Chapter 362: Why Is Magnus

Magnus stared blankly and confusedly at the Saint Guilliman before him.

He tried opening his mouth several times, attempting to utter the incantation he had written to bind the utterly weakened Saint Guilliman into the Book of Magnus.

But each time he tried, only gibberish came out, and his mind remained a chaotic void.

The knowledge of that incantation had vanished from Magnus's mind, leaving only an empty, hollow space—he could not recall it no matter how hard he tried.

Magnus instinctively panicked.

Knowledge—knowledge was the one thing Magnus could never abandon.

For ten thousand years, he had lost his fleshly body, his soul shattered, his progeny reduced to ash—but none of that mattered.

As long as knowledge remained, he was still the Crimson King, still the King of Sorcery, still Magnus.

Everything Magnus was came from his knowledge; knowledge was Magnus, and Magnus was knowledge—indivisible.

"What have you done?!" Magnus roared at Saint Guilliman.

Saint Guilliman, seeing Magnus's expression of confusion and fury, couldn't help but smile.

Magnus growled in anger, drawing the Book of Magnus—the volume bound with all his knowledge and thoughts—from his waist, trying to find the incantation within.

This was not the first time he had done this; since Prospero had been reduced to ash by the fires of the Wolves and the Imperial Guard, Magnus had always found forgotten knowledge and spells within his own book.

But where the spell should have been recorded, there was nothing—only a twisted black mass, like a chaotic inkblot.

Yet strangely, the inkblot seemed alive, spreading outward across the other pages, dissolving every word it touched from the very strokes, as if chaos and ignorance were devouring knowledge and enlightenment.

Simultaneously, Magnus's own knowledge was draining away.

The Crimson King's single eye widened as he growled in fury: "Bacteria!"

It was bacteria—he saw it with his single eye: a strange bacterium spreading through the Book of Magnus, consuming its knowledge and devouring Magnus's own.

He reached out in rage to stop the bacterium's expansion—

"Mechanized Device. Emperor's Sword!"

Zhou Yun's voice suddenly rang out from within the book.

Before Magnus could react, Zhou Yun's arm burst forth from the book's pages, wreathed in golden spiritual flame.

His arm was as sharp as the true Emperor's Sword, driving deep into Magnus's crimson, massive hand as it reached toward the Book of Magnus.

"Aaahhh!!!"

A savage roar erupted from Magnus's mouth; the searing pain of the Emperor's spiritual power forced him to recoil his hands.

Zhou Yun, wearing orange-and-yellow woven shoes, then burst out of the Book of Magnus, clutching a petri dish in one hand.

"Success," Zhou Yun nodded to the weakened Saint Guilliman.

The bacterium in his hand was "bacteria capable of consuming knowledge within books," manufactured by the Random Bacteria Generator.

It could devour the knowledge within a book, turning its contents into meaningless gibberish—but only within a single book.

Although the bacteria produced by the Random Bacteria Generator were inherently guaranteed to work, when Zhou Yun first created them, he could not think of any practical use.

After all, if he wanted to erase knowledge from a book, he could simply shove it into his fourth-dimensional pocket and sell it.

It was only when Saint Guilliman realized Magnus's warp essence *was* the Book of Magnus that Zhou Yun understood the bacterium's true purpose.

The Book of Magnus *was* Magnus himself—even closer to his true self than the current Magnus.

All of Magnus's knowledge, thoughts, and beliefs resided within the Book of Magnus—even those he himself had forgotten.

Consuming the knowledge within the Book of Magnus was equivalent to consuming Magnus's own knowledge.

The copy and the original of the Book of Magnus were interconnected; Zhou Yun did not need to approach Magnus or risk seizing the Book of Magnus—both were impossibly difficult.

So Zhou Yun entered the world of the Book of Magnus through the "Shoes That Enter Storybooks," using the copy to reach the original and spreading the "bacteria capable of consuming knowledge" from within.

Now, with a single glance, Zhou Yun knew the plan had succeeded.

"Aaaah!!!" A mindless, savage roar erupted from Magnus's mouth.

He reached out toward Zhou Yun and Saint Guilliman, as if trying to chant a spell.

But Magnus could only unleash a crude, raw spiritual hammer—savage and unrefined, like a child who had just awakened spiritual power or some Asford-born female psyker ogre.

Although Zhou Yun had deliberately seeded the bacteria in chapters related to sorcery, the spread required time, and the knowledge within the Book of Magnus was vast; Magnus had not yet forgotten all his knowledge.

But a hollow had suddenly opened in his mind, his knowledge system—familiar, frequently used spells were fading away, bit by bit.

The consequence of this knowledge gap was that even spells he had not yet forgotten now required thought and search to cast correctly.

Not only on the level of sorcery, but Magnus's entire thinking had slowed—and the battlefield offered no time for such hesitation.

The spiritual hammer Magnus unleashed was immensely powerful; though devoid of technique, Magnus had always been among the strongest psykers in the galaxy—even Ariman, Lord of the Red Network, could not touch Magnus's spiritual power.

Walls of silver and gold turned to dust before the tidal wave of spiritual energy, shattered into the smallest molecules, ignited by friction between spirit and matter, matter and matter—becoming a roaring sea of fire surging toward Zhou Yun and the weakened Saint Guilliman.

Zhou Yun swiftly pulled the Reflective Cloak from his fourth-dimensional pocket and swung it violently at the spiritual tide—it instantly veered off course.

