For Iax, these Enslavers were arguably the most troublesome Xenos Creatures in the central database.
Of course, that did not mean these bizarre Warp Creatures were difficult to kill.
Rather, their ability to travel through the warp let these xenos scatter everywhere.
And the speed at which they used the flesh of psykers to open portals and summon other Xenos Creatures forced the Men of Iron to race all over the sector.
The Maelstrom was an enormous region, containing tens of millions of planets.
Although the charted Imperial Worlds lay in only a few thousand star systems, there were far more uncharted regions and planets that had never been explored in detail.
But this meant Iax had to clear out the star systems one by one.
Within the warp, these strange creatures were exceptionally agile, but once they entered the physical universe—
Without the warp environment, these xenos were merely creatures with rather peculiar abilities as far as the Men of Iron were concerned.
Moreover, the Men of Iron were not normal life-forms to begin with. For specialized creatures like Enslavers, which preyed on souls and warp energy, the Men of Iron were not on the menu.
As long as they were not beings like the Necrons, whose technology was advanced beyond comprehension, Iax had not been particularly worried about these xenos.
Yet once large numbers of fleets entered the sector, Iax quickly discovered that these xenos were nothing short of a catastrophe for living beings.
Since these creatures had initially attacked the warp shipyards and displayed an intense craving for psychic power—
Iax soon deduced that they might have been drawn by the compressed, pure psychic crystals.
For the Men of Iron, this was a serious technological accident. These Xenos Creatures had severely undermined their agreement with the Imperium.