Warhammer: Don't Call Me the God of All Machines

Chapter 956 Landing on the End

"Elsa's scent?"

"Why, why is Elsa here?"

"Even if those damned Idas brought their goddess of life to Kadia, she shouldn't be on the front lines of the battlefield. What's the difference between that and throwing meat into a pack of wolves?"

Unlike Nurgle, who went completely mad at the mere sight of Elsa, Typhons, being a demon prince who rose from mortal to demon, was far more clear-headed and rational.

During the Great Crusade, he was a company commander in the Deathguard Legion, responsible for managing and overseeing many of the Legion's affairs, while the Primarch often only nominally managed the Legion. The rich experience he accumulated during that period is still relevant today.

On a whim, Typhon realized that this must be a trap designed to throw them into chaos.

But who has the ability to create a trap? Who has the power to command Elsa to create a false impression? And who has the ability and insight to orchestrate this seduction and misleading scheme?

Typhons' rotting, bloated body jolted violently, crushing a Nurgle writhing in flesh and pus on the bridge of the End of the World into a crisp explosion.

The Nurgle, half-dead from being trampled, wasn't completely dead yet. It howled and tried to stuff its ruptured internal organs back in, but to no avail.

The little creature kept cursing Typhons before being banished back to the depths of the Plague Garden.

Typhons didn't care about the feelings of this tiny Nurgle. At this moment, he was frantically working his already stagnant brain, trying to deduce who was behind this.

Soon, a biting cold wind seemed to blow in from the void, instantly piercing through the layers of fog in Typhon's mind, making him feel a chill from the bottom of his heart spreading directly from his tailbone to the top of his head.

It's Mortalian! It must be her!

Typhons is the person in the entire galaxy who knows Mortalian better than anyone else. Ever since Mortalian crashed in Barbaros and was adopted by the planet's psionic overlord, Typhons has followed Mortalian.

He watched this quiet child grow up rapidly, witnessing him display a terrifying innate talent that allowed him to easily surpass everyone older than him.

Typhon, who was called Typhon at the time, was also swayed by Mortarion's charisma and followed him to fight against the Xenomorphs' brutal enslavement.

Typhon was indeed genuinely loyal to Mortarion during his time in Barbarossa, serving as his comrade-in-arms and follower.

It wasn't until the Emperor finally arrived in Barbarus and helped Mortarion kill the alien overlord that Typhon's feelings began to change.

Only Typhons knew his true identity: he was the descendant of a psionic overlord and a human female slave from Barbalus, making him a naturally powerful psionic being. Typhons's understanding of his own identity had always been rather vague.

When Mortalian's true father's identity was revealed, Typhons finally couldn't hold back anymore. Why was he a damned alien-human hybrid, while Mortalian's father was actually the legendary Lord of Humanity, an emperor with boundless power and influence?

They could share hardships and get through the tough times on Barbarossa together, but things started to change once that was over.

Because of his alien adoptive father, Mortalian harbors the purest malice and hostility towards all aliens and psionics.

Unfortunately, Typhons possessed both of these traits, so he dared not reveal his true situation for fear of being discovered by Mortarian.

Furthermore, after they joined the Death Guard, Typhons implanted a gene seed, which made his relationship with Mortalian even more complicated.

He was not only Mortalian's comrade-in-arms, but also became his son, which greatly frustrated Typhon's sensitive and proud heart.

Typhons began to fall into a kind of paranoia: he wanted to prove that he was no less than Mortalian, and even though his origins were far inferior to the Primarch's, he wanted to surpass the Primarch in other ways.

Later, Typhons discovered that the Primarch was indeed a hopeless existence, and that he could not surpass it in any aspect. As a result, even more insane and twisted ideas arose in his mind.

Guided by the Hand of Fate, Erebas, he led Mortalian and most of the Death Guard into the depths of the warp, where they crashed into Nurgle's Garden.

