The Silent King had completely overheated. Even the mechanical components inside his living-metal body were smoking from the overload.
That alone showed how furious he was.
"Not much mental fortitude, huh? We've barely started, and you already can't take it?"
Eden watched the Silent King glow red and smoke with rage. He found the sight so satisfying that he nearly burst out laughing.
Szarekh frequently used his proxy phaerons to disgust and humiliate others. Eden was merely giving him a taste of his own medicine.
The Silent King had two proxy phaerons?
Fine. The Lord of Hope had brought thirteen.
They would see which side could talk more shit.
Clearly, Szarekh had suffered a catastrophic defeat in this opening exchange. Before countless witnesses, he had been cursed into oblivion and stripped of all dignity.
Zabok and the other twelve phaerons had gone completely berserk. Their insults grew fiercer with every passing moment, driving Hapthatra and Mesophet to the verge of collapse.
Then they concentrated their attacks on the Silent King.
Every imaginable version of ass-fic was unleashed in rapid succession. They even questioned whether Szarekh had acquired the legitimacy to rule by selling his ass.
"You..."
Overwhelmed by fury and the rising temperature of his data-logic systems, the Silent King's ghostly green eyes repeatedly flickered black.
Even his CPU was starting to overload.
Never before had he encountered such pure, unrestrained verbal abuse and absolute humiliation. Worse still, the steady defeat of his two proxy phaerons left him without even an opportunity to fight back.
What almost made him pass out from rage was the so-called unofficial history being vividly narrated by the Lord of Hope's mouthpieces.
According to their story, Szarekh had sold his ass to the C'tan in exchange for their support and the technology of biotransference, ultimately leading to the deception and enslavement of the Necrons.
In this unofficial account, Szarekh had been weak, pathetic, and utterly helpless beneath the pressure of the Old Ones.
Desperate to secure new allies, he had offered his ass to the C'tan in exchange for superior technology and military power.
Yet even after he sold himself, the C'tan had exploited and deceived him. Through biotransference, they had stolen the souls of the Necrons.
Szarekh had lost everything and gained nothing. He had surrendered his ass for free.
It was both pitiful and infuriating!
This half-true, half-fabricated ass-fic deconstructed and erased all of the Silent King's achievements and honors during the War in Heaven.
It made the supreme ruler, a brutally cold dictator responsible for the deaths of countless beings, look like a complete joke.
More importantly, it destroyed his regal image.
The guarded gazes of the surrounding Necrons now contained traces of mockery and amusement.
"These are ignorant slanders. They do not even deserve the dignity of a denial..."
The Silent King struggled to restrain himself, determined to maintain his proud and silent persona.
He knew that if he lost control or began screaming obscenities, he would only look even more pathetic and invite further ridicule.
Yet the changing gazes of the Necrons were unbearable. They seemed to burn him like high-temperature rays.
The supreme ruler realized that the humiliations spread by the Lord of Hope's mouthpieces, absurd though they were, had begun reshaping his public image and undermining his authority.
The damage might be impossible to reverse.
The Lord of Hope's insults and ass-fic were inflicting more damage upon his reputation than his repeated defeats in the War in Heaven or even his deception at the hands of the C'tan.
Many Necrons knew these stories were untrue.
Nevertheless, they wanted to believe them. They were willing to spread them because doing so would weaken the Silent King's authority.
Besides, Szarekh truly was the person most responsible for the decline and suffering of the Infinite Empire.
There was no defense against that accusation.
In the court of public opinion, speculation became fact.
Repeat a lie often enough, and once enough people believed it, or merely wanted to believe it, it acquired a kind of truth of its own, no matter how absurd it might be.
That was precisely what was happening now.
Under the influence of the ass-fic, the Necrons had completely lost their former reverence for the Silent King.
They now saw him as an unworthy ruler who no longer deserved to sit upon the Dais of Dominion.
"This isn't entirely my doing. If Szarekh still possessed overwhelming prestige, no amount of slander would affect him."
Eden understood the situation clearly.
It was a self-reinforcing cycle of cause and effect.
The Silent King's image had become vulnerable only because of his repeated strategic failures and his historical responsibility for dragging the Necrons into an abyss.
That vulnerability was why Eden could strike him so easily and sweep away his majesty.
"Most Necrons no longer want Szarekh sitting on that throne. Once a wall begins to collapse, everyone rushes forward to give it another shove. This is the inevitable tide of history..."
Eden murmured to himself.
The situation resembled the Horus Heresy.
The influence of the Dark Gods had not been its only cause. It had also resulted from the Emperor's neglect of the Primarchs' emotions, his disregard for concealed risks, and his prolonged withdrawal from public view.
The seeds of rebellion had already been planted during the Great Crusade, perhaps even when the Primarchs' mother scattered them across the galaxy.
By the time Horus openly rebelled, all those long-standing contradictions had merely erupted at once.
The present situation was no different.
As the Lord of Hope, Eden had simply detonated the contradictions that had accumulated within the Infinite Empire over millions of years.
He was allowing history to pass judgment upon Szarekh.
Zabok and the other twelve phaerons continued denouncing the Silent King.
