The First Invasion

During the first invasion, Behemoth was brought to a halt by the Imperial Fleet above Macragge.

The Hive Mind remembered—humanity would fight to the death for their core world, and a direct assault would require overwhelming power.

The second invasion of Kraken resulted in it being divided and surrounded, and then defeated piecemeal.

The Hive Mind has remembered—humans understand the advantage of operating from within, and must strategically form an unbreakable pincer movement.

And so, Leviathan was born.

In 997 M41 AD, on the southern side of the Milky Way, beneath the galactic disk, in the dark abyss never before covered by any of the Imperium's detection methods, Leviathan appeared.

Its appearance perfectly bypassed the Imperium's millennia-old defenses—all of which faced the eastern edge of the Milky Way, the direction of the previous two invasions.

Leviathan, on the other hand, comes from below.

Like a giant beast lurking in the deep sea, it launches a silent attack from the blind spot of its prey.

The first to discover it was Inquisitor Lord Fides Kryptman.

Through his meticulously designed "Kryptman Census"—an early warning system built at the cost of the destruction of hundreds of human worlds—he captured the last desperate signals emitted by those worlds before they were swallowed up.

But he couldn't stop it, he couldn't even stop it.

Leviathan's tactics were unsolvable from the very beginning.

A pincer-like attack with two tentacles.

The two main fleets, separated by hundreds of light-years, closed in like two giant pincers.

Wherever they pass, the Shadow in the Warp looms over everything in advance, severing Psionic Energy communications between the besieged world and the outside world, and blocking any possible Warp reinforcements.

Those worlds were isolated, divided, surrounded, and then—swallowed up.

One of its tentacles pointed directly at Terra.

Its sharpness was so great that the Imperium's high command once thought the end was near.

It was held back at Tharsis Urtha by a combined force of Ultramarines, Deathwatch, and the Astra Militarum —but it was only a delay, a temporary respite bought by the Imperium at the cost of countless lives.

The main body of the fleet was not destroyed; it was merely reoriented.

Another tentacle swept across the edges of the Storm Zone, the Ultima Segmentum, and the Segmentum Solar.

Countless worlds were erased from the Imperium's star map, silently and without a trace, as if they had never existed.

Kryptman made an extreme choice—he ordered the burning of the Imperial World along Leviathan's path to cut off their biomass supply, while simultaneously luring Leviathan's main force into the Octarius Ork Empire.

That was a huge gamble.

The stakes are the lives of countless human worlds, the future of the Octarius Sector, and the survival of civilization in the Milky Way.

He lost, and he won.

The loss was that countless worlds were reduced to ashes in his hands, the Ork Empire expanded wildly by consuming Tyranid creature, and new and more terrifying biological forms continued to evolve in the ongoing war between Tyranids and Orks.

The good thing is that Leviathan's main force was indeed diverted, and Terra's threat was temporarily eliminated.

But this "win" came at a great cost, so great that Kryptman himself was listed as a fugitive by the Imperium, and so great that history is still debating whether his choice was correct.

However, Leviathan was never truly defeated.

During the Indomitus Crusade, Guilliman returned and led humanity in a counterattack.

But Leviathan did not disappear; it merely split—it split into new sub-fleets such as Nothilon, Promethor, Grendyllus, which launched another fierce attack from new directions, including the Pacificus Segmentum.

The Fourth Tyrannic War thus broke out.

Today, Leviathan's influence has penetrated deep into Ultramar, reaching the very edge of the core of the Segmentum Solar.

Its Shadow in the Warp continues to shroud vast star systems, its biomass conversion efficiency is increasing, and its evolutionary speed is accelerating.

It is the number one Tyranids force threatening Terra at present.

It is the sharpest, most lethal, and most successful tentacle of the Hive Mind.

It is a civilization-level existential threat that Imperium of Man must face, yet have been unable to completely resolve to this day.

And at this very moment, in the endless darkness of the cosmic abyss, in this desolate star system far from the core of the Imperium and far from any human world—a fleet of Leviathan is leisurely... sighing.

fourteen

The tentacles of the Great Devourer gently stretched out in the void.

The tentacles stretched for thousands of kilometers, their surface covered with a thick chitinous carapace. Every texture was the crystallization of billions of years of evolution, and every cell operated precisely under the unified command of the Hive Mind.

If we could describe its state using human terms, it would be -- leisurely.

Yes, leisurely.

This fleet has just completed a perfect hunt.

