This is our Warhammer journey

Chapter 474 Huron's Brother's Daily Routine of Resisting Pressure

The Great Vortex Guardian Front, Badab.

If this offensive, launched in tacit agreement by countless races and the chaotic forces of the warp at the beginning of the 800th century, initially plunged most of the human empire's territory into chaos, then as time passed and the forces of both sides gradually integrated and took shape during the war, this true test for humanity truly began.

Huron, protected by the 'Guardians', passed through a depressurized archway and onto the passageway.

They were advancing at full speed, maintaining an extremely tight formation. These warriors wore uniform silver-blue armor, the only difference being their unique chapter number and various colored trims on their left shoulders, and the uniform Great Vortex Guardian insignia on their right shoulders.

The passageway was not without demonic attacks. These bizarre creatures, which appeared with the aid of chaotic magic, began to invade reality as their attacks intensified, but they were all torn to pieces the moment they crossed paths with these elite armed forces.

Huron followed the group unharmed, his power claws unstained by any blood.

'Guardian Guard'

Approved by the chapter commanders and through the Vortex Guardian Project, the Guardians were carefully selected from the thirteen Astartes chapters stationed at the Vortex. Each chapter sent ten members, armed with Hades-type Terminators and equipped with a full set of powered weapons by Huron at great expense. The Guardians are considered one of the most elite forces in Astartes history.

Its core duty is to uphold the authority of the Maelstrom Guardian 'Ruft Huron' and prioritize his safety.

after all--

For an Astartes, this was indeed a difficult thing to say, but as his status gradually rose and he dealt more with members of various chapters, such as the Manhunter, the Black Templar, and others from the first and second founding chapters, Huron had to admit one thing.

Although he was also a chapter leader, he was indeed much inferior to these 'monsters' in terms of personal combat strength, to the point that the various chapters stationed in the Great Vortex had to worry about the safety of this 'patron'.

After all, what contradicts Huron's criticized military force is his exaggerated level of operational and strategic expertise.

Boom!

A continuous tremor could be heard.

Huron led the team steadily forward.

This is a wide, high bridge in space, spanning the Badab space ring and some attached fortress arrays to the west. Further out are massive star fortresses, whose internal passages are protected within a huge skeleton.

In space, endless naval battles rage in deep space.

The ravaged sky roared overhead, bright as a furnace, streaked with crisscrossing trails.

Walking down the corridor, he could hear the warship's structure cracking and groaning after the Void Shield overloaded, and the uneven impacts and rumbles of the steel structure beside him bearing off from the continuous bombardment.

The expeditionary fleet that arrived with the support of the Wings of Dawn has been incorporated into the defensive system of the Whirlwind Guardian Line. With the blessing of the Primal Power, they are able to use a more intelligent combat system, which allows the expeditionary fleet to perform even better in the battle.

Chaos could no longer tolerate Badab's unyielding stance.

As time went on, Huron gradually stabilized its defenses against the Tyranid swarm and Orks after receiving support from the expeditionary fleet and the Black Templars, but Chaos obviously wouldn't let the situation remain deadlocked.

What they did is obvious to the naked eye.

If you simply look up at the starry sky, you can see that enormous rift that almost tears the center of the Milky Way apart.

This warp rift, which nearly swallowed the Wotan Alliance, a space dwarf regime, has grown larger than the Eye of Terror after merging with the Maelstrom. It has greatly amplified the power of the Chaos faction. Human planets around the Maelstrom will be contaminated by the psionic energy it emits. Some people will have their senses burned by this psionic energy, and some will even awaken psionic power on the spot.

No one knows how Chaos achieved this; many psionicists can only hear its furious roars from the High Heavens.

In recent times, it's become commonplace for psionicists to go berserk. It's not uncommon for suddenly awakened psionicists to be blown up into a portal if they aren't contained in time.

After accomplishing all this, the Chaos Wotan Alliance and the Chaos Warbands, under the leadership of Warmaster Abaddon, formed a massive fleet that continuously filled the Badab region. Accompanying this fleet were two Blackrock fortresses that Abaddon had seized during the Gothic Wars.

Among them, Abaddon's general, Starbuster Harken, boldly declared that he would take over the Badab system within 80 days.

"These dwarven tribes deserve to die!"

Huron cursed under his breath, feeling contempt for those distant human relatives who once thought they could live safely just by living deep in the center of the galaxy.

After the return of the Dawnwing, the upper echelons of the Empire were generally aware that there was a massive rift in the galaxy that overlapped with the High Heavens and stretched across the galaxy. It was sealed by a series of black stone planets placed above the rift by an ancient race.

Among them, Cardia is the most important node. The fall of Cardia would cause the entire galaxy to be torn apart by the Great Rift, which is an outcome that no one can accept. Therefore, the Cardians no longer send the Astral Army to support various planets. Instead, the surrounding star sectors have begun to frantically supply Cardia with manpower, weapons, fleets, and all combat resources that can make Cardia safer, and have devoted all their efforts to the encirclement of the 'Eye of Fear'.

