The jovial, booming laughter of the Great Unclean One washed over the battlefield, a sound of such profound, unholy mirth that it was a psychic assault in itself. The five Deathwatch veterans, paragons of transhuman courage, felt an instinctual revulsion, a deep-seated dread that their training had never fully managed to excise. This was not merely a monster. This was a fragment of a god, a being of pure, conceptual foulness.
"Greater Daemon!" Captain Arken's voice roared over the vox, snapping his men out of their shock. "Designation: Excommunicate Majoris! All units, focus fire on the primary cranial structure! Purge this filth in the Emperor's name!"
The disciplined volley of the Deathwatch was instantaneous. Storm bolter shells, each one a miniature rocket, slammed into the daemon's massive, grinning face. Krak grenades sailed through the air, detonating against its corpulent body in explosions of shaped-charge fury. One of the Astartes, a specialist from the Salamanders chapter, unleashed a torrent of superheated melta-fire.
The assault would have vaporized a lesser beast, or even a battle tank.
The Great Unclean One, G'hul'gor, simply laughed harder.
The bolter shells vanished into its blubbery hide like pebbles into mud. The grenades tore open great, weeping wounds that immediately filled with giggling Nurglings and sealed over with fresh, diseased flesh. The melta-beam boiled away a chunk of its shoulder, which only made the daemon chortle with glee as new, foul life erupted from the cauterized wound.
"Tickles! It tickles!" the daemon boomed, its single eye weeping with joyous tears of pus. It lumbered forward, raising its colossal, rust-eaten cleaver. "My turn to give gifts!"
From its maw, it vomited a torrent of thick, green, pestilential slime. The stream shot across the field, a river of concentrated plague that would dissolve ceramite and corrupt flesh in seconds.
Rimuru, who had been watching the exchange with a grimly fascinated expression, stepped in front of the Astartes. He didn't raise his sword. He simply held up an open hand. A translucent, multi-layered barrier shimmered into existence before him—the Absolute Defense of Covenant King Uriel.
The river of filth slammed into the invisible wall and splashed harmlessly aside, turning the corrupted soil to a bubbling, acidic soup where it landed, but leaving the area behind the barrier pristine and untouched.
G'hul'gor's cheerful expression faltered for a fraction of a second, replaced by one of genuine surprise. "Ooh! A shiny bubble! You are full of wonders, little clean one! Grandfather Nurgle will be so excited to peel you open and see what's inside!"
With a roar of joyous effort, the daemon charged, bringing its massive cleaver down with the force to shatter a fortress gate. It was a blow of immense physical power, backed by the daemonic strength of the Warp itself.
Rimuru met the blow.
He didn't brace or strain. He simply lifted Soulcleaver, its slim, silver blade meeting the colossal, rusted weapon.
There was no deafening clang of impact. There was only a quiet, hissing shing.
Where the two weapons met, the ancient rust and foul corruption on the daemon's cleaver vanished, flaking away to reveal the clean, bare metal beneath. The immense, unstoppable force of the blow was completely and utterly negated. The Great Unclean One was brought to a dead stop, its attack held effortlessly by the slender, elegant blade.
The daemon stared in disbelief, its single eye blinking slowly. It had put the weight of a god's favor into that blow, and this tiny, clean thing had stopped it without even moving.
"My gifts are wasted on you," G'hul'gor grumbled, its jovial tone now tinged with the petulance of a spoiled child. It swung again, and again, a flurry of massive, clumsy blows that Rimuru parried with casual, almost bored, flicks of his wrist. It was not a duel. It was a master swordsman disarming a raging toddler.
"You have had your fun," Rimuru said, his voice cold and clear. "But your Grandfather's 'gifts' are unwelcome here."
He saw an opening. The daemon, in its frustration, had overextended. Rimuru's form blurred. In an instant, he was no longer in front of the daemon, but directly against its massive, bloated stomach, his movement too fast for even the Astartes' enhanced eyes to properly track.
He thrust Soulcleaver forward.
The blade sank into the daemon's flesh with no resistance, burying itself to the hilt in the core of the creature's being.
<
The Great Unclean One stopped moving. It looked down at the tiny figure and the sword embedded in its gut. It did not feel pain. It felt… a void. A clean, sterile emptiness where the glorious, churning rot of its god should be.
A brilliant, silver-white light began to shine from the wound, not a burning light, but a pure, cleansing one. The light spread outwards, tracing cracks of silver across the daemon's diseased hide.
"What… what is this?" G'hul'gor stammered, its jovial tone gone, replaced by a rising, panicked confusion. "The rot… it fades! The buzzing of the flies… stills! Grandfather's blessings… they are… quiet…"
For the first time in ten thousand years, the Greater Daemon felt something other than joyous decay. It felt fear.
The silver light intensified, and with a final, agonized cry of "NO!", the Great Unclean One's massive form dissolved. It did not explode in a shower of gore. It unraveled, its corpulent flesh, its rusted weapon, its very daemonic essence breaking down into motes of pure, clean energy. The psychic stench of plague that had suffocated the battlefield was scoured away, leaving behind only the scent of ozone and the faint, sweet smell of rain on dry earth.
In the space of a breath, the Greater Daemon was gone.
Rimuru stood alone in the now-silent field, withdrawing his pristine, unstained sword. The very ground where the daemon had stood was now a circle of clean, black ash.
The Deathwatch veterans stared, their weapons lowered. They had been prepared to fight and die for hours against such a foe. They had just witnessed a being who would be a campaign-ending threat for an entire chapter of Space Marines be… erased… in under a minute.
From orbit, the change was even more dramatic. Kael watched the tactical display as the massive, singular warp-signature of the Greater Daemon didn't just fade or vanish. It was extinguished, like a candle flame being snuffed out in a vacuum.
The path to Vorlag's citadel was now clear. The silence that fell was heavy, a vacuum waiting to be filled. And the master of Helios Prime had surely felt the death of his favored son.
A new sound began to echo across the plains, not the moans of the dead or the laughter of daemons, but a deep, resonant tolling. It was the sound of a great, diseased bell, coming from the citadel itself.
And then, a voice entered all their minds. It was not a broadcast, but a direct, psychic intrusion. It was a voice of cold, ancient intelligence, layered with the gurgling rot of the plague.
You are not of the Corpse-God's blind legions, the voice of Vorlag the Vile whispered in their souls. You are something new. Something clean. An interesting variable in the Grandfather's equation. I have seen your power. Come to my cathedral of contagion. Come, and let us discuss the true meaning of eternity.