Astartes Second Legion Retributors, Serial Number Conquered World—Universe No.117, beyond the Milky Way, approximately 160,000 light-years away, near the Large Magellanic Cloud, a remote corner.
From afar, the planet within this small galaxy between the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud appeared to be covered entirely in primordial jungle.
Unlike the vast majority of observed planets, it did not look desolate. It seemed as though life flourished vigorously upon it.
But if one entered the atmosphere to observe more closely, one would discover that this was a deathly silent world. The sky was overcast, the land dim and indistinct, everything cast in gray-black. All of it exuded a strange, oppressive aura.
It was as though someone had deliberately splashed foul-smelling ink across what should have been a harmonious and beautiful natural painting.
Within the atmosphere, lead-black "mist" drifted thickly, mixed with filthy green spores, forming invisible, shifting clouds of miasma.
The air here was so viscous, so suffocatingly unpleasant, that any ordinary life-form would likely be poisoned to death by mere contact.
Across the surface, most areas were coated in a damp layer of dark cyan-black mold. Tangled vines and vegetation of green, gray, yellow, and purple sprawled across the fungal carpet.
Following the countless vines in the reverse direction of their spread led to low-lying areas filled with densely packed "holes" of varying sizes.
Within them, something shimmered—but not a clear azure. Instead, it was a thick, grotesque, bubbling dark green, like a city sewer left uncleaned for years.
No. It was far "filthier" than that.
Countless slick, blue-black vines burst forth from within. Upon the twisted roots of the dense "forest," flowers bloomed in garish splendor. Beneath the torn vine-like bodies lay muscle fibers resembling animal flesh.
Endless "vegetation" grew and writhed in the polluted, foul, and putrid environment.
Their texture was partly like plant fibers, partly like the membranous lining of mammalian organs. From them wafted a slow, pungent stench.
Crack!
With a sound like an eggshell shattering, a hunched figure twisted its way up from the filth.
It possessed no trace of vitality, like a malformed aquatic monstrosity dragged from a sewage abyss.
Its original race was unrecognizable. Deep-green moss-like vines covered its enormous, bloated, mutated body. Fragments of shattered armor clung to it, the whole tinged with a sickly, excrement-green hue.
Countless viscous tentacles burst from each of its pustules, tearing through flesh. Ulcerated, rotting chunks of meat spilled from ruptured skin, mixing with the blackened fluid that seeped from broken tissue, stirring without pattern.
This planet had been completely infected by some unknown viral substance. It was absolutely unfit for any life-form to inhabit.
"Roar—!"
Suddenly, as if sensing something, the monster jerked its head upward and emitted a shrill, piercing scream.
"Roar! Roar roar—!"
A chain reaction followed. The entire fungal plain seemed to come alive. What had barely resembled a primitive forest moments before transformed instantly into a hellscape.
Beneath the thick fungal layers, enormous tentacles erupted—bearing gaping maws, even arms and rows of sharp fangs—stretching endlessly as corrosive fluids sprayed outward.
Flesh cavities lined with teeth, like grotesque mouths, spewed out countless black-haired, spiked growths. They were stitched together by fleshy buds into misshapen lumps, as though massive maggots had been crudely fused into obscene constructs.
The mountains and plains alike were drowned in foul slime and indescribable forms.
Every part of it was nauseating.
It was as though their very existence was a blasphemy and mockery of the Creator and of life itself.
The next instant, in response to these aberrations, an orange-red light of destruction suddenly illuminated the heavens.
This was heat sufficient to melt the entire planet, flames capable of incinerating the atmosphere. In but a moment, the dense spore-laden miasma filling the sky was burned away by superheated fury.
After countless years, the land finally received a semblance of true "sunlight."
BOOOOM—!!!
Then came peals of deafening thunder. A searing beam of light-lance energy descended from space like a pillar linking heaven and earth.
Like the low growl of a god, echoing through the mortal realm.
RUMBLE—!
Terrifying tremors and explosions shook the earth relentlessly. Whether land below or atmosphere above, all matter met only one fate beneath the expanding fireball—vaporization.