Hapthatra and Mesophet had already been verbally beaten into the ground and no longer dared make a sound.
They were playing dead.
"@#￥%&!"
"Criminal of Necron history! Shameless coward who fled his own empire!"
"Szarekh, you have no dignity left! Cover your ass and crawl down from that miserable throne!"
Zabok was especially ferocious. He pointed directly at the Silent King and roared:
"Ass-Selling King! You sold out your entire species for your own glory! How does a beast like you still have the nerve to remain upon that throne?"
The title "Ass-Selling King" echoed repeatedly across the pulse-communication channels and through the void itself.
"Silence!"
The Silent King had already adopted a mask of pure agony. Hearing this latest humiliation finally made him explode.
He shot to his feet, pointed at the Lord of Hope's extravagant Catacomb Command Barge, and practically roared:
"Destroy them! Shatter them! Erase them completely from both the galaxy and history!"
The Silent King had broken.
The persona of a ruler who never spoke in public collapsed completely. Trembling with uncontrollable rage, he gave the order to attack.
He no longer cared about the duel.
Instead, he launched an unrestricted assault with utter madness.
Hum!
The Triarchal Menhirs surrounding the Dais of Dominion suddenly flared to life.
Several Annihilator Beams pierced the layered shields of Eden's extravagant command barge.
The outer layers of living-metal armor suffered severe damage, and even their self-repair mechanisms slowed to a crawl.
"You want to compete with me in firepower?!"
Eden immediately gave the order to retaliate.
Thirteen Annihilator Beams erupted in response.
They likewise pierced the Dais of Dominion's energy shields, leaving deep craters in its sepulchral stone.
The two kings exchanged fire in an instant.
Annihilator Beams capable of effortlessly destroying capital ships tore wildly across the battlefield.
Several unfortunate Destroyer gunships, Ghost Arks, massive Triarch Stalkers, and even the Catacomb Command Barges of various phaerons were caught in the crossfire and reduced to pure cosmic dust.
The decisive battle had begun.
At the same time, elite Triarch Praetorians launched their attack, striking at every being marked as a traitor.
The Necron dynasties under Eden's command began a collective charge, determined to destroy every force still loyal to the Silent King.
In the blink of an eye, a war involving nearly every surviving dynasty erupted.
The entire region of space filled with weapons of catastrophic power.
"Your pitiful slanders cannot alter the fate awaiting you! The great Szarekh has occupied this throne since ancient times, sits upon it now, and shall remain upon it for all eternity!"
Hapthatra and Mesophet raised their sceptres and joined the attack, striking every rebel within range of the Dais of Dominion.
Clusters of neutrons fell like stars, exploding against the shields of the Catacomb Command Barges in billions of blazing lights.
Antimatter rays swept across the battlefield, melting war machines into twisted ruins.
Then the power of the C'tan shard manifestations was unleashed.
Nyadra'zatha the Burning One released flames that incinerated everything in their path.
The Nightbringer swung a scythe of darkness capable of breaking matter down into its constituent particles.
The Void Dragon created storms of black-hole singularities and released endless swarms of nanites.
Their terrifying powers rampaged across the battlefield.
Every living-metal machine and warrior caught within their range was torn apart. The entire region was being destroyed.
"Even mere shards of the C'tan possess such power.
"It's difficult to imagine what the War in Heaven must have looked like when dozens of complete C'tan still existed."
Eden could not help marveling at the destruction.
No wonder the Old Ones, once masters of the galaxy, had resorted to frantically creating new species and forms of life during the later stages of the war in an attempt to relieve the pressure upon their front lines.
They had even created the first Krork, beings capable of using and repairing almost any form of technology.
The Orks who now tormented countless species across the galaxy, including daemons, were merely versions that had degenerated over thousands of years.
Eden could roughly imagine how brutal that galaxy-spanning conflict must have been.
Perhaps the Old Ones had not taken the initial challenge of the Infinite Empire seriously. They had simply crushed the Necrons whenever necessary, never considering the conflict a true total war.
Only after the Silent King brought the C'tan into the war had the struggle fully erupted and spread across the entire galaxy.
Vast regions had been shattered, and even the galaxy itself had been reduced in size.
In essence, the War in Heaven had been a war between the Old Ones and the C'tan.
The Infinite Empire had merely provided support.
Ultimately, the C'tan were reduced to only a handful through their cannibalistic conflicts and their war against the Old Ones.
Even so, those few survivors exterminated the Old Ones and won the war.
Yet the surviving C'tan had also been left severely weakened by the endless conflict.
Before they could replenish themselves by consuming stars, the Silent King led the Infinite Empire in a surprise attack against them.
The C'tan were defeated and imprisoned, leaving behind only shards that could not be completely destroyed.
They were manifestations of the galaxy's fundamental power, akin to living concepts.
A concept itself was extremely difficult to destroy.
Even with the C'tan in a profoundly weakened state, the Infinite Empire had been forced to expend more than half of its remaining strength to shatter and imprison them.
That demonstrated just how powerful the C'tan and the Old Ones had once been.
