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Chapter 91: Ka'Bandha Fears Nothing
🕑 Added 2025-08-15 14:04:24 +0000 UTCChapter 91: Ka'Bandha Fears Nothing
"Blood for the Blood God!"
A whip shrieked through the air, followed by a muffled explosion. Flames spread death. With every roar of the Bloodthirster, the swarming Tyranids screamed and melted.
Looking down from the sky, the Forge-World, once a thing of mechanistic beauty, had now been transformed into a literal purgatory, a burning hell. The mechanical shells that had once isolated the smog and dust were gone. The production lines that had once supplied an entire sector had collapsed. Flammable materials burned fiercely, pillars of black smoke rising from them, the intense temperature difference creating a gale-force wind.
"Soulless puppets, come! Let me drown you in purgatory," Ka'Bandha roared from the center of the chaos, spreading his shattered wings. As the skeletal frame unfurled, tendons and fascia rapidly regrew. In the blink of an eye, his wings were reforged in the molten fire.
Scanning his surroundings, he saw no trace of civilization, only an endless expanse of lava and flame, as if he were standing in the crater of a burning volcano.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Heavy footsteps crushed the molten rock as a horned beast strode forward. A Norn Emissary flicked a broken biomorph from its arm.
WHOOSH—
A drop-pod bursting from the sky crashed to the ground. A weapon-beast fell out, crawled onto the Norn Emissary's severed limb, and began to rapidly grow, connecting with its nervous system. A new psychic blade began to glow with a deep, eerie light.
Ranged weapons were having little effect. Including the psychic emitters, besides tearing at his fragile wings, they couldn't even scratch Ka'Bandha's armor.
A troublesome enemy.
If Romulus was a master of tactics, causing endless trouble for the Hive Mind's advance with his absurd command ability and mysterious troop deployments, then Ka'Bandha, with his pure individual might, was making the Hive Mind feel a deep sense of powerlessness.
After fighting for so long, dense ranged attacks were useless. Swarming him with hordes was useless. The Lictors sent to assassinate him had had their heads torn off. For two months, the Hive Mind had sent all sorts of bioforms, but none could stop his advance. Instead, it had lost a massive amount of biomass, to the point where it couldn't even break the human defensive lines.
Now, after collecting data on the daemons appearing from the portals, the Hive Mind had realized that only by defeating him in a ritual duel did it have a chance of driving him away. Otherwise, it would have never wanted the Norn Queen to waste so much biomass incubating a Norn Emissary.
These daemons of the Warp are damned!
The Hive Mind felt it was a huge loss. But burning biomass to kill a robber was better than not being willing to spend it and losing everything in the end.
The Norn Emissary waved its four arms and charged.
But this time, the behemoth that had always charged forward did not respond.
"Yes, my liege! You have given me guidance! I will capture the Angel for you! I will go to a more glorious battlefield!" Ka'Bandha raised his head. Bathed in the fury of battle, he ignored his opponent and looked to the north.
In his vision, a bright crimson light was rising from the other side of the planet, piercing through steel, the planet's crust, and the molten rock. The Blood God's crimson blood had already climbed onto the Angel's weapon, like a torch guiding a believer through the mist, and at the same time, it had revealed the torchbearer's form.
Ka'Bandha was overcome with ecstasy.
Ah, this thirst for blood!
Ah, this boundless fury!
"Angel!!!" Ka'Bandha roared, then beat his wings and took to the sky, abandoning his opponent.
For the sake of his master's goal, what was abandoning a single war?!
This powerful enemy, who had caused the Hive Fleet countless losses for two months, forcing the Norn Queen to expend a massive amount of biomass to incubate a Norn Emissary just to deal with him, had just... left?
The Norn Emissary froze again. The Hive Mind, faced with this situation, was having trouble processing. It found that while this planet had a lot of biomass, the enemies were one after another, all bizarre. Tough humans, meddling daemons.
"Hooo~ Roooar~"
The Norn Emissary let out a low growl, the heat-vents on its body spewing scorching steam. Then, the massive body began to chase after Ka'Bandha.
Humans, daemons... all the things that stand in the way of me sating my hunger. I will kill you all!
Hiss~
Ramesses took a deep breath of whatever passed for air in the Warp.
In his vision, he had seen the Blood God's crimson spear fall, the crimson angel be marked, and the Bloodthirster who had been fighting the Hive Fleet abandon the battlefield, all to interfere in a duel.
'Khorne is really going all-in. As expected of our second brother.'
Generous, and decisive! Without Khorne, this game would have been very hard to break. The Tzeentchian Greater Daemons had too many tricks up their sleeves.
Click~
Ramesses placed a stone. The white stone landed in an area no one had expected. A dead move.
"You lose," Kairos said, placing his own stone.
Ramesses was clearly not very good at Go. Kairos had been deliberately feeding him stones the entire game, but if the man himself was determined to die, there was nothing he could do. Of course, Kairos wasn't worried. Instead, he was looking forward to what would happen next. He could feel his opponent's effortless confidence.
"Yes, I lose," the sorcerer said, his tone flat.
