Chapter 214 213: Norn Emissary
"Who? Custodians? Dead? All of them?!"
Not to mention Van Roth, Huron, and the others, even Sith, upon hearing these words, widened his eyes in astonishment.
As the most perfect product of the Emperor's genetic engineering, they were also the strongest individual units in the Empire beneath the Primarch.
Although a squad of Custodians numbered only a few, the prefix 'all dead' should never, under any circumstances, appear before Custodians!
Sith stared blankly at Malakin. Seeing the pallor and lingering fear displayed by Malakin and even the Lamenters, Van Roth couldn't help but want to ask again, but Sith directly raised his hand.
"Go to the cathedral."
Van Roth stopped, glanced cautiously at Sith, and then looked at the soldiers and Mortals around them who were curiously watching. Van Roth suppressed the urge to ask while everyone was watching.
"The rest of the Lamenters need to be properly settled. After they have rested, they will serve as my close attendants."
Sith continued, and after speaking, he looked directly at Malakin, signaling for him to follow.
Soon, only Van Roth and the core team arrived at Sith's private room.
As Malakin spoke, Sith, who thought he had prepared enough, frowned even deeper.
Because the situation in this Tyranid war was countless times worse than he had imagined!
"So, this Tyranid invasion hasn't just swept through the Segmentum Solar."
"But has swept through both the Segmentum Pacificus and the Segmentum Solar at once?!"
"And what we just encountered was far from a main force; it was just a collection detachment under a Tyranid secondary tentacle, used for gathering biomass?!"
Sith was silent, while Van Roth stared blankly at Malakin before him, a look of truly unbelievable shock on his face.
Not to mention that a mere detachment under a secondary tentacle, used solely for collection rather than combat, could have such an exaggerated scale.
One must know that the Empire has a total of five Segmentums, and within these five major Segmentums, they are further divided into sectors and sub-sectors.
Yet now, according to Malakin, the war has spread to two whole Segmentums, two-fifths of the Empire's territory.
Such a scale was truly unimaginable, even for Van Roth, who had seen his fair share of storms.
"Yes, now two Tyranid tentacles are attacking Terra simultaneously from two directions, one from above and one from below, starting from the Segmentum Pacificus."
"According to the information we received earlier, Lord Leontus is leading the Terran reinforcements, fighting the Tyranid Swarm at the Sanctuary Star, which lies at the junction of the Segmentum Pacificus and the Segmentum Solar."
"It is said that even the Phalanx, as well as Marshal of the Imperial Guard Lorgar Aurelian, have already departed from Terra and headed to the Sanctuary Star."
Malakin answered quickly. Hearing that even the Phalanx and Lorgar Aurelian had gone to the front lines, although they hadn't witnessed the grand spectacle of two Tyranid tentacles attacking simultaneously, everyone could roughly picture the brutality at the Sanctuary Star in their minds.
However, after understanding the overall situation, everyone finally focused their attention on the most critical matter.
"Then, since you weren't at the Sanctuary Star, how could the Custodians leading the squad be dead?"
"Couldn't run, and were exhausted to death?"
Offering the only explanation he could think of, Van Roth finished speaking, but Malakin opposite him, with his pallor unchanged, shook his head slowly:
"No."
"They were killed in a frontal assault."
Van Roth couldn't help but glance at Malakin. If not for the fact that he saw Sith, who had been silently watching behind him, Van Roth would have swallowed hard.
"Killed in a frontal assault by... a large Tyranid Swarm?"
Hesitantly offering his own explanation again, Malakin's next words forced even Sith to break his silence, and he stared at the other person with wide eyes.
"It was the Custodians leading us to besiege one of them, and then we were killed by it."
"In the end, that demon didn't even die; it left with its injuries."
The room was deathly silent. If it hadn't been confirmed during treatment that Malakin was fine, Van Roth would have even thought Malakin had been parasitized by the Tyranids!
No.
A full squad of Custodians, along with Malakin and the Lamenters, were actually countered and killed by a single enemy unit?!
What was the enemy? A Primarch?!
Thinking of this, Van Roth glanced at Sith beside him and recalled the Primarchs active among the Chaos and Imperial factions recently, confirming that individuals including Sith, this Astra Militarum Primarch, had not appeared in the Segmentum Solar.
Van Roth breathed a slight sigh of relief.
But Malakin didn't know much, yet at this point, Sith already understood what Malakin and his group had faced.
A whisper came from Sith:
"Norn Emissary..."
