The 92nd Black Crusade (XIX, Belisarius Cawl's

Tyranids Mini-Lesson

Karyl opened his eyes and saw a thick fog of steam, hot and boiling. Belisarius Cawl's massive body was faintly visible within it, and the clicking sound coming from beneath his robes was as loud as a torrential rain.

It seemed dangerous, but he himself was manipulating his appendages and making calculations amidst this steam.

The blue light from the holographic projection screen illuminated his silhouette amidst the still-flowing steam, making him appear completely inhuman; his multiple, moving appendages were one of the main culprits behind this impression.

Karyl coughed softly, and the blue light dissipated. Belisarius Cawl turned around with a speed completely out of proportion to his body, and the steam quickly dissipated in a gust of wind that seemed to come from nowhere.

He shook his head, seemingly unfazed, and put the prosthetic eye, which had been removed at some point, back in. Engine oil—or something similar—was seeping from the boundary between flesh and machine, making his aged face even more terrifying.

Of course, the Archmagos himself was completely unaware of this.

He chuckled strangely, cold air gushing from his respirator in bursts, and his limbs began to tap against each other, checking each other's condition and retracting under his robe. He nodded to Karyl with obvious delight.

"The bugs are coming!" Cawl shouted, raising his arms.

"."

"I said the bugs are coming, sir."

"I—" Karyl paused for a moment, genuinely confused for a split second.

"Excuse me, Belisarius Cawl, I don't understand. Is this something to be happy about?"

"In a worldly sense, of course not, but for me, this is certainly something to celebrate. Sotha has been on the edge of these greedy creatures' feast for the past nineteen centuries, which has caused me a lot of trouble for my research."

"What research?" Karyl asked.

"Research targeting the Tyranids, huh?" Cawl replied. "You are unaware, sir. However, before arriving in Sotha, I assured the esteemed Roboute Guilliman that I would provide a solution that would be effective against the Zerg."

"Although he doesn't quite believe me, I have indeed been diligently pushing this forward. And now, it's time to check the results."

The hunched-over giant sage waved excitedly at Karyl and led him back into the enormous mechanical maze. He walked quickly, and this time he didn't need to find his way again.

Just three minutes later, they arrived at a surveillance array. Thousands of observation screens hanging from the ceiling were filled with images of Sotha, from forests and fields to the still-burning city.

Without any visible movement from Cawl, two robotic arms swept through the dense network of cables, clearing them away. Two screens followed closely behind, some kind of anti-gravity device humming at their base.

"Please allow me to introduce my observation window. In the early centuries, when I still maintained the habit of self-examination, I would observe the outside world from here, but I later went too far."

Cawl began to ramble on, and then pulled a single golden gear from under his red robe. He didn't use his limbs to do this; the gear was held in his own right hand.

Although it had long been mechanized, Karyl still sensed something unusual in the action, but Cawl didn't explain it and simply began to focus on fiddling with the gear.

Seeing that he was not getting a reply, Karyl began to observe the two screens. They displayed images of two ends of a city, burning.

Sotha's local defense forces are driving their troop carriers over the rubble; the work of collecting the bodies has been suspended, and another war has begun.

But the enemy did not appear.

Karyl frowned and turned to look at the other observation screens, but still saw no signs of Tyranids invasion.

"The Archmagos."

"Yes, yes, I am, sir—" Cawl answered without looking up. "—Please give me a few more minutes, okay? I'm searching my memory; the key I designed myself is a bit too complicated, I don't have time to waste on cracking it."

Karyl had no choice but to wait. Cawl did not disappoint him; just two minutes later, he burst into laughter, and the golden gear in his hand suddenly began to deform.

A complex mechanical structure emerged from beneath its golden exterior, quickly transforming the gear into a key.

Cawl bent down, holding it. The ground cracked open, and a silver cylinder slowly rose. Cawl inserted the key into the keyhole on its surface and then gently turned it.

"A clever use of old-fashioned structures, sir. Data isn't always reliable, but with proper maintenance, machinery will never betray you—"

The Archmagos chuckled and stepped forward again, heading towards the deepest part of this forest of screens. There, a huge screen was slowly lighting up.

"Over the years, I've designed and deployed many satellites for Sotha, which can show me what's outside of Sotha when necessary."

Cawl offered this explanation, but he continued to laugh strangely. Karyl looked at him, puzzled, only to find that Cawl's laughter grew even louder.

"Of course, out of respect for the Emperor's Scythes and the local lords, I haven't usually used these powers that are beyond their permitted scope. However, I think they shouldn't have any complaints about this red-robed oddball anymore. Anyway, sir, look here."

Cawl straightened up and pointed to the upper left corner of the screen with his right hand. The image quickly zoomed out, switching from the unscathed surface of Sotha to the burning void.

Karyl squinted and saw an indescribable void naval battle.

The Macragge's Honour Allied Fleet is engaged in battle with the Zerg's bio-like, living ship horde, whose numbers are incalculable and, even at a rough estimate, are several times larger than the Allied Fleet.

Any general would be overwhelmed when facing such a number of enemies, but the commander-in-chief at this time was Roboute Guilliman.

The swarm's living ships were being destroyed one after another by the relentless barrage of fire. Huge pieces of flesh and carapace floated in the dark vacuum, quickly freezing and shimmering in the gunfire, resembling eerie, bleeding eyes.

Despite appearing to be at a disadvantage, the Tyranids seemed completely unconcerned. Their ships continued to advance at a steady, slow pace, like a huge, disorganized mass of meat, relentlessly tearing at them no matter how much the combined fleet, this ferocious beast, tried to devour them.

Moreover, they are by no means defenseless.

