Chapter 28 Big E!

You Complete and Utter Scumbag!

28: Chapter 28: Big E!

You Complete and Utter Scumbag!

Malakim Phoros was the last to board the Thunderhawk Gunship.

He stood on the edge of the assault ramp, looking down as the civilian militia and planetary defense forces defending the spaceport were completely swallowed by the Tyranid swarm.

In their final moments, they detonated the krak charges strapped to their chests, engulfing themselves and the surrounding xenos in columns of roaring fire.

The deafening explosions shook the earth, launching mangled xenos limbs and shattered armor into the sky.

With absolute, defiant resolve, those ordinary, baseline humans delivered humanity’s unyielding final answer to the Great Devourer.

“Emperor, I beg you…

tell me.

Why?

Why must humanity endure such unending suffering?

Why must we bear such a despairing fate?” As the Thunderhawk ascended into the void and the spaceport shrank into a tiny, burning speck, Phoros finally tore his gaze away, his hearts heavy with an agonizing, suffocating grief.

— The moment the Thunderhawk docked with the Chapter’s orbital strike cruiser, Phoros immediately ordered the ship to break orbit.

Racing against time, they punched through the encroaching Tyranid bio-ship blockade and reached the Mandeville Point at the edge of the system, desperately preparing for Warp translation.

“The Chapter has suffered catastrophic losses.

Counting the Neophytes and the critically wounded, we can barely muster two hundred battle-brothers.

If we are forced into another major engagement, the Lamenters will face absolute extinction.” “Our void-ships are critically low on food and water.

We must find a safe harbor to offload the civilian refugees immediately, or mass starvation will set in within days.” “All of our heavy ground transports have been completely destroyed.

The armory is critically low on power armor replacement parts, and our munitions reserves are nearly depleted.” The moment they successfully broke out of the Tyranid encirclement, Phoros was bombarded with a relentless stream of disastrous logistical reports.

His Chapter was hovering on the absolute brink of annihilation.

And he still had thousands of civilian refugees cramming the holds who needed to be resettled before they starved to death in the void.

Just as Phoros was nearing the edge of absolute physical and spiritual exhaustion, completely unsure of what to do next…

a blinding flash of golden light illuminated the command deck.

The Sanguinor, clad in majestic golden armor and bearing pristine white wings, materialized out of thin air.

“Lord Sanguinor, Herald of the Great Angel.

Why have you come?” Phoros dropped to one knee, offering a deeply reverent salute.

“Have you come to pass judgment upon our incompetence?

Because we failed to protect the innocent?” The Sanguinor did not answer.

He remained completely, stoically silent.

Instead, he raised an arm wreathed in golden armor and holy radiance.

The ship’s primary cogitator arrays suddenly hummed to life on their own.

The central hololith projector activated, projecting a brilliant, undeniable set of spatial coordinates pointing directly to the Cryptus System.

A second later, the Sanguinor vanished.

Phoros stared at the glowing coordinates, his brow furrowing deeply.

What does this mean?

Is the Great Angel commanding us to set course for the Cryptus System?

— Meanwhile, in the Cryptus System.

Vane had taken the time to walk through the Blood Angels fleet, casually placing a hand on the hull of their Frigates, Cruisers, and Battleships to permanently unlock the crafting recipes for Imperial void-craft.

With the blueprints unlocked, all he had to do was synthesize the modular components and snap them together to build a fully functional warship.

Of course, as a proud, high-level Minecraft automation player, manually hand-crafting things was completely beneath him.

Absolute, end-to-end automation was the only acceptable standard.

He quickly designed a massive, fully automated assembly line capable of synthesizing ship components and seamlessly constructing them.

He then encapsulated the entire assembly line within a colossal orbital shipyard, setting it to endlessly churn out void-craft.

As for not having enough naval crews to actually pilot the ships?

Vane couldn’t care less.

Unlike a standard video game, reality didn’t have a unit cap or lag out if he spawned too many entities.

He could just build the ships and stockpile them in orbit for later.

During his downtime, Vane also crafted advanced AI silicon chips, upgrading his Iron Golem phalanxes to make them tactically adaptable to a wider variety of combat environments and logistical tasks.

Down on the surface, the Hive Mind controlling Leviathan was growing increasingly, fundamentally disturbed by the tactical reality of the battlefield.

The humans were replacing their destroyed mechanical constructs at an absolutely absurd rate.

Destroy one metal golem, and eight more would instantly take its place.

The Imperial void fleet was experiencing the exact same impossible phenomenon.

The Tyranids would violently shatter an Imperial Cruiser, only for a brand-new, factory-fresh Cruiser to instantly warp into the formation to replace it.

It was as if the humans possessed an infinitely generating resource pool.

“I have literally never fought a war this wealthy in my entire life!” Tyberos the Red Wake led his Space Sharks on a brutal tear through the Tyranid lines.

The moment they encountered heavy resistance, they didn’t even bother engaging in melee; they just lazily called down a saturation orbital bombardment and wiped the grid square clean.

A single Carcharodon Company was currently outputting the firepower and kill-to-death ratio previously expected of several full-strength Chapters.

“A fully equipped Guardsman just solo-killed a Lictor?!

What kind of wars have I been fighting my entire career?!” General Dhrost stared at the tactical after-action reports, genuinely convinced he was hallucinating.

Previously, even a highly trained squad of elite Tempestus Scions would suffer catastrophic casualties attempting to put down a Lictor, one of the Hive Mind’s premier apex assassins.

