Yoholo, There is a surprise for you all in the next chapter, make sure to check it out.
You do not want miss this.
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Chapter 148: Gullimans Rebellion?? – Darkest Timeline!!
The Osiris Mind Control species was ancient beyond measure, spawning in the darkness between stars across countless eons.
[Mental attack detected. Establishing mental barriers and initiating counter-attack protocols.]
The Gene Engine's voice resonated through Guilliman's consciousness as defensive systems engaged.
The alien lord grunted in pain as his psychic assault met unexpected resistance.
[Target's mental defenses compromised. Initiating reverse invasion.]
Agony twisted the creature's withered features. Psychic light bled from its eyes like tears of liquid fire. It opened its mouth in a silent scream of torment.
A flood of alien images crashed into Guilliman's mind. He had successfully breached the enemy's consciousness and connected directly to the species' collective mental network.
Countless perspectives flashed before him, a cascade of alien thoughts and memories. The sheer volume of information would have shattered any mortal mind instantly.
"We must evacuate. The human fleet is approaching."
"Order the slaves to kill themselves."
"Leave nothing for them to save."
Guilliman's hearts sank as he absorbed the xenos communications flowing through their network. Their malicious intent became crystal clear.
"I will not allow it!! " he growled and delved deeper into the psychic web.
He searched for the network's source, the central hub that bound all their minds together. If he could find it, he could stop their genocidal command.
There. The Source Tracker.
The monarch of the Osiris species, the living nexus of their collective consciousness. Kill it, and their network would collapse before the slave populations could be murdered.
"So, you seek to spy upon us?" The Source Tracker's mental voice dripped with ancient malice. "You wish to prevent our final stratagem, but you shall fail. Instead, you will become my thrall."
The alien overlord detected Guilliman's psychic intrusion and struck back. It attempted to crush the Primarch's mind and bend it to his will.
It was destined to fail.
Guilliman's terrifying psychic potential, enhanced by the Gene Engine's power, quickly gained the advantage in their mental duel. He began counter-invading the creature's thoughts and turned predator into prey.
The Source Tracker realised its peril. With ruthless pragmatism, it detonated the entire mental network and severed all connections in a psychic conflagration.
The resulting psychic storm swept toward Guilliman with the fury of dying stars, raw power enough to extinguish solar systems. Worse still, the death screams of countless enslaved beings flooded his consciousness as the network's destruction killed them all simultaneously.
Before Guilliman could react, the psychic tsunami struck him down. He crashed into the crystal chamber's far wall with bone-crushing force.
[Physical damage at sixty percent. Immediate medical attention required.]
[Excessive psychic trauma sustained. Mental barriers compromised.]
Guilliman staggered to his feet while blood streamed from his nose and ears. The screams of the dead echoed endlessly in his mind and made coherent thought nearly impossible.
"Primarch!"
"Lord Guilliman!"
His warriors rushed into the chamber and called his name with desperate concern.
Guilliman tried to force himself to remain conscious, to explain what had transpired. But darkness claimed him, and he collapsed into unconsciousness.
Three Days Later
When Guilliman finally awoke, it was to reports of total victory. The psychic network's detonation had released power capable of scouring worlds clean, yet he had survived with only three days of unconsciousness, testament to a Primarch's inhuman resilience.
The Sepeiris campaign was a huge success. The mental network's destruction had caused a psychic backlash across every world in the Osiris Cluster. Nearly every xenos overlord was dead or critically wounded, their species virtually extinct.
For the Thirteenth Legion, it represented a glorious addition to their roll of honors.
"What is the status of the cluster worlds?" Guilliman asked and voiced his greatest concern.
Before the Legion's assault, the Osiris had initiated its evacuation protocol. They had commanded their enslaved populations to turn upon each other and triggered civil wars across dozens of worlds. When the network detonated, countless slaves died instantly, their heads simply exploded as the psychic links severed.
Very few had survived.
"I am still too weak," Guilliman whispered, self-reproach heavy in his voice. "I failed to save them. If I had been stronger, if I could have moved faster, perhaps I could have changed everything."
