The 28th Expeditionary Fleet.
"Thirty years, Chemos, Sagittarius, golden ring."
"I love Fu, Fu loves me..."
The Eldar Corsair mercenaries had at this time mostly returned to their own small, sail-like warships, holding a ceremony of worship for the new Phoenix King.
Piously bowing thirty times.
As for this incomprehensible "blessing"...
...Yriel also didn't know why she would choose the words from the legendary drama of the new Phoenix King as a devout wish for him.
But she could feel that whenever she said these words, whether in the Eldar language or in the human language, the evil creatures from the Empyrean would no longer dare to approach him by half a step.
During Warp travel, the exorcism effect was very good.
As one of the faithful followers of the Phoenix King, this small group of Eldar, after successfully escaping the clutches of the Thirsting Lady, their reverence for the new Phoenix King had become deeper and deeper.
Even if the other was not an Eldar.
So what if the original form was just a Mon-keigh?
As long as he could defeat the Thirsting Lady, that was a super fighting god!
"Have you received any news from Iyanden?"
Beside her, a Bonesinger asked.
"I'd rather I hadn't," Yriel shook her head bitterly.
"I told them everything that happened here. The old things said that we were seduced by a daemon, and that it was a treasonous act of great rebellion."
She understood that Iyanden was still relatively strong among the Craftworld Eldar at this time.
No matter how slim the hope, these old guys had not given up the hope of restoring the Eldar Empire.
And under this paranoia, they would absolutely not admit that the new Phoenix King was a human.
"It's alright, sister. Once they have truly witnessed the power of our new Phoenix King, which can sweep away all the gloom of the Thirsting Lady, they will definitely take the initiative to apply to join our ranks."
"It's still too early for all of this."
"We still need to teach those blindly confident humans who do not understand the great power of the Empyrean, to make them also understand the dangers of Chaos."
"But how do we do that?"
"Spread the faith."
As Yriel spoke, her eyes seemed to be able to emit golden flames.
The new Phoenix King needed a catchy mythological story to assist in its spread.
"And there is nothing more suitable than this Sagittarius Golden Ring that has spread throughout half the human Imperium."
Within the Imperium of Man, under the influence of Fulgrim and the joint efforts of the vast number of Terran artists...
...the play The Sagittarius Golden Ring, just as Fulgrim had expected, had become a masterpiece that was easy to understand and popular throughout the world.
In the Imperium of Man, you can say you haven't read the Imperial Truth, but you absolutely cannot have not seen The Sagittarius Golden Ring!
Under the influence of this play, the golden ring carved with a centaur had become a token of love for almost everyone.
Hoping that it could, like themselves, accompany the other through one thirty years after another.
People often said that this Sagittarius golden ring was the guardian god of all pure love in the world.
That it could destroy all the evil things that dared to obstruct pure love!
"Perhaps," Yriel murmured.
The entire ship, with the two thousand seven hundred Eldar who had come one after another, began a thirty-minute-long ceremony.
In the Empyrean, something that was completely unexpected by everyone seemed to be brewing.
But in this thirtieth millennium, who could really know?
The main planet of Gardiner.
The battlefield.
"Cicero, be careful!"
Kasjia shouted, weaving through the battlefield on his high-speed motorcycle.
Due to the multiple injuries he had suffered in the previous charge, the numerous wounds on his body were now greatly distracting him.
He had not even noticed the high-speed suicide Rhino armored vehicle coming from the side, and was only looking at the enemy he was focused on fighting in front of him.
"Wh—"
He noticed it.
But it was too late.
The armored vehicle, shining with a crazed light, was about to self-destruct in front of him.
"Stop!"
As if time had instantly stopped, behind the crowd, the Thousand Sons Librarian, Amal, had stopped the madly shining guy with the psychic staff in his hand.
"Get out of the way!"
Amal shouted anxiously.
The staff in his right hand was now shining with a strange light, and fine frost was condensing under his feet. His skin, which had returned to its original state, had become abnormally tight under his extreme exertion, and was shining with a strange light under the influence of the psionic power.
After seeing Cicero quickly disperse, he finally released the almost solidified psionic power in his hand and retreated, watching the suicide armored vehicle and the other's walking tank crash into each other, causing an explosion.