Boiling mountains, steaming seas—nothing less.
Seen from outer space, it appeared as though a crimson fireball had sprouted upon the planet's surface, continuing to swell.
"The Flood."
Hovering in low orbit above the planet, Selene wore a battlesuit of silver and blue. Her slender waist was tightly cinched, her figure graceful and elegant. Upon her head rested a high crown styled after the Subspace Lance, her hair falling freely with loose strands cascading over her full chest. She radiated regal splendor.
"As expected, the Forerunners failed to eradicate you completely. Aside from the portion annihilated within the Milky Way by the ring array activated by the Warrior-Servant leader, the IsoDidact, there remain quite a number of Flood here in the birthplace of your 'Creator,' the Precursor, within the Large Magellanic Cloud. They survived... and entered dormancy."
Lowering the hand with which she had unleashed a solar-flare bombardment, Selene smiled radiantly.
One hundred thousand years ago, during the final stage of the war between the Forerunners and the Flood, the Forerunners successfully activated seven rings of the Halo Array. The devastating cross-phase neutrino waves eradicated the Flood fleets across the galaxy—and, of course, all life within it.
With the activation of the Halo Array, every living being in the Milky Way not protected by the Ark, the rings, or Forerunner shield worlds was indiscriminately wiped out.
When the war ended, the Forerunner civilization itself was left gravely wounded, on the brink of extinction. The scant survivors were either dead or maimed. After using the Keyships on the Ark to return the preserved species to their respective planetary systems, they chose self-imposed exile in atonement.
Thus ended the reign of the galactic overlords who had dominated for tens of thousands of years.
From that point onward, the Milky Way began anew.
"Whether within the Milky Way or here in the Large Magellanic Cloud beyond it, the Forerunners failed to cleanse you entirely."
For example, upon a certain ring, a vast Flood force had survived and lay dormant within that ill-omened world, awaiting the awakening by some "fortunate" soul.
"However, as the inheritor of your legacy, I shall assume the responsibility of cleaning you up—hammering the coffin lid of the resurrected Precursor race shut for good."
The cross-ring pattern reflected in her pupils gleamed with undiminished mirth as Selene clenched her hand fiercely.
Vooooom—BOOM!
Reflected within her crimson eyes was a colossal fireball piercing straight into the heavens—a violent strong nuclear force reaction akin to stellar ignition.
The surging heatwaves inevitably expanded outward, sweeping into outer space and stirring her braided hair.
Crack—crack—crack!
As time passed, the entire planet became enveloped by the fireball. Crystallization spread across its surface as fractures appeared—then multiplied.
Bang—!
At last, the planet disintegrated, bursting apart like a dying star and transforming into a solar storm poised to sweep across the entire planetary system.
Yet the fragments of the exploding world had not even escaped low orbit before an invisible force-field barrier intercepted them. Their kinetic energy was stripped away, and they dispersed into drifting shards like massive diamonds.
Selene dismissed the force-field barrier and turned her gaze toward the remaining planets of the system.
Under her superhuman vision, tremors had already begun beneath their surfaces. A vast, ancient fleet awakened from slumber, emitting muffled, obstructed hums as it ascended toward space.
Their decayed, bloated hulls fused grotesquely with swollen flesh tumors, forming silhouettes that assaulted one's sanity.
The eerie green glow of the Flood fleet reflected within Selene's pupils. "Gravemind? It must have sensed the large-scale death of its own biomass and awakened in response."
When the Flood erupts, it progresses through several distinct stages: Feral, Coordinated, Interstellar, and Transgalactic.
In the Feral stage, the Flood generally manifests in four forms: Infection, Combat, Carrier, and Gravemind.
Among them, the Gravemind is the highest form—the embodiment of the Flood's collective consciousness. Once the Flood accumulates sufficient biomass, it gives rise to a centralized intelligence entity, the so-called Proto-Gravemind.
The moment a Proto-Gravemind is born, the Flood immediately enters the Coordinated stage.
After its emergence, the Gravemind commands the Flood legions to scour and devour all intelligent life within the planetary system without restraint. Their scale, morphology, and numbers increase at a geometric rate.
