Chapter 930 - 929

The Sepulchral Platform.

Eden knew that the war had reached its final stage. The Necron armies under his command were closing in around the Dais of Dominion from every direction.

The Triarch Praetorians and the dynastic forces that continued to resist fell one after another beneath the devastating firepower, reduced to the purest atoms drifting through the void.

They had no possibility of activating their reanimation protocols. Every tomb complex and living-metal engine was already under Eden's control.

The forces available to the supreme ruler within the Sepulchral Platform were gradually being exhausted.

Soon, the Silent King would be a king without an army.

"No dynasty is still supporting the Silent King, right?"

Eden's ghostly green gaze swept across the region, carrying an unmistakable warning.

Anyone who still dared support the Silent King and oppose the new order would suffer a devastating attack from the Lord of Hope.

"No. The old king is about to fall..."

"We can't continue supporting Szarekh, or we'll face permanent death as well!"

The Necrons who had been debating whether to defend the Dais of Dominion were terrified by the warning.

They withdrew even farther, no longer daring to approach the Sepulchral Platform.

Yet they did not dare flee, either. If they did, the Lord of Hope might hunt them down and punish them afterward.

These phaerons and nobles understood that their best options were either to join the campaign against the Silent King or do nothing and wait for the new supreme ruler to ascend the throne.

Then they could pledge their allegiance.

The Third War of Secession within the Infinite Empire was nearing its end. The Necrons would be united once again, welcoming a new ruler and a new age of change.

All they could do was accept it.

"The age of the Szarekhan Dynasty is over! Overthrow Szarekh and welcome the coming of the new king!"

After realizing this, many phaerons and nobles who had previously attacked the Lord of Hope joined the assault against the Silent King, hoping to earn Eden's forgiveness.

Even more firepower poured into the Dais of Dominion.

Ancient relics were destroyed one after another, and its sole remaining Triarchal Menhir began to shake on the verge of collapse.

The Necrons could all see that the Dais of Dominion was falling apart.

Szarekh would soon face judgment and pay for the sins he had committed.

They felt a faint sense of liberation.

Perhaps it was finally time for the Necrons to end sixty million years of misery and suffering and welcome a new beginning.

Perhaps the King of Hope and the New God truly could restore their souls and free them from the endless void within.

Those who had opposed the Silent King from the beginning attacked with even greater fury.

They hated Szarekh for forcing biotransference upon them and transforming every Necron into an abomination of living metal.

Worse still, during the successive Wars of Secession, he had massacred countless members of their dynasties, forcing them to submit and condemning them to the Great Sleep.

At last, they could have their revenge.

"Silent King, can you hear the fury of the Necrons?"

Eden spoke quietly.

"No one supports your rule any longer.

"The flames of their wrath will consume you and force you to pay for the sins of your past."

The Triarch Praetorians, Hapthatra, and Mesophet had all been destroyed.

Once the core shielding of the Dais of Dominion was broken, the Silent King would have nowhere left to run.

"My subjects..."

From atop the Dais of Dominion, the Silent King stared at the Triarch Praetorians who had been reduced to ash.

Indescribable pain and anger consumed him.

The destruction of the other dynastic forces did not matter greatly, but the Triarch Praetorians had been his most loyal warriors and subjects of the Szarekhan Dynasty.

Even after their bodies had been transformed into living metal, they had continued supporting his reign willingly.

Now they had all been destroyed, without even the slightest possibility of reanimation.

He was losing the fundamental military force that sustained his rule.

That was what truly caused the Silent King pain.

His royal authority had been reduced to nothing, and the forces upon which his reign depended had been exhausted.

The Lord of Hope had destroyed his regime and shattered the foundations of the Dais of Dominion.

Now Eden intended to pass judgment upon Szarekh, the Silent King and master of the galaxy.

The hatred this inspired was beyond description.

"Unforgivable..."

Flames of fury burned within the Silent King's deep-set eye sockets. His oppressive presence continued to spread.

His cold gaze swept across Eden and every Necron in the region.

"No one can pass judgment upon me, Szarekh. Not the Old Ones, not the gods, and certainly not you traitors and slaves to divinity!"

"Perhaps you have forgotten that I am the most powerful of all Necrons.

"I have no equal!"

The Silent King slowly rose and tightened his grip upon the Godslayer Spear. Strange patterns spread across the emerald cloak behind him.

Those ancient weapons appeared to have absorbed and stored enough energy. They no longer seemed entirely real, almost as though they belonged to another dimension.

They had been fashioned from the remains and necrodermis of the C'tan and possessed terrifying power.

Confronted by an encirclement he could no longer evade, the supreme ruler had finally decided to leave his protective barrier and risk his life in battle.

In truth, the shield surrounding the Dais of Dominion could not withstand the concentrated bombardment for much longer.