"Thanks."
Cicero looked at the wreckage of the explosion in front of him with some lingering fear.
If it weren't for Amal's assistance, this one blow would have definitely taken his life on the spot.
"It's not over yet! Over there, the Gardinerians' large-scale weapon is approaching!"
It was the large walking tank of the master of Gardiner—of course, the name "tank" was clearly not so suitable for its excessively large body.
BZZZZZT—
The golden-red, high-energy particle cannon from the top of the tank swept across the battlefield.
A terrifying ray, like the scythe of the Grim Reaper, that could pierce through everything it encountered and turn the final point of impact into a lake of red-hot magma.
"We have to find a way to deal with this thing!"
Kasjia was now using the Phoenix long spear. With the support of the high-speed anti-gravity motorcycle, he aimed at the large shield generator on the other's machine and pressed the spear's retractable attack button.
With a whoosh, the shield generator that was hit instantly turned into scrap metal and exploded.
The retractable attack was still so good.
As for the Sword Saint Arcur Tona at the side, she would naturally not, like him, use an un-martial-virtue-like retractable weapon to—
ZHEW!
The blade of the Xana-pattern saber in her hand flew out of the hilt, revealing the chain link behind it.
As the blade cut into the other's shield generator at an extremely fast speed and caused an explosion, the psionic force field of the super-giant spider tank was weakened by another few degrees.
Heh, don't say it.
You really can't say it.
It's quite useful.
Arcur Tona's eyes lit up.
Compared to the previous fighting technique, which required getting close to cut the other, this set of attack methods, which was called close combat but was actually long-range, developed by Kasjia, was indeed quite interesting.
As much as she had looked down on these little tricks of Kasjia before, they were just as powerful in practice.
"Continue to increase the attack!"
With the fierce artillery fire from the core units of the Iron Hands, the counterattack that the master of Gardiner had gathered, although it had started with a great momentum, as more and more Iron Hands joined the battlefield, a breach was gradually torn in the defensive line.
And the heavy spider tank that Kasjia had been dealing with before had also had its shield overloaded under the joint siege of the Ultramarines, the Emperor's Children, the Thousand Sons, and the Iron Hands, and the High Lord of Gardiner sitting high in it had been killed.
"The High Lord is dead?"
"It's not that simple," Kasjia replied. "According to the data on Gardiner that I have read, the one who rules Gardiner is a personality entity formed by the joint uploading of countless magistrates who rule this star system."
"It's less a kill and more a defeat of one of the digitized personalities of the High Lord of Gardiner."
If they didn't destroy the other's digitized avatar, which was hiding in the capital fortress of Gardiner, there would be an endless stream of Gardinerian masters to fight them in the future.
"So you're saying he's an Abominable Intelligence."
"Then why did we even negotiate with him before?" Arcur asked.
Good question.
But there are some things that are best not to be asked casually.
"Now there will be more and more of those large spider tanks joining the battlefield. Not only that, but the other side's bio-genetically modified soldiers, under high-concentration stimulants, are also following closely behind."
"The war is about to reach a white-hot stage. Now is the key time to break away and land in the core area. Arcur, prepare to execute the next plan."
"Understood."
As she spoke, the Second Company Captain of the Emperor's Children nodded and, driving the purple-and-gold motorcycle under her, left for the main force of the Iron Hands behind her.
"Also, Amal, you know what you should be doing."
"Understood."
He also nodded heavily and, leading a small squad of Thousand Sons psykers, advanced towards the main force behind him.
"What is the meaning of this? Commander Kasjia?"
"Why did you let them all go back? Is there some special arrangement?"
Seeing this, the Ultramarines Chapter Master Cicero asked with confusion.
"You'll know soon enough, Chapter Master."
Kasjia said with a heavy heart and a sigh.
The scorching battle situation, after the Iron Hands Primarch joined the battlefield, had no more suspense.
In the battlefield, every shot from her tactical backpack would clear the obstacles for the advance of the Iron Hands.
These were just the clearing work so that she would not be disturbed by other small fries when she advanced.
What she was most proud of was the terrifying power hammer in her hand, which was indestructible and could instantly tear anything that blocked her way into pieces.
