The synthesized, emotionless voice of the Necron vessel echoed in the silent bridges of the Imperial fleet. It was not a declaration of war. It was a statement of fact, a cosmic error-report delivered by an entity that saw their very existence as a bug in the system.
Lord Inquisitor Varrus and Canoness Celestine, two of the most powerful and uncompromising individuals in the Imperium, reacted with the only logic they understood in the face of an existential threat.
"All vessels!" Varrus's voice boomed across the fleet command channel, his strategic mind instantly shifting from discovery to extermination. "Target the xenos vessel! Unleash a full-spectrum alpha strike! I want every lance, every macro-cannon, every torpedo tube firing on my mark!"
"Let the fire of our faith be the Emperor's judgment!" Celestine's voice rang out in support, her own fleet's weapons glowing with holy energy.
On Varrus's command, the void lit up. The combined might of an Inquisitorial fleet and an Ecclesiarchy armada, a force capable of leveling a subcontinent, was unleashed. Beams of pure energy, projectiles the size of buildings, and torpedoes carrying the wrath of miniature suns crossed the distance in seconds, a wave of absolute annihilation aimed at the silent, crescent-shaped ship.
The Necron vessel did not raise shields. It did not evade. It simply… phased.
For a fraction of a second, the ship became a ghostly, translucent image. The entire, overwhelming Imperial barrage passed directly through it, continuing on into the swirling accretion disk of the black hole. Not a single shot had landed.
The ship then solidified, its living metal hull as pristine and unmarred as before.
A stunned, horrified silence fell over the Imperial fleet. They had just thrown the sum of their power at the enemy, and it had been as effective as throwing stones at a ghost.
<
"Erase it from the timeline?" Rimuru murmured, his eyes widening.
<
"This is not a battle we can win with ships," Rimuru announced to the strategium, his voice cutting through the shocked silence. "Their technology is beyond yours. And we have very little time." He looked at Varrus. "I am going over there."
"That is suicide!" Kael protested. "We cannot get a lock! Its shields—"
"I don't need a lock," Rimuru said. He turned to the hulking form of Captain Arken. "Captain. Would you care to accompany me on a diplomatic mission?"
Arken's scarred face split into a grim smile. He hefted his thunder hammer. "Diplomacy is my specialty."
"Lord Inquisitor, this is madness!" Kael said, turning to his master.
Varrus, however, was staring at Rimuru, his ancient eyes seeing the only impossible solution to an impossible problem. "Go," he said, his voice a low command. "Resolve this 'unlawful paradox'."
Rimuru placed a hand on Arken's shoulder pauldron. "Hold on tight."
With a silent application of Spatial Domination, they vanished.
They reappeared on the bridge of the Necron Scythe ship. It was a place of profound and terrifying alienness. It was a cavern of silent, black, living metal, the architecture all impossible angles and flowing geometric lines. There were no crew, only silent, scarab-like Canoptek constructs that skittered across the walls, tending to conduits of emerald light.
In the center of the chamber, floating above a dais, was the ship's commander. It was not a Necron Lord in the traditional sense. It was a being of impossibly slender, silver limbs and a great, cyclopean eye that burned with the cold light of a dying star. It was a Chronomancer, a master of time and causality, a high-ranking agent of the Triarch.
The Chronomancer's head tilted, its single eye focusing on the newcomers. Its voice was a psychic broadcast, colder and more empty than the void itself.
"I am Rimuru Tempest," Rimuru said, his voice calm. "We are travelers. We mean you no harm. We request that you cease your attempt to destroy this star system."
The Chronomancer showed no sign of having heard. It raised a slender, metallic hand.
From the Chronomancer's hand, a beam of faint, grey energy shot towards Rimuru. It was not a laser or a plasma bolt. It was a weapon that targeted time itself. Captain Arken, standing nearby, felt the unbearable sensation of his own past, present, and future being simultaneously threatened with erasure.
Rimuru did not move. He did not raise a shield. He simply met the attack with his own, absolute nature. He activated the core authority of his Ultimate Skill, Void God Azathoth. The power of non-existence.
The time-erasure beam struck Rimuru and… vanished. It was a weapon designed to delete things from the timeline. It had just hit a being whose fundamental nature was tied to the concept of the void, of nothingness itself. It was like trying to erase a hole.
The Chronomancer's single, great eye widened a fraction of a millimeter, the first sign of anything other than cold logic it had shown.
Rimuru raised his own hand, a small, swirling sphere of pure, chaotic blackness appearing in his palm. It was the energy of Turn Null, the ultimate destructive force. "Your law seems to have some exceptions," he said, his voice now carrying a cold, dangerous edge. "And your five minutes are almost up."
He looked at the unblinking, cosmic entity before him.
"You say causality demands my erasure," Rimuru stated, the black sphere in his hand pulsing with power. "Then perhaps it is time that causality itself was rewritten."