Chapter 382: My Ass Itches!

Hot, searing fire burned.

Why was this hot night so unbearable?

The Primarch has returned—shouldn't this heavy, strange, dark nightmare night already be over?

Then why does Tiruien still feel himself struggling, sinking, burning in the furious flames beneath reality?

He curled up, huddled beneath the blankets, sweat drenching the fabric.

He was trapped in a dream, in a nightmare worse than any he'd endured over the past months.

He dreamed of Terra blazing in infernal fire, all things on earth consumed by blood-red flames.

Faces—human yet not human—scarlet and writhing, emerged from the flames into reality, mouths gaping to reveal dripping fangs and squirming tongues, swinging brass-forged weapons to smash toward Tiruien.

Tiruien felt his blankets ignite, the entire room ablaze with wild fire.

Demons beat Tiruien with pure, savage violence, cursed him with blasphemous words.

Bruises spread across Tiruien's skin, blood poured ceaselessly from shattered flesh.

Pain ravaged his body, forcing screams and sobs from him.

"This is just a dream!"

Tiruien screamed in his dream, shrieked in his dream, but could not wake.

"This is just a dream!"

Tiruien shrieked, suffered, struggled.

In the dream of the hot night, Tiruien saw a monstrous, ape-and-beast hybrid, a colossal scarlet demon, appear at the edge of reality.

The demon bore eight horns—four large, four small—half its face exposed to gleaming bone, wielding twin bloody chain-axes, its back sprouting torn, grotesque wings, as if severely wounded.

The great demon took a step forward, ready to storm into the realm of reality and slaughter.

"This is just a dream!" Tiruien cried in terror.

At that moment, Jeci shook the convulsing Tiruien awake.

"It was just a dream." Tiruien, still shaken, clutched the sweat-soaked blanket.

"No longer, my lord."

Jeci's voice carried fear:

"The nightmare has come to reality."

Tiruien felt suffocation—he smelled gunpowder, blood, and brass in the air, saw a scarlet glow like pulsing blood spill through the window, heard the clash of weapons and beastly roars at his ears.

The air was so hot and dry he could no longer hide beneath the blankets, fearing the heat would ignite everything around him.

Jeci pointed fearfully at the window, as if already knowing what lay outside.

"Don't look."

Tiruien told Jeci.

Yet Tiruien himself staggered to the window and stared out in terror.

Tiruien knew demons existed, knew the forbidden names of those enemies, but had never seen them with his own eyes.

Now, Tiruien witnessed terror firsthand.

He thanked the sages for stripping the masses of the right to know demons existed—he had never understood the wisdom of those great lawgivers so deeply.

Mankind is weak; merely gazing upon this sight would drive one mad, leaving only terror and screaming in the mind.

Blood-rain drenched the entire world, blood-tides swept across the land.

Scarlet demons raised crude weapons and charged the warriors who used their flesh to plug the breaches in the Eternal Wall.

Then, the sea of blood surged.

Splashed blood was its waves, the tides were flying shards of flesh and severed limbs, the foam was misty spray.

In an instant, the human line was shattered by the profane abominations from the Warp.

Tiruien's heart held only icy despair, indescribable terror, and hatred for this vile scene.

But then, a clear, faintly sacred, inexpressible voice suddenly flashed past Tiruien's ear.

Was it truly a voice? Or merely an illusion? A pure sensation?

Tiruien instinctively turned toward the sound's origin—and saw the Holy Sanctum deep within the palace bathed in radiant light.

He heard: the Eternal Gate had opened.

He heard: the sacred voice of the Emperor.

"We cannot hold the Eternal Wall!"

Bathed in torrents of blood-rain, Leina, clad in Cadia's gray-green uniform, screamed as she unleashed psychic energy at the Khorne demons, shouting to Shield Captain Valerian:

"The Eternal Wall has collapsed! The Space Marines are too few, and the Imperial Guard have only unmodified flesh—they cannot fill these gaps!"

"We must narrow our line and retreat to the Lion's Gate!"

Valerian battled hordes of demons with his holy power spear.

The Imperial Guard were immensely strong—but that strength was confined to the material realm.

The Emperor had not granted them supernatural powers of the Warp when he designed them; Valerian clearly felt his helplessness against demons.

"No!" Valerian instinctively rejected Leina's suggestion: "We cannot go to the Lion's Gate! Behind the Lion's Gate lies the Holy Sanctum!"

