Eighteen hours after the combined fleet of the Word Bearers and the Lords of Midnight exited the warp and arrived at the star system containing Coruscant, the chaos pollution on Improko had fallen to its lowest point. This once-frozen dead world had been reborn.
The purification hymns of the Word Bearers intertwined with the shadows of the Lords of Midnight, thoroughly cleansing the lingering filth of chaos.
The metal corridors once covered in corrupted flesh now flowed with blessed pure water; the command halls that once echoed with the whispers of demons now hung banners depicting the Emperor and the Primarchs.
The psychic flames of the Grey Knights still burned deep within the fortress, the eternal golden fires purifying every inch of once-defiled land.
The Greek demigods planted olive-branch-shaped relics at key points, these softly glowing artifacts continuously emanating waves that repelled chaos.
The accompanying engineering teams demonstrated astounding efficiency, their Hex robots moving like swarms through the fortress. Corrupted, twisted structures visibly returned to their original forms, stronger even than before the fall.
Of course, the forces of chaos and heresy would not idly watch as such a strategic location changed hands.
Within those eighteen standard hours, chaos fleets from Coruscant launched seven major counterattacks.
The most ferocious involved over ten Khorne-blessed Star Destroyers launching suicidal assaults on the combined fleet, their prows adorned with brass rams nailed with still-twitching living sacrifices.
However, all these attacks crashed against a meticulously prepared "iron wall"—
The Word Bearers' Priests (Psykers) had already calculated every possible enemy hyperspace exit point, and the Lords of Midnight had planted disposable beam arrays at key coordinates.
The precision of every defensive battle was clearly recorded on the holographic tactical displays.
When the chaos fleets ended their hyperspace jumps, they were greeted by fully charged beam arrays.
Any landing craft or shuttles that managed to breach the orbital firepower fell into Curze's "death labyrinth"—a three-dimensional killing web of auto-turrets, illusion traps, and neurotoxins.
The most ironic part was that much of the materials for these defenses had been salvaged from purified chaos fleet wreckage, transforming destroyed enemy ships into tombstones for their comrades.
With the seventh counterattack repelled, Improko's overall defensive perimeter expanded to the point where it could threaten the entire star system.
This frozen planet was now a poisoned dagger pressed against the throat of the forces of chaos.
At this moment, aboard the Word Bearers' flagship, Fire of Faith:
Standing side-by-side before the observation window, the holographic projections of Lorgar and Curze silently and synchronously deduced the next stage of the offensive.
Outside, a newly completed temporary orbital dock was assembling the first batch of special torpedoes designed to target Warp entities, infused with psychic materials refined from the Pure Blossom, weapons meant to play a critical role in the coming assault on Coruscant.
"They think they've recaptured a piece on the chessboard," Curze said, looking at the debris of chaos vessels outside, a dangerous curve at his lips. "But they don't realize the whole board has changed."
Lorgar raised a hand, brushing across the Han script sutras on his chest; the words of the "Codex of Humanity" flashed with victorious golden light.
"Let darkness stew in anxiety a little longer, brother. The real judgment hasn't even begun."
Then Lorgar's fingertips traced the weak points on the holographic star map of Coruscant's defenses, while Curze softly explained the intelligence gathered by the Lords of Midnight.
Beep—beep—!
However, their tactical planning was suddenly and rudely interrupted by the blaring of alarms, the lighting across the bridge shifting to a harsh crimson.
"Looks like our guests have arrived early," Curze remarked, a flicker of vigilance flashing in his eyes.
Hearing this, Lorgar calmly turned toward the observation window, his grip on his scepter tightening slightly.
Outside, the once-serene starry sky above Improko was being violently torn apart—
First, nearly a thousand wedge-shaped "Star Wars" universe ships twisted out of hyperspace, their once-sleek armor now crawling with writhing flesh, gun barrels protruding like bone spurs from wounds.
But what truly darkened the expressions of the two Primarchs was the fleet that followed.
Reality itself was torn open by a horrifying force, and more than four thousand crimson-hulled ships, painted in Khorne's bloody colors, tore through the fabric of existence in the most blasphemous way.
Their appearance resembled Emperor-class battleships of the main universe's Imperium, yet these sacred constructs had been defiled into symbols of blasphemy, their armor engraved with brass skull reliefs, engine exhausts spewing viscous blood-like matter.
Leading them was a thirty-kilometer-long behemoth.
As this monstrosity squeezed out of the rift, everyone on the bridge, save for the Primarchs, felt their breath catch.
This chaos-corrupted ship resembled a mobile shrine to Khorne—
Its hull completely twisted, its prow reshaped into a roaring blood maw, its sides trailing countless chains strung with corpses.
Most horrifying were its portholes, each one showing twisted faces trapped behind them, souls eternally imprisoned in silent screams.
Moreover, they hadn't traveled to Improko like the "Star Wars" ships via hyperspace; rather, they ripped open red-violet glowing "vortices" in real space and "squeezed" through, crossing from another dimension into reality.
Upon seeing those "vortices," both Lorgar and Curze immediately thought of the Warp.
Without waiting for orders from the Primarchs, the combined fleet completed battle deployment within seventeen seconds of the alarms sounding.
The Fire of Faith fired first, unleashing its new golden beam arrays that traced faith-filled paths across the vacuum.
These Emperor-blessed weapons exploded not in conventional blasts but in purifying fires that engulfed entire enemy ships.
Three chaos-corrupted Star Destroyers melted like candles under the holy flames.
