The Origin Vanguard's crash brought an indescribable shift to the battlefield in Mossy Valley. The solar bombardment had failed to completely destroy the Hunting Lord's shrine, and the battle, which had been progressing smoothly, suddenly took a sharp turn for the worse.
Almost the instant the solar ship crashed, the Hunting Lord, who had nearly been driven to the brink, launched a desperate counterattack.
Vast amounts of foul Warp energy surged out of the half-melted shrine. Purple-black rifts opened all across the God's Forbidden Ground, whose terrain had been drastically altered. The Hunting Lord was actively using its power to break the boundary between the Warp and the material world, allowing one hunting wraith after another to enter the battlefield as immortal spirits.
It was opening its divine realm within the material world, and even intended to assimilate Mossy Valley into that realm.
The situation was beyond what its useless gnoll followers could handle. It had to take matters into its own hands!
As Lord Payn watched with furrowed brows, he could see through the open rifts into the Hunting Lord's ravaged divine realm. Within that realm, which was close to shattering, the blood-red gnoll giant stood atop a throne at the end of the Burning Road. Its body was battered, clearly bearing the injuries it had suffered in several attacks over a short period.
But now, the creature with its eyes tightly shut was slowly rising, its claws braced against the throne.
The connection between the Hunting Lord's true form and the throne was clearly visible as strands of viscous, blood-colored light were torn apart one by one. The process caused the Hunting Lord excruciating pain, and its roars echoed throughout the divine realm, even affecting the material world and making the Bloodscar Clan in Mossy Valley more frenzied