Alien Empera's dark energy wave surged like a tide, instantly engulfing one of the Great Devourer's avatars.
That terrifying darkness was like a multitude of blades; black energy shells fired from his palms tore the Tyranid avatar's flesh inch by inch, pulverizing it and denying it even a chance to regenerate.
The avatar shrieked in psychic agony and finally collapsed entirely under the invasion of darkness, becoming ash drifting in space.
Seeing this, the other avatar immediately shifted tactics. Psychic sigils swarmed over its carapace again, forming a honeycombed defense matrix to blunt the remaining wave of darkness.
But Alien Empera only sneered. His figure flashed, and he appeared in an instant above the Tyranid avatar's head. The Empera Blade swelled again, its edge coiled with annihilating black lightning.
The descending blade unleashed dark power like a rampant dragon, piercing the avatar's psychic defenses in an instant.
The Great Devourer's massive Tyranid body was torn apart amid the thunderstorm; carapace shattered, flesh vaporized.
Alien Empera's dark power rolled through the star domain like the fury of an abyss; its might dimmed the surrounding stars.
Though the last avatar of the Great Devourer was grievously wounded, it still refused to yield—blinding psychic rainbows burst from the cracks in its broken carapace.
Billions of lesser Tyranid organisms poured madly from its wounds, like a reverse rain of flesh, condensing in the vacuum into a wormstorm vortex that blotted out the heavens.
The scene was terrifying to the extreme—enough to make anyone with trypophobia shudder. If such a swarm descended upon a planet, the entire world would be devoured in an instant.
Unfortunately for them, they faced Alien Empera at full power—the Grand Emperor of the Dark Universe.
"A dying struggle." Alien Empera's scarlet eyes burned with black flame, his cloak unfurling into a shadowy canopy spanning several planets.
He clasped his left hand in the air, and three collapsed stars, wrapped in dark energy, appeared behind him—their blazing cores forcibly twisted into purple-black spears of ruin.
"Allow me to grant you eternal annihilation! Do you like fireworks?"
A wave of vast dark energy spread. On the system's outskirts, a gas giant was instantly wrapped in Empera's darkness, began to collapse, and was converted into an apocalyptic energy storm that detonated with ferocious violence.
Rhodes couldn't help but swear under his breath. Alien Empera had actually detonated a gas giant. Though its explosion wasn't on par with a supernova, it was nothing to scoff at.
Rhodes immediately ordered the flagship's void shield arrays, as well as its psychic shields and shipborne energy shields, to maximum—triple redundancy.
Meanwhile, per Rhodes's command, the other human fleets activated their Warp drives, tearing a hole in realspace to slip into the Warp to avoid the coming storm.
Even so, Rhodes remained uneasy and had Tartarus and Zog join forces to erect a gold-and-pure-white energy barrier.
Once all preparations were complete, the gas giant detonated.
BOOM—!!!
The gas giant's explosion raised a storm of destruction in the dark void.
Under the Dark Emperor's catalysis, the compressed stellar-core matter became hundreds of millions of streams of purple-black energy, sweeping the entire system in an instant like a cosmic-scale supernova!
The wormstorm vortex was half vaporized in the blast; countless Tyranid organisms didn't even have time to scream before they were reduced to ash under the corrosion of dark power.
Yet the Great Devourer's avatar still wasn't fully annihilated—its core twisted madly in the explosion, thicker psychic energies gushing from within its shattered carapace as it forcibly reassembled amid the dying blast!
Across the entire system, every Tyranid organism seemed drawn by something, converging toward the avatar at the center.
"What tenacious life." Alien Empera sneered, clenching the Empera Blade; the black lightning along its edge grew ever more violent.
"But my patience is exhausted." Even as the words fell, he vanished—and in the next instant he was directly above the Tyranid avatar.
The Dark Emperor's sword erupted in a black mist that devoured all light, then came crashing down, striking the avatar hard.
The Tyranid Great Devourer let out a shrill, universe-shaking scream.
In its master's hand, the Dark Emperor's sword—born of darkness—unleashed unimaginable might.
Rhodes glanced at the ornate Empera Blade at his own waist. It really had been unfair to the blade—following him, it could never display such power.
The Empera Blade fell with a roar, its arc carving a pitch-black fissure across several astronomical units as it literally tore space!
The avatar's psychic defense split like paper; its body was bisected down the middle. The dark energy surged like a plague, ravenously eroding its flesh and halting its regeneration.
Behind Alien Empera rose the phantom of a colossal dark sun—the ultimate symbol of the Dark Universe, the Domain of Darkness that could swallow even stars!
Once, Alien Empera used this technique to seal the sun of the Ultra System's Earth, plunging the entire planet into darkness. If the Ultramen of the Land of Light hadn't appeared en masse, the sun would have been extinguished then and there.
Yet just as the avatar was about to be utterly destroyed, the Hive Mind's psychic power erupted. The remains of the Great Devourer's avatar began recombining at high speed, attempting to split and be reborn once more.
"A futile struggle. If you resurrect ten thousand times, I'll kill you ten thousand and one." Alien Empera raised his left hand, a pitch-black sphere coalescing in his palm, sending out waves of annihilation.
Dark power condensed into an orb, and he hurled it at the avatar.
"Dark Singularity Burst—!"
The sphere suddenly swelled into a micro black hole, whose terrifying gravity pulled every scrap of the Tyranid avatar's remains into it—not a shred of flesh left behind.
Once it finished devouring, the black hole rapidly collapsed and vanished into nothingness—a technique only the purest dark power could wield.
