"Then, come on."

Valoris' breath froze inside his helmet, and every heartbeat was accompanied by the hum of the power armor's servos.

His halberd was stuck in the deck ten meters away, and the Norn Herald, a twisted Tyranid creation, was staring at them with an almost mocking attitude.

Valoris picked up his swords and prepared for battle.

The Imperial Guards rearranged themselves, their golden armor stained with the blood of their comrades and the corrosive body fluids of the Zerg.

Their formation was still perfect, but their numbers were less than eighty.

The Norn Messenger stood on the pile of corpses, his six arms slowly stretched out, psychic lines flowing on his dark purple shell, wriggling like a living thing.

Its scorpion tail was raised high, and what dripped from the tip of the tail was not venom, but red blood soaked in psychic energy. It was the blood of the fallen imperial guards.

"Reorganize the formation." Valoris's voice was cold and calm, as if he was reading a battle report rather than facing a massacre.

The guards did not respond, they didn't need to.

The next second, the fight broke out again.

The Norn Messenger's movements were so fast that they almost exceeded the visual limit. Its left arm bone blade slashed at the front row of guards, but it suddenly changed direction halfway and accurately blocked the power sword that attacked from the side.

At the same time, its right pincer suddenly clamped the neck of a guard, lifted him up and slammed him to the ground.

"boom!"

The helmet of the Custodian was dented by the impact, but he did not let go, and the power sword stabbed fiercely into the joint gap of the Norn Emissary. The monster roared, and the scorpion tail stabbed down like lightning, piercing the warrior's chest.

The roar of the Norn Messenger echoed in the chamber of the biological warship, and its six arms waved like the scythe of death, and every attack was accompanied by the blood of the Custodians.

"Hold your formation!" Valoris roared, but the battle was completely out of control.

One of the Custodians attempted a flank attack, piercing the Norn Herald's ribs with his power sword.

But the monster seemed to have anticipated this. Its right pincer suddenly turned and accurately clamped Kalix's helmet.

“Crack, crack, crack!”

There was a horrifying sound of twisting metal. The Norn Emissary's giant claws suddenly exerted force, and the helmet of the Custodian dented and shattered under the pressure, and finally...

"Crack!"

The head of the imperial guard was crushed, and blood and brain matter splattered on the shell of the Norn messenger.

But this was not enough. The monster's left arm bone blade pierced into the imperial guard's breastplate and pierced through the back, followed by a sound of flesh being torn apart.

“Ss ...

It exerted force with both arms, tearing his body in half from the middle. Internal organs, bones, and fragments of power armor fell like rain, and the yellow-green insect blood mixed with the bright red human blood, forming a disgusting quagmire on the ground.

A dozen guardsmen seized this fleeting opportunity and rushed towards the lower limbs of the Norn messenger like golden lightning.

They knew that the monster's upper body was almost invulnerable, but its leg joints, especially behind the knees, were likely one of its weak points.

"Aim for the joint!" roared a Custodian, and the Stormbreaker smashed heavily behind the norn emissary's left knee.

"boom!"

The carapace shattered, and blue psionic fluid gushed out. The Norn Messenger let out a painful roar, and its left leg twitched violently, almost falling to the ground.

But its counterattack came faster.

The scorpion's tail stabbed down like lightning, piercing through the shoulder of a guard, lifting him up and throwing him towards the fleshy wall in the distance.

Another warrior's storm shield was shattered by the bone blade, and his arm was neatly severed at the elbow, blood gushing out like a fountain.

"Don't stop! Keep attacking!" Valoris' voice exploded in the communication channel.

The guards fought bravely and bravely, and one warrior was cut in half by the giant claws of the Norn Messenger, but his power sword still pierced deep into the monster's knee.

Another Custodian was singed by the psychic lightning released by the tentacles, but the final blow of his storm hammer still smashed the norn emissary's right ankle shell.

“Its legs are failing!”

The Norn Messenger finally staggered, its left knee completely shattered, and blue psychic fluid gushed out like a waterfall.

The monster let out a deafening roar and waved its six arms wildly, trying to force back the besieging imperial guards.

But the golden warriors were already blood-thirsty.

"For the Emperor! For my dead brothers!"

Storm hammers, power swords, guardian spears, all weapons bombarded the lower limbs of the Norn messenger at the same time.

