Nurgle: I Have a Bad Feeling About This
The goddess of life stood frozen in place, completely stunned.
Looking at the terrifying human army before him, his mind completely lost its ability to think, and his emerald eyes were filled with nothing but endless shock and horror.
She looked at the endless line of elite warriors.
Looking at that terrifying combat power that could crush the entire Warp, and feeling that earth-shattering war aura, only one crazy thought remained in his mind.
Is this... a sign that the War in Heaven is about to begin again?!
What exactly is going on with this terrifying group of war machines?!
Let alone Nurgle's demon army, even if the Old Ones himself were to appear, they would collapse on the spot upon seeing this display of power!
Bang--!
The sound wasn't like an explosion, but more like some huge, pus-filled cyst bursting from the inside, green liquid carrying fragments of half-melted bone and rotting plant roots that splashed everywhere, washing over the moss-covered clearing in the Garden of Nurgle.
A pot of thick soup exploded.
The copper bottom of the pot was blasted open with a large hole, and the dried soup on the edge of the pot was shaken into countless tiny fragments by the shockwave, which mixed into the green mist that filled the sky.
The mist was poisonous—of course it was poisonous, everything in Nurgle's Garden was poisonous—but its toxicity was far greater than ordinary mist, for it was a super plague broth personally brewed by Nurgle, the ultimate product of seventy-seven types of Chaos Primal Matter, one hundred and thirty-eight deadly viruses, and Primarch- level genetic samples extracted from Mortarion, carefully simmered in a great cauldron for seven hundred and seventy-seven days.
The broth spread across the open ground, and wherever it passed, the thick layer of humus on the ground began to boil, bubbling up tiny bubbles.
The bubbles burst, releasing new spores, new bacteria, and new microbial forms that even Nurgle itself hadn't anticipated.
A group of Plaguebearer were frolicking in that clearing.
These chubby little creatures dragged their round bellies on the ground, their single horns gleaming a dark green light in the mist.
They were laughing hysterically, their mouths wide open—mouths that took up almost two-thirds of their faces and were full of yellow teeth—pushing at each other and throwing rotten fruit at one another.
They were having a great time playing.
Pour the broth over them.
The outermost few Plaguebearer had their faces smeared with the soup. Although the temperature wasn't too high—after all, Nurgle never harm people with heat—the plague essence contained in the soup instantly seeped into their bodies.
Their bodies began to swell, like inflated balloons, from round and plump to bulging and about to burst.
Before they could even scream, before their gaping mouths could even utter a gurgling sound, their bodies exploded with a "poof."
More Plaguebearer surged in.
It's not because they're stupid, but because the broth smells so delicious.
Plaguebearer has a natural affinity for rotten, foul-smelling, and filthy things. This thick soup exudes the essence of decay, concentrated millions of times after being simmered for seventy-seven days. Its aroma is so rich that it can give a Plaguebearer's olfactory system an instant orgasm.
They lay on the ground, their rear ends sticking out, sticking out their long, thin tongues, desperately licking the soup flowing on the ground.
Then they began to swell, burst open, and turn into puddles of tiny pus.
The pus was licked by other Plaguebearer, and new Plaguebearer swelled, burst, and turned into pus.
The scene was absurd and terrifying, like some kind of perpetual motion machine.
Nurgle rose from his throne.
The enormous, mountain-like, bloated body rose from the tangled, decaying roots of the trees.
He still held the huge bronze ladle in his hand. The ladle had a round head, and half a ladle of thick soup remained in the concave part, dripping down and hitting the ground with a crisp "tap-tap" sound.
He lowered his head, his small, murky eyes, like the silt at the bottom of a pond, staring at the pile of Plaguebearer on the ground that were constantly multiplying, exploding, and regenerating on their own, his brows furrowed slightly.
He stretched out his hand, his five fingers, covered in pustules and maggots, and gently stroked the long, white, moldy cotton-like beard on his chin.
His long beard was covered in soup, and when he ran his fingers over it, the soup was squeezed out and slid down the gaps in his beard, dripping onto his protruding belly.
Another batch was fried.
This is the third time this month.
But this time, it wasn't his fault.
Nurgle has absolute confidence in his culinary skills.
For 65 million years, he has stirred the cauldron countless times, each time with the direction, force, and speed of stirring precisely to the limit that Chaos Psionic Energy could calculate.
No ingredient was added in the wrong order, no virus was added in excessive doses, and no toxin shortened the cooking time.
His stirring technique is flawless, just like every single day for tens of thousands of years.
Someone disturbed him.
There are external factors.
Nurgle raised his head and looked up at the eternal, leaden haze above the Garden of Nurgle.
Above the smog lies the endless, distorted, and maddening Chaos vortex of Warp.
And in the very depths of that vortex, in a place far more profound than any demon, any realm of Chaos, any forbidden land—there lies a black sun.
The sun either does not emit light, or the light it emits exceeds the range that the naked eye can perceive.
It simply floated there silently, like a black hole pierced through the void, greedily devouring all the light, all the energy, and all existence around it.
But at this moment, it is moving, it is expanding, it is contracting, like a huge, living heart beating violently.
Expansion.
shrink.
Expansion.
shrink.
With each expansion, the black light spreads countless light-years in all directions, dispersing, crushing, and turning the Chaos energy of that area into nothingness.
With each contraction, the black sun absorbs all surrounding matter, energy, and remnants of souls into its core, leaving no light behind.
It is bestowing blessings.
Master of Mankind, the master of darkness and destruction, the skeleton on the Golden Throne, the fifth Chaos Gods —he is bestowing a blessing upon some being.
Moreover, the power of the blessing was outrageously great, not like it was given to a single individual, but more like it was used to simultaneously infuse power into an entire army, a legion, or even an entire race.
Nurgle's chin drooped down a little more.
His white beard had grown even longer, almost reaching down to his third layer of belly fat.
He tried to open his eyes wide, but his cloudy eyeballs could only be seen as thin slits due to the pressure of his excess flesh.
He carefully scanned the vast, Chaos void surrounding the Black Sun with those two thin slits, trying to find the army that was receiving the blessing.