More complex or bizarre spells might have bypassed the Reflective Cloak.

But such a crude, direct spiritual hammer was precisely what the Reflective Cloak was designed to counter.

Yet Magnus seemed to have anticipated this outcome.

He had unleashed the crude spiritual hammer merely to buy time—to find a suitable spell within the hollowed-out structure of his knowledge to resolve this crisis.

Magnus muttered a blasphemous incantation with a stilted voice; it took form as translucent, crystalline scarabs writhing into the silver-and-gold floor, burrowing directly into the core of the Titicaca's Revenge, merging with the arcane foci that sustained the pyramid-shaped warship's power.

Instantly, the arcane foci grew agitated.

Magnus intended to ignite his flagship, using its stored, terrifying warp energy to annihilate everything around him.

Saint Guilliman was too weak to move; his spiritual power was spent. Neither of them could escape the blast radius of the entire Titicaca's Revenge.

"He's detonating the whole ship?" Saint Guilliman weakly lifted his head, his gaze filled with disbelief—as if silently asking whether Magnus even knew what he was doing.

Zhou Yun scratched his head, grabbed Saint Guilliman, and pulled a Door of Anywhere from his fourth-dimensional pocket.

Magnus stared blankly at the red-and-pink wooden door Zhou Yun had pulled out, as if wondering what it was.

Magnus had once known of the Door of Anywhere—he had seen Zhou Yun use it countless times before others.

But now he forgot; the hollow in his mind had erased the very concept of the Door of Anywhere.

Without hesitation, Zhou Yun kicked open the door and dragged Saint Guilliman through.

Magnus, staring at the Titicaca's Revenge beneath his feet, now surging with overwhelming spiritual energy, hesitated briefly.

"Run."

Kharn, who had been monitoring the battle, suddenly spoke to Abaddon.

Abaddon's full attention was fixed on the Maelstrom's Glory, locked in combat.

The Soul of Vengeance had been ravaged by the profane flora summoned by the Chief Gardener of Nurgle and was gradually losing ground against the Maelstrom's Glory.

Yet Abaddon still diverted a sliver of attention toward Kharn.

Abaddon respected Kharn's tactical counsel.

Others might think Kharn was merely a berserker version of a Khorne-chosen Chaos Warrior.

But Abaddon knew: beneath Kharn's rage lay supreme cunning, tactical and strategic judgment.

The fact that the World Eaters, under Angron's command during the Great Crusade, still conducted organized operations proved Kharn's genius in warfare.

"I never expected to hear the word 'run' from the mouth of a Khorne-chosen. Will the Blood God call you a coward?"

"."

Kharn gave Abaddon a cold, dismissive glance.

"Running is not fleeing. Strategic withdrawal is not cowardice."

"Withdrawal is to fight better, more worthy opponents. Besides—"

". Among acts that please the Blood God, being blown to bits by a floating warp pyramid does not count."

"You can never harvest a pyramid's skull."

". Huh?" Abaddon paused, processing Kharn's words—then noticed the Titicaca's Revenge in the distance, surging with immense spiritual energy, glowing like a tiny star, about to explode.

"By the Wolf God!"

Abaddon shouted in horror:

"What is Magnus trying to do?!"

"Has he forgotten we're nearby?! Does he want to kill us all?!"

Hey! Isn't that Horus's Soul of Vengeance? Why is Abaddon here?

Magnus stared at the distant Soul of Vengeance, puzzled.

He could have used divination or prophecy to determine what Abaddon was doing near his flagship.

Divination… prophecy…

What divination spells did he even know? Which method would be best now?

Emperor Tarot? Numerology?

After a moment of thought, Magnus realized with dull shock—he had forgotten most methods of divination.

Only Emperor Tarot and Numerology remained in his mind as knowledge related to prophecy.

Oh!

Suddenly, Magnus keenly sensed the spiritual energy in the air surging rapidly.

His single eye contracted sharply—he realized his flagship, the Titicaca's Revenge, was about to explode.

Someone had ignited the arcane foci sustaining its warp power!

Magnus was stunned—how could anyone bypass his rituals, incantations, and spells to forcibly alter the arcane cores he himself had set?

And all of this had happened without his knowledge, without triggering any of his alarm spells—almost as if Magnus himself had ignited his own flagship!

"Using my flagship's explosion to kill me is plausible!"

"But using it to kill me? That's absurd!"

Magnus growled at the enemy hidden somewhere out of sight.

The explosion of the Revenant of Tzika could indeed unleash a violent warp energy shockwave, but to think that alone could kill him—kill Magnus, the mighty King of Sorcery, the Crimson King—is that not an underestimation?

He needed only a teleportation spell to escape to safety—

Ah!

Magnus slapped his forehead, sinking once more into thought and confusion.

How do you use a teleportation spell again?

He began searching his mind for knowledge, but the emptiness within his mind grew ever larger; every time he tried to think, he saw only a blinding white void, making him increasingly frantic.

Magnus couldn't help scratching his ears and rubbing his head, his crimson claws scraping his forehead, then his hair, finally his two pointed horns atop his skull.

Ah!

Magnus rubbed his horns in bewilderment, puzzled that as a human, he had grown such enormous horns.

He should be human—at least, Magnus had found within his fragmented knowledge the notion that "he was human."

"Then why is my head pointed?"

"When did these horns grow?"

"No—why am I standing here?"

"Oh! I must warn my father quickly—Horus has been corrupted by Chaos; he is about to rebel!"

(End of Chapter)