Even the Infinite Empire, which had merely supported the greater powers in that ancient conflict, could still dominate the galaxy after losing more than two-thirds of its strength and spending tens of millions of years in slumber.
"Fortunately, by the time humanity rose, both the C'tan and the Old Ones had already passed into history. The worst thing left behind was a severely fragmented Infinite Empire.
"If those ancient powers had still been around, humanity would have been crushed into the ground."
Eden knew that humanity would have had little opportunity to develop if the C'tan and the Old Ones still existed.
Humanity's only choices would have been to serve as a subordinate species or become someone's vassal.
Those were powers humanity could not have resisted.
The C'tan in particular were gods of the material galaxy. They were already higher-dimensional life forms that transcended the limits of physics.
At their full strength, even the venerable Emperor before his ascension would probably have been beaten into the ground by a C'tan.
More troubling still, Warp gods such as the Emperor and the Chaos Gods would find it difficult to project their power across the dimensional barrier to fight the C'tan.
Of course, the C'tan would encounter the same difficulty when attempting to strike into the Warp.
An almost impenetrable barrier separated the two realms.
Perhaps that was why the Old Ones had frantically constructed more sections of the Webway during the later stages of the War in Heaven. They had needed opportunities to recover and reposition their forces strategically.
Unfortunately, even those ancient masters of the galaxy had ultimately been exterminated by the C'tan.
"Fortunately, we don't need to face such a threat now.
"At least, I hope we don't..."
Eden continued thinking about these possibilities while controlling his extravagant Catacomb Command Barge and trading fire with the Silent King through the Menhirs infused with C'tan shard energy.
It was his instinctive response whenever he encountered a threat, particularly one involving higher-dimensional power.
As the Savior and Lord of Hope, Eden was not especially concerned about the Necrons.
They had become completely divided, and most of their forces were already under his control.
The advantage was firmly his.
The Silent King was merely struggling before his inevitable death. There was little he could do to change the outcome.
To put it bluntly, even if Eden lost this duel or allowed the Silent King to escape, it would not alter humanity's ultimate destiny.
Humanity's rise had already become inevitable.
Given enough time, it had the potential to become a galactic power equal to the Old Ones, perhaps even surpassing those ancient dominant species.
Humanity's greatest strength was its ability to learn.
It could absorb the technological legacies left behind by previous civilizations, then develop beyond them.
The C'tan were different.
According to legend, those higher-dimensional beings had been born from stars, and there had once been a considerable number of them.
If the C'tan returned, would humanity suffer the same fate as the Old Ones?
Could Eden lead humanity to victory in a war against the C'tan?
In his struggle against the Chaos Gods within the Warp, Eden at least possessed the galaxy as a rear base and sanctuary. Their claws could not directly reach into the material universe.
The C'tan were different.
They were part of the galaxy itself.
Like vampires, they fed upon the energy of stars and planets.
They were devourers of suns and worlds, beings feared by all life.
No one wanted a C'tan to notice their homeworld and consume it completely.
The Great Devourer consumed planets by slowly stripping them away.
These gods of realspace simply gorged themselves without restraint, greedily absorbing every source of energy they could find.
They devoured a world's light and heat, the magma within its core, and anything else that could be converted into energy, including living flesh.
That was what concerned Eden.
If a C'tan at the height of its power suddenly appeared within the galaxy, it would be an irresistible natural disaster for humanity.
This was also one of the reasons Eden was so eager to conquer the Infinite Empire and excavate Tomb Worlds in search of technology and relics.
He was preparing for a possible future threat.
He refused to wait until a C'tan appeared before realizing that he had no way to respond.
The C'tan might have been shattered and imprisoned, but no one knew whether they might one day revive.
Nor could anyone guarantee that other C'tan would not enter the galaxy from the wider universe and unleash another terrifying catastrophe.
Humanity might suffer the same fate as the Old Ones, paying for defeat with the extinction of its entire species and passing into history.
After witnessing the power unleashed by the C'tan shards, Eden once again felt the pressure of an existential threat.
He had made his decision.
Once the Silent King had been eliminated, Eden would gather every piece of Old One and Necron technology he could find.
Then he would create even more powerful weapons capable of confronting the galaxy's higher-dimensional life forms.
At least then, he would not be helpless when the crisis finally arrived.
The decisive battle continued.
Across the central battlefield, Necron phaerons, nobles, and countless living-metal warriors tore into one another.
The ancient sepulchral platform, as large as a moon, gradually collapsed beneath the devastation.
Eden lightly raised his sceptre.
Several annihilation-class beams infused with the power of C'tan shards erupted from his command barge and destroyed one of the Triarchal Menhirs surrounding the Dais of Dominion.
Mesophet was destroyed along with it.
He did not even have time to scream before his body was disintegrated.
Eden had secured an overwhelming advantage.
The phaerons and dynastic forces that continued their hopeless resistance alongside the Silent King were being surrounded and destroyed.
The Dais of Dominion itself was under concentrated fire from countless enemies and teetered on the verge of collapse.
"Szarekh, accept your defeat."
Eden looked directly at the Silent King.
"There is nothing you can do to reverse this."
He had already sealed every possible route of escape.
(End of Chapter)
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