The present-day Pangaea City was vast beyond measure, and the endless legions of the Space Necrons rained down from above at random, with no fixed landing points.
Soon, three entire centuriae of Necron Warriors—three hundred in total—descended together as if deliberately coordinated, slamming down into the same district.
But defending this district was only a single Centuria of Navy Astartes!
This lone detachment of blue-plated heavy-armored warriors now stood against enemies from three converging directions, engulfed in the emerald deathlight of the Necrons. Their ranks seemed pitifully thin—enough to make onlookers break into a cold sweat.
At the vanguard of the enemy came three Necron Praetorians. Their forearms had reshaped into flanged mauls the size of a man's fist—brutal hybrids of blunt force and piercing spikes, designed specifically to smash through heavy plate. Their joints had shifted, redistributed for maximum leverage and impact.
Behind them, the Necron Warriors imitated their leaders, their arms likewise reshaping into hammerheads, and together they surged forward in perfect formation toward the Marines.
There were no cries of war here, none of the shouting that filled other battlefields. Both sides advanced in utter silence, like grim reapers about to reap lives.
The Necron host had no need for vocal cords, such superfluous organs discarded long ago. And the Navy Astartes—what need had they for shouted slogans? Their will was steel, their discipline absolute.
Blue and green clashed.
The first Marine to meet the charge faced a Necron Praetorian nearly three meters tall. Yet beneath his helmet, his eyes were utterly unshaken.
Two hands gripped his chainsword-greatblade—one overhand, one underhand—and in a diagonal rising slash, he struck directly into the Praetorian's descending maul.
Against such a foe, one might expect him to parry defensively, stall for time, and rely on comrades for a coordinated strike. Instead, this warrior chose direct confrontation—force against force!
With a deafening crack, chainsword met the twin hammer-arms of the Praetorian, the weight behind the blow like a mountain crashing down. The Marine grunted, his body driven half a step into the earth—yet he held. He had withstood the Praetorian's full-force opening strike!
And in that instant, the true difference became clear.
The Navy Astartes—modified through the "Primarch Gene-Lite" process—were only a fraction weaker in raw power than the Necron Praetorians themselves.
The Marine shifted instantly. His right hand released the hilt, while his left dragged the blade downward. The chainsword's meter-and-a-half of spinning teeth screeched along the Necron's forearms in a vicious arc.
And at that exact moment, he twisted the throttle open to maximum output.
The weapon roared to life, teeth spinning at five thousand revolutions per second, biting deep into the Praetorian's wrists in the space of a heartbeat.
This lightning counterattack—born of human ingenuity, improvisation, and will—was something utterly beyond the Necron's battle algorithms. The Praetorian froze, unable to process, unable to react.
And in battles between titans, such hesitation is always fatal.
The Marine's right hand snapped back onto the hilt. With both hands, he wrenched the blade.
Crack!
Like a crowbar prying apart steel, the chainsword split both hammerheads from the Necron's arms in one brutal twist.
Here the truth was laid bare: even when strength and durability were evenly matched, the fluidity of living thought, the spark of true will, would always triumph over limited programming.
The Praetorian staggered back, realizing—too late—the gravity of its peril. Its arms retracted with blinding speed, compressed into springs of coiled energy. Its severed stumps honed into spearpoints, poised to unleash a lethal counter as soon as the Marine advanced.
But the warrior did not move.
His feet were rooted like iron into the street he was sworn to hold. His duty was clear: defend this district—let not the Necrons advance a single step.
Chasing a crippled Praetorian had no strategic value.
Instead, he pivoted and cut another Necron Warrior clean in two. His comrades at his flanks mirrored his action, hacking through more than a dozen foes in the blink of an eye.
Then, without a single word exchanged, the front rank Marines simultaneously shifted tactics. Instead of slaying outright, they shoved their adversaries back a pace, stepping back themselves to rotate with the fresh warriors of the second line.
The exhausted pulled back; the fresh pressed forward. In perfect silence, the line flowed like clockwork.
Two hundred Astartes fought as one machine of war. Against them, six hundred Necron Warriors broke like waves against stone.
These were not ordinary soldiers—they had once been the Navy's finest officers, masters of advanced Armament Haki. After augmentation, their Haki had evolved into proto-psionics, able to strike directly at the soul's core.
With every swing, their blades poured that energy into Necron forms, burning out the parasitic minds within like pesticide killing vermin.
Every corpse that fell was permanently neutralized, its bio-metal husk reverting to inert matter, incapable of reconstituting.
The three disarmed Praetorians could only stare in helpless disbelief at the carnage, their limited minds locked in the question:
"How… did we lose?"
And in that moment of paralysis, a yellow blur streaked overhead.
Three streams of fused Haki-energies plunged into their skulls, detonating like liquid bombs, shredding all in their path.
The yellow figure vanished, and the Praetorians' eye-fires guttered out. One by one, they exploded from crown to heel, falling silent forever.
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