"A Battle Barge is approaching the Blackstone Fortress. Frigates attempted to intercept, but the Battle Barge has diverted all power to its Void Shields and engines."
"Estimated time to intercept?" Warmaster Abaddon asked.
"40 minutes. There are Fenrisian runes on the prow."
"Warmaster," Urkrathos said, "Please, let me go out and meet the enemy."
"No."
"Then what should we do?"
"You shouldn't do anything," the Warmaster roared, "Unless I order it."
"What about the Wolves? Who will deal with that pack of Astartes?" Zarafullston asked.
"I was once part of a wolf pack, too," Abaddon gave his answer. "I know how to make them howl."
–
The Blackstone Fortress grew closer. The people aboard the Firemane's Fang could already see the spiky, obsidian surface.
Like the maw of an abyss, getting closer, becoming clearer.
A heavy atmosphere permeated the air; the Cadian soldiers gripped their guns tightly.
"Divert all energy to the Void Shields. All hands, prepare for boarding."
Wolf Lord Bloodhowl put on his helmet, an action he hadn't taken in a long time. The purple hue of Manyullyn was mixed into his Ceramite Power Armor, adding a touch of eerie strangeness.
Zeke looked at the armor on Wolf Lord Bloodhowl, then looked at his own.
It was clearly the exact same model of Manyullyn Power Armor, yet once he wore it, it turned into a blocky, Minecraft-style armor.
Zeke had actually looked forward to transforming into a three-or-four-meter-tall muscle-bound hulk upon donning the Power Armor; it seemed he had overthought it.
Upon receiving Wolf Lord Bloodhowl's order, a portion of the troops remained to guard the Firemane's Fang, while the rest of the boarding party boarded the assault boats.
They would use these vehicles, known as Shark-class Assault Boats, to board the Blackstone Fortress and execute the mission.
As the vanguard force for setting up the Nether Portal, Wolf Lord Bloodhowl had a very clear deployment strategy for his troops.
That was to be small and elite. He had selected only battle-hardened Space Wolf veterans with extensive combat experience.
Zeke was squeezed between two Space Wolves. The assault boat's central engine roared, and in three seconds, they went from relative stillness to sub-light speeds.
The Shark Assault Boat tore through the sky full of artillery fire, accompanied by an earth-shattering boom, and slammed straight into a section of the Blackstone Fortress, embedding itself within.
The Melta charges pre-set in the nose cone detonated in sync, blasting through the Blackstone Fortress's outer skin.
Impact complete. Path cleared. Channel established.
The Space Wolves roared as they stood up, Bolters racked, Chainswords revving.
Infected by the atmosphere, Zeke felt his blood boil and was the first to rush toward the enemy lines.
He sprang from his seat and rushed to the assault boat's main airlock door.
"FBI! Open up!"
Zeke mustered all his strength and delivered a full-force side kick to the hatch.
A piercing pain shot up from his toes; the door didn't budge an inch. Zeke sucked in a breath of cold air.
Beside him, Wolf Lord Bloodhowl stared at Zeke for two seconds.
Then, he pulled the manual door release lever next to him. The pressure valves hissed, releasing gas, and the door slid open inwards.
Outside the door, past a patch of molten glass, lay the interior of the Blackstone Fortress.
Zeke felt a contradictory emotion; the Blackstone Fortress was welcoming him, yet simultaneously rejecting him.
The Space Wolves filed out, with Zeke following close behind.
"Give me some time." Zeke took out a pickaxe. The passage was relatively narrow; if he wanted to set up a portal, he needed to dig out some space.
Zeke began swinging the pickaxe, clang-clang-clang, destroying all the surrounding fortress walls.
The Blackstone Fortress hummed, expressing anger toward Zeke, the one destroying it.
The more you scream, the more excited I get. Zeke continued to expand the surrounding space.
The next moment, the Blackstone Fortress launched a counterattack against Zeke.
Black bone spikes morphed out of a wall surface, stabbing toward Zeke. Zeke met them with his pickaxe, smashing all the spikes to pieces.
Seeing this tactic fail, the Blackstone walls on both sides of the passage began to close in, attempting to crush Zeke to death.
Two tall figures stepped in—Wolf Lord Bloodhowl and a veteran Space Wolf.
They stood left and right, grabbing the walls with force. Using inhuman strength, they physically halted the closing speed of the walls.
Zeke ducked down and slid through the gap held open by the two.
As he escaped, two figures, one large and one small, slowly walked out from the corner ahead in the passage.
The small one was a girl, with one pupil entirely black.
The large one was a Black Legionnaire. Judging by his stance, he was there to protect the little girl.