The sound of the shell cracking was like breaking glass, and the monster's right leg finally couldn't support it and it fell to the ground.

At the moment when the power sword of the last imperial guard pierced the knee of the Norn messenger, the entire biological battleship suddenly shook violently.

The severed Zerg limbs began to wriggle strangely, and yellow-green blood flowed upstream, condensing into countless tiny psychic crystals in the air.

"Something's wrong! Everyone retreat!" Valoris warned sternly, but it was too late.

The broken body of the Norn messenger suddenly burst into a dazzling blue-purple light, and the shattered shell fragments floated up and were reassembled as if controlled by an invisible hand.

What's even more terrifying is that a completely new psychic tissue began to grow from its wound. It was no longer a chitinous shell, but a translucent blue crystal with liquid psychic flames flowing inside.

"Roar!!!"

Accompanied by an eardrum-shattering roar, a psychic shock wave erupted with the Norn Messenger as the center.

The five closest imperial guards were blown away, their golden armor twisted and deformed in the psychic storm, and their masks exploded.

One of the guards crashed into the fleshy wall thirty meters away, and the impact was so great that his spine broke at a strange angle.

"Hold the formation!"

Valoris fell to one knee, and the servo system of the power armor sounded an alarm that it was overwhelmed.

He watched the Norn messenger slowly stand up. The leg wounds that should have been fatal were healing at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the new psychic shell was thicker than the original one.

The ten guardsmen in the front row struggled to raise their storm shields, but the Norn messenger simply waved his tentacles lightly.

The terrifying psychic lightning coiled up like a giant python, and the shield made of refined gold melted into molten iron in the high temperature. The arms of the imperial guards holding the shield were carbonized by the burning of psychic energy.

"The enemy is mutating, Emperor above." A young guard muttered to himself, his mask was broken, revealing bloodshot eyes.

Valoris's brain was working rapidly. He noticed that a new diamond-shaped crystal was beating violently in the core of the Norn Messenger's chest.

That should be the psionic core of the Norn Emissary - if we can destroy it...

"Miss Squad, attract attention! Campbell Squad, prepare the melta bombs!" Valoris ordered in the communication channel, "I will create an opportunity!"

The twelve guards immediately launched a feint attack, distracting the Norn envoy with their perfect tactical formation.

The storm hammer and power sword chopped off the psychic shell, creating dazzling sparks. Although they could not cause any real damage, they succeeded in distracting the monster temporarily.

Valoris seized the opportunity and pulled a melta grenade from the body of his fallen comrade.

He lowered his body, overloaded the servo system of his power armor, and rushed towards the front of the Norn messenger at an almost suicidal speed.

"Emperor, bear witness to my loyalty."

three meters.

Two meters.

one meter...

Just as the melta grenade was about to aim at the psychic crystal, the six arms of the Norn Messenger suddenly twisted at an angle that violated the laws of physics.

Two bone blades slashed down crosswise, and Valoris barely raised his sword to block, but the third giant claw had already smashed heavily on his breastplate.

"Crack!"

The breastplate made of fine gold was dented and the broken ribs pierced into the lungs.

Valoris spat out a mouthful of blood and the melta grenade flew out of his hand.

What's worse, the scorpion tail of the Norn messenger had circled behind him at some point, and the stinger accurately pierced the energy interface of his power armor.

“Ugh!”

High voltage current ran through his body, and Valoris' optic nerve was temporarily blinded in severe pain.

He felt his body being lifted high up and then slammed hard to the ground.

once.

twice.

three times.

Each impact caused the power armor to deform further, and blood seeped from every seam.

"grown ups..."

Faint shouts from the imperial guards could be heard in the distance, but the sound seemed to be separated by a thick layer of frosted glass.

The Norn messenger held the dying Valoris in front of him, the featureless face almost stuck to his mask.

Valoris could clearly see that under the monster's new psychic shell, there were countless tiny nerve cords wriggling, as if mocking his arrogance.

"You...are...just...a...mortal..."

A strange voice sounded directly in Valoris' mind. It was not language, but the voice of the hive's will manifested.

A huge amount of spiritual energy was sweeping over Valoris's head, and his brain was almost crushed by it.

The scorpion's tail slowly tightened, and Valoris heard the sound of his spine beginning to break.

His power armor had been damaged over a large area, and the life support system emitted its final whine.

