A Meat Bun Swallowed, My Fate Is Mine to Command, Not Heaven's

Just as Stand users are drawn to one another, Hogg, while basking in the praise of his offspring following the battle, felt an inexplicable summons.

His massive war-beast form had shrunk back to his original two-meter-twenty stature; not wishing to disturb his progeny's joy, Hogg began to search for the source of the sensation alone.

The surrounding Blackwatch were joyfully sweeping the battlefield, collecting Necron weapons and corpses, a scene that proved infectious to the newly joined Eldar warriors.

Having undergone enhancement and modification by G301, the Eldar looked at the piles of wreckage and suddenly felt that the junk on the ground might prove useful later, setting aside their customary elven elegance to join the scavenging party.

Cole, a shield-guard and veteran of the Blackwatch, possessed ample experience in scavenging and appraisal; he watched the Eldar recruit who had joined his squad aimlessly searching for low-value scrap, unable to identify any meaningful spoils.

To educate the recruit, Cole called the elf out from among the wreckage, deciding to show him the ropes.

"Roland! You rookie, get over here! That stuff is all trash; you could haul it all away and it wouldn't even trade for a few servitors. If we don't grab the good stuff now, those gear-heads will be here soon and leave us nothing."

The Eldar Striking Scorpion soldier named Roland was stopped by his superior, ceasing his rummaging through the debris at his feet to approach Cole, clutching a Gauss rifle.

Removing his mask, Roland revealed the iconic war-paint of the Eldar. Regarding a field he had never encountered, his eyes betrayed a clear, naive ignorance, yet he still respectfully asked Cole, who had taken good care of him:

"Sir! What counts as good loot?"

"Good loot? You're asking the right person. Let me tell you, alien—and I don't mean you—alien creations are completely different from our own technology. Limited by their racial culture, they always have peculiar decorations."

"For example, the weapon in your hand is clearly fodder-grade. We've taken down a Necron tomb, so this weapon is a dime a dozen. Real good loot is always flashy and explosive, just like how we in the Blackwatch all have cool hairstyles."

Leading Roland to a spot he had already scouted, he pointed to a box in the corner wrapped in numerous shifting cubes and said: "See that? I don't know what this thing does, but look at those moving patterns and the numerous cables connected to it; it's clearly worth a fortune."

The exquisite lines and the energy sparks flickering upon it convinced Roland that Cole wasn't pulling his leg; this had to be a treasure.

The two began to dismantle it, using the power armor's strength to remove cable after cable. By the time they reached the final three, they wouldn't budge. Seeing several Tech-Priests in black robes entering the entrance, they realized their time was running out, so they decided to use a plasma melta to cut the prize free.

In the Warhammer universe, scorching plasma was treated as an incredibly effective solution, much like acetylene in a construction site.

As the azure plasma began to cut, the first cable snapped. A violent ring of energy erupted from the device, the raging shockwave knocking the surrounding crowd flat, while the two closest to it were slammed directly into the wall by the excess energy.

Hogg, who had been searching for the source of his sensation, was also caught in the energy ring; the familiar energy stirred his memories—it was a C'tan Shard.

Years ago, Emperor had fed Hogg fragments of the Void Dragon, though that piece had been far too small; yet, that unique flavor remained etched in Hogg's memory.

Rushing to the corner where the fluctuations originated, Hogg found two unlucky Blackwatch soldiers embedded in the wall by the impact. He plucked them out and stepped in front of the shard.

The C'tan Shard before him had been sealed within a Dimensional Tesseract by Necron technology, serving as the tomb's power source while simultaneously obscuring Hogg's senses. He extended his claws from his right hand and plunged them into the Dimensional Tesseract, exerting force until an orange shard radiating scorching energy was extracted.

Dark red Psionic Energy coiled around the fragment. As Hogg's consciousness probed within, he saw a hazy nebula drifting in the pitch-black cosmos; stars were his sustenance, and the souls of living beings were his dessert. The laws of the universe served him—or rather, It. This was a god of the material universe.

As his consciousness explored further, Hogg witnessed the carnage of the ancient War in Heaven, the wails of the C'tan as they cannibalized their own kind, and the shattered physical forms of the C'tan after defeating the Old Ones, only to be broken and sealed into dimensional devices by their former servants, the Necrons, becoming pathetic slaves and power sources.

A figure burning with eternal, inextinguishable flames appeared before Hogg's consciousness. The maddened C'tan lunged at Hogg, intending to devour him and usurp his physical form.

But pitch-black tentacles emerged from the void to entangle him, and the dark red Psionic Energy eroded and assimilated him bit by bit, leaving behind only a final, defiant roar.

Having devoured the C'tan Shard, Hogg felt a bit bloated, yet he now knew the name of this fragment: "The Burning One."

As a relatively powerful C'tan, the fragment of The Burning One enhanced Hogg's overall energy levels. At the same time, the Dimensional Lightning, which had previously only served as a special effect, was finally empowered. Hogg felt he could now tear through the barrier between reality and the Warp directly with his Dimensional Lightning, the massive electromagnetic force distorting everything around him.

Following Hogg's thought, his tattered Raider armor began to melt. Pieces of metal from his pocket dimension turned into liquid, repairing the damaged sections of the armor, and a brand-new suit appeared on Hogg's body.

Ceasing his testing of his abilities, Hogg surveyed the cleared Necron tomb. According to the gear-heads' scans, the tomb had a massive volume buried underground, and it was constructed entirely of Blackstone.

Leaving the gear-heads to excavate, Hogg returned to the Blacklight with his legion.

In the recent battle, the Necrons' firepower had pinned the Blackwatch down, unable to lift their heads. As someone suffering from late-stage "insufficient firepower" phobia, Hogg felt his troops needed to bolster their arsenal.

He could rely on Knights and Titans for heavy fire support, but in confined environments, their firepower was severely lacking. They would definitely suffer against ancient overlords like the Necrons, let alone the great enemy to come: Chaos, as some Chaos Daemons possessed immense resistance to ranged fire.

The Alaitoc Eldar who had joined them were merely a tiny-scale Craftworld Eldar group, lacking the power of the Alaitoc Craftworld of later ages.

The so-called mother-ship craft parked at the spaceport wasn't a craftworld at all, but a large immigrant warship, barely larger than the Blacklight. They were so poor they didn't even have Phantom Titans, only Wraith Titan equivalents to Knight mechs.

But even these things, while called Titans, were barely taller than Knights, and in the underground environment, even the slender Phantom Titans couldn't enter.

Lost in thought, Hogg wandered aimlessly aboard the Blacklight when he suddenly saw several Dreadnoughts with anime decals on their armor playing cards next to the Fourth Company's barracks. One of them seemed to be the former Fourth Company Commander. Bored out of his mind, Hogg decided to have a little fun and relax.

Thanks to Zhong Er Ye Bing Ren, Han Yue Wu Hong Shuang, Tsathoggua, Antonis Death-Speaker, and Fallen Wei Xin. Tail number 50023, Shen () Wo Bu Ren De, for the monthly votes. Also, thanks to Void Spirit ZIO for pointing out the typo.