This calm acceptance of the result made the other Lords of Change look at him with surprise. This sorcerer had been completely unconcerned even when he had noticed them secretly trying to influence the half of his soul he had wagered. Such calmness was either a sign of absolute confidence, or pure idiocy.
Then, ten pairs of eyes all widened, as if seeing something unbelievable.
The soul began to blur, turning to fine sand, then dissipating with the tides of the Warp, like a clay sculpture dissolving in the sea.
Wait, he's really this hardcore?
Seeing Ramesses's soul on the verge of dissipating in the blink of an eye, the Lords of Change panicked.
We were just trying to recruit a new colleague for our master! We didn't want to kill you! Do you have to be so dramatic?
This wasn't like Magnus, who had shattered into pieces but could still be slowly put back together, with a bit of Warp-stuff mixed in to create a brand new Greater Daemon. If a person shattered like this... look at Sanguinius, look at the Thousand Sons who had triggered the Rubricae. Without the power of Death itself, there was no saving them!
Several of the Lords of Change quickly cast spells of creation, but it was already meaningless. The attempt was futile. The soul was rapidly becoming ethereal, its remaining energy quickly fading.
"Do you have any last words?" Kairos asked, his voice flat. He could no longer see the present...
"Of course I do."
The dissipating soul suddenly solidified and dove into the Go board.
"???"
The Lords of Change, seeing this, finally realized they had been played. They quickly used their most powerful spells, trying to drag the fleeing sorcerer back.
"Hahahaha!"
As the daemons' energy poured into it, a cheerful laugh came from the Go board. Then, the Lords of Change all felt a strong pulling sensation.
"Time for a journey, everyone."
Damn it!
The Lords of Change who had realized something was wrong immediately pulled back. But Kairos and three others were a half-second too slow. The ritual spell, using the power they had just poured into it, bound them, giving them no chance to refuse, and dragged the masters of that power to another world.
Kairos looked up. He saw the past of this Go board, born from a sourceless creation. Then he saw the future, a long whip, covered in skulls, swinging towards him.
"Hmm?" Kairos tilted his head in confusion. He remembered that looked like Ka'Bandha's whip.
The Go board unfolded. The shattered souls of several Lords of Change were mixed into it, and a ritual channel connecting to Pierdra was forcibly opened.
At almost the same instant, Kairos, along with the other Lords of Change who had just finished casting their spells, vanished.
Pierdra.
Several azure comets fell from the sky, directly smashing into the flying crimson meteor.
Kairos felt himself collide with something that was moving at high speed. Then he clearly felt that he was injured.
I'm bleeding? Then I must be in the real world.
Kairos looked at his own future, then continued to calculate the present.
"Kairos!!!"
It was the roar of one of Khorne's eight most favored Bloodthirsters.
Kairos realized that he should now be on a battlefield against Ka'Bandha. But why were they here?
"Damned Lords of Change!" Ka'Bandha roared, rising from the ruins, shaking the dust and rubble from his body, and flicking the blue blood from his whip. He looked at the three giant blue eagles, their forms barely solid, before him.
The moment he had seen these evil sorcerers, he knew he couldn't leave. These slaves of the Deceiver, these disgusting wizards, had ruined the Blood God's grand wars more than once, making the bloodshed impure.
The Bloodthirster spat a breath of fire.
No wonder, no wonder the great Blood God had marked the angel for him, even making him abandon a glorious battlefield. The most glorious battlefield was here!
He absolutely could not let the claws of these deceivers touch the Blood God's most prized collectible.
Ka'Bandha leapt high, bringing his axe down in a mighty cleave.
"Wait, this is a conspiracy! A trap woven by our prey to make us kill each other..."
"I swear on my honor, I will offer your heads to the Blood God!" he roared!
The most valiant warrior of the Blood God would not be fooled by the words of a Tzeentchian daemon like the exiled Skarbrand, and lose the favor of the Blood God.
A conspiracy?
Ka'Bandha gathered all his strength and, on the spot, cleaved off the head of a nameless Greater Daemon.
As long as I kill all these Lords of Change, there will be no more conspiracies!
"I will make you bleed! I will make you vomit nothing but blood from your rotten mouths!"
He would win, and then, carrying four heads, he would find the angel and offer the most sublime gift to the Blood God.
"Kairos!"
The roar of one of Khorne's eight most favored Bloodthirsters.
"Tzeentch!!!"
In the crimson domain, the roar of the Blood God shook the heavens.
"Hee hee—"
In the Crystal Labyrinth, the Lord of Change gazed at the thousand reflections in his mirrors, an boundless joy spreading across his being.
Good. You did good!
He loved this kind of audacity, to put one's own soul on the board. This world was actually very fair. If you wanted to achieve something, you just had to offer up your soul. The value of a soul was supreme, but mortals often did not know it.
And the sorcerer could still win the gamble.
The sorcerer had used half his soul to offer an unparalleled sacrifice, to create a joke that would pit two gods against each other.
So what about next time?
The Lord of Change clutched the fine sand, an expression of anticipation on his being.
Until the sorcerer swallowed the bitter fruit of knowledge and gave the Lord of Change a reason to mock him, He would only feel joy.
No one didn't want to win.
(End of Chapter)
