Chapter 465: 463
Just before the seven-foot daemon awakened, Kain commanded his power armor to disassemble, exposing the super magic crystal concealed within it.
He seized the crystal and hurled it straight at the creature.
The daemon had barely opened its eyes halfway when the crystal smashed into its face.
A shriek sharp enough to drive ordinary humans insane instantly reverberated throughout the entire daemonic domain. The creature's body twisted violently.
The super magic crystal behaved like a black hole, warping and tearing apart the daemon's body as it dragged the pieces into its depths.
When the crystal's vortex-like absorption finally stopped, it had been filled to capacity with "screams."
Almost nothing remained of the daemon's body except its enormous fleshy wings.
The blood-soaked wings abruptly turned to stone before crumbling into ash.
At the same time, the daemonic domain surrounding the city collapsed and dispersed.
Kain picked up the fully charged super magic crystal and turned toward the few Astartes struggling to reach him.
"Take this to the Archma..."
His voice abruptly stopped.
The Astartes should have accepted the crystal he was offering. Instead, a spear-like metal blade shot from the warrior's gauntlet and shattered it.
The weapon continued forward and pierced Kain's abdomen.
At the same time, an abnormal surge of Chaos energy invaded his body. It seemed to be petrifying his flesh, leaving him staring at the Astartes in shock and disbelief.
"Surprised?"
An inhuman voice filled with delight came from inside the metal helmet.
The warrior's power armor began evaporating, revealing the xenos figure that should have been destroyed by the super magic crystal.
The creature wore an expression of immense satisfaction.
Kain's shocked expression slowly transformed into a faint smile.
"Not at all. I've been waiting for this moment."
He hadn't activated his Blank Field. He had deliberately kept the super magic crystal seemingly protected inside his power armor.
He hadn't even activated Bullet Time.
Kain had done all of that because he, too, had been waiting for this exact moment.
He had known from the very beginning that there was something wrong with everything he was seeing.
That didn't mean the battle had been an illusion. The fighting between the Astartes and the daemons had been real. However, the true master of the daemonic domain had been controlling both sides like puppets.
Kain had recognized the performance through his ability to sense the emotions of living beings.
The emotions he sensed from the Astartes were clearly abnormal. He quickly realized that they were being forced to put on a show for him.
One Astartes in particular had stood out.
The sheer evil contained within that figure's emotional fluctuations was on a level Kain had never encountered before. It was far stronger than the daemon hidden inside the egg.
They weren't even remotely comparable.
That creature was the true master of this daemonic domain.
Kain had been waiting for an opportunity to make physical contact with it at close range.
Now that opportunity had arrived.
The daemon believed it had caught him after confirming that his most dangerous weapon had been expended. In reality, Kain had caught it as well.
The moment he finished speaking, he pushed Bullet Time to its limit.
He activated his Blank Field at full strength, transforming himself into a Blank.
He also injected his entire remaining supply of D99 Serum.
The Warp energy that had been restraining and petrifying him was immediately absorbed, leaving behind only the physical damage caused by its corrosive effects.
As the daemon's expression shifted to astonishment, Kain suddenly lunged forward and wrapped his arms around it.
Sssssss!
If their contact had produced a sound, that was what it would have resembled.
Kain was like a piece of red-hot iron, while the daemon was a block of ice.
"Wha...?"
"You..."
The daemon's astonishment turned to fear.
It had done something it absolutely shouldn't have.
It attempted to manipulate Kain like a puppet.
The daemon launched a psychic invasion into his consciousness, intending to seize control and consume his soul.
But that only accelerated the rate at which Kain devoured it.
Normally, when someone ate something, they first had to bite and swallow it before the food reached their stomach.
By invading Kain's consciousness, the daemon had skipped that entire process and shoved part of itself directly into his stomach.
For Kain, it was a pleasant little surprise.
"Damn you!"
The Greater Daemon howled in rage.
It had been thousands of years since it had cursed someone with such fury.
The last time had been because of the Emperor of Mankind. The Emperor had nearly killed it permanently, inflicting the kind of true death from which even a daemon could never return.
Now it had encountered yet another unprecedented creature. For the first time in thousands of years, fear began growing inside it again.
At first, the daemon assumed Kain had implanted some kind of stone within his body. When its energy began being forcibly absorbed, it responded by pouring even more power into him.