During the battle, if he had been able to overpower the alien monarch and prevent the network's detonation, millions might have lived. The weight of those lost souls pressed upon his conscience like a crushing burden.
"We must avenge them," he declared while steel entered his tone. "The surviving xenos will answer for this blood debt."
Guilliman ordered the entire Thirteenth Legion to scour every world in the cluster and hunt for the Source Tracker. They had to ensure its destruction, absolute and final.
But despite their exhaustive search, they found nothing. The creature had vanished without a trace.
This failure made Guilliman withdraw from everyone. Even though he'd won the battle, he felt guilty about something no amount of thinking could fix. The death screams of innocents continued to echo in his thoughts and created cracks in his very soul.
Emperor's Grand Design
The Emperor continued His work on the webway project. Months of careful effort had begun to bear fruit. A miniature warp rift floated before Him, its chaotic energies filtered through psychic matrices until they became docile and pure, safe to use without any risk of corruption.
The Raven idly showed off his collection of golden fries to anyone who would listen. He also suggested that Valdor should take the Custodes on midnight runs while covered in ritual oils.
Valdor firmly declined and stated he would never engage in such undignified behaviour that brings shame to his Master's name.
"Valdor, you need to understand..." The Raven began, then froze mid-sentence.
Valdor noticed the sudden silence and turned to see the Raven completely motionless, his eyes wide with prophetic vision.
"Are you all right?" Valdor asked and reached out to prod him.
The Raven ignored the Captain-General entirely. His consciousness raced through streams of data and probability matrices, parsing potential futures with mechanical precision.
He saw Guilliman, wounded by the Osiris incident, developing fractures in his mind and soul. He saw those cracks widening through subsequent traumas and betrayals. He saw the Lord of Ultramar's eventual fall into darkness, not just embracing the Chaos Gods, but something far worse.
"Guilliman rebellion timeline?!" The Raven's mind flooded with digital expletives.
He had been so focused on preventing Horus and Erebus from causing havoc that he had forgotten that other Primarchs could also fall to corruption. And Guilliman's potential rebellion would make Horus's treachery look like a minor skirmish.
In Horus's rebellion, the traitors eventually fled into the Eye of Terror. In Guilliman's rebellion, it was unclear who would end up fleeing into that hellish realm.
Despite the Thirteenth Legion's nickname as "ICU Gods of War," his sons were genuinely formidable warriors. In the Battle of Calth, captured Centurions had slaughtered Word Bearers without power armour.
Future heroes like Calgar, Titus, and the legendary Captain Sicarius would all serve under Guilliman's banner.
In Horus's rebellion, the main advantage against the Ultramarines had been information warfare, keeping them isolated and uninformed. If Guilliman had received a warning in advance, Lorgar's Word Bearers would have been crushed instantly.
The Ultramarines possessed overwhelming numerical superiority. Enough to fight anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Horus himself, after his empowerment by the Chaos Gods, had evaluated Guilliman thus: "He doesn't even need to take the field. He could defeat all of us with paperwork alone."
During the Great Rebellion, Guilliman had committed darker deeds than even Horus. Who had recklessly used alien technology? Guilliman. Who had established a separate empire? Guilliman. Who possessed military strength that awed both Emperor and Chaos Gods alike? Guilliman.
During the Great Rebellion's final battle, Guilliman, bringing reinforcements to Terra, even made chaos gods cautious, forcing the Chaos Gods to drag the entire Solar System into the warp and freeze it in time because Guilliman brought exactly the right number of troops, enough to fight the rebels, the loyalists, or both at the same time.
Horus's rebellion had been a mere civil war. But if Guilliman were to rebel, it would be an apocalypse that would never end.
"Raven." Valdor prodded him again.
The Raven snapped back to awareness, glared at the Captain-General, then flew directly to the Emperor's side.
"Big Guy, something's happened to the Thirteenth Legion. I need to investigate immediately."
"Go," the Emperor replied without looking up from His webway experiments.
"Valdor, wait here. I'm going to buy some oranges and will be back to teach you how to respect your elders properly."
[End of Chapter]