The destruction of the "Core Database" hadn't "killed" her. Instead... it had "set her free."
It had "killed" her reason and responsibility as Phaeron.
All that remained... was a... "pure," "hungry," "utterly bereft"... "monster"!
"You... will all die..." Her voice was no longer "her" voice, but a chorus of billions of dead souls. "Then... I will find him... and eat his soul... inch... by inch!"
Liu Zhipeng's Overlord body "tumbled" out of a phase rift.
With a "smack," he landed on the observation platform at the very top of the Highest Dome in a textbook full-body prostration.
His gaze turned toward the "main battlefield" in the Throne Room.
Then he saw it.
He saw that golden, perfect angel, Sanguinius... down on one knee.
He saw the angel's golden divine blood staining the obsidian floor red.
He saw the angel's holy wings being corroded by a kind of... energy of nothingness!
"..."
Slowly... he turned his metal head toward the source of the "screaming."
Phaeron Xunbekel.
She was still alive.
She floated above the throne.
She had become the "god" of the "Flayed Ones" curse! An... incarnation of nothingness made of "hunger" and "despair"!
"Fucking... hell..."
Leo's metal jaw dropped to the floor with a "clang" for the second time.
"This fucking... isn't in the script! I... did I just... make things worse?!"
Leo stared at the incorporeal Xunbekel. The "Despair Aura" radiating from her had even begun to make the Highest Dome, built from living metal... wither!
And Sanguinius... before this pure negative energy, his sacred Primarch light was like a torch in the night...
"No! Fuck no!"
Leo's brain completed its "tactical simulation" in 0.001 seconds.
"Sanguinius... I fucking saved him during the Horus Heresy by luring him away! He can't fucking die here!!"
[Glory of Bloodshed] activated! Under