The Great Vortex was also part of this, so the Dawnwings—and even the High Lords, at least with the approval of the leader of the Star Court, the most powerful psionic among humans—expended considerable effort to strengthen the defenses of the Great Vortex to prevent Chaos's major defeat in Kadia from causing them to shift their focus.

The planets throughout the rift region are also key targets for fortification, and both the Empire and the Dawnwing have strictly controlled the mining of Blackstone, a unique mineral.

The Wotan Alliance, located at the center of the galaxy and also built on the Great Rift, has ignored humanity's warnings and is now the weakest link in this defense system due to the presence of numerous high-quality objects that prevent it from facing subspace threats.

After discovering that it could not devour humans, Chaos, eager to increase its influence on the real universe under the pressure of the Dawn Wings, naturally set its sights on those slightly weaker forces.

These beings, who survived by virtue of their environment and scale, had lived far from the deepest and most evil things in the galaxy for countless years. When the great power of the High Heavens began to show them the same attention as humanity, their collapse was instantaneous.

You don't know how much it hurts until you get punched.

At the strong request of the chapter commanders, Huron ventured deep into the fortress.

A communications officer approached.

"Hello, sir."

She clearly had no time for any further courtesy and quickly reported everything she knew.

"This is a census report—"

The southern horizon was illuminated by the orange glow of stars, casting shadows of towering star rings and the silhouettes of nearby intersecting warships.

In the various evacuation areas, passageways and streets were crowded with people, displaced people flowing like rivers into safer areas.

In various cities and settlements, officials and arbitrators with lampposts arranged long lines of migrants into temporary shelters. Halls, libraries, stadiums, theaters—any space that could be requisitioned and allocated was utilized. Then came the resettlement, and then the goal was to get these people back to work as quickly as possible.

They were driven from their homes on the eastern surface of the planet and above the massive star ring, and desperately sought refuge inside towering fortresses on the other side of the planet.

Despite the grim situation, many areas in Badab still remain considered safe.

Huron saw people carrying stacks of property in shipping containers, including many elderly people and children.

Millions more people were evicted from their original homes, and tens of thousands of well-trained officials and soldiers were needed to care for them. It would take several days to reassign them to jobs in order to restore their usefulness.

How many more will there be next?

Where can the enemy go when they reach Badab, the core of the Great Vortex defense line, and push the line to the surface?

The air inside Badab Fortress has changed.

Unlike Astartes, mortals naturally develop some odors if they are left unattended for a long time.

Despair is the same.

Countless men and women have been on duty for far too long. The entire command center is squeezing everyone's resources to ensure basic health and operation, which makes their uniforms wrinkled and their hair tangled.

Most people are so sleep-deprived that they almost forget how long they've been here.

Despite their grogginess and the stench, they remained numbly at their posts, manipulating levers and switching instruments.

Because there was nothing else to do.

Deep within their brains, almost stiffened by thought and data, they still remember what they are fighting against, so they choose to persevere, only because the fear of failure or surrender forces them to stay awake.

"That's ironic," Huron thought.

He is maneuvering the fleet to defend against Abaddon's threat, directing the commando team to risk their lives to prevent Blackrock Fortress from approaching the planetary orbits inside the Badab system, and keeping an eye on battlefields tens or even thousands of light-years away, where humans and greenskins, humans and chaos, humans and Tyrannosaurus, and humans and the aforementioned problems are randomly combined.

Amidst the string of data, he unusually looked up from his seat and scanned the entire signal room.

The communications officer's reports seem irrelevant to the battlefield; when faced with a threat, these people always hope for a more powerful presence, while they themselves are quite capable of creating trouble.

This is the troublesome thing about mortals, which made Huron subconsciously feel irritated.

If the enemy hadn't been so enamored with and indulged in their cruel nature, perhaps these people would have surrendered long ago. However, the reality is that the power of fear is just a tiny bit stronger than that of despair.

Every video from the front lines, every atrocity committed by the Orks, Chaos, and Tyranids during their occupation—the way they were pursued by some greater threat, forced to disregard even the preconditions, and greedily slaughtering and devouring humanity—constantly strengthened the defenders' resolve, preventing them from collapsing.

Huron turned his gaze away from the messenger.

Huron didn't ask her when her last break was.

Ordering her to go and rest was a charade, because even a Space Marine was long past the point where he could normally endure anything. The only reason he had been able to hold on until now was because surrendering would mean certain death, and Chaos would destroy everything he had created. This was no different from the pursuit of mortals.

No, he is fighting for something greater.

So do they.

He closed his eyes slightly, and the figures of those mortals appeared in his mind.

You can't consider them a burden at the start of a war.