He had intended to offer Mortarion to Nurgle, hoping that the Father would bestow upon him a precious blessing, and that he and Mortarion could then live together more equally.

But Mortalian escaped with the help of that bitch Aisha, leaving Typhon alone in the Plague Garden, enduring the ostracism and contempt of the other demons.

"She's here... the traitor who abandoned the Legion and joined the alien false god has arrived!"

"How dare she come? Is she looking down on the power of the Death Guard? Or is she looking down on my power?"

Typhons gritted his rotten teeth and shouted at the Death Guards around him.

The Death Guards, whose bodies were bloated and rotting, almost bursting their power armor, suddenly trembled.

Upon hearing the name Mortalian, a strong and urgent urge to return to the Primarch arose within them.

This impulse persisted even after long periods of chaos and corruption, and may have become even more intense.

"The Primarch went down the wrong path; she was seduced by those despicable Eldar..."

“We must guide her onto the right path. We must slaughter all the Eldar and bring her to the Father's side, so that we can stay with the Primarch forever…”

Typhons's murky eyes gleamed with greed and savagery, and a horrifying smile stretched across his rotting lips, as thick saliva dripped onto the control panel, sizzling and corroding.

He knew exactly how to boost the morale of these Death Guards; he couldn't capture Mortalian on his own.

The Death Guards, who had been like walking corpses, were stirred up by Typhons and became excited again.

They have been corrupted by the power of Nurgle for too long, and even their thinking has been completely distorted into the most common, lazy and complacent mode in the Plague Garden.

They will not resist orders, but they also will not take the initiative to optimize them, just like those low-intelligence puppets who only follow the rules step by step.

"Turn the End around. Since Mortalian dared to come, let her stay here forever," Typhons ordered.

The End and the other Deathguard fleets began to advance towards the Eldar fleet. Even in terms of sheer size, the former had an overwhelming advantage.

Typhons was indeed wary of Mortalian, but this was a large-scale war, and individual strength was not as important as one might imagine.

If the Eldar fleet dares to confront his fleet head-on, he will show these timid, pointy-eared Eldar just how resilient the Deathguards with Nurgle's Blessing can be.

Typhons had accepted the power to destroy the hive and become the voice of the benevolent father, spreading the gospel of plague everywhere. He did not think he would be defeated by Mortalian, who had refused to bestow blessings.

Moreover, his warship was guarded by a large number of unclean beings, whose spittle alone would be enough to drown Mortalian.

To prevent Mortalian from escaping, he even proactively weakened the End's defenses and kept other warships at a considerable distance from the End.

He had to lure Mortalian into a boarding maneuver, otherwise, given the Eldar starships' mobility, they could easily escape again.

However, Typhon underestimated Mortalian's determination; even if he hadn't taken these self-deceptive actions, Mortalian would have come after him.

Mortalian's Life Breath, a Dragonship-class cruiser, had already locked onto the End. Just before the two warships reached their maximum distance, the Life Breath gracefully left the End behind.

Then, while the End was still turning, Mortalian used her psionic powers to launch a boarding teleportation attack on the enemy.

"Ada's warriors, follow in my footsteps!"

Mortalian's voice, transmitted through psionic energy, reached clearly into the ears of every Eldar elite who had followed her in switching sides.

The Primarch opened a massive portal on the armory deck of the Breath of Life, large enough to accommodate even a Phantom Knight or a Phantom Titan.

Without the slightest hesitation, she was the first to step into the passage, her tall figure enveloped in emerald green psionic light.

Ironically, Mortalian, once a staunch anti-psy advocate, led the Death Guard in hunting down aliens and uncontrolled psykers across the galaxy, but after merging with Aisha's bloodline, the psyker energy within her was fully awakened.

Even compared to Lemanrus, who had awakened his true nature, Mortalian was in no way inferior in terms of psionic power, which allowed her to easily withstand the consumption of maintaining such a large-scale teleportation.

As the emerald light of the teleportation channel slowly faded, Mortalian had already landed on the deck of the End.