"But we cannot hold this many breaches in the Eternal Wall, nor this vast outer palace."

Leina yanked a shard of the Eternal Wall from the ground.

The Eternal Wall was so vast—even its fragments stood as tall as mountains. Leina, using psychic force, hurled it violently at the Bloodletters ahead.

She constantly recalled the knowledge implanted in her mind—before entering the battlefield, she had memorized the palace's layout and eaten it like a memory-bread.

The walls were too wide, mortals too frail, the Astartes too few. To defend this palace, we'd need tens of thousands of Astartes.

Damn it, why does each Space Marine Chapter have only a thousand men? Couldn't they have more?!

"These demons number nearly as many as during the Battle of Cadia! Yet we have far fewer troops than we did at Cadia!"

"Even so, retreating to the Lion's Gate takes time—we need someone to hold here until the others withdraw!" Valerian swung his spear, decapitating a Bloodletter, and shouted back to Leina.

"Cadia 184th Regiment will hold here," Leina said, crushing several Steel Bulls without changing expression.

". hese numbers of demons?" Valerian was stunned by Leina's words.

Even the elite Cadia Shock Troops, even with Leina, a top-tier psyker, even with Astartes fighting alongside them, even if they only needed to hold until the others retreated to the Lion's Gate—

"We are not like you."

"We have no gene-modified bodies, no mighty bolters or power spears, no ceramite or gold-plated power armor, no minds beyond mortal limits."

"We have only crude ballistic armor, simple lasguns, rigorous training, and..."

"Golden courage?" Valerian asked, watching Leina float midair.

"Huh?" Leina blinked, slightly confused: "No, I meant the gifts granted by Saint Doraemon."

"All members of the Electric Light Saber Platoon! Draw your blades... Electric Light Saber!"

Leina's voice reached every soldier of the Cadia 184th Regiment through the comm-channel.

The soldiers, moments before solemnly raising their lasguns, suddenly smiled.

They instantly dropped their lasguns and drew short swords from their belts—toy-like, child-sized.

To Valerian's bewilderment, the soldiers charged straight into the Khorne horde, wielding those toy swords, holding their own against multiple demons each.

These soldiers temporarily plugged the wall breaches, and via teleportation gates, rushed to other gaps, briefly halting the entire Khorne invasion.

No matter how they did it, Valerian knew he must seize the opportunity created by the Cadia 184th Regiment.

"I will lead the other forces through the underground tunnels used by the Imperial Guard to reach the Lion's Gate."

This violated Imperial Guard protocols—but Valerian felt now was not the time for rules.

"Huh?" Valerian suddenly noticed Leina's expression had gone vacant.

"I heard..."

Leina murmured as if in a dream:

"I heard... the Eternal Gate has opened."

"I heard... the sacred voice of the Emperor."

On another part of the battlefield, Kellaprin, the Chief of the Astropathic Choir, unleashed psychic energy upon demons—his expression mirrored hers.

Bound to the Emperor's psychic presence, he too wore the same look as Leina.

He gazed, delighted and moved, toward the Holy Sanctum deep in the palace.

He heard: the Eternal Gate had opened.

He heard: the sacred voice of the Emperor.

Deep within the palace, the Holy Sanctum.

"Do you know who holds the greatest power in the Human Empire?"

"The Minister of the Neiwu Force? The Inquisitor? The Primarch?"

"No. The Pope of the Imperial Cult."

"Look—even the Father of the Primarchs, if he refuses to worship the Cult, is locked on torture devices for ten thousand years."

Watching the slowly opening Eternal Gate, Zhou Yun couldn't help but tell a mocking joke.

"Yes, yes—they even imprisoned the Ultramarines' father in a stasis field for denying the Emperor is divine," said Sanguinius, a faint smile crossing his lips.

"The Pope truly wields immense power—he made Horus and Fulgrim his executioners," responded Guilliman with his cold, strange humor.

At that moment, the Eternal Gate roared open.

Zhou Yun turned slightly to look inside—and saw light, heat, fury, and wailing.

The screams of countless psykers drained dry pierced the veil of reality, becoming an endless Eternal Sound, terrifyingly piercing Zhou Yun's skin, flesh, and bone, delivering the sound directly to his ears.

Zhou Yun heard that the Eternal Gate had opened,

Zhou Yun heard the divine voice of the Emperor, clear as day.

"My butt itches."

It didn't seem all that divine.

(End of Chapter)