A small but life-rich planet was devoured, countless biomass was transformed, and new Tyranids creatures are being conceived in Leviathan's incubation chambers.

Throughout the entire process, there was absolutely no resistance worth mentioning.

Those humans are too fragile.

The fragments of memory stored within the tentacles surged—the last traces left by countless devoured human worlds, the fear and despair forcibly read by the Hive Mind before being digested.

They screamed, they ran, they knelt and prayed, they took up arms and fought back desperately.

But ultimately, they all turned into biomass.

They became part of the swarm.

It became the fuel for Leviathan's continued evolution.

The tentacles trembled slightly; if that movement were translated into human emotion, it would be similar to—a sigh.

Indeed, humanity is still quite fragile.

The tentacles recalled a battle that had occurred not long ago.

It was a real battle, not a one-sided massacre, but a clash between two apex predators.

A group of warriors who could fly, carry heavy loads, and even devour the Tyranids descended from the sky, fighting their way in and out of the swarm seven times.

Their carapace—if it can be called a carapace—is blue, a blue that is extremely rare in this universe.

Their weapons spewed flames, their fists tore through flesh, and their eyes burned with a madness that tentacles could not comprehend.

That was the first time the tentacles realized that "prey" could be so terrifying.

But it quickly adjusted its mindset.

What can a mere two thousand or so soldiers like that do?

The tentacles stretched out again, a movement that subtly conveyed a sense of confidence.

With its terrifying power to cover the planet with swarms of insects, those mere two thousand or so blue warriors were nothing more than appetizers.

Even if another 20,000 came, it could still handle them.

The power of the Hive Mind is limitless.

The number of insect swarms is infinite.

Evolution is infinite.

Human fear, however, is limited.

With that thought in mind, the tentacle released another pulse of Psionic Energy.

That was the Hive Mind's method of detection—using Psionic Energy as tentacles to sweep across the void and sense all that exhibited signs of life.

Like the echolocation of whales, like the ultrasonic waves of bats, only on an interstellar scale.

The pulse spreads, recedes, and then—returns.

The tentacles froze.

It sensed a warship.

A very large warship.

Very large.

Based on the information it extracted from countless human memories, this size should belong to what the Imperium of Man calls the "Gloriana-class"—the largest in the human fleet, a mobile fortress capable of carrying an entire Chapter.

But that's not the point.

The key point is that there were signs of life inside that warship.

Many vital signs.

A great many.

A conservative estimate is 100,000.

The tentacles' Psionic Energy perception trembled slightly for a moment.

One hundred thousand life responses.

One hundred thousand... lives that could potentially react as terrifyingly as those blue warriors?

No, that's impossible.

Those should just be ordinary Space Marines, ordinary human soldiers, and ordinary biomass reserves.

Those terrifying blue warriors must be the most elite beings in the Imperium of Man, the very best of the best.

How could there possibly be 100,000?

How could 100,000 such terrifying things exist in the same universe?

The tentacles tried hard to convince themselves.

But its perception cannot deceive it.

The energy intensity of those life responses, the biofield characteristics of those life responses, the blue color of those life responses.

They're all blue.

One hundred thousand blue life responses.

They all shared the same blue hue as those terrifying warriors, a color extremely rare in this universe.

The tentacles' thoughts paused for a fleeting moment.

This is not the state the Hive Mind should be in.

The Hive Mind is unified, calm, and always calculates the optimal solution with maximum efficiency.

But at this moment, the tentacles of this fleet, the "brain" of this Leviathan squadron, were actually stunned.

Then, it sensed something even more terrifying.

The enormous warship began to move.

No, it's not the warships that are moving.

The little people inside the warship—those blue life forms—began to rush out of the warship.

One hundred thousand blue life forms swarmed out of the Gloriana-class warship, like bees leaving their hive, like ants emerging from their burrow, like—like a swarm of insects.

But they are more terrifying than the swarm.

Because of what they are wearing?

What kind of technology is that?

What allows them to fly in a vacuum?

When did the Imperium of Man possess such equipment that would allow Space Marines to perform large-scale interstellar maneuvers?

And why do they hold their arms out in front of them when they fly?

That pose looks so familiar.

That posture was exactly the same as that of the terrifying blue warriors from before.

The image flashed through the tentacles' memory—two thousand blue figures descended from the sky, their hands outstretched in front of them, crashing into the swarm of insects like meteors, and then—then came the slaughter.

The Psionic Energy thoughts within the tentacles began to vibrate violently.

No way.

That's impossible.

That's absolutely impossible.