The roar of bolters from within the room instantly set the Victrix Guard's highly sensitive nerves on edge.
Lox's appearance and shrill warning sent adrenaline surging through every one of them.
The lord of the Five Hundred Worlds had been assassinated in the inner chambers of his own palace, under the heavy protection of the Victrix Guard!
These mightiest and most elite of the Ultramarines displayed their decisiveness in an instant. The rushing Victrix Guard tried to open the massive door, only to discover that the internal hydraulic systems and control buttons had been destroyed.
They immediately changed tactics. Power fields flared along the blades of their Macragge axes, while the powerful twin-linked bolters standard to the Victrix Guard concentrated their fire on the mechanical structures connecting the door to the walls.
The primarch's private chambers had been built to the highest standards. Trace amounts of adamantium had even been mixed into the structure. Even beneath the Victrix Guard's furious bombardment, the door merely warped slightly.
Only when melta bombs were placed against the door's mechanical framework could these terrifying explosives, which relied on highly compressed fusion-fuel reactions, effectively damage the structure.
Yet the Victrix Guard did not dare use melta bombs that were too powerful to breach the door. If the assassins had failed to harm the primarch, only for their own melta blast to stab him in the back, no one would dare bear the consequences.
Inside the room, Guilliman faced the assault of ten fully armed Astartes at once, including "Ventanus."
These assassins clearly knew how formidable the primarch was in close combat, so they uniformly relied on bolter weapons to suppress him at range.
Deadly rounds shot from cold muzzles. In the blink of an eye, time seemed to slow to a halt in Guilliman's vision,