A tide of Iron Men surged across the battlefield in a mechanical wave, tying down the Nightbringer's shard. Yet, despite being outnumbered, the fragment showed no signs of weakening.
With a lazily disdainful gesture, the Nightbringer summoned its obsidian scythe and began cleaving through the machines, not out of necessity, but to satisfy its ancient bloodlust. Its blade sang through alloy and gravitic armor plating, scattering incandescent fragments across the blasted terrain.
However, after tearing through battalions of soulless constructs across the broken landmass, the C'tan Shard grew… bored.
These machines had no fear. No souls. No agony. Nothing to scream, nothing to suffer. Nothing to feed its hunger. Their destruction was sterile, void of the emotional nourishment the C'tan craved.
Effortlessly cleaving a massive Knight-class Iron Man in two, the Nightbringer cast its gaze upward toward the Leviathan, then launched itself skyward in a streak of shadowed light.
But the moment it left the ground, one of the colossal Iron Men lunged and grabbed it mid-flight.
Startled that a mere machine could restrain it, the Nightbringer turned, but was violently slammed back into the planet's crust. The impact sent tectonic shockwaves across the battlefield, shattering mountains and boiling underground seas, fissures radiating out like cracks in a cosmic mirror.
The giant construct's shoulder-mounted head rotated as its arm-mounted weapon systems shifted from energy beam to graviton field emitters.
This new weapon, originally developed for Iron Men assault units, generated localized high-density gravity wells capable of crushing targets with force surpassing standard gravitic shields. The air around the Nightbringer shimmered and warped as space itself seemed to collapse inward.
Though the pressure forced the shard into the ground, it did not break.
The Nightbringer tried to phase through the battlefield, to reduce itself into mist and escape, but it failed. The entire world was enveloped in the blue-hued dimensional dome of the Nexus Firmament, anchoring even non-corporeal beings in place.
Everything was visible on the Firmament's tactical display.
Qin Mo observed every movement of the Nightbringer, then asked Shapeshifter beside him: "Do you think this is working?"
"It is," Shapeshifter nodded. "This shard probably fed on stellar energy before it arrived, boosting its power, but a shard is still a shard. Eventually, under star-breaking-scale firepower, it'll collapse."
After a pause, it added, "We're lucky it's just a shard. Even with its nourishment, this is still only a sliver of what a true Star God is. A complete C'tan… the fight would drag on until the heat death of the universe."
"Then we'd be tossing black holes at each other and detonating stars like firecrackers." Qin Mo said, agreeing. "Full-scale C'tan war happens on a sector-wide scale. Reality-warping, physics-breaking, using stars as ammunition."
"Doesn't matter much," Shapeshifter shrugged. "There are only two complete C'tan left in the galaxy."
That made Qin Mo think of the Outsider, Tsara'noga.
A Star God so warped by madness that even its own kin feared to speak its name.
A complete Star God, tricked by Cegorach the Laughing God of the Aeldari, into consuming its brethren in a paranoid frenzy, the Outsider had retreated into the void, now curled up in some dark corner at the southern edge of the galaxy, mad and reclusive.
It was not destroyed, merely hidden. Slumbering. Suffering.
Even the Tyranid Hive Fleets, mindless in their hunger, avoid that thing, and take a very wide detour around it.
While the Outsider cannot match the Nightbringer for pure force, the Void Dragon for technological intellect, or the Deceiver for guile and cunning, it is rumored to be the most deadly and dangerous of the remaining C'tan.
Should the Outsider return from its self-imposed exile, the galaxy shall bear witness to a culling not seen since the last Necron harvest, which almost wiped out all life in the galaxy and brought about the downfall of the Old Ones.
Barring a cosmic-level disaster, no one sane would ever provoke the Outsider.
Still, the current situation didn't involve the Outsider.
As Qin Mo and Shapeshifter conversed, the Celestial Engine completed its recharge and returned to the system. The Leviathan recalled all Iron Men forces via teleportation.
The Celestial Engine re-engaged.
Once again, twin particle lance moons unleashed devastating salvos of converging energy, forming planet-splitting beams that rained down upon the blackened world below. Each lance beam was a spear of sunfire, splitting tectonic plates like porcelain and vaporizing oceans into planetary steam.
As the planet's surface began to melt and fracture under the bombardment again, Qin Mo suddenly asked:
"Should I seal it in a Tesseract Labyrinth, or… eat it?"
"You want to end up like it?" Shapeshifter asked, pointing at the still-living Nightbringer shard drifting amidst planetary rubble.