This once-mighty warship belonging to the Death Guard Legion is now covered in a thick, writhing carpet of fungi. The warship's bulkheads and decks undulate slowly like the stomach and intestines of some kind of giant beast, occasionally emitting strange sounds of blood flowing and muscles rubbing together.

Various types of moss and vegetation that would never appear in the real universe, along with giant worms, roamed around the warship, gnawing on anything they could swallow.

A thick stench, accompanied by the smell of decay, assaulted her senses. Mortalian used her psionic powers to create a barrier in front of her, keeping the filth out.

"The End, I will bring you destruction and salvation."

The Primarch's mind overlaid the image of the End of the Machine from the past with its current form, and a surge of inexplicable anger and sorrow welled up within him.

Mortalian took a step forward, and as her boots, crafted from spirit bones, touched the writhing flesh, a vibrant green energy emanated from them.

That was Aisha's power. The Eldar's Goddess of Life almost regarded Mortalian as her own daughter, and she generously transferred her divine power to the Primarch.

Wherever the emerald green waves reached, those decaying things that had been stagnating between new life and death suddenly began to radiate new vitality.

They continued to grow and spread, almost completely filling up the space inside the cabin in a short period of time.

When they reach their limit of growth, they quickly begin to wither and die.

In just three breaths, all that remained of the End in front of Mortalian was the deck and bulkheads that looked like rust spots, and the dense, decaying matter had turned to dust.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

"There should not be so much decay and stagnation between life and death."

Mortalian chanted softly, and the End was being gradually purified by her. The Pale King watched the decaying matter turn to ashes before him, and couldn't help but recall his past self, how he had firmly believed in so-called numerology, especially favoring the number seven.

Now, she already knows that seven is Nurgle's holy number, and that she and the Fourteenth Legion had already been targeted by Nurgle, who had been secretly influencing them.

But Nurgle's sacred number is not just seven; three is also a hidden sacred number of Nurgle, which symbolizes the triple path of life, decay, and death.

Nurgle could have become a complete Triune God, but he stubbornly chose decay. He favored despair, death, and stagnation, which undoubtedly deviated completely from the true meaning of life.

Mortalian was greatly influenced by Aisha, and she instinctively loathed Nurgle, this twisted and corrupt life form.

Life without death is no longer life, but some kind of blasphemous and deformed monster.

After Mortalian cleared a sufficiently spacious deck within the End's massive cabin, Ada's boarding party finally caught up.

Having spent a long time with the Eldar, Mortalian was well aware of their strengths and weaknesses.

It can be said that most Eldar units are truly fragile yet high-attack units, relying only on mobility, psionic shields, and phantom clones.

To send them to fight on a battlefield teeming with Nurgle creatures, where even a clod of mud, a blade of grass, or a maggot is laced with plague and poison, is tantamount to courting death.

Even though they were protected by Aisha's blessing, Mortalian did not want to waste the lives of these Ida warriors.

Even with Aisha's return, Eldar's birth rate and population remain a major headache.

In this dark and cruel galaxy, population often equates to fighting power.

The biggest reason why the human empire has been able to stand firm is that countless humans in the galaxy are tenaciously multiplying and thriving, giving the empire an almost inexhaustible supply of troops and resources.

The first thing to appear from behind Mortalian was a war vehicle called the Ghost Knight.

These elegant yet deadly war machines average over ten meters in height, their skeletal frames exhibiting a moonlit radiance and slenderness.

Within their bodies, the conscious souls of the dead are perfectly synchronized with the minds of the living pilots in the cockpit, giving the riders every movement an extraordinary fluidity and precision.

The fifteen Phantom Knights were divided into three squads. As soon as they entered the battlefield, they began to be on high alert and sent out numerous hovering probes to scout the surrounding battlefield environment.

With the commotion caused by Mortalian, the Death Guards and Nurgle demons on the End of the World also noticed the intruder's arrival and are now swarming in this direction.