Just as the avatar was about to be completely destroyed, a surge of psychic power flared.
"My swarm… shall devour all!" With that screech, all Tyranid remains in the system abruptly came alive, transforming into countless psychic bombs and self-detonating in all directions!
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom—!!!
The entire star domain became a vortex of annihilation, and even Alien Empera was forced back several steps by the self-destruction's shockwave.
But his cloak snapped once, dark energy surged again, and he suppressed the last of the blast's aftershocks! When the dust settled, the Great Devourer's projection had completely faded, and the avatar's remains were gone.
Alien Empera slowly sheathed his sword; the energy on his dark armor gradually calmed. He swept his cold gaze over the ravaged star domain, then looked toward Rhodes's fleet.
["Your subordinate is quite unusual. You win this time too—but only for now."]
That was the final message the Great Devourer left for Rhodes.
Throughout the entire system, every Tyranid organism had been wiped out. This time, Rhodes received a full ten million system coins.
The battlefield fell briefly silent. Several of the gene-sons aboard Rhodes's ship stared, stunned, at the battle. What power this was!
The skirmishes they'd fought on planetary surfaces were nothing. Even if they grew to giant size, before existences like these they would be obliterated in an instant.
A chill crept into Rhodes's gene-sons. This battle had already exceeded the scope of conventional interstellar war!
Rhodes nodded in satisfaction. Though the Great Devourer's avatar had only one-tenth of the body's power, it was still world-ending.
Even so, it had been crushed by Alien Empera. Our Dark Universe Grand Emperor was stronger and more reliable. As for how he compared to the Great Devourer's true body—who could say?
Standing at Rhodes's side, Tartarus's eyes flashed with admiration.
"As expected of the Dark Universe's Grand Emperor. This power truly rivals the gods."
He had long heard of Alien Empera's might—one who could confront the Land of Light head-on; even the King of the Absolutians had to take him seriously.
Rhodes smiled faintly, his gaze deep. "This is only the beginning. The Great Devourer's true body has yet to appear. The real battle lies ahead."
It was only an avatar—and one with merely a tenth of the body's power, pieced together at that—yet its regenerative power was already so horrifying. One could imagine the true body.
An utterly cockroach-like life force. He'd have to think of a counter.
Alien Empera stowed the Empera Blade and flew back to Rhodes's bridge. The suffocating pressure from his dark armor still rolled off him, but before Rhodes he knelt on one knee and said respectfully, "Master, the task is complete. I have utterly destroyed that creature."
Rhodes nodded. "Well done, Alien Empera. Your power pleases me. That battle was nothing short of magnificent."
Alien Empera lifted his head; scarlet eyes flashed with fighting spirit. "Thank you for your praise, great master. To kill your enemies for you is my honor."
This was the battle he wanted! It rivaled his war with Father of Ultra. Meeting an opponent against whom he could go all-out was wonderful.
"Alien Empera, how would you rate that avatar's combat strength? How much of your power did you use to defeat it?" Rhodes asked.
He would not forget the message left by the Tyranid Great Devourer's will at its dispersal. Next time, he would have to be ten times stronger than this avatar.
"With respect, master—the opponent was extremely powerful, with an utterly terrifying regenerative capacity. I was using nearly my full strength to annihilate it. If not for my extreme dark power forming a micro black hole, I might not have been able to completely erase it," said the Dark Universe's Grand Emperor.
Though he had spoken with contempt in the fight, he respected the foe's strength. Even in his original universe, such power counted as a major force.
"That was only an avatar—merely one-tenth the strength of its true body," said Rhodes.
"Truly astonishing. An avatar with only a tenth of the body's power possessing such horrifying might," Alien Empera mused.
Which meant he was not that thing's match. He had already gone all-out.
Had the avatar been any stronger, he would have been the one to lose!
And tenfold strength was no joke. Twice the enemy's strength could already mean a one-sided crush; at two or three times, a casual blow could subdue an opponent completely.
If the true body came, even with the master's other combatants, they might not be enough.
"Do not worry. For the Great Devourer's true body to reach the Milky Way will take time—at least a century," said Tartarus beside them.
With his universe-spanning teleportation, he could clearly sense the Great Devourer—and understood how formidable it was.
It was indeed one-tenth, but that was one-tenth of its flesh alone, not counting the psychic power the Great Devourer commanded!
To deal with that enemy, the master would need to summon an ultimate lifeform to fight it!
Fortunately, it lacked instantaneous transit across the universe. Otherwise, things would be dire. By devouring life, it could strengthen itself—and then the entire cosmos would become its food.
"In a hundred years, we will surely defeat it. For now, let us proceed with this crusade. Alien Empera, you will remain aboard my ship and, like Tartarus, guard me at my side," Rhodes said.
This Unyielding Crusade must accumulate enough to upgrade the Advanced Enhancement Shop, then complete enhancements for the Dark Universe Grand Emperor and the Angel of Root Destruction, as well as the Yapool's interdimensional space.
Rhodes planned to redeem three monster enhancement opportunities, targeting Alien Empera, Zog the Angel of Root Destruction, and the Yapool.
One mastering light, one mastering darkness, and one mastering interdimensional energy—once these three powers were his to command, Rhodes's own strength would transform.
With the war against the Tyranids concluded, Rhodes piloted his ship to catch up to the main fleet and led them to continue the Unyielding Crusade.
Countless xenos still awaited them, as did the forces of Chaos—an endless stream of system coins!
The entire Unyielding Crusade was in full swing under the leadership of several Primarchs!