"You go down first."

He shook off those troubling thoughts and simply issued the order.

When Huron finally stood in the position of a leader and began to think, he realized how naive his past ideas were in retrospect.

Look at those traitors who have sided with Chaos. Without mortals to maintain their bones and pump blood into their weapons of war, they fight tooth and nail for even a sip of clean water and a wad of ammunition.

Click!

The base gates opened, and the guards took on the responsibility of identification and protection, inviting visitors inside.

In the past, Huron could detect their footsteps and identify them before they even entered the room. But now he was too tired to notice until the cloaked figure and the High Marshal of the Black Templar had already passed halfway up the steps leading to the Maelstrom Guardian's command platform.

"Ruft".

Kahulangi said.

Huron nodded, looking away from the completed evacuation plan.

Even though he had known the chief of the man-eating shark's think tank for many years, he still found it easy to feel uneasy about that calm face, especially now that Badab was deeply affected by the warp and was tormented by those strange hostility and illusions.

That damned chaotic pollution.

Unable to directly corrupt Huron's soul, these despicable beings constantly weave lies that everything they have created has been destroyed by their comrades, trying to make him regard these comrades who fought side by side as enemies, and trying to make him choose some blasphemous means to replenish his troops under the increasing administrative pressure of rising casualties in order to stabilize society.

He also paid his respects to Grand Marshal Ledodes, a legendary figure who had fought for a thousand years and was now exhausted. They both fell silent, waiting for Huron to speak first.

"The Kahulangi Brothers".

Huron asked, "Has anything changed?"

This question was almost an unconscious habit, starting from the time the Great Vortex region was gradually enveloped by the chaotic warp tides, and from the time the Dawnwings knew what they were going to do.

The answer, of course, remained the same.

Lord Ramses remains silent.

Kahulanji said, "I'll let you know if there are any changes. How's the defense?"

Huron smiled confidently.

"As solid as a rock".

When the war inevitably descended into an extremely troublesome situation, only Huron still had some control over the overall tactical situation. Only he remembered all the previous plans, where each military force of the Great Vortex was deployed, and where they might be now, considering losses, unexpected events, and other factors.

The only thing Huron could be proud of was the accuracy of his predictions, which came from years of dominating a sector of stars.

This confidence and ability earned the admiration of Grand Marshal Ledodes.

The Black Templars have dealt with the Greenskins countless times. Aside from the disastrous start of the War of the Beasts, the Sons of Dorne were present in the mid-game battles and the later defenses. They were extremely adept at dealing with these alien enemies and were responsible for the defense of the southern Maelstrom.

He has now handed over battlefield command to another swordsman, Helbrightchett, who has risen to fame and even won the title battle championship, while he leads a considerable number of Black Templars back to assist Huron in defense.

The Grand Marshal believed in Helblechett's abilities; he could lead the Black Temple to contain the Greenskins' expansion. Huron's importance was beyond question; without him coordinating the entire Maelstrom, the resulting chaos alone would cause unacceptable losses to humanity.

Now these younger generations have grown up.

Thinking of Huron and Helbrightchett's achievements, Ledodes couldn't help but smile, and some subtle thoughts began to stir in his mind.

retire.

That would be a dream come true for an Astartes.

But even someone as confident as Huron needs something that can truly motivate him at this moment.

The prolonged war relentlessly tormented his soul, and the endless chaos left him utterly exhausted.

If Dawnbreaker succeeds.
In the middle of his thought process, Huron discovered that his enhanced senses could distinguish a strange, continuous, harmonious chime from the groans of the Shield system, the low thuds, and the countless bass sounds below.

He stopped.

Something within his bloodline was awakened.

Before Ledodes could join the discussion, everyone noticed Huron's unusual behavior.

"grown ups?"

"Karab Cullen from the Red Scorpion Chapter asked. He was a member of Huron's Guardian Guard.

Huron looked up.

In this region that was almost completely sealed off by the rift, before the Star Language Court could even report the results of that great victory, a strange yet incredibly familiar gaze fell upon his head.

That gaze...

He is another father of genetics.

It's Robert Guilliman!
Huron smiled with delight.

Around him, and on the battlefield, almost all the Sons of Guilliman felt a strange sensation at that moment.

That emotion doesn't deceive them; the feeling is very subtle, like being watched through a thick curtain, and if you're not careful, you might even mistake it for an illusion.

But for those who had never experienced this feeling before, it was all too clear to these warriors born in the Dark Ages.

Kahulanji received the message.

He looked up.

Huron stared at him.

"He's back?"

He asked in a hoarse voice.

“They are back.”

Kahulangi nodded.

"Lord Guilliman, Lord Romulus, and all the lords of the Wings of Dawn, they have finally arrived."

Huron looked at the communications officer.

"Activate the psionic call channel."

He said, "Star Language Court, call directly."