"And this one is parasitizing the technological constructs of the Forerunner civilization..." Selene remarked with interest, folding her arms beneath her chest.
On a few hulls not yet fully consumed, one could still faintly discern the grand, intricate geometric patterns characteristic of Forerunner design.
To endure for over a hundred thousand years without decay—and without any maintenance whatsoever—the durability of Forerunner creations truly drew sincere admiration from Selene.
"Though it is a pity about these technological relics. Left to ferment for a hundred millennia, they now resemble a cosmic garbage heap that has never once been cleaned. Revolting."
The Flood is not merely a plague, virus, or parasite. Once it reaches sufficient scale, it can infect not only carbon-based lifeforms but even silicon-based constructs.
Its form is that of a lethally adaptive parasite composed of indiscriminate Flood Super Cells (FSC). These structures resemble neurons and glial cells. The Flood can arrange these microstructures at will, mimicking whatever organic forms are required.
As for why such a massive Flood fleet had slumbered here instead of assaulting the Milky Way, Selene could roughly infer the reason.
'After the war between the Forerunners and the Flood ended, this force survived by virtue of having left the Milky Way, thus escaping the cross-phase neutrino waves unleashed by the Halo Array.'
'And because all life in the Milky Way had been exterminated by the Halo Array, the Flood lost its targets for infection and consumption. Naturally, it entered dormancy, awaiting the time when the galaxy would flourish once more—when it would reemerge to test the newborn civilizations with death. A curse from the Creator—the Precursors.'
"But I have no need of your test. One cleans before moving in."
Snap!
With a crisp snap of Selene's fingers, dozens of Subspace Lances materialized behind her.
As torrents of Honkai energy poured into their shafts, the Subspace Lances warped, expanded, and elongated—some transforming into star-spears, others into Subspace Ribbons.
"Go."
At her command, the Subspace Lances moved.
In an instant, the starry void seemed drenched in a rain of light, blossoming into violet-crimson explosions spanning hundreds, even thousands of kilometers.
Any matter that stood before the Subspace Blades was cleaved in two by extreme Spatial Severance—first the thin atmosphere, then the celestial-scale Flood carriers rising skyward, and finally planetary surfaces, crusts, mantles, cores...
Everything was split apart.
Then the Honkai energy infused within the subspace constructs dispersed rapidly. Under Selene's control, it converted into violent strong nuclear particle reactions.
Rumble—rumble—rumble—!
Yet Selene seemed unsatisfied. "Not exhilarating enough... I still feel restrained."
A smile filled with unrestrained destructive desire curved across her face, the arc of her lips growing ever more audacious. "Strong Nuclear Force—Void Unleashed."
Violet-crimson divine sigils unfurled behind her. In the profound void at her back, it was as though tens of millions—no, hundreds of millions—of eerie black suns ignited simultaneously.
In an instant, the starfield blazed with light.
Like a curtain of rain—no, denser than an entire ocean poured downward—Honkai fusion bombardments rained across the system. Subspace Ribbons severed heaven and earth. Vast solar flares blanketed the void. The entire planetary system lay within Selene's range of fire.
There was no doubt. In a single moment, the Flood fleet was annihilated—reduced to nothing, not even residue remaining.
In the next breath, one planet disintegrated, collapsed, exploded. The second followed... then the third... the eighth... The entire planetary system fell into gravitational chaos and collapse amid endless terror.
At last, the nameless system's central star reached the end of its life beneath Selene's relentless stimulation and bombardment.
A lifespan of billions of years was compressed into an instant. It swelled, destabilized, mutated—and then...
Rumble—rumble—rumble—!!!!
There is no air in space, no medium for sound to travel. And yet in every observer's mind, a knell of extinction resounded—a world-shaking roar.
In that moment, it became the most radiant star in the universe, unleashing the most brilliant light of its death upon all creation—dazzling as the first light at the dawn of existence.
Gulp~
Beyond the planetary system, within an Imperial Navy fleet that had followed Selene, every soul—including the Astartes—felt their throats go dry.
"Is this... the power of a god?"