"Then I guess we seal it and use it as a battery." Qin Mo shrugged, rising from his console. He opened a nearby storage compartment and began rummaging.
Eventually, he pulled out a fist-sized object: a Tesseract Labyrinth.
It functioned much like the ones used by the Necrons, except this one wasn't painted in Qin Mo's usual obsidian black.
Instead, it was painted red and white. An echo from another time. A relic of a life that predated the grimdark universe he now inhabited.
"Teleport us to its location," Qin Mo ordered the command AI.
In an instant, he and Shapeshifter materialized near the shattered world's remains.
The planet had been pulverized into floating tectonic plates and molten fragments. Electromagnetic storms surged through the region.
There, suspended between two drifting landmasses, was the Nightbringer shard. Still alive. Still struggling.
"Forgemaster…" it rasped, seething with hate as it stared at Qin Mo. "You're the reason these wretched slave-species could have god-killing weapons!"
"You should've come down here and crushed this shard yourself! So many millennia… and you're still so cautious!"
"You're still alive, Forgemaster? You remember me? Get me out of this thing! You promised you'd separate me!"
Countless voices echoed in Qin Mo's mind, some kind, some venomous, all conflicting. He couldn't tell which one was the shard's true identity.
But he knew what had to be done.
He slowly raised the red-and-white Tesseract Labyrinth.
Upon seeing it, the Nightbringer Fragment panicked, its form twisted, fleeing backward a full kilometer in the blink of an eye… but the distance between them didn't change.
The Nightbringer realized it too late, Qin Mo had rewritten local space.
The shard, despite its vast power, was only a fragment. It could not outmatch a reality-altering battlefield crafted by a whole ctan like the Forgemaster.
It had escaped the Necron star-tomb once, feeding on stellar energy to rebuild its strength, but all of that power had been worn down in the recent engagement. Now, only the barest core of its strength remained.
"When I seal you in here," Qin Mo said coldly, "you'll have all the time in the universe to answer my questions."
With that, he tossed the Labyrinth.
The red-and-white sphere collided with the shard's head. In a flash of energy, the Nightbringer was drawn inward, captured.
The Labyrinth shuddered three times, then projected a holographic message:
["CAPTURE SUCCESSFUL."]
"What's that projection even for?" Shapeshifter frowned. "It's a shard. Once it's in the Labyrinth, it's not getting out."
"You just don't get it," Qin Mo grinned, calling the Labyrinth back into his hand. "Some victories need flair."
Regardless, the shard was secured.
Shapeshifter felt a wave of relief, but remembered something.
Back on the Leviathan, Qin Mo had once told him: "And you've got a more important job. Save your strength."
But now the shard was sealed. So what job was left?
"…That 'important job' you mentioned," Shapeshifter asked cautiously, "what was it?"
"There isn't one anymore," Qin Mo replied, shaking his head. "I had dozens of contingency plans to deal with this. The one we executed was the primary plan. One of the backups involved you and I personally fighting the shard… but we didn't need it."
Shapeshifter assumed human form and sighed with exaggerated relief. "You're... really cautious."
Qin Mo didn't respond. Together, they teleported back into the Leviathan.
The mission was complete. The Leviathan and the Celestial Engine began their return trajectory.
As the Celestial Engine disappeared into the void, Shapeshifter asked suddenly, "Why did you even build something like that?"
"…Because I wanted to." Qin Mo didn't elaborate.
But the truth ran deeper. The Celestial Engine wasn't meant for the Nightbringer.
It was built for a war that never came, a theoretical event where the Inquisition declared the Talon heretical, prompting full-scale Imperial assault.
It was meant to counter the Gloriana-class Battleship deployed in such scenarios.
"And this still isn't the complete Celestial Engine," Qin Mo said excitedly. "The real version will be a planet with orbiting two moons, equipped with thousands of lance batteries and planetary-class shields. Fully crewed. A war world. And that won't be the only one," he added. "Eventually, I'll make enough of them to form an entire star system."
Shapeshifter listened silently. To it, building an entire star system-sized war machine seemed… excessive.
Unless, of course, Qin Mo actually planned to march into the Eye of Terror itself.
If not?
Then maybe it was all just a very elaborate excuse for the Forgemaster to keep forging godlike machines.
.....
If you'd like to support me and read a bit ahead, feel free to check out my Patreon. (https://www.patreon.com/c/Hemont).
Do you like this Novel? Then pls consider supporting me by Commenting or Rating it.
.....