A restless atmosphere began to permeate the air, and a foul stench, a mixture of various odors, swept over them, causing all the spirit race members to feel an instinctive disgust.

Five Dark Knights, equipped with heavy Dark Cannons, their long barrels gleaming with an ominous light, easily locked onto the surging tide of Plague Walkers and Nurgles approaching from afar.

Without any deafening cannon fire, the Nether Cannon unleashed vortexes of psionic energy that distorted reality, easily tearing the Nurgle demons it struck into pieces.

Another group of Dark Knights began charging their sunburst cannons on their shoulders, their targets being the massive, slow-moving Nurgle Demon Engines and the bloated Great Unclean Ones further away.

The boiling plasma spheres were projected out like miniature suns, bursting forth with devastating energy turbulence upon impact, vaporizing the corrupted flesh and metal, and clearing out brief vacuum zones in the dense enemy ranks.

However, the End is, after all, the territory of the Nurgle demons. It would be a pipe dream to think that the firepower of just a few Ghost Knights could stop the enemy.

However, Mortalian didn't expect them to decide the outcome of the battle. The greatest use of units like the Spectral Knights was to create time for the infantry and Titans to enter the fray by utilizing their balance of mobility and firepower.

As the Nurgle demon drew closer, it became impractical for the Dark Knights to provide cover fire, so they switched to their massive ghost blades and charged into the enemy ranks like ballet dancers.

The enormous blade gleamed with a blinding energy field, tracing deadly arcs.

Wherever the blade passed, the Death Guard was easily severed along with its power armor, and the heavy Terminator's decaying armor was also cleaved open by the strike imbued with psionic power.

The scattering shields on their arms lit up intermittently, deflecting and absorbing explosives and corrosive acid attacks from enemies.

Thanks to the precious time bought by the Nether Knights, the colossal behemoth that truly made the internal structure of the End Ship tremble finally entered the battlefield.

Three Phantom Titans, each twenty-five meters tall, burst out of the portal. Their figures were more slender and elegant than those of the Ghost Knights, and their smooth, skeletal lines seemed to belong to a different world than this brutal battlefield.

For the Eldar today, although they still possess the technology to create Phantom Titans, the exorbitant cost makes it virtually impossible for any Arkworld to manufacture them.

The existing Phantom Titans are almost nonexistent; every one damaged is one less available. When Mortalian transferred these three Welcome Titans from those Ark Worlds, their Ark Prophets repeatedly requested Mortalian to make good use of them and minimize battle losses.

The Phantom Titan unfurled its massive rear fins, projecting a Titan-class holographic energy field covering a vast area. The distorted light caused most of the Nurgle Defenders' ranged attacks to futilely pass through the illusory image.

The Phantom Titan on the left has massive Phantom Pulse Cannons mounted on its arms. Each time the muzzle flashes, it fires a thick pulse energy beam powerful enough to tear apart the armor of a warship.

The pulsed energy beam easily pierced through several decks of the warship, evaporating the gathered Deathguard Company and the approaching Nurgle beasts, creating a shockingly large cavity inside the ship.

The Phantom Titan on the right has an even more bizarre attack method. Its shoulder-mounted space distortion cannons continuously fire silent distortion fields, and the spatial structure in the area covered by the field becomes extremely unstable.

The bodies of the Nurgle demons were pulled, squeezed, twisted, and deformed by an invisible force, eventually collapsing into an indescribable mass of matter like crumpled pieces of paper.

The central Phantom Titan, serving as the command unit, primarily stands at the rear of the battlefield to protect the portal, and can only conduct ultra-long-range bombardment using the Phantom Missile Launcher.

These psionic missiles skillfully bypassed obstacles and penetrated key nodes such as various pipes and automated weapon arrays, greatly damaging the overall structure of the End.

The Death Guards and Nurgle demons on the End were caught in a dilemma under the saturation firepower of the Eldar.