If Kain had merely been absorbing its energy, that would have been manageable.
Instead, he was also dragging its soul into himself.
By pouring more power into Kain, the daemon had only made its predicament worse.
Yet it needed to continue. Only by maintaining that flow of power could it invade Kain's soul and attempt to dominate him.
The instant it successfully entered his consciousness, it regretted the decision more than anything it had ever done.
This thing was absolutely not human.
Inside Kain existed an environment that filled the daemon with shock and terror.
A Warp of his own.
But this was nothing like the Warp the daemon knew.
This strange internal realm was attempting to break the daemon down and turn it into fertilizer.
If this continued, the Greater Daemon would truly die. It wouldn't merely be banished back to the Warp to resurrect later.
When it had entered the material universe this time, it had brought its true body with it.
It had been forced to take that risk because the region of the Warp corresponding to this part of realspace had become a prison.
That region had been completely fixed in place.
The daemon couldn't enter the material universe, nor could it move beyond the imprisoned region within the Warp. Even the Warp's energy there had nearly frozen solid.
It had been like a fish trapped inside a frozen river.
Eventually, it devised a way to break through the ice and enter the material universe.
Once there, it intended to travel beyond the sealed region through ordinary physical space before returning to a part of the Warp where it could move freely.
Its true body could manifest in realspace, but remaining there for too long would be like a fish stranded on dry land. It would eventually perish.
After hammering against the frozen barrier day after day, it had finally managed to open a tiny crack.
Measured by humanity's perception of time, it would have needed no more than two additional days to break free.
The natives of this star system were simply too incompetent. They barely understood how to use psychic power.
Had they been more capable, the daemon could have used their planet as an anchor and opened a rift into realspace much sooner.
It had only needed to endure another two days.
Then an unexpected stellar eruption occurred outside, threatening to seal the crack once again and infuriating the daemon.
However, the eruption also presented an opportunity to escape immediately.
As the fissure was forced inward from the opposite direction, a genuine opening appeared for an instant. The daemon seized that brief opportunity and forced its way through.
Escaping in that manner required it to abandon part of itself, but it had succeeded.
After emerging, the daemon quickly learned what had happened. It entered the Aeldari Webway and crossed the star system, eventually reaching this human planet.
It intended to enjoy itself.
After being imprisoned for thousands of years, it had nearly gone insane from confinement. It wanted to vent its rage as well. Had that star not erupted, the daemon would have been completely free within another two days.
Upon encountering the humans, however, it discovered something it couldn't ignore.
Somehow, the Imperium's Astartes had acquired an object that was practically the perfect counter to Warp energy.
After investigating, the daemon learned that the crystals were connected to an unusual human who might not have left the planet yet.
That human was special.
The daemon was preparing to create an even greater disturbance and see whether it could lure the human out when the signal device carried by one of the Astartes reacted.
By following the signal's fluctuations, the daemon could vaguely sense the human's location.
However, it couldn't touch him.
The situation resembled those metal skeletons known as Necrons. The human appeared to be hiding within another layer of space.
When the daemon sensed subtle tremors spreading through its domain, it realized the human was about to emerge.
It decided to play with him.
Of course, it also remained wary that he might produce an even more dangerous version of that strange crystal.
Sure enough, Kain brought out exactly such an object.
When the human supposedly froze in shock, the daemon gleefully destroyed the crystal.
It believed it had manipulated him from beginning to end.
Now it realized that it was the one who had taken the bait.
If this continued for even another instant, Kain would devour it completely.
Damn it!
Damn it!
There was only one option left.
Even if the consequences caused it to fall from the rank of Greater Daemon, that was still preferable to dying.
A second later, the daemon screamed as it successfully tore itself free from the Warp within Kain's soul.
Only half of it escaped.
To break free, the daemon had ripped its own existence in two.
It immediately triggered an explosion of compressed air, trying to force itself away from Kain.
They were so close together that Kain absorbed and weakened most of its power. Otherwise, the explosion could have effortlessly erased the entire city.
If the daemon truly exerted itself, even destroying the planet would have required little more than a casual wave of its hand.
Boom!
It didn't expect the explosion to kill Kain.
Creating enough distance between them would be sufficient.
(End of Chapter)
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