In his gradually blurred vision, he saw that the surviving imperial guards were still fighting, but each of them was covered in wounds and their golden armor was torn to pieces.

"By the Emperor... have I... failed..."

At the last moment before his consciousness faded, Valoris felt a strange warmth suddenly surge in his chest.

That was no hallucination of a dying man, but an ancient and sacred power, surging from the deepest reaches of the Warp.

"No."

The voice sounded again, but this time it was not the whisper of a norn emissary.

"Stand up, my Custodians."

Valoris's consciousness sank and floated in the darkness.

He heard the sound of his bones breaking and felt the burning pain from the scorpion's stinger piercing through his power armor.

Blood flowed from the corners of his mouth, condensing into suspended blood beads in the weightless environment. Death was imminent - this should have been the most familiar moment for the captain of the Imperial Guards, but it felt so strange at this moment.

"Valoris Terax."

A voice pierced through the veil of death.

Not through the communicator, not through hearing, but directly imprinted on his soul.

The sound was like the whispering of millions of people at the same time, and also like the echo of one person in an empty hall.

"Son of the Butcher, the last bloodline of the Terrax family, one of the guardians of the Solar Segmentum, the holder of the Eye of the Imperial Palace Dome, the guardian and vigilant of the Emperor..."

Memories came flooding back.

Valoris saw himself standing on the balcony of the palace three hundred years ago. At that time, he was still a young man who had just been selected into the Imperial Guard. His father pinned the family emblem on his chest: "Remember, you are not only guarding the Emperor, but also the hope of human civilization."

Broken images flashed before his eyes: he was standing on the ruins of a planet, his Guardian's halberd piercing the chest of a Chaos Lord; he was under the green shadow of the Orcs, fighting side by side with countless Space Marines to slay the Orc boss.

“Now, I need you to stand up again.”

Valoris's vision suddenly cleared. He saw - not with his eyes, but with some higher-dimensional perception, a golden thread extending from the depths of the Warp to connect to his heart.

At the other end of the thread was the figure sitting on the golden throne.

"You have the blood of the Terrax family flowing in your veins..."

Valoris' pupils suddenly contracted.

His heart started beating again, stronger than ever.

Golden light flowed out from the gaps in the damaged power armor like liquid, and every wound was healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The Norn Messenger seemed to have noticed something unusual. It suddenly tightened its scorpion tail and wanted to kill its prey, but -

"boom!"

A golden lightning burst out from Valoris' body, directly blasting the scorpion tail into pieces.

The Norn messenger roared in pain and staggered back several steps.

Valoris stood up slowly, his eyes had completely turned into burning golden fireballs.

When he spoke, his voice echoed with thousands of overlapping harmonies:

"Alien..."

Valoris - no, at this moment it should be said that he was the embodiment of the Emperor's will - slowly raised his hand.

"My lord?"

The surviving imperial guards saw that the captain's originally silver-gray hair was turning into bright gold at a speed visible to the naked eye, and each strand of hair was emitting a faint light.

The Norn Messenger, or rather the node creature of the entire Zerg Hive Fleet, let out a desperate roar and frantically released all its psychic energy, trying to make a final struggle.

But those energy waves that were powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of reality melted away like snowflakes in a furnace when they came into contact with the golden light.

"Look carefully, alien." Valoris' voice echoed throughout the biological warship, "This is the wrath of the Lord of Humanity."

He stretched out his hand, and a long spear made of pure golden light condensed in his palm.

This was no weapon of the material world, but a projection of the Emperor's will. When Valoris wielded it, space itself groaned as it was overwhelmed.

The beast wanted to escape, but its six legs suddenly froze in place - not because it was restrained by some force, but because it "saw" the horrible truth: from the perspective of a higher dimension, the person standing in front of it was not a mortal, but a huge being of light connected to the golden throne.

“Extinction.”

With this simple syllable, the golden halberd drew a perfect arc.

There was no spectacular explosion, no violent impact. The body of the Norn Messenger began to disintegrate from the atomic level, like a pencil mark being erased by an eraser.

Its shell, muscles, nerve cords...

All the matter that made it up quietly dissipated in the golden light, without even leaving a scream.

As the Norn messenger disappeared, the body of Valoris also disappeared.

Even the Imperial Guards could not withstand such a huge force.

On the other side of the palace, Yang Cheng also discovered something strange about the emperor.