Chapter 421: A Hidden Paradise! The Anomalous Mandeville Point! Standby!
Judging from the strength the Universal Megacorp had shown so far, it was entirely possible that they really did possess a few hidden paradises—havens they could offer to the Necrons.
Although Trazyn didn't fully trust Jack's words, it had to admit the massive fleet before it was very much real.
At the very least, this proved the Megacorp's industrial capabilities were tremendously powerful. And such productivity could only stem from a stable production environment—meaning Jack's claims were at least halfway believable.
With this in mind, Trazyn was almost certain that the Megacorp possessed a secure and prosperous rear stronghold, possibly even the size of an entire universe.
"I admit your proposal is intriguing. But how do you plan to prove it to me?" Trazyn asked in return.
There was no doubt that the Necrons yearned for a new home.
Even a civilization as powerful as theirs, within the grimdark Warhammer galaxy, was like a fish struggling in the mire.
This world was utterly rotten—there was no future here.
The Necrons had become soulless husks, shambling through existence day by day. The glorious legacy of their ancestors, the Silent Kings, had long faded, leaving only cold metal skeletons waiting to be eroded by time.
"We can assign someone to escort you to another universe. Once you see it with your own eyes, you'll understand I've been telling the truth all along," Jack Wells offered calmly.
Nothing could be more convincing than witnessing it firsthand—seeing was believing.
Trazyn nodded and immediately accepted Jack's invitation.
Its current body was merely a shell, replaceable at any time. If anything went wrong, Trazyn could instantly transmit its consciousness back to its stronghold through the power of the C'tan Shard.
Even the Chaos Gods of the Warp had no way to counter this shed-skin tactic.
"Very well. Then I'll trouble you for the ride."
Trazyn could hardly wait to witness the legendary "hidden paradise." It couldn't even begin to imagine what a perfect utopia would look like.
"In one hour, we'll dispatch a vessel to escort you through the star gate to another universe. To avoid unnecessary misunderstandings, we ask that you do not carry any dangerous equipment," Jack said with a warning tone.
"If you do, we'll take immediate action to neutralize any potential threats."
Though Jack's final sentence carried a distinct threat, Trazyn didn't feel offended. In fact, it only grew more curious about what lay ahead.
It seemed this faction of humanity had truly discovered another paradise!
An hour passed quickly. When Trazyn boarded the Megacorp vessel and headed toward the star gate, it was finally able to examine the exterior designs of various warships up close.
With hope for a new universe in its cold, silent core, Trazyn and its ship crossed the star gate—vanishing completely from the Warhammer universe.
Once Trazyn had departed, Jack resumed his mission as planned—tightening the lockdown on the Prospero system and monitoring all comings and goings with utmost scrutiny.
More and more Megacorp warships poured through the star gate, flooding into orbit above Prospero.
Their numbers quickly swelled from 50,000 to 200,000—and they were still rising.
Clearly, this massive fleet would deliver a "tiny bit" of corporate shock to the incoming Imperial Navy.
…
At that very moment, a standard Imperial Legion fleet was navigating through the Warp.
To guard against higher-dimensional entities in the Warp, every vessel had activated its Gellar Field—designed to repel demonic incursions.
In the Warp, time held no meaning.
In Imperial history, there had been cases where a fleet reached its destination before it had even departed.
Far more chilling than simply arriving centuries late.
Such events were known as Warp navigation anomalies—"Warp Drifts."
To ensure safe passage for Imperial vessels, the Emperor had established the Astronomican, a psychic beacon whose flickering frequencies allowed Navigators to steer ships through the Warp with relative safety.
Fortunately, Roboute Guilliman's current voyage had been smooth, without any encounters with Warp demons.
As they neared the Prospero system, the Ultramarines aboard let out sighs of relief—grateful they hadn't gotten lost or run into trouble en route.