The little girl reached out her hand, gently caressing the Blackstone Fortress as if caressing a beloved.
"Are you Father's enemies?"
Morkath looked up at these foreign objects that had suddenly intruded into the Blackstone Fortress. She closed her eyes and began to communicate with the Fortress.
Using the Blackstone Fortress as a medium, she read the thoughts of the group before her: Kill her.
"Kill her!" Wolf Lord Bloodhowl took the lead. It was obvious that the series of attacks the Blackstone Fortress just launched against Zeke were instigated by the person before them.
Three Space Wolves followed behind him, their figures leaping through the Blackstone passage, their Power Armor making crisp, mechanical clank-clank sounds.
Regardless of how harmless this little girl looked, as long as she stood in their way, she was an enemy.
Morkath stopped the Black Legionnaire beside her from raising his gun. She reached out and touched the giant mouth of the alcove lined with sharp fangs.
The walls made of flesh and stone suddenly snapped shut, trapping a Space Wolf.
Wolves are naturally tenacious so he did not die on the spot, but the hard Blackstone was enough to paralyze his movement.
At the same time, Morkath looked up and grinned at Wolf Lord Bloodhowl, who was accelerating toward her.
Her teeth were white and neat. Then, she made a fierce biting motion.
From the Blackstone ceiling above Wolf Lord Bloodhowl, Blackstone pillars grew out. Arranged tightly, they bit down toward Bloodhowl below.
Before the Blackstone pillars could close, Wolf Lord Bloodhowl raised the Bolter in his hand and fired several shots in succession.
The bullets shot through the gaps, but ultimately failed to hit Morkath before the enclosure sealed.
As the Blackstone pillars closed, Morkath's figure revealed a brilliant smile toward Wolf Lord Bloodhowl. Goodbye, intruders.
Then, she disappeared at the end of the tunnel.
–
Behind Zeke, rows of Blackstone pillars also rose up.
Zeke's group gathered toward the middle. There were closing Blackstone pillars both in front and behind them. That little girl wanted to rely on these stone pillars to squeeze them into the center and crush them to death.
Zeke remembered the information on that little girl.
Her name is Morkath. A thing spawned by Chaos to help Abaddon better control the Blackstone Fortress.
You could consider her the Blackstone Fortress's illegitimate ship-girl daughter.
Morkath, relying on having a certain blood relation to the Blackstone Fortress, can control it to a certain degree.
But because her birth involved the meddling of Chaos, the Blackstone Fortress doesn't exactly look kindly upon this child.
That's about the gist of it, Zeke told Morkath's information to the people around him.
"We must designate her as the primary target," Wolf Lord Bloodhowl reacted. Morkath would provide Abaddon with a massive terrain advantage, which would be detrimental to Cadia's offensive.
"I agree. If possible, prioritize capturing her." Zeke looked at the walls gradually closing in on him and pulled out a Blueprint.
Trying to trap a Block-Man? That was simply the best joke Zeke had ever heard.
Come out, Tunnel Bores! Mere Blackstone walls? Hollow them out for me!
One, two, three... Tunnel Bores were printed out by the Blueprint one after another in the narrow passage, stuffing the originally cramped space to the brim.
They adjusted their direction, their drills aiming in unison at the Blackstone walls closing in from all sides.
–
Morkath walked through the passage.
No one can defeat me inside the Blackstone Fortress, she thought, wondering how to report her glorious victory to her father, Abaddon.
"Urgh... Ah!"
Without warning, a toothache struck. Morkath fell to her knees as teeth peeled away from her gums one by one, falling to the floor and shattering into dust.
The Black Legionnaire beside her tried to help Morkath up, but then heard the rumbling sound of machinery operating from behind.
If one isn't enough, then two. If two aren't enough, then ten. Blackstone is indeed hard to mine, but there are plenty of Tunnel Bores.
Zeke surrounded himself with a ring of Tunnel Bores facing all directions, churning and shattering all the Blackstone walls that attempted to compress him.
The sound of mechanical gears rattled, and the surrounding space was rapidly expanding.
Having dug away the obstructing Blackstone pillars, Morkath's figure reappeared before their eyes.
Without needing a prompt, Wolf Lord Bloodhowl seized the moment, gripped his Storm Axe tight, and charged toward Morkath.
"Wolf Lord Bloodhowl, take this!" Zeke used the Blueprint to deploy a Tunnel Bore oriented horizontally.
Beneath it was a minecart, capable of automatically laying tracks, thus achieving horizontal mining locomotion.
Wolf Lord Bloodhowl climbed onto this Minecart Tunnel Bore.
