Scholar and Warrior

On the other side.

The boarding Slayers had already fought their way to the engine room, eliminating every crew member inside. The Cunning Hounds' warship would be completely crippled. But the Slayers did not destroy the engines—they intended to keep this vessel.

Without a ship, without crew, in the Red Corsairs you were nothing but cannon fodder thrown into battle when the time came, because there was no other choice but to stay.

To secure control of the ship, more Slayers launched themselves aboard via Boarding Torpedoes. The Hound Clan's mortal servant forces were utterly insignificant; they surrendered before the entire Slayer warband of around a hundred warriors had even finished boarding.

Now, the Slayers gathered together, advancing toward the Navigator's position, intent on seizing the Navigator and keeping him for their own use.

"Blow the hatch!" One Slayer barked orders at his comrades.

"That Fierce Angel isn't here—what gives you the right to command us?" "But... I do want to do it! Damn it!" "We feel the same!"

The Slayers reached a consensus. A hundred warriors exchanged glances and nods. Eventually, two of them stepped forward, carrying explosives toward the hatch.

Just as the bombs were about to be pressed against it, the hatch slid open.

A figure stepped out—clearly a Space Marine, but wearing no armor. Strangely, he held a book in his hands, his eyes fixed straight on the pages, not sparing the Slayers even a glance. He said lightly, "No blowing the hatch. I have precious books in here."

"State your name!" one Slayer roared. "We don't kill nameless men!" "Ahriman."

He turned a page.

"But you warriors had best call me Scholar."

"Also..." Ahriman still kept his eyes on the page.

"I kill nameless men."

The moment the words fell, frost crept across the corridor walls. Some kind of psychic sorcery had been cast, leaving no trace behind. In a single breath, every Slayer's metal turned to dust.

Only then did Ahriman lift his head and exhale gently. A gale howled through the corridor, sweeping the dust of the dead far away.

Ahriman closed his book, turned, and stepped back into the chamber.

The floor was etched with symbols, lines, and strewn with various implements. If Lu Jin had been present, he would have recognized that Ahriman was preparing a ritual.

Arcane, incomprehensible words flowed from Ahriman's mouth. The chamber flickered with blue light. The floor beneath the ritual array rippled like waves, then bulged like a birthing sac, as if something was about to emerge from within.

The blue light spread throughout the chamber. Spread throughout the entire ship.

The puppets that the Cunning Hounds had shaped from other warbands and the four Fierce Angels screamed in the blue light, gradually crumbling to ash. Their souls were kneaded together in the Warp—this was the very material of the ritual.

This was the Cunning Hounds' true purpose. They had never intended to forge puppet warriors. They were merely completing a part of a grand ritual for Ahriman.

In the blue light, Ahriman's body dissolved into dust, then coalesced into a suit of armor. A horned helm was the most striking feature of that armor.

And perhaps this armor was Ahriman's true self.

When he gazed through the viewport at a planet beyond, the ritual shifted to that next location.

Blue light flashed.

Lu Jin and the Fierce Angels suddenly fell from the sky, crashing onto the ground. They stood up and looked around. Everywhere they saw was blue crystal.

The entire surface of the planet had turned into blue crystal.

Recalling what had just happened... they only remembered their consciousness wavering for a moment, and then—they had fallen from the warship onto the ground.

"It's him!" Ninos pointed ahead.

Lu Jin looked, but his field of vision held nothing.

Yet the next second, a blue rift extended and unfolded in midair, and a Space Marine floated out from within it.

"Ahriman?!"

Lu Jin's heart shouted.

Just from that highly distinctive armor, he could tell who this was.

Azak Ahriman.

A Chaos Space Marine, Tzeentch's chosen, also a pawn, and a rebel.

Ahriman's psionic power was extremely formidable.

Ninos and the others had been disarmed by him in a single move, captured without any chance to resist.

Ahriman floated in the sky, looking down at the ground. Seeing that Ninos had yet to be transformed, he immediately judged the Cunning Hounds Clan's leader a waste.

He raised his hand.

Once again, Ninos had no power to resist, slowly drawn into the sky by psionics.

The Fierce Angels raised their bolters and fired at Ahriman.

Lu Jin mustered all his strength and leaped up, hurling both weapons as he rose.

The bolter rounds, battle axe, and warhammer halted in midair, turning into flying sand.

Even the bolters in the Fierce Angels' hands crumbled into dust along with them.

"To know the highest good is wisdom; to know the highest evil is folly."

Ahriman looked down at the helpless crowd on the ground.

"I grant you the right to know."

"First, this is a ritual. Second, you are the ritual materials. Your Chapter Master, Ninos, is the key component."

"Finally, watch."

In Ahriman's view, his brief explanation was already the last mercy he offered these doomed souls.

