"Who are you? How dare you assassinate the planetary governor's daughter!" Katerina didn't dare to scream for help, knowing it would only hasten her demise. Instead, she could only threaten Marcus in a low, trembling voice.
"From now on, I ask, you answer," Marcus responded, his voice cold and distorted by his disguise. The Psychic Flying Knife pressed a fraction deeper into her throat.
"What stage is the Tyranid invasion of this system in?" he demanded.
Katerina looked at Marcus in surprise, hesitating for a moment before speaking. "The Tyranids have already been repelled—"
Behind his mask, Marcus felt a surge of confusion. Even if his previous interference had caused the Thousand Sons to retreat early, and the Imperial forces hadn't suffered too many losses, it seemed almost impossible for the Imperial Guard in the Recidous Star System to repel an endless Tyranid invasion. "Reason," he prompted.
"Just a while ago," Katerina explained, "the great Gene-Seed Primarch, son of the Emperor, Lord of the Ultramarines, and Imperial Regent, personally led the Emperor's army to crush the Tyranid offensive in several surrounding sectors." As she spoke, she straightened a framed portrait, turning it towards Marcus. The person in the portrait was Roboute Guilliman, clad in his Armor of Fate and wielding the Sword of the Emperor, with the Central Hive as his background.
Marcus's pupils behind his mask constricted sharply. "Impossible. How many systems more important than yours across the entire galaxy have been abandoned? How could this remote system attract a Primarch?"
Katerina said helplessly, "I don't know the reason either. I only heard my father say that the Primarch came here to find something and someone—"
"Where is he?" Marcus pressed. Katerina could sense that the person before her did not possess the normal reverence for a Gene-Seed Primarch that a citizen of the Imperium of Man should have. "Heretic traitor? Or xenos servant?" Katerina speculated about Marcus's identity, while also responding, "He has already left. It was three days ago, no, now it's four days ago."
Marcus quickly calculated the time. If the time flow between worlds was the same, plus the time Roboute Guilliman spent fighting the Tyranid. Then it was almost as if he had just left the Warhammer Universe, and Roboute Guilliman arrived in the system with his army right after. This couldn't be a coincidence.
"Damn it, Emprah, did you scheme against me?" Marcus immediately thought of the figure who had appeared in his dreams several times, most likely the Emperor. "Good thing I ran early, otherwise I might have been captured and transformed into a servitor who only obeys orders, becoming a tool for the Imperium of Man to travel to other worlds." After silently cursing the Imperium a few times, Marcus looked back at Katerina. All the information he had obtained came from this woman, so it might not be absolutely true. And even if she wasn't lying, a governor's illegitimate daughter might not know the full picture of events.
A flying knife shot out, its hilt striking Katerina's head, instantly knocking her unconscious. Immediately, after confirming there was no one else nearby outside the room, Marcus summoned a Tyranid Warrior and implanted a Fleshworm into Katerina. After doing all this, Marcus opened the window and leaped out. With the enhancement of his psionics, he agilely jumped between the various buildings of the Hive City Spire. To gather more intelligence, soon, more than a dozen other nobles or noble servants also located in the Hive City Spire were threatened and questioned by Marcus, and had Fleshworms implanted in them.
After collecting these fragmented pieces of intelligence, Marcus looked up from a secluded spire. It was nighttime on Avarax, and the most prominent feature in the night sky was the Great Rift, spanning the entire galaxy. Originally, in the pitch-black night sky next to the Great Rift, there should have been intense firefights between Imperial warships and Tyranids, clearly visible from the Hive City Spire area. But now, the night sky was eerily calm.
Withdrawing his gaze, Marcus looked down. The Underhive was dark, with countless miserable and unfortunate scavengers and mutants residing within, constantly dodging the bio-monsters of the Imperial Underhive. Meanwhile, the gigantic factories in the Underhive were operating non-stop, with hundreds of millions of laborers and servitors producing massive quantities of materials. The Upper Hive area was brightly lit, where wealthier merchants, lower-ranking nobles, and administrators were holding lavish banquets. In short, this was what a normal Hive City should look like.
Combining the intelligence he had just gathered, Marcus confirmed that the Tyranid forces that had invaded the Recidus Star System had indeed been repelled. Furthermore, according to the information revealed by those nobles, the Ultramarines had also withdrawn from the system. Only one legion of Astra Militarum forces remained, responsible for clearing out the remaining Tyranid remnants. The entire system had returned to its state before the Tyranid invasion.
"This isn't right—" In the darkness, Marcus muttered to himself. Based on his understanding of the Imperium of Man, those Inquisitors would not easily let go of him, who had displayed superhuman abilities on the battlefield and then suddenly disappeared when facing Chaos. Although there was a possibility that the Ultramarines helped conceal his information, Marcus always prepared for the worst. It was highly probable that an Inquisitor from the Inquisition had already infiltrated Avarax, just waiting for him to reveal a weakness.
Originally, Marcus's plan was to travel through a few more worlds, accumulate enough power and an army, and then return to the Warhammer world. But now, that seemed unnecessary. Without the major threat of the Tyranids, Marcus only needed to deal with one Inquisitor. As long as he could eliminate the opponent, he would gain a significant amount of operational time in the Warhammer Universe.
Thinking of this, Marcus immediately opened his system panel and released a lictor. In addition to stealth assassination, the lictor had a special ability: it could absorb the brains of its prey through the tentacles in its mouth, thereby obtaining information from them. This would be perfect for finding the Inquisitor who might be lurking in the shadows. And even if someone discovered a Hive City noble with their brains sucked out, it would be attributed to residual Tyranid organisms.
After giving the lictor before him the order to find the Inquisitor, Marcus no longer intended to stay there. Who knew what strange methods those Inquisitors had to track him. Marcus clearly remembered that when he first arrived in Warhammer, people from the Adeptus Mechanicus had drawn his blood and verified his genes. It was possible that with the Inquisition's power and methods, they could obtain this blood and use psychic powers to track his whereabouts.
Opening the system panel and switching to the shuttle interface, a white light quickly enveloped him, then vanished without a trace. The lictor left behind, its oral tentacles swaying in the wind for a moment, then determined its target, and then vanished into the darkness, also disappearing from its original spot.