Norn Emissary?
Everyone frowned and turned to look at Sith, puzzled by the name Sith had spoken.
Sith searched his memory, his expression becoming increasingly grim.
The Norn Emissary was the top individual combat unit of the Tyranid Swarm, and because of its exaggerated combat record, it was jokingly referred to as a 'Little Primarch'.
A Little Primarch was certainly not as powerful as a proper Primarch, but the Norn Emissary could be mass-produced!
Although this mass production meant at most two or three at a time, it was still better than a proper Primarch, where losing one meant one less.
It was an existence that, if one died, the Tyranids would feel the pain, but not enough to die of grief.
As Sith spoke, Malakin remembered something after finishing his account, and hurriedly picked up his helmet to display the footage recorded within it.
It was a recording of Malakin following the Custodians into a nightmarish corridor. The surroundings were full of torn human bodies, and the eyes of a face left on the floor conveyed the terror before death.
Then, to everyone's astonishment, a mass of concentrated chitin squeezed out from a narrow sewer, and in the footage, it suddenly transformed into a giant beast three stories high.
Using speed comparable to the Custodians, with terrifying psychic energy erupting from its body, it raised its chitinous blades and tore the leading Custodian to pieces.
Next came a fierce battle, and the Norn Emissary also suffered serious injuries.
But after the last Custodian was smashed into pulp by the Norn Emissary, it casually finished off three Lamenters and knocked Malakin away, and this giant beast actually ran away back into the sewer!
The exaggerated degree of this footage, after Van Roth and the others finished watching it, made them even think for a moment if this was another trick by Tzeentch.
But knowing that the shadow of the Tyranid Swarm here could even temporarily shield the eyes behind him, Sith knew that the possibility of Tzeentch going to such lengths was really not high.
After all, according to the strength in Sith's memory, the Norn Emissary really did possess such terrifying combat power.
Malakin and his group were actually quite lucky, because they only encountered a Norn Emissary. If they had encountered a 'Neurothrope Tyrant' assisting the Norn Emissary in battle, I'm afraid there wouldn't be any meeting between Sith and Malakin right now.
Because the Neurothrope Tyrant, as the ultimate form of Tyranid psychic units, had psychic power so strong that it could 'manifest' to certain Mortals from a very long distance, making the Mortals believe they had received a summons from the God-Emperor, thereby working for the Tyranids.
Thinking of this, Sith's expression became increasingly silent. Even if he were to take action, with the Seven Gods behind him being shielded by the hive mind, facing a combination of multiple Norn Emissaries and a Neurothrope Tyrant, it would be hard to say he had 100% certainty.
Looking across the entire fleet, unless they used a sea of people to drown them, it would be really hard to eliminate these new Tyranid units.
And to compare human numbers with the Tyranids...
Sith's brows furrowed tighter and tighter. The crowd around him, gradually digesting Malakin's footage, also had faces that turned as pale as Malakin's.
If one of them managed to sneak inside a warship, destroying the warship alone would be like child's play!
If two or three came at once, with this efficiency, in the narrow hull of the ship, Van Roth and the others really couldn't think of any effective countermeasures.
The more the crowd thought, the more silent they became, and the ugliness on their faces became more and more obvious.
Until, in the deathly silence, a voice with a hint of mania spoke in an extremely casual manner:
"It is possible..."
"To let it clash with my masterpiece~"
The crowd in the deathly silence was somewhat stunned. Malakin also looked over curiously. Then, when he saw clearly the figure that had entered the darkness, not knowing when, Van Roth and the others looked at the person, but only a moment later, they suddenly looked at Sith.
And Bayer, who had locked himself in the depths of the orac and had disappeared for a long time, finally walked slowly out from the continuously repeating projection of the Norn Emissary.
Then, with a manic curve to his mouth, amidst Malakin's confusion and the wide-eyed stares of Van Roth and the others, he opened his own projection right next to the Norn Emissary's projection without showing any weakness, grinning hideously!
In the quiet darkness, a tall Astartes clad in black Tartaros-pattern Terminator power armor, at a time when everyone was horrified, confronted the Norn Emissary without showing any weakness.
At the same time, Bayer faced Sith, and amidst the confrontation between the black Astartes and the white Norn Emissary, he bowed his head respectfully:
"My Lord, your 101..."
"Is complete!"
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It might not seem tempting right nobut who knows what the future holds?
"And If you're enjoying it, drop a Power Stone for me!"