Armor-piercing spikes, acid projectiles, and other lethal techniques typically found only in living organisms were erupting from the bows of these so-called ships, hundreds of times larger than their actual size. While their individual attack power wasn't particularly formidable, their sheer quantity and near-impossible evasion made them formidable.

The Void Shield has its limits, and any ship blocking its path will be dragged down by its ramming ships, either resulting in mutual destruction or engine failure.

"Hmm, they don't seem to care about their losses," Cawl said thoughtfully. "That's true, they can certainly afford to wait."

His tone suddenly turned somewhat annoyed.

"At this rate, if our fleet fails to deliver a decisive blow, they won't suffer any fatal losses at all. Ah, and here too, sir."

The screen zoomed out again, and at the edge of the Sotha system, more Tyranids living ships appeared to be slowly approaching.

"There are so many that they are impossible to count," the Archmagos muttered to himself in an angry tone, as the grinding of gears began again.

He lowered his head in thought, but Karyl felt the ground beneath his feet tremble.

A flash of blue light appeared, and he looked down to see that the Combat Servitor he had seen in the darkness were being awakened one after another, their numbers seemingly endless, and they were stepping in perfect unison onto transport vehicles and leaving the interior of Mount Pharos.

"No, that won't do," Cawl suddenly spoke up. "We must prevent them from reaching Sotha orbit. Once the spores break through the atmosphere, they won't stop until they completely dominate the sky. I don't want my Servitor to be fighting a war of attrition with the spores, sir."

He looked at Karyl.

"What are your thoughts?" Karyl asked.

"How much do you know about the Tyranids?" Cawl asked, his tone suddenly becoming polite.

Karyl didn't delve into the reasons behind this, but calmly stated, "I've read an investigative report that mainly focuses on the deployment of Tyranids spores and the evolutionary traits they exhibit in the process."

Is it the one written by Agina Silas?

"Yes."

Cawl began nodding again, continuously, and the oil seeping from his prosthetic eye began to decrease.

"Very good, very good. Although Agina is stubborn, she is indeed an excellent investigator. This gives us a good start to our next topic—anyway, now that you have some understanding of them, I will quickly get to the point."

"I won't go into the different types and differences between the insects, since they're all pretty much the same. I believe even the Hive Mind Tyrant Lord wouldn't pose much of a threat to you."

"What is Hive Mind Tyrant Lord?" Karyl pressed, interrupting him. The word Cawl used was a neologism, awkward and extremely long.

"They're large, strong, fast, and intelligent insects," Cawl said. "Unlike most insects, they're very good at learning and countering our resistance, but that's not the main point; the real threat of the swarm lies in their numbers."

"I think even you would be annoyed if you were surrounded by Hormagaunt and Termagant. So, here's the key point."

Cawl suddenly leaned down and told Karyl seriously, "Most insects don't inherently possess self-awareness; they are merely a combination of weapons and tools. What truly controls them is a aggregated consciousness, which we call the Hive Mind."

"It has no physical form and cannot descend to the battlefield in person, but it possesses extremely powerful psionic energy, far surpassing that of us Psyker, and can even distort the surrounding Warp."

"It is so powerful that it prevents Daemon from descending, causes ships navigating the Warp to become lost, and plunges people into pain, confusion, and nightmares; Psyker, will find themselves in an even worse situation."

"Research indicates that the Hive Mind Will controls all the insects through synaptic organisms—that is, Synapse Creature. In other words, although it doesn't exist in reality, it is omnipresent. It constructs a vast network that allows it to see everything happening on the battlefield and react swiftly. In short..."

"You want me to deal with it." Karyl remembered his explanation, then ignored it all and calmly gave this conclusion.

"."

Cawl fell silent for a good ten seconds, his face showing a mixture of surprise and confusion. But he quickly regained his composure and began nodding repeatedly.

"Yes, yes. This is a feasible plan. The fundamental purpose of the Hive Mind is to devour biomass, and all its actions are for this purpose. Therefore, we can have it evaluated through you."

He became more and more excited as he spoke, pacing back and forth, and finally burst into laughter.

"Ha! My lord, you clearly possess a certain intuitive talent for research! This is truly a brilliant idea! If the Hive Mind deems this a losing proposition, with the recovered biomass unable to justify the expenditure, then it will naturally retreat!"

"That's not what I meant," Karyl said. "My idea was to just kill it."

Cawl fell silent again, his massive body beginning to tremble, the parts creaking beneath his robes. One second, two seconds, three seconds passed, and he and Karyl remained locked in a silent standoff.

Then, the Archmagos finally realized that this person was probably serious.

A surge of anger suddenly rose on the remaining half of his face.

"But it's something without a physical form!" Cawl shouted, flailing his limbs and looking utterly devastated.

"Were you even listening to my explanation?! It doesn't exist, it's just a swarm of insects! To kill it, you'd have to kill every single insect in this entire fleet, which is simply impossible!"

"I didn't say I was going to kill all the bugs, I just said I was going to kill it or, like you said, make it back down."

Cawl laughed in exasperation and asked, "Then, how do you intend to do this?"

"It's simple—" Karyl smiled slightly at him, a smile even containing a hint of satisfaction. "—I have a plan."

Cawl stared at him, his gaze hardening, his expression blank. After a few seconds, he asked, "What plan, sir?"

"You'll find out," Karyl said casually, then turned and walked away.

Enraged, the Archmagos extended all his limbs and charged at his workbench at high speed. A dozen seconds later, accompanied by the tremors of the ground, Belisarius Cawl, fully armed, caught up with Karyl like a heavy armored vehicle.

As he charged, he roared, "I'm going to report you to Roboute Guilliman!"

"What did you report me for?" Karyl asked.

"Reckless!"

Karyl burst into laughter.