He had no choice but to face the final duel.

"This guy isn't going to be easy to deal with. He's fully stacked his buffs."

Wariness appeared in Eden's eyes.

Only now did he realize that the Silent King had remained motionless upon his throne not because he was afraid to emerge, but because he had been accumulating power through some unknown method.

The Silent King had sacrificed the Triarch Praetorians, the loyal forces of his dynasties, and every fallen being of living metal.

The Nightbringer shard engine mounted within the crown of the Dais of Dominion had been using its authority over death and annihilation to absorb the faint remnants of the souls and life force of every slain Necron.

That energy was being used to strengthen Szarekh's godslaying wargear.

His mastery over the authority of the C'tan was far greater than Eden had anticipated.

That was understandable.

The Silent King had possessed C'tan shards for tens of millions of years. Naturally, he had learned to exploit them thoroughly.

Who could resist gaining authority over material reality itself?

Even Eden was working tirelessly to study the C'tan shards under his control. He had ordered his research institutes to use them to develop new weapons and explore the boundaries between the authority of the Warp and that of the material galaxy.

He wanted to seize even greater power.

It was his desire to explore strength, or perhaps simply his hunger for it.

"How much of the C'tan's authority has the Silent King truly mastered?"

Eden wondered.

Before his eyes, the Silent King thrust his spear.

Szarekh did not appear to exert much force. He merely extended the weapon with a gentle motion.

In the next instant, however, the Godslayer Spear seemed to merge with the structure of space itself, unleashing a terrifying distortion.

Space split apart wherever the spear passed.

A long fissure swept across the battlefield, tearing through everything in its path.

There was no explosion or visible impact.

The Necrons, living-metal gunships, and fortresses along its path were simply severed.

The spear had not cut through matter.

It had cut through the spatial dimension itself, causing all matter contained within that space to separate along with it.

Several phaerons were silently sliced apart. Before they could react, their bodies fell into more than a dozen pieces.

The other living-metal constructs and warriors suffered the same fate, without even the chance to resist.

More terrifying still was the strange gaze that followed.

The Gaze of Death drained all vitality from the living metal, reducing it to useless powder.

"That is... the Nightbringer's power. Divine punishment..."

"Wherever that spear strikes, even living metal loses its immortality!"

The Silent King's unstoppable attack immediately intimidated the surrounding phaerons and nobles.

The momentum of their assault faltered.

Their lost fear of the old king began to rise once again.

"When will you finally understand that true strength is the only foundation upon which a ruler can build his reign?"

The Silent King stared toward Eden, his tone permitting no argument.

"Look at these wretched traitors. Do they still dare defy me?"

"So long as I, Szarekh, remain alive, and so long as I destroy you, I will have more than enough time to force the Infinite Empire to submit to me once again.

"Humanity and every other species of flesh will kneel as well!"

In the Silent King's view, no one would dare challenge a ruler who possessed absolute strength.

That was the inevitable outcome.

"What?!"

The moment the Silent King finished speaking, several attacks struck him.

He stared in disbelief.

He could not understand how any phaeron or noble could still dare resist after witnessing such power.

The attacks had come from Zabok, Zahndrekh, and the others.

"You see? There are still Necrons willing to oppose you and overthrow your reign."

Eden spoke calmly.

"Power is not everything. Living beings possess the will to resist anything, even when facing a destiny of certain death."

If strength alone could conquer everything, the Chaos Gods would have taken the galaxy long ago.

To ordinary humans, daemons of Chaos and monstrous xenos possessed terrifying, seemingly irresistible power.

Yet humanity continued to charge against them.

One human after another sacrificed their lives.

They did not surrender to fear. They resisted without yielding, burning like flames that illuminated the darkness surrounding humanity.

Nor was this courage limited to humans.

After recovering some of their emotions, Necrons such as Zabok had also developed the will to resist.

They wanted to secure a new future for their species instead of remaining trapped in endless emptiness, civil war, and slaughter.

"Besides, I possess the same power you do."

Eden's gaze shone intensely.

He lightly raised his sceptre, releasing several streams of specialized C'tan shard energy that spread across the region and sealed the surrounding space.

The spatial suppression devices had been constructed using C'tan shard energy. Their purpose was to inhibit dimensional severing as much as possible.

The Godslayer Spear could no longer display its full power, and the strength of its attacks fell dramatically.

The Silent King was subsequently besieged by even more high-ranking phaerons.

For a time, he appeared rather battered.

"Unfortunately, this still isn't enough for you to touch me."

Even before Zabok and the others, the Silent King maintained his lofty posture.

"You never will!"

He activated the C'tan necrodermis covering the surface of his living-metal body.

A strange veil shimmered into existence.

Every attack directed at the Silent King dissolved upon reaching it. Nothing could touch his physical form.