The Night Blade of the Lords of Midnight displayed a completely different combat style.
Instead of beams, it released thousands of miniature "suicide boarding pods."
These pitch-black capsules, coated in light-absorbing material, fragmented into smaller units near the enemy ships.
Upon piercing the enemy hulls, they didn't detonate but released Curze's specially formulated neurotoxin.
Chaos cultists inside the struck ships burst into insane laughter, then began tearing out their own innards with their corrupted claws.
However, when these attacks hit the blood-red ships, the effects were greatly diminished.
Apart from Emperor-blessed weapons, ordinary railguns, Gauss cannons, plasma weapons, and hardlight beams were distorted and deflected by a blood-red force field several hundred meters from the target ships.
The Night Blade's suicide pods were crushed by brass giant hands suddenly extending from the void.
More terrifyingly, destroyed chaos shipwrecks didn't drift idly—they self-assembled into new, grotesque combat units.
Lorgar's psychic senses instantly detected abnormalities: the seams of the crimson ships flickered with runes not belonging to this or any other known universe. He said gravely to his brother:
"This is not simple chaos corruption. These Khorne ships hail from another timeline's human Imperium."
Curze's pale finger traced across the thirty-kilometer enemy ship, enlarging the image to reveal a blood-maw-shaped emblem.
"Interesting," Curze hissed like a serpent. "Seems that in some timeline, we lost very, very badly."
At that moment, the Judgment launched its payload: twelve rhomboid metallic pillars forming a massive diamond formation around the ship.
The Han-script runes on the pillars ignited into burning golden chains that, like living creatures, lashed toward the blood-red ships.
When the chains touched the enemy hulls, the writhing faces in the portholes stilled, then turned into golden light and dissipated, delivering the most painful blow to Khorne's forces.
Simultaneously, the Greek demigods activated the "Olympus Array."
Flying spear-shaped fighters trailing silver-blue psychic threads, they wove a net through the chaos fleet.
Ancient Greek battle songs, defying physics, resonated through the vacuum, and under this song, three blood-red battleships shattered like glass.
When the first round of fire exchanges broke out, the entire starfield gleamed and pulsed like molten glass thrown into a furnace—brilliant, and deadly.
Though chaos had an overwhelming numerical advantage, the combined fleet, through flawless tactics and pure psychic suppression, tore open bloody gaps in the enemy lines.
Massive psychic matrices bloomed like golden roses, the sacred beams directly piercing vast numbers of chaos ships.
Instead of conventional explosions, the struck ships twisted and collapsed into golden psychic dust under invisible crushing forces.
After all, attacks from the Word Bearers and Grey Knights were most lethal to chaos, especially the Judgment, the Grey Knights' flagship—every torpedo launched bore exorcism scriptures, releasing cleansing holy shockwaves upon detonation.
However, Khorne's thralls soon showed their most terrifying trait: the greater the losses, the more frenzied they became.
Whoosh—whoosh——!!
Hummm. Hummm——!!
Crimson psychic beams, viscous "blood" shells, and brass skull barrages rained down on the combined fleet's shields.
The ferocity of the bombardment forced the fleet's energy shields into full deployment, some smaller ships' shields nearing overload.
These smaller ships, along with heavily loaded carriers and supply vessels, began retreating into Improko's atmosphere, temporarily withdrawing from the "naval battle."
This left the already outnumbered fleet increasingly strained.
Nonetheless, the four Emperor-class battleships, including the two legion flagships, launched a counterattack.
Hundreds of meter-long rhomboid pillars were launched, assembling into a fourteen-kilometer-wide three-dimensional matrix.
The pillars' runes lit up, flowing toward the center like ignited fuses.
When the final rune blazed, the starfield seemed to freeze for a second—
Ri~whoosh————————!!
A cyan-blue beam ripped through the silence.
Unlike conventional lasers, it twisted like a freed thunder dragon, roaring silently toward the enemy fleet.
Reality visibly warped where the beam passed; nearby wrecks were shredded into molecules by the warped gravitational fields.
This annihilating torrent tore through the center of the chaos fleet.
Enemy ships struck directly by the beam didn't even explode—they were instantly plasma-fied.
Outer ships were flipped and smashed into each other like leaves in a storm.
When the light faded, a perfect spherical vacuum existed at the enemy formation's heart, as if even cosmic dust had been obliterated.
The surviving chaos ships hesitated, while the still-spinning wreckage drifted like headless flies.
The thirty-kilometer chaos flagship still floated at the center, a blasphemous shrine against the void.
Its surface flesh shimmered sickly in the cannon fire; thousands of twisted faces in its portholes turned to the combined fleet, howling silently.
Brass reliefs oozed blood, the droplets congealing into bizarre spheres, then bursting into blood mist.
"."
Lorgar's scepter suddenly radiated blinding golden light. He frowned slightly and exchanged a heavy look with Curze.
Both Primarchs sensed a familiar psychic signature within the flagship.
It bore the fragmented psychic imprint of one of their brothers—shattered like a broken mirror.
The presence was filled with mad muttering, twisted laughter, and a barely suppressed "cry for help."
Curze turned away in the hologram, glancing sideways at Lorgar and said:
"That madman is clearly waiting for us." His voice scraped like ice across glass. "Every second of delay gives him more time to prepare crazier tricks."
"I'll handle things out here," Lorgar nodded lightly, the sutra on his chest fluttering without wind. "But remember, brother, no matter what you see—"
"I know."
Curze's image was already fading, leaving behind only a disturbing smile.
"After all... madness is my domain."
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