With her unstoppable advance, more than a dozen of Gardiner's super tanks had been destroyed by her hammer.
The power of a Primarch was just that terrifying.
BOOM!
With the fall of Ferris's invincible iron hammer, all that was left on the battlefield now was this last Gardinerian super-giant spider tank.
The suicide armored vehicles and suicide soldiers and other consumables had indeed slowed down the advance of the Ultramarines, but they had not achieved much more since then;
The Titan-beasts, apart from one that was strongly requested to be preserved by the Mechanicum, the rest had been overloaded and destroyed by the heavy weapon fire of the Iron Hands.
The massive, tide-like infantry tanks had been pushed back by the even more massive joint forces of the Ultramarines and the Iron Hands.
Including those Gardinerian genetically modified soldiers, they had also been all eliminated in the iron flood.
The last of the Gardinerian's surface armed forces had almost all been killed in this one battle.
The war had reached the final cleanup stage.
"Is there anything else you want to say?"
"Begging for mercy, regret? Or praying for release?"
Seeing that the other side was already defeated, Ferris said to the giant tank, with a size that was extremely disproportionate to hers.
Although the words of the weak had no meaning, at this moment, she really wanted to hear the other's final whimper of failure due to weakness.
"Heh... Ferris, don't think you've already won."
With the other's reply coming from inside the giant tank, the master of Gardiner had already prepared his final response.
Beep—
Mutual destruction.
The sky!
There was a strange change in the sky!
With the words of the master of Gardiner, the star ring in the sky of the main planet of Gardiner suddenly broke free from Ferris's control.
And it seemed that under the control of the master of Gardiner, the asteroid belt surrounding the main planet of Gardiner was gradually being pulled down to the planet's surface by the gravitational pull of the star rail!
Once these asteroids landed on the surface, what they would bring to the ground forces of the Iron Hands would be no less than an Exterminatus-level strike!
"Quick. Order the 413th Expeditionary Fleet and the 52nd Expeditionary Fleet to immediately launch an attack on the asteroids I have marked."
"According to my instructions, use the ramming prows to knock these things down!"
Ferris's expression became very grave.
The other side's orbital system had the protection of a psionic shield generator, and the effect of artillery fire on it was not very effective.
The only way to quickly destroy it was to use the powerful ramming prows of the fleet to smash the orbit surrounding the planet to pieces.
But it was clear that, as Ferris had expected, the movement speed of the warships was not fast.
To smash the enemy's orbital system before they could smash the asteroid belt down was really a bit too much to ask of the warships themselves.
But now, what other way was there—
"My lord."
In Ferris's communication system, the voice of the Second Company Captain of the Emperor's Children, Arcur Tona, came through.
She had, on the battlefield, followed Kasjia's request and had returned to the warship in the sky.
And the purpose of her trip was not to bid farewell to the battlefield ahead of time.
But to bid farewell forever.
"Look at the sky."
With a magnificent meteor streaking across the sky, a low-visibility specialized drop pod successfully passed through the other's protective shield and landed in the control center.
It was Arcur Tona's drop pod.
As for her landing alone in the enemy's den, what she wanted to do was naturally self-evident.
More accurately, it was to die with the other's reactor.
"You had already anticipated this moment, didn't you?"
The Ultramarines Chapter Master Cicero said to Kasjia, looking at the meteor streaking across the sky.
"That's right."
"Then what are you going to do now? Just watch Arcur walk to her death alone?"
"No. But even if we break into the city now, we can't do it easily, let alone rescue her?"
Kasjia's hand gripped the motorcycle's handlebar.
To be able to bring Ferris the realization that Arcur was doomed, she had to die with the other's shield generator reactor.
At the very least, Ferris had to realize that the two had died together.
In that case, Kasjia could not possibly save Arcur from the explosion of the reactor.
"But who can say it's completely impossible?"
The Ultramarines Cicero smiled.
Kasjia had not revealed anything about the daemon.
He did not know that in the prophecy, Arcur had to die to make Ferris realize her mistake.
He just wanted to save that highly skilled sword saint.
And in his heart, this commander of the Emperor's Children, Kasjia, was thinking the same thing.
"Let's go! Let us, the Ultramarines, clear a path for you and send you over!"
....
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