Chapter 620: The Emperor

The burning longsword pierced Imotek's chest; his body forged of living metal proved astonishingly fragile.

The Storm King watched silently as flames spread across his body, feeling his will being burned, his memories ignited, even his very existence sliding toward death.

He was going to die!

The Storm King clearly realized this.

This would be total death—even the Necrontyr resurrection protocols could not save him.

The true God of Death?

The Storm King still remembered the scene he had just witnessed.

The golden one, the burning one, the warrior one.

Roaring light and fire erupted from Robert's body, making him as brilliant and blinding as an entire star; the Emperor's Sword in his hand instantly transformed into a magnificent interstellar lighthouse, tearing through the dimensions of reality and the Warp, revealing the black sun suspended within the Warp.

Clearly, some powerful Warp entity had always been hidden within Robert Guilliman.

Perhaps from the very beginning, the Robert Guilliman he spoke to was that entity—only after the Nightbringer was released did it begin to reveal its power.

The Nightbringer had been subdued; the Storm King could scarcely comprehend the battle that erupted between them.

Physical laws were altered repeatedly, time was killed and resurrected over and over, parallel timelines intertwined endlessly, countless possibilities manifested simultaneously, reality itself reshaped like clay in the palms of those two beings.

In the end, he saw only the blazing Emperor's Sword plunge into the Nightbringer's chest, immense psychic energy extending from all directions and piercing the Nightbringer's body, forcibly binding it within the void.

Then that seemingly mortal being stepped into the void, seized the Nightbringer, and shoved it into his pocket.

Imotek still maintained a quantum-entangled communication link with the Nightbringer, embedded within the Nightbringer's living-metal shell; theoretically, as long as the Nightbringer was not destroyed or remelted, the link would never be severed.

But after the Nightbringer was shoved into that strange white pocket, the link was cut.

Before the cut, Imotek saw only the profound, icy void within the pocket—the seemingly endless space.

Then darkness swallowed the Nightbringer, as if the maw of a chasm devoured his very existence.

Soon after, a fragment of the Primordial God of a Million Civilizations—the Star God known as the Nightbringer—vanished forever from the galaxy.

To kill a fragment of a Star God.

Such a thing had occurred only once in sixty million years.

The Necrontyr who performed this act were cursed forever with the Skinstealer Virus.

Yet, that seemingly human being, after killing the Nightbringer's fragment, experienced nothing at all.

Before Imotek could react, the scorching Emperor's Sword had already pierced through his chest.

Death was before him.

Imotek felt it clearly.

"You had better choices, yet you never chose them. What a pity," said the human standing beside him, sighing lightly as he looked at Imotek.

"Nonsense."

Imotek was puzzled why this stranger spoke to him as if they were old acquaintances, yet he answered sincerely:

"Your order, the future you seek to build, has triumphed over mine through the practice of war."

"Practice tests all; the practice of order is war. If you cannot prove this in practice, if you do not utterly destroy me in war, my logic will never compel me to submit to you."

"Yet you proved my order is weaker than yours. To prove this, I am as satisfied as if I had won against myself."

Imotek's body slowly turned to ash in the Emperor's fire, leaving only his metallic head, still bearing a satisfied expression, bathed in flames.

"I never sought to be a ruler; I sought only to purge chaos with order, to seek a better order—whether its master was me or not. If your order can be realized, that is my final desire. I, I beg you to fulfill it."

Flames surged; the air of the Macragge's Glory dispersed into the vacuum, swept away by a fierce wind—the Storm King Imotek scattered with the breeze.

Zhou Yun watched this scene and sighed lightly.

In over twenty-two thousand great dreams, Zhou Yun had often cooperated with Imotek, forged friendships with him—but Imotek's final choice was always the same:

To test through war, to judge through practice which order—his or Zhou Yun's—was stronger. At first, Imotek won some victories; later, only Zhou Yun's victories remained. Eventually, Zhou Yun grew too indifferent to even cultivate friendship with Imotek.

"A part of my order was forged through thousands of wars with you, tempered by your order," Zhou Yun replied calmly.

". uh?"

At that moment, Guilliman beside Zhou Yun let out a soft, puzzled exclamation: