Chapter 91 The Anathema

Stepping back through the portal into the Throne Room, Vane opened his inventory once more.

His Administrator privileges were completely gone, and the massive stack of EMC points and endgame items had vanished right alongside them.

“Looks like I can only briefly unlock them while I’m inside the spiritual realm.”

Vane felt a twinge of regret. If he had full access to those overpowered items and his Admin privileges out here, completing the campaign would be an absolute breeze.

A deeply emotional, excited voice from Sanguinius caught his attention, and Vane turned to look.

Having completely purged all his hidden ailments and threats, the Emperor stood up from the Golden Throne, carefully acclimating to a body that hadn’t moved a single inch in ten millennia.

“God-Emperor!”

“My Lord!”

The massive crowd gathered before the Golden Throne dropped to one knee in unison. They looked up at the Master of Mankind with sheer, unadulterated awe, many of them openly weeping from the overwhelming emotion of the moment.

After ten thousand excruciating years, the Master of Mankind had finally returned to them.

The Emperor swept his gaze across the Throne Room, his eyes shining with profound emotion.

He was finally on his feet again. Now, he could resume pushing forward his grand designs. He would bring back the fallen heroes—including his greatest confidant and oldest friend, Malcador the Sigillite.

Stomp! Stomp!

A Custodian hurried into the room. The absolute moment he stepped into the Throne Room, he saw the Emperor—who was supposed to be completely paralyzed on the Golden Throne—standing up and actively stretching his limbs.

The Custodian froze, absolutely convinced he was hallucinating. He tilted his head, blinked hard, and looked back at the Throne. Nope, the Emperor was still doing calisthenics.

Man, these hallucinations are getting intense. Is it time for me to retire? the Custodian muttered to himself.

Captain-General Trajann Valoris was left utterly speechless by the display. He walked over and stood right in front of the bewildered guard.

“Aelicus, it’s not a hallucination. Stop doubting your own eyes. Now, why did you rush into the Throne Room?”

Aelicus stared at the Emperor stretching, then back at his Captain-General. It took him a solid eight seconds to accept the mind-bending reality that the Emperor had actually awakened. Finally, he snapped to attention and gave his report.

“The cultists’ sacrificial ritual successfully summoned demons! They are currently assaulting the Lion’s Gate, and they are on the verge of breaching the Palace!”

“My worst fears have come to pass,” Trajann sighed heavily.

When he first got word of the disturbance at the Webway gate, he had been busy dealing with the increasingly rampant cult activity across Terra. He had dispatched Shield-Captain Valerian to investigate, hoping to stop the fanatics from completing their ritual. Judging by the news, Valerian had failed. The Daemons had set foot on Terran soil once again.

“Has the situation really deteriorated this badly?” Grand Master Voldus of the Grey Knights clenched his fists, his voice dripping with righteous fury. “Those damned Neverborn have actually dared to defile holy Terra.”

“We must strike back! We need to let Chaos know that humanity will never bow!”

“The God-Emperor has awakened! Those hellspawn will pay the ultimate price for their arrogance!”

Whoosh.

Just as the crowd was boiling with righteous indignation, their battle lust surging as they prepared to follow the Emperor to purge Terra, Vane suddenly threw his arms up and bellowed at the top of his lungs.

“For Imperium Secundus! Purge these damned demons!”

The second he finished screaming his battle cry, he activated his Void Ring and teleported straight to the frontline.

Left standing awkwardly in the Throne Room, Sanguinius and Guilliman desperately wanted the floor to open up and swallow them whole.

You can joke about our embarrassing, treasonous history in private, but why the hell would you scream it out loud in front of literally everyone?!

Their pristine reputations were completely shot!

The Emperor didn’t show a single ounce of emotion, mostly because he had already known all about that little incident anyway.

“Gear up. We march together to purge this filth,” the Emperor declared. “It is time these abominations learned that humanity’s wrath can burn them to ash.”

He took his flaming sword back from Guilliman, rallied the crowd, and marched out of the Throne Room, heading straight for the bloodbath at the Lion’s Gate.

—

Terra, The Lion’s Gate.

“Is this the end of humanity?”

Shield-Captain Valerian swung his guardian spear, completely obliterating a manifested demon in front of him.

Recently, he had noticed a massive spike in cultist activity. Just to be safe, he had called in a squad of Grey Knights to back him up on the investigation. But by the time they tracked down the mastermind, it was already too late. Masses of innocent citizens had been slaughtered, their bodies used as sacrifices to fuel the summoning ritual. Even though Valerian and the Grey Knights executed every last cultist, they couldn’t stop the demons from manifesting.

Looking up, countless structures beyond the Lion’s Gate were engulfed in flames, the inferno lighting up the pitch-black sky. Rivers of crimson blood geysered from the torn earth, and the suffocating stench of gore choked the air.

Khornate demons clawed their way out of the blood pools, brandishing wickedly sharp hellblades. Led by massive Greater Daemons of Khorne, they formed an impossibly huge phalanx and launched a berserker charge against the Lion’s Gate wall.

The artillery mounted on the walls fired frantically, dumping a terrifying amount of ordnance into the horde, but it barely slowed the demonic tide. If a miracle didn’t happen soon, the monsters would smash right through the defensive line and rip apart any Imperial forces standing in their way.

Tanking the heavy artillery fire, the demons slammed into the base of the Lion’s Gate, scaling the massive walls like rabid animals. They were desperate to breach the fortifications and storm the palace of the Anathema.

The Custodes, the returning Sisters of Silence, the Grey Knights who had answered the call, and the Imperial Fists garrisoned on Terra had all deployed in full force, engaging in brutal hand-to-hand combat with the demons swarming the walls.

“Time for a slaughter!”

Vane teleported directly into the heart of the battlefield. With a single swing of his Blade, he lopped off the heads of several demons. His killing speed was blindingly fast; within moments, he was surrounded by a massive mountain of corpses. His bloodthirsty, manic combat style was so beautifully extreme that Khorne himself, sitting upon the Brass Throne, would have probably wanted to grant the guy a blessing.

Just as the overwhelming demonic tide was on the verge of completely breaking the Lion’s Gate defense, a blinding, majestic light erupted from behind the Imperial lines, piercing straight through the blood-red sky.

The Anathema…

The Anathema…

Shocked, the frenzied demons suddenly let out shrieks of absolute terror.

“What’s going on?” Valerian whipped his head around in confusion, his eyes immediately going wide.

That… that’s impossible!

Why is the Emperor on the battlefield?! And he has two Primarchs with him?!

What the hell happened? Did the Warp invasion cause Terra’s timeline to regress back to the Great Crusade?!

It wasn’t just Valerian. Every single person monitoring the warzone was utterly dumbfounded by the sight of the Emperor and the Primarchs marching onto the battlefield.

Even Khorne, watching from his domain deep within the Warp, bugged his eyes out as he watched the Emperor step into the fray.

Wait, how the hell did the Anathema completely recover?!

This… this has gotta be a glitch, right?!