The Adeptus Mechanicus agreed, leaving the Knight Houses dumbfounded.
What? How long had they been fighting? And now they were supposed to hand this battlefield over?
Had they been working for nothing?
When the Knight Houses calculated their profits, they had included everything they would earn from conquering this entire Aeldari territory and selling the whole lot to the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Now this... this was a massive loss.
(A Tech-Priest glanced their way.)
Uh... they still had a war to fight. They couldn't leave everything to the Astartes.
The Priest didn't care. They could leave it to the Crimson Tide and stand guard before the Webway Gate. These fellows had already demonstrated ample military strength. What the Forge World was waiting for... was someone to lodge a complaint, of course.
Since the Great Crusade force commanded by the Lord Regent wasn't far away, the Adeptus Mechanicus sent a Priest straight to Guilliman to request assistance. (One fewer Priest competing for knowledge. Heehee.)
The Knight Houses formally opened the area below. What puzzled Evan was that, according to the records, the Aeldari really had opened the Webway. The Knight Houses had suddenly discovered Aeldari emerging from beneath their own territory, and that was how the fighting had begun.
But the Knight Houses had already fought their way into the Webway. Why hadn't the Aeldari closed it?
Could the Knight Houses actually have a way to open the Webway themselves?
Evan rode a Mastodon heavy transport into the heavily defended Core Region. Along the way, he could see many Knight suits marching resolutely toward the gate.
"They're war maniacs."
"At least they're fighting for the Emperor."
After connecting to their Machine Spirits countless times and sweeping across battlefields, the pilots had become addicted to that feeling of invincibility. Every Knight was a