It resembled a Webway veil and exploited the laws governing dimensional boundaries, creating an effectively limitless obstruction against nearly all matter and energy attempting to cross it.

It was the equivalent of an invincible shield.

"New God, we cannot defeat this traitor to the Necrons!"

Zabok and the other phaerons found the situation increasingly difficult.

If they could not even touch the Silent King, how could they possibly bring him down?

They soon suffered even greater damage beneath Szarekh's counterattacks.

"Lord of Hope.

"I can fight you here for a thousand years or ten thousand, until every last one of you submits!"

The Silent King regained control of the battle, radiating an almost invincible presence.

He endured bombardments of neutron clusters, antimatter rays, nanite swarms, and countless other weapons while breaking through several defensive lines in succession.

Attacks that would have been devastating to any other living being could do nothing to him.

The veil covering the Silent King's body combined the dimensional technology of the Old Ones with the power of C'tan shards. It even brushed against the fundamental laws of space.

The veil appeared no thicker than a sheet of fabric, but it contained infinitely compressed space.

It could have held a hundred stars.

No attack could possibly destroy it.

Before long, the Silent King had advanced to within several tens of thousands of kilometers of Eden's extravagant command barge.

He looked down upon Eden with contempt.

"Lord of Hope, how much longer do you intend to hide behind the miserable shields of that throne?

"Then again, your personal strength is insignificant. You can only hide behind your armies while pretending to possess authority.

"Unfortunately for you, I will destroy those shields and personally drag your wretched form from that throne.

"You are unworthy of sitting there."

"Who said I was hiding?"

Eden displayed no sign of panic. He seemed to be waiting for something.

"I was merely waiting for the thing capable of cracking open your turtle shell to arrive."

The Silent King's data-logic lurched.

He stopped advancing as a vague sense of danger washed over him.

Hum!

In the next instant, space began to shake violently.

A massive machine resembling an enormous drill appeared within the region.

The Silent King stared at it in disbelief.

"That is a human... No, an Old One machine!

"You have allied yourself with humanity?!"

The supreme ruler immediately recognized it.

It was a priceless Old One relic once used to excavate passages through the dimensional structure of the Webway. The Silent King himself had spent a great deal of time searching for it.

Unfortunately, it had eventually fallen into the hands of humanity's Savior.

More importantly, that machine posed a potential threat to the veil surrounding his body.

The Warp tunnel-boring machine had been sent into the region by Rogal Dorn, Jaghatai Khan, and the other Primarchs after they broke through the defenses surrounding the Xindu System.

Whoosh!

The Godslayer Spear shot forward.

The moment the Silent King saw the Warp tunnel-boring machine, he attacked without hesitation, attempting to destroy it.

However, the machine's densely layered force fields and Blackstone armor withstood the attack.

The strike caused only minor damage to its outer surface.

"No!"

When the Silent King realized he had failed to destroy it with a single blow, he immediately began retreating.

A few more attacks would have been enough to destroy the machine, but he no longer had the time.

If he remained trapped within the region, the Old One relic might tear apart his protective veil.

The Silent King was already too late.

Zabok and the other phaerons caught up and tied him down.

A micro black hole appeared immediately afterward, anchoring him firmly in place and preventing him from breaking free.

What?

The Silent King struggled against the gravitational pull.

Then he saw the Warp tunnel-boring machine begin producing deafening spatial noise as its enormous drill spun with increasing speed.

His thoughts sank.

The Old One spatial machine had activated.

It was coming directly for him.

"An invincible defense?"

Eden thought.

"Let's see which is tougher, your precious veil or my Warp dump truck!"

"Praise the Savior!"

Inside the Warp tunnel-boring machine, the senior operators of the Webway Construction Department roared as they drove the colossal spatial drill into a full-speed charge.

They were extraordinarily excited.

This was a glorious honor, the kind of boarding assault that would make even Space Marines wild with envy.

Such an act of heroism would certainly be recorded in the epics of their homeworld and the Imperium itself.

The senior operators piloted the Warp tunnel-boring machine straight toward the Silent King like a runaway dump truck.

Before the immense machine, Szarekh looked unbelievably small.

"No!"

The Silent King stared at the oncoming machine, and indescribable fear surged through his data-logic.

It was like a human attempting to cross the street, only to see an overloaded hundred-ton truck suddenly bearing down on them.

How was anyone supposed to stop that?!

The Silent King attacked desperately, but every strike was swallowed by the shattered space churning ahead of the drill.

Countless beings watched as the ancient machine reached the space directly before the Silent King.

It seemed to collide with an invisible obstruction.

Sparks erupted wildly from its drill.

Then, in the next instant, the entire machine plunged into the void and vanished.

An even greater spatial shock followed.

The distortion was centered upon the Silent King, and it continued spreading outward.

(End of Chapter)