At the same moment, deep within the Hive Mind's network, Rena's consciousness was sharing the full perception of the battlefield through the hybrid officers in the garrison.
Human emotions kept flooding into her consciousness.
There was fear, tension, and uncertainty about the unknown, but at the very bottom, there was a heavy, almost stubborn determination.
They knew they were going to die.
They understood that against the Thousand Sons ' wizard legion, against the flesh-and-blood Aberrant that had devoured the orbital spear, their mere tens of thousands of defenders would not last long.
But not a single person backed down.
Rena quietly "watched" the busy figures on the battlefield.
The young soldier's hands trembled as he loaded the Lasgun, yet he still stood at the very front.
The elderly pastor coughed up blood, yet he still raised his staff and chanted prayers.
Bishop Jensen stood at the forefront of the position, leaning on his scepter. His back was thin but straight, like a pillar separating Chaos from the human world.
She suddenly remembered something Lynn had once said.
At that time, she couldn't understand human beings.
Weak, short-lived, full of emotions and flaws, their individual combat power is insignificant in the face of the Tyranids's biological weapons.
They lack a shared network of consciousness and a unified will, constantly succumbing to internal strife and distrust, endlessly fighting over trivial gains.
But Lynn told her that the most terrifying thing about humanity is never the strength of an individual.
"They would fight for something intangible—home, honor, fellow human beings, or even an ideal that can never be realized."
"Willing to give everything, including my life."
At the time, Rena just thought it was absurd.
The individual sacrifices of the Tyranids are solely for the purpose of the entire race's continuous devouring, satisfying an insatiable appetite. It is the optimal solution etched into their genes, a cold, hard logic of survival.
However, human sacrifices are often not cost-effective at all.
They could have survived by taking a step back, or gained more life by surrendering, yet they chose the most tragic path.
Completely inefficient and irrational.
But at this moment, as the collective determination of tens of thousands of people surged into her consciousness through her senses, and as the figures of those who knew they were doomed but still gripped their weapons clearly appeared before her eyes.
Rena suddenly felt a stirring in her heart that she couldn't quite explain.
This is not a genetic instruction, nor a forced command from the Hive Mind.
They chose it themselves.
They chose to use their own flesh and blood to block the torrent of the Warp.
Rena is unable to empathize with human emotions, nor can she fully comprehend the logic behind this "sublimity".
But she knew that these people were helping Lynn protect Brevis, and were helping her protect the biomass and order on this planet that had not yet been devoured.
All she could do was make the most of every second they had given their lives for.
"Order the Priest of Lower City to have all the Plague-Cleansing forces immediately assemble towards Midtown, deploy along the underground network, and intercept any Chaos units attempting to infiltrate from underground."
"Three regiments of the Vanguard reserve force are to immediately proceed to the surrounding streets of the Midtown and establish a defensive line in depth, utilizing the buildings as cover."
"All air defense firepower should be redirected to the ground, prioritizing coverage of the area surrounding the Warp Domain region."
Commands were transmitted rapidly along the swarm network, precise, efficient, and without any redundancy.
The religious armed forces in the Lower City have moved, the Frost Soldier Legion in the Ice Plains is ready to go at any time, and the Vanguard reserve force directly under the Governor's Office has also been mobilized.
Under Rena's command, all of Brevis's armed forces were converging on the Midtown or preparing to cover their retreat.
She doesn't understand human sacrifice, but she will accept it in her own way.
Within the Warp Domain, Atia, aboard the Disc of Tzeentch, slowly drifted away from the core of the Flower of Flesh.
The dark blue Power Armour gleamed under the distorted starlight, its surface covered with intricate, ever-changing runes.
The golden outline meanders along the lines of the nail plate, outlining intricate and mysterious patterns.
The slits in the helmet's eye sockets did not reveal the usual brutality of Chaos Space Marine, but rather an almost indifferent thirst for knowledge, like a scholar observing a specimen on a laboratory table.
In his left hand he held a magic staff as tall as a person, the top of which was inlaid with a multifaceted crystal that rotated continuously, refracting different colors of Warp firelight with each rotation.
A deep blue velvet cloak draped over his shoulders, with nine pupils on it that turned gently with his movements, as if constantly peering into reality.
As one of the nine high-ranking wizards under the Supreme Being of the Cult of Knowledge, Atia rarely sets foot in the Realspace anymore.
Most of the time, he was in the Sanctuary Library of Planet of the Sorcerers, flipping through ancient scrolls, unraveling the threads of fate, and studying the essence of all things.
The Lord of Change bestowed upon him wisdom, and also an insatiable thirst for knowledge.
Anything unknown, obscured, or deviating from the course of fate in the world can drive him mad.
This time, what drew him to this remote border planet was a person.
A person whose fate is entangled by the Tyranids.
The initial clue came from a magical artifact acquired by chance— the Eye of Radicus.
It was an artifact unearthed from a Necrons. After being modified by the Thousand Sons Sorcerer, it could glimpse the fate of most individuals and had never made a mistake.
But just three months ago, when he was guided by the Lord of Change to focus his observations on the Brevis System, the Eye of Radicus failed.
On that planet, there is one person whose fate is completely blank.
There is no past, no future, and no observable trajectory.
It's as if this person doesn't exist in the long river of fate at all, yet still undeniably influences the trajectory of an entire galaxy.
Even more interestingly, in the faint afterimage reflected back by the artifact, the person's body was wrapped in the tentacles of the Tyranids.
It's not parasitism or devouring; it's symbiosis.
A human has established a deep symbiotic relationship with the Tyranids, and can even influence the swarm in return.
This discovery ignited Atia's passion almost instantly.
What are the Tyranids? They are the purest predators in the galaxy, a biological torrent driven solely by the instinct to devour.
They have no individual will, no possibility of communication, and no one can truly "control" them.
If we could thoroughly understand the nature of this symbiotic relationship, if we could master the methods to control the Tyranids...
That would be a revolutionary breakthrough for Cult of Knowledge.
It could even push the Supreme Being's plans forward by thousands of years.
So he came.
Leading an elite Thousand Sons Warriors, and following the call of the Chaos Cultist, he personally descended upon this remote planet, traversing the passage constructed from nine flesh and blood altars.
Atia's gaze swept across the boundary of the territory, landing on the Imperium guards who stood ready outside.
Tens of thousands of ordinary human soldiers, several thousand low-ranking clergy, and several hundred rudimentary armored vehicles.
They are ridiculously weak.
He couldn't even be bothered to deal with these ants himself.
To him, the soldiers outside weren't even "opponents"; they were merely debris that needed to be cleared away before the experiment.
His real target was that special human who could control the Tyranids.
"Clean them up."