The Style of That Shot

Nikanna opened fire.

The Raven Guard's weapons once again blazed with the fire of death. A heavy bolter round accelerated within the barrel, and after exiting the muzzle, its internal thrusters continued to spiral and accelerate.

This should have been futile against Khorvalen's psychic shield, but Nikanna saw the shield's weakness, its one and only flaw.

In the eyes of the Raven Guard, the world momentarily composed of dots and lines, and where those dots and lines intersected lay the weakness. Psychic power was not invincible; it still possessed weak points, discernible to sufficiently keen eyes.

Absolute technology granted the bolter absolute stability, and Nikanna's eyes, which could see the points of death, guided this absolutely stable bolter.

The bolter detonated at its target location, the violent psychic shockwave plunging Khorvalen into agony.

This caused an extremely minor lapse in concentration, but even this flaw, less than a hundredth of a second, gave Guilliman an opening.

Before the ritual dagger could slice his throat, Guilliman managed to utter a single sentence with difficulty:

"You made a mistake."

Khorvalen had not yet responded, but the next second, a sharp tearing sound rang out.

Like fingernails scraping across a blackboard, like a blade grating against bone, or like a water-filled bag being ripped apart, a massive lightning claw emerged from Khorvalen's chest.

"You didn't kill me immediately."

Guilliman continued to speak with difficulty. He slowly stood up, lifting Khorvalen with the lightning claw in his hand. His power systems had not yet recovered, and the Primarch was driving his weapon with his own terrifying physical strength.

The lightning claw pierced the power armor, piercing Khorvalen's damaged augmented bones and muscles. This Word Bearer had not undergone complete augmentation surgery, making his flesh more fragile.

Khorvalen wailed as one of his hearts was ruthlessly torn apart by the lightning claw's thrust. The pain of his shattered heart instantly severed his nerves. He convulsed instinctively, his head thrown back, black blood spewing from his mouth.

His mind was blank; death was incredibly close.

The plight of the Word Bearer commander immediately caused the Word Bearers to falter. Soloth Chorl had only been distracted for a millisecond before Hill's power glaive sliced off half his helmet. The glaive severed his skull and brain tissue, leaving his brain almost entirely exposed to the air.

His remaining eye gazed into the darkness, where a phantom in the shadows watched him.

Just as it had when he betrayed Lucius, he had gazed at him from the darkness.

Nikanna opened fire again. He did not miss. The bolter round destroyed the remaining half of Chorl's head, turning everything to ash.

Hill broke through to the Primarch's side. Guilliman pulled the lightning claw free, along with one of Khorvalen's hearts.

"My Lord!"

Khorvalen's mangled corpse landed on the deck with a dull thud. Black blood flowed everywhere. He was still cackling and vomiting filth.

"Never mind me, destroy the systems!"

Hill charged towards the command platform, which was protected by the Word Bearers. Rows of brass-colored data engines hummed, the very ones that physically prevented Kaos from retaking the orbital platform.

The red-helmeted warrior took a deep breath and activated his power glaive, shattering all of these data engines.

This blow also shattered the shackles of the data world. Within the starship, Loci witnessed the physical limitations that had been restraining the AI suddenly shatter.

"Act now."

The starship's artificial intelligence unleashed all its computational power. It wielded the Slaughter Code, created by a high-ranking tech-priest in his final moments, and launched an assault on the occupied weapon arrays.

In the Omnissiah's Archive on the surface, high-ranking tech-priest Tauren observed the data changes through the transmitter. Kaos's collapsing mental space was being reconstructed, and all permissions were being reset.

She watched as the Slaughter Code created by Hurst drove out the corrupted data. The code, polluted by the so-called Eightfold Path, turned to dust before the Slaughter Code.

"This machine is merely a mid-tier component; it is part of a more powerful entity."

Tauren merged with the machine, her neural impulses sensing a powerful mind that manipulated data and code at an incredible speed.

Undoubtedly, this was a living Abominable Intelligence.

She did not panic like other Magos who had encountered Abominable Intelligence; she simply joined the offensive, assisting in dealing with the collapsing arrays.

In orbit, the weapon arrays, which had been continuously unleashing destructive weapons upon the sun, ceased their fire. The command override from Kaos had rewritten their programming.

The weapon arrays began to turn, locking onto hundreds, even thousands, of targets instantly. The perfect firing solution calculated by the AI was immediately executed.

And as the weapon arrays returned to the loyalist side, Kaos's battle advantage had completely shifted to the Ultramarines.

Ship-to-ship lances spewed forth from the sky. The dazzling beams tore through dust and clouds in the blink of an eye. Beams far brighter than a star unleashed surgical strikes.

Whether it was the Word Bearers' fortified positions, enemy Titans, heavy vehicles, or the Word Bearers and cultists still launching attacks, they all turned to gas under the lances descending from the sky.

Even Titans could not contend with power at this level. Ground forces always deployed only after the navy had decided the outcome of the battle.

Under the AI's computational dominance, all of Kaos's servitor-birds, camera probes, and everything connected to the network were its eyes and ears. It precisely analyzed which areas belonged to the Word Bearers and which belonged to the Ultramarines and their auxiliaries.

Under absolute precision strikes, the Imperial forces did not suffer significant damage. Only a few individuals had their eardrums damaged by the intense shockwaves, or temporarily lost their sight after witnessing the close-range detonation of the lances.

The negative pressure caused by the orbital bombardment threw the ground's atmosphere into extreme chaos. Air turbulence swept dust into raging vortices.

The warriors still on the ground hid in their fortifications. Cold mechanical voices continuously issued warnings from every speaker, telling everyone to stay put and not run around.

Scorching dust billowed towards them. When the warriors curiously emerged from their trenches, everything on the ground had vanished.

The Word Bearers were as if they had never been there. The land was quieter than ever before.

After destroying the ground targets, the weapon arrays turned their direction once more. This strongest defensive line of Kaos finally launched a counterattack against the Word Bearers' space fleet.

The Word Bearer behemoths engaged in space combat with the Ultramarines' starships were struck by massive weapons from orbit. Lances and missiles destroyed a large number of Word Bearer warships. Those swaggering slaughterers were now turned into incredibly bright fireballs, all life vaporized in the flames.

The scene in space could be seen from the main control room. Guilliman looked through the viewport as the powerful beams of the weapon arrays sliced through space, leaving long, narrow rays in the starry expanse.

The enemy fleet burned, caught between the orbital platforms and the remaining Ultramarines flotilla, the Word Bearers were in full rout.

"You failed. The Word Bearers did not kill the Ultramarines."

Guilliman looked down at Khorvalen, struggling in a pool of blood, but the traitor turned his gaze towards the sun of Kaos.

"You... you were wrong. Victory and defeat were already decided. Kaos is finished, hahahaha..."

Khorvalen coughed so hard he nearly ruptured his lungs. Veridian's star had suffered too much; even with the weapon arrays ceasing their assault, it would never recover. Its light was blinding and ugly, an unbalanced nuclear reaction turning it into a deadly supernova.

"Guilliman, I return your words to you – you should have killed me immediately!"

Khorvalen roared, his bloodied, broken body unleashing a surge of psychic power. Frost appeared from nowhere, freezing the ground and coalescing into a strange circle. The Word Bearer vanished from the sight of the Primarch of the Ultramarines.

"He got away! Everyone return to the Glory of Macragge immediately. He must have fled back to his own warship; he has nowhere else to go!"

Guilliman was filled with regret. He had only gravely wounded Khorvalen, failing to crush his head completely.

In this contest, both sides had made the mistake of underestimating their opponent.

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