight for over twenty hours.
So stupid.
Russ burst out laughing, unable to hold it in.
His wave-like laughter made his chest tremble.
"What are you laughing at? Damn barbarian, Fenrisian husky. We're dueling, not doing stand-up comedy."
Lion was a little embarrassed and angry.
On Caliban, a duel was a sacred matter.
And this barbarian was always like this.
"Sorry, I really couldn't help it. I suddenly realized how stupid this is."
Russ no longer suppressed his laughter.
His chest hurt from laughing, but he did not care. He simply stood there, laughing heartily.
"You—"
Lion's expression darkened further with anger.
He kicked the laughing man to the ground, got to his feet, turned, and walked away.
"Barbarians will always be barbarians. You can't even respect a duel. Don't provoke me again. Next time, I won't hold back."
P.S.
Loyalty every day, praise the Emperor.
The battle between cat and dog.
Thanks to reader 20210411155751355 for the donation.
Hehe, it's time for the big vote for Warmaster.
If you support Lion, type 1.
If you support Horus, type 16.
Before you continue