What's Your Devotion to Khorne?

The cultists were experiencing for the first time that red might not actually be a pleasant color.

But finding it unpleasant was useless.

Receive the divine judgment of the Blood Angels—!!!

The two-and-a-half-meter-tall Astartes leaped high into the air. To mortal eyes, it was as if a rhinoceros had suddenly taken flight—then the airborne rhinoceros came charging straight at them.

Save us—!!!

The Blood Angels landed with a sweeping slash. The Chainsword drew a golden line through the air, sending three autocannons ahead of them, along with their gunners behind them, flying.

Fragments of gun barrels mixed with heads as they tumbled down, smashing into the skulls of the cultists in the rear ranks.

What fell down?

His coworker's head—!! Aaaah!!!

The Bone-faced Cultists in the rear opened fire in panic. Hundreds of autoguns fired at once, weaving a dense web of bullets.

Solid rounds and laser beams poured toward Tyrennius together.

But ordinary weapons could not even scratch Ceramite. At most, they could strip away some of the paint.

The bullets struck the Ceramite and clattered away, leaving not even a scratch.

The laser beams hit his shoulder guard, leaving only a thin, nearly invisible scorch mark on the blood-red armor.

The iron coffin was living up to its name.

Tyrennius leaped high and came crashing down, driving his shoulder guard straight into the first line of defense as he landed.

Several cultists screamed as they were knocked flying, crashing into another row behind them and toppling it as well.

Instantly, the air filled with wails.

The remaining cultists hurriedly opened fire.

Bullets hammered Tyrennius from head to toe. The rounds clanged against the Ceramite with a crackling din, producing only the futile sound of a rainstorm beating on a sheet-metal roof. Whatever was inside remained completely unharmed.

Meanwhile, the golden great Chainsword's destructive power within the packed formation was cataclysmic.

Tyrennius swept his sword across, and seven or eight cultists along a straight line flew into the air at once.

The wounds directly struck by the Enchanting blade began burning the instant they were hit. Golden flames sprang up from their dark-red robes.

The cultists screamed as they hit the ground, reduced to charred bones.

It dealt Enchanting damage to demonic targets.

It worked on cultists carrying the power of Chaos as well.

The Bone-faced Cultists were clearly beginning to panic, and gaps appeared in their formation.

The people at the front began retreating as a group, while those in the rear pushed forward. The entire formation began trampling itself.

An elite guard in heavy armor tried to stabilize the line. He raised his power axe and shouted, "No retreating! Blood God, pro—"

Then he saw the tip of Tyrennius's Golden Light greatsword pointed at him.

He swallowed the unfinished words and turned to run.

Those with truly devout faith had already been chosen for sacrifice. The ones outside were not particularly devout to begin with.

Tyrennius did not bother chasing the runner. He swept aside another guard nearby with one stroke, then continued advancing toward the altar.

Their main task was to disrupt the sacrificial ritual, not kill these cannon fodder. There was no need to waste time on them.

The Holy Light Great Chainsword carved one burning trail of Golden Light after another through the crowd.

The Chaos Cultists' dense defense might have been an impregnable wall against ordinary enemies, but against one Blood Angels wielding a Holy Light Great Chainsword with Enchanting for special damage against demons, it was a wall made of tofu.

The Chaos Cultists began to lose ground.

The crowd kept retreating.

The heavy-armored guards in the rear still tried to maintain the formation. They shoved the retreating believers forward with power hammers, bellowing blasphemous slogans against the Emperor in an attempt to raise morale.

But no matter how hard they pushed or shouted, whenever Golden Light flashed through the formation, the number of people retreating doubled those moving forward.

The sorcerers regrouped the two remaining red-robed priests and the psykers, attempting to raise a second Psychic Barrier before the altar.

Dark-red light stretched forward with difficulty.

Before the psychic shield had fully taken shape, Tyrennius hacked into it with his sword, cleaving the barrier and the sorcerers behind it apart.

How were they supposed to block that? They couldn't!!!

The guards outside were growing thinner and thinner.

The eight core sorcerers at the altar deep inside the cave continued chanting.

They did not care in the slightest about the fate of their subordinates outside. They never paused from beginning to end, madness burning in their red eyes.

No matter how many people died outside, as long as they successfully opened this spatial rift, they would win.

********

Tyrennius did not know how many Chaos Cultists he had killed. The nun kept taking potshots from the side.

They had slaughtered their way to the entrance of the Chaos Cultists' lair and were about to break inside.

The Warp Rift above the cave roof had expanded to nearly three meters long. Dark-red light pulsed along its edges like a heartbeat, and each pulse pushed out a deeper red halo.

The leader of the Blood Cultists was a powerful sorcerer.

He turned to glance toward the cave entrance.

Tyrennius was cleaving the last heavy-armored guard who had tried to stop him from shoulder to waist.

Golden Light illuminated the split cross-section of the guard's heavy armor, as well as the nearly depleted guard unit.

The spatial rift was still short of completion.

Were they really about to be judged by a lone Astartes like this?

Seeing that the ritual was about to end in failure, the Blood Cultists' leader let out a roar.

Like a gambler who had lost everything and slammed his final chip onto the table, despair and madness intertwined within him.

With nowhere left to turn, he decided to burn himself as an offering to Khorne.

He abruptly raised his staff above his head with both hands. The largest and brightest Warp Crystal at its tip exploded in his palms.

The fragments did not scatter. They hovered in midair, transforming into a cluster of dark-red flames.

The flames spread from the Blood Cultists' leader's hands up his arms, across his shoulders and torso, finally wrapping his entire body in the shape of a human torch.

He screamed.

The Blood Cultists' body dissolved within the flames.

His robe, flesh, and bones burned and peeled away layer by layer, then were drawn into the flames and became part of them.

The sacrificial fire devoured him from head to toe. After swallowing him, it erupted at the very center of the altar into a deep-red pillar of light that shot toward the sky.

The deep-red pillar slammed straight into the Warp Rift above the cave.

The rift seemed to gain some kind of support. It abruptly tore open wider on both sides.

The remaining core sorcerers exchanged glances, then looked toward the Astartes holding the Holy Light greatsword. They followed suit.

One after another, the Chaos Sorcerers shouted slogans in the language of Chaos and sacrificed themselves, turning into bundles of burning dark-red torches.

If this Astartes broke in, the ritual would end in failure.

They were all going to die anyway. They might as well gamble on sacrifice. Perhaps their Blood God would take notice and grant them his blessing.

Red pillars of light shot into the sky.

The spatial rift above the cave rapidly expanded under the impact of successive sacrifices.

The rift tore from three meters to five, then from five meters to ten.

Warp energy became churning deep-red mist along the edges of the rift. Something began moving within the mist—something with a physical form, forcing its way outward from the other side.

Tyrennius, Lin En, and Cecilia were horrified, but with the remaining Chaos Cultists blocking them, they still failed to stop it.

These cultists were all madmen.

There was no stopping it now. The Warp demons on the other side had already discovered the rift and were squeezing through.

Tyrennius stopped. He stood five meters before the cave entrance.

The ritual had already been pushed past the edge of the critical point. The Warp Rift had formed. Killing everyone left now would be useless and would only turn them into a sacrificial pool of blood.

He had no idea what level of demon would emerge.

He had no idea whether he could successfully get the demon—

The entire cavern ceiling trembled. Gravel rained from the top of the cave, striking the altar before bouncing and rolling away.

A gust of wind carrying the smell of sulfur and rust gushed from within the rift. Then a foot stepped out.

It was a deep-red, reverse-jointed goat's hoof covered in brass armor.