As he said, to know is the highest good. It was the supreme virtue to revere knowledge, and also a kindness to let them understand before death.

Lu Jin picked up a crystal and hurled it at the sky.

The Fierce Angels followed suit, grabbing crystals and shouting curses at Ahriman.

But this was still the struggle of a cornered beast; the crystals thrown into the air turned to dust just the same.

Meanwhile, Ninos's eyes rolled white, and blue was gradually replacing his iconic white psionic glow.

The planet's surface trembled, mountains shifted sideways.

A bone-piercing chill permeated the entire world.

Outside in low orbit, Huron ordered the fleet to approach the planet and conduct orbital bombardment, quickly snuffing out this ritual.

The Black Heart King thought the ritual was aimed at him, since Chaos had been tempting him all along—it wasn't impossible that they now sought to forcibly drag him into the fold.

But the orbital bombardment was reflected by the crystals, instead striking the ships' void shields.

Even Huron, commanding an entire fleet, was helpless against everything happening on the crystal planet.

Lu Jin knew this was inside a Warp Rift; if they were outside, Ahriman surely wouldn't have such power... but right now, he was truly at a loss.

Lu Jin stopped throwing crystals, forcing himself to think calmly about Ahriman, recalling what he cared about.

Then he spoke: "You..."

The moment a single word left his mouth, Ahriman glanced at Lu Jin.

Instantly, Lu Jin's mouth vanished from his face, silenced by psionics.

The surface environment continued to change.

Vague outlines refracted within the crystals. Lu Jin and the Fierce Angels saw those bizarre shapes flickering from all directions.

Then, blue flames ignited, and countless strange beings manifested within the fire.

"Daemons!"

A Fierce Angel who had witnessed daemons before roared.

The moment Lu Jin saw those beings, he recognized them as daemons indeed.

Daemons were Warp entities, serving the four Chaos Gods.

Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, and Slaanesh—each of these Chaos Gods had their own daemons.

And what Ahriman summoned were inevitably Tzeentch's daemons.

Perhaps Ahriman's psionic sorcery was meant to bring a massive horde of daemons into the Maelstrom.

As for why he was doing this... it might be to aid Abaddon, who was preparing for the Thirteenth Black Crusade.

"Kill him!"

"Don't kill him!"

Shouts rang out amidst the flames.

A massive two-headed daemon, wielding a staff, stepped forth from the fire. Its blue feathers quivered as both bird heads fixed their gaze on Lu Jin, uttering contradictory words.

Both sentences were directed at Ahriman.

Ahriman looked at Lu Jin. Though he didn't know why the daemon had spoken thus, he still decided to kill Lu Jin.

A matter of a single thought.

Lu Jin stared at Ahriman, unafraid, yet uncertain what to do.

As the surface of his armor gradually rippled like quicksand and his skin began to turn to sand...

Ahriman suddenly shuddered, as if glimpsing something, and whipped his head around to roar at the Weaver of Fates, Carlos: "Quickly, report to the Changer of Ways—"

An abrupt, deafening roar drowned out the latter half of Ahriman's words.

And the Two-headed Tzeentch Greater Daemon, Carlos, summoned by Ahriman, had already vanished during that shudder before Ahriman turned his head.

Huron stood at the flagship's viewport, staring down at the crystalline world below.

Suddenly, the stars coalesced into a crimson giant axe, which in the blink of an eye cleaved into the planet.

Mountains crumbled, tectonic plates shattered.

The planet's crust was split open by the axe blade, even its core laid bare before Huron's eyes.

Landmasses splintered and flew across the planet's surface.

It was as if a man had taken an axe to a clod of earth.

Only here, the axe was roughly the size of the planet, and the clod of earth was a genuine world.

When the axe blade touched the planet's surface, soil would spray outward—but now, in this moment, what sprayed outward were a planet's continental plates and mountain ranges.

The blood-red giant axe vanished.

The planet drifted, pushed by the strike, leaving a trail of crustal debris in its wake.

This planet left its ninth orbit around the star and collided with the eighth planet orbiting it. Both worlds were utterly destroyed, leaving only debris captured by the star, forming an astronomical spectacle beyond belief.

Sound actually traveled through the vacuum.

It simply took a long time to reach Huron's fleet.

The deafening roar pierced the viewport, cracking the warship's specially reinforced windows. Everyone heard the thunderous crash of the planet's destruction.

And...

A furious bellow.

A roar filled with boundless rage and hatred. It made every hearer instantly feel an impulse—a killing impulse.

But that impulse gradually faded. For those with strong willpower, it faded faster.

No terrible, violent incidents occurred.

A deep, hearty laugh echoed after the roar, audible everywhere throughout the entire Maelstrom.

It was the satisfied, manic laughter of a Chaos God venting its fury.