"My lord, we've arrived at the Prospero system. We're currently searching for the Mandeville Point. Should we exit the Warp once it's located?"
The Navigator respectfully inquired.
The Mandeville Point was the optimal location for entering or exiting the Warp. Without it, a ship might emerge too close to nearby celestial bodies, risking destruction from gravitational interference.
"Yes. Exit immediately," Guilliman ordered, gazing at the screen in the central control station.
He couldn't help but reflect on the tragic inevitability of brothers turning on each other.
Truthfully, the tensions among the Primarchs had always run deep. If not for the Emperor's presence and the Infinity wars occupying their attention, civil war would have broken out long ago.
But Magnus's crimes far exceeded internal disputes. Consorting with the Chaos Gods and daemons of the Warp—there could be no forgiveness for such treason.
Even if the other Primarchs pleaded on his behalf, Magnus would still face severe punishment.
Sigh… In the end, we were still brothers. I really don't want to be the one to do this.
Guilliman felt some dissatisfaction with the Emperor's orders.
He preferred diplomacy and resolution. He believed in talking things through rather than escalating to violence.
Killing their own people only depleted the Imperium's already dwindling resources.
Guilliman hoped that even if the Thousand Sons were truly suffering from fleshcraft mutations, the first course of action should be to help them—heal them.
Even if it came to killing every last one of them, he believed they should be sent on a redemption crusade—dying with honor on the front lines of the most brutal battlefields, rather than being slaughtered like dogs by their own kin.
When he'd first received this order, Guilliman had considered refusing it more than once.
But then he thought again—if this task fell to Horus instead, not a single Thousand Sons warrior would survive.
Even Magnus himself might perish at Horus's hands.
By taking on this mission himself, Guilliman could at least ensure that some of the Thousand Sons' senior commanders—and perhaps even Magnus—might make it out alive.
Steeling his heart, he stopped dwelling on what was already decided.
"According to Terra's intel, the Megacorp fleet has already arrived. I wonder what kind of forces they'll deploy to help us capture Magnus," mused Guilliman's adjutant, Marius Gage.
Gage had personally attended the Megacorp's Ideal City during their last visit to the Prime Universe. From what he'd witnessed of their interstellar travel technology, he was thoroughly impressed.
Still, this current joint operation was only a mission to take down a single Primarch on a single planet. Surely the Megacorp wouldn't dispatch too many ships.
In Gage's estimation, if the Megacorp sent even a hundred ships, that would already be a generous show of support. The rest would be up to them.
Guilliman gave a faint, unreadable smile.
The Megacorp had arrived at Prospero in such a short time—highly likely, they hadn't brought many ships with them.
Back in the Ideal City, Guilliman had been stunned by the Megacorp's warship formations. Now that the tables had turned and they were on Imperial territory, it was only right for Guilliman to flaunt the Empire's might in return.
Given the gravity of the situation, Guilliman and the other Primarchs had all brought sizable forces of their own.
Altogether, the fleets under the four Primarchs numbered over 2,000 warships!
Even during the height of the Great Crusade, such a concentration of power would've been considered formidable—visually overwhelming.
As Guilliman entertained thoughts of impressing the Megacorp with Imperial grandeur, a sudden alert snapped him back to the present.
"Lord Guilliman, something's wrong!" a Navigator called out.
"There are too many Mandeville Points in the Prospero system—way too many. I've never seen anything like it."
Staring at the screen, the Navigator's face paled. The data and visuals didn't make any sense. A chilling thought crept into his mind—could this be a trap laid by Tzeentch?
The Mandeville Point was the place where the Immaterium and realspace came closest. Normally, each star system should only have one.
But in the Prospero system, no fewer than 200,000 Mandeville Points were detected.
The Navigator, a seasoned veteran of Warp travel for decades, couldn't have imagined anything so bizarre even in his nightmares.
"What the hell is going on? Is this the work of the Chaos Gods?" Guilliman's voice tightened as he pressed for answers.
