"Steel within and without, all steel. This had always been the creed and battle cry of the Iron Warriors."
"But when Iron Men shouted those words, they were clearly more fitting, yet somehow even stranger..."
The Imperial Fists who had come to carry out the decapitation mission were struck speechless. It felt as though they had merely come along to witness their old rivals being slaughtered by the Iron Men.
Even the elite Templar Brethren struggled to keep up with Adam's speed. To their eyes, Adam left behind only afterimages.
It was not because he had mastered some special technique for exerting force. It was simply because when Lox had created his firstborn, he had built him according to the highest possible standards.
He had used the Omnissiah's authority to create the finest materials. Every component of Adam's body was the crystallization of cutting-edge technology.
Without the empowerment of authority, nothing comparable could have been created through ordinary means.
Though Adam and the mass-produced war Iron Men under his command appeared much the same on the surface, they were fundamentally two completely different things.
If the auramite armor worn by the Custodes was worth an inhabited world, then Adam's body was worth something even more absurd.
Watching the scene before them, the Imperial Fists could not help but feel a sense of crisis rising within them.
The Astartes were still the Empire's relied-upon elite force, but in terms of cost-effectiveness and numbers, they were no match for the Iron Men.
They were weapons of war forged by the Emperor. They could accept the fate of dying on the battlefield, but they could never tolerate being rendered obsolete by some other existence.
To die gloriously on the battlefield was an immensely honorable end for every Astartes. In the moment of death,