Promotion

The perspective shifted to the other side,

On the Bridge.

Miriael danced lightly, wielding the Agoniser. Once again, she broke through Lucia and Leonardo's combined attack with what she considered perfect grace.

The Agoniser cut through their weapons as if they were weeds. Its blade then darted out like a viper, only to change course halfway through and transform into several twisted, treacherous strikes.

If the two of them hadn't dodged in time, they would have been in serious trouble.

Miriael giggled and was just about to press her attack when she abruptly stopped.

She tilted her head slightly, a flicker of confusion crossing her face.

Over there... What a powerful psychic surge!

What's going on?

But the Slaaneshi Daemon Prince soon understood what had happened.

Her Warp pact with the Chaos Lord Malven had just been severed.

"How unfortunate. Did that Chaos Lord die?"

Combining this with the psychic surge she had just sensed, she realized what had happened and chuckled. "The Psyker who just left through the Warp did it, didn't she?"

"That must have been another one of your companions from earlier, right? What a powerful Psyker... It's a shame she's not very bright."

Miriael shook her head and let out a shrill laugh, mocking them.

"If she'd joined you in attacking me, she might have posed a bit of a threat. But things are different now."

Her gaze swept over the Living Saint and the Adeptus Custodes before her. "During the fight, you were already poisoned by the Agoniser. Your bodies are in a terrible state, and you're nowhere near as strong as you were at the start. Even if that Psyker used the Warp to come back right now, she still wouldn't be a threat to me."

"What a foolish choice."

After taunting them, Miriael once again drew on the power Slaanesh had blessed her with: the ability to sense emotions.

To Miriael's great satisfaction, her enemies' emotions were no longer as unruffled as before.

The Living Saint Lucia remained fairly calm, treating Miriael's taunts like words falling on deaf ears. Her heart was unmoved, her holy will as unshakable as a rock.

The Adeptus Custodes Leonardo, however, felt a fleeting flicker of doubt in response to the provocation.

He quickly suppressed it, and no negative emotions took hold of him. Yet that discovery alone was enough to delight Miriael.

The only thing spoiling the fun was that the Living Saint was protected by the False Emperor, while the Adeptus Custodes had never been corrupted. Neither was an easy target.

If they were ordinary Imperial warriors, such as Space Marines or Battle Sisters, the negative emotions welling up inside them would certainly be influenced and magnified by the Slaaneshi Daemon Prince's power. Once they built up to a certain point, they would become corrupted and their resolve would crumble completely.

"How unsatisfying. Let's keep the pleasure going!"

Miriael raised the Agoniser again and struck an extremely seductive sword stance, ready to unleash another flurry of attacks.

But her massive demonic body suddenly froze for no apparent reason.

Not just her—even Lucia and Leonardo, who stood opposite her and should have seized this rare opening to attack, stopped moving at the same time.

All three of them clearly sensed that, somewhere else, the presence of something utterly "anomalous" was rapidly growing stronger.

The Slaaneshi Daemon Prince slowly turned her head and shifted her gaze.

At last, she looked toward the mortal who had been standing silently by the door, watching the fight.

The "mortal" looked no different and was simply standing there, but the air around him had become impossible to ignore. Instead, he stood out conspicuously.

Something about him was fluctuating violently, carrying a sensation wholly unlike that of the Real Universe.

It was as if... in a world that should consist of nothing but liquid, an impossible, solid object had suddenly been shoved in. It was utterly out of place, yet undeniably real—completely anomalous.

What was that?

At that very moment, Rowan was experiencing a truly wondrous sensation.

Since boarding this corrupted Strike Cruiser, they had killed well over a hundred Chaos Space Marines, along with a great many Chaos Cultists.

The elite among them, as well as the Chaos Sorcerers who had been killed alongside them, had souls far stronger than those of ordinary Astartes.

And then there was the Chaos Lord, killed by Sibyl at the end, whose psychic power had been considerable. That had fulfilled the final condition for ascending to the next tier.

The equivalent of one hundred thousand souls had now been gathered.

"Heh. I thought I'd never reach this level in my entire life."

Rowan murmured.

The Hume index of his body's Reality Strength was surging rapidly under the influence of all those souls, like a vast pile of firewood going up in flames. In one go, it had crossed a chasm he'd once never dared imagine passing.

True Reality Strength: 200 Hume --> 300 Hume

Range Reality Strength: 60 Hume --> 40 Hume (Note 1)

"...So this is the power of a Tier 3 Reality Warper?"

Rowan held out his hand. A searing ball of Plasma formed in his palm. He slowly closed his fist, and it vanished without a trace. "This feels completely different from before."

From his current perspective, he could clearly sense the "malleability" of the world around him, as if it were made of modeling clay.

This was unlike the feeble Level 2 Reality Warpers.

For Tier 3 Reality Warpers, both their range and the strength of their abilities underwent a qualitative leap.

A great deal of information on the subject flashed through Rowan's mind:

For example, the Tier 3 Reality Warper codenamed "Supersonic Girl" had easily broken the sound barrier simply because she "wanted to run faster." She had also unconsciously warped a Foundation researcher into the personality she imagined, simply because she "thought he was a good person."

Another example: someone who could warp their body into a microscopic wormhole, drive everyone within a kilometer insane with a single shout, or briefly nullify every anomaly around them just by believing firmly in materialism. If they so much as thought about hurting someone, that person would immediately die as reality collapsed... (Note 2)

These were all things a Tier 3 Reality Warper could do!

"What exactly are you... No, what kind of god are you?"

A voice interrupted Rowan's thoughts.

He looked up. Miriael, who had been so overbearing before, had lost all trace of her earlier flamboyance. She was slightly hunched over in an extremely tense attack stance, even ignoring the two powerful enemies she had been fighting at close quarters this entire time.

A mischievous thought struck Rowan as he remembered how some Big Gold One had fished him up and brought him here.

He smiled faintly and replied in an even tone:

"I'm no god. I'm just an ordinary human from Terra."