After thinking it through, the Navigator offered a hypothesis:
"At the Mandeville Point, Warp entities can more easily affect the material world."
"And here, even a psyker's power could be greatly amplified."
"…So,"
Guilliman already understood the implication before the Navigator finished. He frowned deeply, trying to think of a way out.
He had no psyker abilities. In the Warp, a battlefield governed by psychic force, he was at a distinct disadvantage.
The 200,000 Mandeville Points had perforated the Prospero system's link to the Warp like a sieve, radiating with a strange, chaotic glow.
The Navigator's nerves began to fray. Despite trying to maintain composure, his body trembled uncontrollably.
"This could very well be a Warp daemon ambush—or a trap set by the Thousand Sons."
"In either case, the moment we enter realspace, we'll be hit with an unprecedented assault!"
Guilliman's jaw clenched.
This was a battlefield blessed by Warp daemons—and the Ultramarines were not equipped to deal with psykers.
Damn it, this trap was set for me!
"Cancel the jump. Hold position," Guilliman ordered without hesitation.
"Yes, my lord!"
The Navigator relayed the order immediately, halting the entire Legion's transition into realspace.
Guilliman was not one to throw away lives for glory. He refused to send his troops charging into a death trap just to uphold appearances.
If something felt off, then it was better to wait for the arrival of Lion and Mortarion's fleets.
If they all jumped together, even if an ambush awaited them, sheer numbers could give them a fighting chance.
"No one is to act without orders. Until I say otherwise, no one is to exit the Warp," Guilliman emphasized again.
"Understood!" Gage and the Navigator nodded in unison.
Shortly after the command was issued, a hasty report arrived.
"My lord, we've received a message from the Death Guard. Primarch Mortarion is asking why we haven't entered realspace. What should we tell him?"
Guilliman raised an eyebrow.
Mortarion was asking why? Did that mean… they were already out?
That didn't make sense.
"Establish a comms link with Mortarion immediately. I need to speak with him."
The signal was swiftly established, and a projection took form before Guilliman: a towering figure clad in smoky green armor, surrounded by mist—the Death Lord, Mortarion.
For once, Mortarion wasn't holding his iconic scythe, which made the atmosphere between them slightly less tense.
"Why are you still in the Warp?" Mortarion demanded immediately, clearly unaware of the abnormal Mandeville Point readings.
Among the Primarchs, Mortarion and Magnus were known to be bitter enemies.
So, the moment he received the Emperor's directive, Mortarion had charged toward Prospero without hesitation—Death Guard in tow.
Whatever Warp beasts or horrors lay in his path, he didn't care. All that mattered was the chance to finally raze Magnus's homeworld to the ground.
From the tone of his voice, Guilliman could sense the barely restrained thrill Mortarion felt. He'd been waiting for this moment for a long time.
"There's something wrong with the Mandeville Points here. The numbers are way off. I'm staying in the Warp to wait for you, Lion, and Russ," Guilliman explained truthfully.
Mortarion went silent for a moment. After confirming with his own Navigators, he finally replied.
"This is the Emperor's order. There's no time to waste. Trap or not, the mission must proceed."
As he spoke, Mortarion took a deep, toxic breath of the swirling green-and-purple miasma that surrounded him—drawing the poisonous fog straight into his lungs.
Guilliman frowned.
He knew that gas—it came from Mortarion's homeworld, Barbarus, a planet saturated with lethal atmospheric toxins. Any ordinary human would die from a single breath.
But to the Death Guard, the poisonous fog was just another battlefield tool.
It wasn't the poison that troubled Guilliman—it was the way Mortarion had invoked the Emperor's command, subtly pressuring him to move forward.
Wasn't this just a ploy to shove me into the meat grinder first, while the rest of the Legions followed safely behind?!
(Show your support and read more chapters on my Patreon: [email protected]/psychopet. Thank you for your support!)