"That machine, it's destroying the Blackstone Fortress! Stop it!" Morkath ordered the Black Legionnaire beside her.
Blood gushed from Morkath's mouth. Her senses were connected to the Blackstone Fortress; destroying the Fortress caused her immense pain.
The Black Legionnaire raised his Reaper Autocannon and fired wildly at the Tunnel Bore carrying Zeke and Wolf Lord Bloodhowl.
The Tunnel Bore was unstoppable. The drill at the very front spun madly, crushing everything in its path.
"Can you summon another wall? Quickly!" The Black Legionnaire shouted.
Morkath plunged her hands into the floor.
She drove her own will into the Blackstone Fortress, ordering the parasitic flesh-machinery to build a heavy wall capable of stopping the Tunnel Bore.
But the Fortress resisted and disobeyed.
The power of the Tunnel Bore terrified them; the drills were wreathed in a terrifying force that could bore through even Blackstone.
Morkath's Blackstone teeth resonated. Her heavy stone eyes rotated violently in her skull, tearing at the neural connections.
Extreme pain and anger made Morkath shriek.
"I order you! I order you to obey my command, Blackstone Fortress!"
Morkath threw a tantrum like a child at the Blackstone Fortress. Her hair came loose, covering her face, looking exactly like a madwoman.
At the last moment, the Blackstone Fortress obeyed.
A wall, even heavier than the ones Zeke had seen before, was closing in front of the Tunnel Bore.
"Will it work?" Wolf Lord Bloodhowl looked back at Zeke. His answer was a smile brimming with confidence.
Useless struggle. You underestimate my mechanical power drills too much. Zeke cranked the Tunnel Bore's horsepower to the max, charging forward indomitably. My drill is the drill that will pierce the heavens!
In Morkath's bloodshot, black-tear-filled eyes, and under Xylon's despairing gaze, tremors came from behind the heavy Blackstone wall.
Centered on the point of contact with the drill, spiderweb-like cracks spread across the surface—fully three meters thick—before progressively shattering into falling debris.
When the wall shattered, Morkath rolled her eyes back and fainted dead away from the extreme agony.
Bloodhowl leaped from the Tunnel Bore, pouncing on the Black Legionnaire, Xylon, who was guarding Morkath.
"Don't you think about getting close!" Xylon fired his Bolt Pistol three times in rapid succession at Bloodhowl.
The three plates of Manyullyn armor that were hit saw the deep purple interior become fluid.
Fine, dense purple patterns of light spread out, covering most of Wolf Lord Bloodhowl's torso, and finally, all converged toward the Storm Axe gripped in his right hand.
The kinetic attribute of Manyullyn armor: Take damage, accumulate power, feed it back to the user.
The trajectory of the downward-chopping Storm Axe accelerated, drawing a mournful streak of purple lightning.
The Storm Axe cleaved open Xylon's Terminator Armor, the disruption field and the axe slicing the flesh and blood beneath in two.
Wolf Lord Bloodhowl gave the enemy no chance to gasp for air.
Riding the momentum, the Storm Axe slashed upward, pulled horizontally, and chopped down again.
Immediately after, Wolf Lord Bloodhowl looked toward the unconscious Morkath. Just as he was about to capture her, the floor of the Blackstone Fortress surged, and Morkath's petite body was dragged down into the Fortress.
At the very last moment, the Blackstone Fortress chose to save her.
"Dammit!" Wolf Lord Bloodhowl cursed. No one escapes the Wolf Pack's hunt.
He looked into the depths of the passage, and after a brief farewell to Zeke, led his squad to continue the pursuit of Morkath.
On Zeke's side, he had already utilized the Tunnel Bores to expand enough space to build a Nether Portal, connecting it with the Nether Portal at Kasr Kraf.
A blue water film emerged, and countless people walked out.
Marshal Amalrich of the Black Templars, Battle Sisters of the Adepta Sororitas...
The army formed lines, orderly entering the Blackstone Fortress.
The Blackstone Fortress had never carried so many people before. The thoughts of countless humans surfaced within it, disturbing its own operations.
The most frequent thought among them was the phrase: Cadia Stands.
The Tunnel Bores were still spinning rapidly, expanding a space large enough for the advance troops to establish a temporary defense zone.
No one knew how to boost morale better than Creed.
The moment the Nether Portal opened, Creed resolutely chose to step into the dangerous Blackstone Fortress alongside his soldiers.
This act of leading by example was more effective than any spoken encouragement.
Under Creed's leadership, the soldiers quickly established a command center beside the Nether Portal and began to flood into the various passages of the Blackstone Fortress, exploring and attacking inwards.