And now?

A single Cadian Guardsman in standard-issue Forefather power armor had literally just 1v1’d a Lictor and won!

His Guardsmen were basically turning into mini-Astartes!

“If the opportunity ever presents itself, I absolutely need to pick another fight with the Tau Empire.” Dhrost grimly recalled the humiliating defeats he had suffered against the Tau’s advanced technology in the past.

If his men had possessed this level of wargear back then?

He would have beaten the blue-skinned xenos so badly they wouldn’t know which way was up!

Let’s see whose technological supremacy is stronger now!

As the Imperial forces continuously steamrolled Hive Fleet Leviathan, two more Adeptus Astartes Chapters suddenly translated into the Cryptus System.

The Astral Knights, who were currently in such a tragic state they only possessed a single functional warship, and the Lamenters, who arrived hauling a massive convoy of starving civilian refugees.

“The Astral Knights?

And the Lamenters?!” Hearing Dante’s report, Vane was genuinely surprised.

The Astral Knights were a renowned Space Marine Chapter.

While their exact founding date was lost to history, they possessed an incredibly deep armory of ancient relics and operated the legendary Battle Barge Tempest, which was equipped with a highly advanced, borderline-heretical AI core.

During the Necron invasion, their former Chapter Master, Artor Amrad, realized the Imperial Navy was completely failing to crack the shielding of the Necron World Engine, Borsis.

In a move of absolute, suicidal heroism, Amrad ordered the Tempest to physically ram the World Engine.

Surviving the catastrophic impact, the Chapter launched a desperate, point-blank boarding action deep into the Necron construct.

After a horrific, grueling slaughter, they successfully sabotaged the World Engine’s void shields, allowing the Imperial Navy to finally obliterate the Necron super-weapon.

The Astral Knights had paid for that victory with their absolute annihilation.

Out of the entire Chapter, only thirty Neophytes and a single, violently ill-tempered ancient Dreadnought survived.

Because their numbers were deemed too low to function, the High Lords of Terra officially dissolved the Chapter.

Their homeworld, their fortresses, and all their remaining assets were aggressively seized and handed over to the Sable Swords Chapter.

With nowhere else to go, the ancient Dreadnought and his thirty Neophytes piled into a single, dilapidated strike cruiser and launched themselves into a desperate, suicidal Crusade.

While the Lamenters were a successor Chapter of the Blood Angels.

From the exact moment of their founding, they had been cursed with cosmically abysmal luck.

Born during the ill-fated Cursed Founding, they were deeply distrusted and openly despised by the Inquisition and other Astartes Chapters.

During one of Abaddon’s Black Crusades, they had been fighting alongside the Mortifactors Chapter.

The Mortifactors, disgusted by the Lamenters’ ‘taint’, abruptly abandoned the battlefield, leaving the Lamenters completely exposed.

The Chapter fought a desperate rear-guard action, taking horrific casualties until only two hundred battle-brothers survived.

Immediately after surviving that meat grinder, their fleet was caught in a Warp anomaly and trapped in the Immaterium for decades.

The Imperium officially declared them KIA and struck their name from the Imperial roster.

When the Lamenters miraculously returned from the Warp, they were immediately deployed to guard the Maelstrom Zone.

Before they could even catch their breath, the Badab War broke out, and they accidentally allied with the wrong side.

As punishment for their ‘treason’, the Inquisition seized their fleet, confiscated their primary assets, and sentenced them to a one-hundred-year Penitent Crusade.

During this Penitent Crusade, they repeatedly, disastrously ran head-first into multiple Tyranid Hive Fleets.

In short, these two Chapters were the absolute, undisputed punching bags of the Warhammer 40k universe.

“The Astral Knights’ Navigator followed a guiding golden light in the Warp?” “And the Lamenters were explicitly directed here by the Sanguinor?!” Initially, Vane assumed it was just a wild coincidence that both Chapters showed up at the exact same time.

But the moment he ran a quick background check on the reports, he instantly realized he was being played.

Big E…

you complete and utter scumbag!

I am writing every single credit of this down on your tab!

Vane was absolutely livid.

This was undeniably the Emperor’s doing.

The Big E was intentionally dumping these bankrupt, struggling Chapters on Vane’s doorstep, expecting him to financially bail them out!

The old bastard absolutely refuses to pay his debts, but he has absolutely no problem aggressively mooching off me!

No wonder the Chaos Gods put aside their differences just to jump him!

The guy treats everyone like disposable wallets and free labor!

He absolutely deserves to be stuck on that Golden Throne!

The Astral Knights were currently broke beyond comprehension.

They had literally nothing to their name except a single, half-broken ship, an ancient Dreadnought acting as Chapter Master, and thirty untrained rookies.

The Lamenters were in an arguably worse state.

They were so impoverished that they had resorted to salvaging destroyed Imperial Guard APC chassis just to build makeshift Rhinos.

And because their civilian refugees had eaten all their rations, the Astartes had arrived in Cryptus completely starving and malnourished.

“Forefather, do you wish to grant their Chapter Masters an audience?” Dante asked.

“Whatever, just send them in.” Vane waved his hand, sighing in profound resignation.

They’re already here.

It’s not like I can just kick them to the curb.

Sure, they were completely broke, but they were still highly capable Space Marines.

Once he fully geared them up, he could just throw them straight onto the frontline to farm kills.

Shortly after, Dante escorted the towering Dreadnought, Thade, and Chapter Master Malakim Phoros into Vane’s presence.

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