This was completely different from the Eldar they had in mind. Most of the time, the pointy-eared Ida would never confront a well-organized warp army head-on, but would retreat at the first sign of trouble, fighting and withdrawing at the same time.

"Typhons, come out and see me!"

"I'm already here, aren't you afraid to come out?"

Mortalian stood atop the shoulder armor that commanded the Phantom Titan.

She still held the two-handed scythe called the Silent Scythe in her hand. This weapon had accompanied her through the exciting years of the Great Crusade, and even now it remained a loyal companion to the Primarch.

The Pale Queen has a deep affection for this weapon, and now she wants to use this scythe to settle things once and for all with Typhon.

The Primarch's roar, amplified by psionic energy, swept across the entire End and quickly reached Typhon's ears.

His already decaying heart began to beat faster at this moment, and the incessantly buzzing flies in the hollows of Typhon's body flapped their wings more excitedly, emitting a chilling buzzing sound.

Even before they had met, he could sense Mortalian's haughty disdain and arrogance from her tone.

“Motalian…”

"I'm here, and I will repay you tenfold for all the humiliation you brought me!"

Typhons' sensitive heart was pounding; he hated being viewed this way, especially by the Primarch.

However, Typhons was a shrewd strategist, and he did not lose his temper. Instead, he continued to send Death Guards and Nurgle Demons to wear down the Eldar forces and Mortalian's stamina.

These are his strengths; to not use them would be utter foolishness.

He had become completely immune to Mortalian's ridiculous provocations many years ago.

Seeing that Typhons was still hiding behind the demon army, the Pale Queen gave up the idea of ​​directly beheading him in a one-on-one fight. Since Typhons wouldn't come out, she would kill her way up to him and then use the Silent Scythe to cut off his head.

The Dark Knights and Phantom Titans began to advance their battle lines in an orderly fashion, while the tribe warriors brought by Mortalian began to take advantage of their agility and deadly skills.

The howling banshees are like silver-green whirlwinds; their piercing battle cries not only intimidate enemies, but their sound waves also have a tearing effect.

They weaved between the legs of the Shadow Knights and amidst the chaos created by the Phantom Titans, precisely slicing through lone enemies with their twin blades while maintaining an extremely cautious distance from those massive enemies that were clearly impossible to kill instantly.

The Vicious Avengers and the Assault Scorpion Cult's branch warriors are stronger and more warlike. Compared to the Howling Banshee, they are better at head-on combat. These elite branch warriors are extremely skilled at using chainsaw swords and hot melt guns to take down troublesome enemies.

Mortalian herself naturally became the core of command and the sharpest spearhead of this legion of the dead.

She no longer needed to deal with every single enemy soldier personally; instead, she focused her gaze across the chaotic battlefield, locking onto the command nodes of the powerful Great Impermanents and Death Guardians.

With each flash of the energy pistol called "Lantern" in her hand, it emitted a purifying emerald light, easily piercing through the thick armor of the enormous plague beast and purifying it from the inside out.

Even the most unclean beings, as large as a small mountain, are often utterly slain and banished before Mortalian's Silent Scythe, imbued with Aisha's divine power, and cannot last more than ten rounds.

She was like a goddess of war, skillfully guiding the Idas' firepower and directing the army's assault. The Idas only needed to obey orders to defeat the demonic waves before them.

"So this is what it feels like to fight under the Primarch's orders?"

"It was absolutely... exhilarating!"

Many older tribe warriors immediately experienced the wonders of the Primarch, a pleasure they had never felt in their long war careers.

Even the most skilled commanders of the Eldarin are still several levels below the Primarchs created by the Emperor using the nature of the Warp specifically for warfare.

If their initial obedience to Mortalian was largely due to Aisha's will, they now genuinely worship Mortalian from the bottom of their hearts.

Regardless of their sect, warriors all harbor a deep reverence for the strong, and Mortalian's appearance undoubtedly fulfilled all their fantasies about a perfect leader.

(End of this chapter)