Olympia.
Perturabo certainly could not forget what this planet used to look like.
This was a mountainous world, covered by rugged yet magnificent and expansive mountain ranges that undulated across the land like the spine of an ancient behemoth.
The mountainous terrain provided an abundance of stone, allowing the planet's architecture and sculpting techniques to be expressed to their absolute fullest.
People loved to build various kinds of cities in the mountainous regions—fortress-cities, cliff-side bastions, peak-top sanctuaries... and so on.
And the wars between the various city-states were the main theme of this planet before Perturabo's arrival.
As for why Perturabo remembered this so clearly?
Because this was the place where he had descended.
When Perturabo crawled out of that mechanical incubation pod, he climbed the cliffside and saw the strange astronomical anomaly in the sky—the Eye of Terror—before being adopted by his foster father, Dammekos, the tyrant of Lochos.
Dammekos viewed him merely as a tool to drive war.
Much like that father of his, both were precisely the same.
However, such a sight should no longer exist.
He was already tempered iron, having forgotten all of this.
Why...
Why would it be like this?
Perturabo fell into a trance.
Then he reacted instantly.
'I am engaged in a great war with a god.'
In this war, every timeline—whether past, present, or future—was their battlefield.
Countless dimensions were tools and props utilized by them; time and logic had not the slightest influence upon it.
'But.'
This timeline... wasn't the opponent's intention a bit too obvious?
---
Flash after flash of brilliant light streaked across the vault of the heavens—the angry roar of lance batteries erupting as salvo after salvo of orbital bombardment thundered down toward the planet.
Drop pods shaped like the Claws of Fear ejected from strike cruisers in low orbit, trailing scorching exhaust plumes as they slammed into the ground. Upon the hulls of those drop pods, the yellow and black striped patterns were strikingly clear—the paint scheme of the Iron Warriors.
Those Astartes, hardened and numbed under Perturabo's crafting, surged out of the drop pods.
They raised their bolters toward their own kin—the people of Olympia.
The slaughter began.
Under Perturabo's orders, the Iron Warriors attacked everything within their line of sight.
Among the people of Olympia, one in every ten died in this slaughter; millions of lives perished at the very same time, and the gunpowder smoke emitted by blood and fire permeated the entire firmament, dyeing the sky a sickening brownish-red.
Perturabo naturally knew all of this.
This was the order he had issued personally.
And at this moment, as the Warmaster of Chaos, Perturabo's vision had long since transcended everything, finally allowing him to see the truth behind it.
The origin of the matter was that Perturabo had discovered a rebellion erupting on his homeworld, believing that the Olympians had betrayed the dedication and effort he had poured into this planet.
In a fit of fury, he issued the order for the purge, never once questioning why the rebellion had erupted so suddenly.
And now, Perturabo saw it very clearly.
Behind all of this was the handiwork of the Word Bearers—of Lorgar.
That hypocritical brother had orchestrated it all in secret, plunging Olympia into chaos and making him destroy his own homeworld with his own hands.
"How is it? With your current state, you shouldn't need me to explain the reasons behind this to you anymore."
A soft chuckle came from beside Perturabo's ear, the tone casual and gentle, akin to a tour guide asking a tourist for their impressions of the scenery.
"How does it feel?"
Adam had appeared beside him at some unknown point, his hands tucked into the pockets of his traveler's coat, his posture as leisurely as if he were taking a stroll.
Perturabo had not yet fully recovered from his trance—a lapse of less than a single second.
'What?'
Beside him, an unremarkable hand reached out.
That hand seemed to ignore everything: it ignored Perturabo's body, which could resist all manner of injuries; it ignored the dark, wicked sorcery protecting his physique. It pierced straight through his armor and reached deep into his chest.
Stung by the pain, Perturabo swung Worldbreaker heavily, knocking the entity that had appeared before him flying away.
'Damn it.'
'When did this guy get over here?'
"No need to be so resistant."
Adam climbed up from the ground, flicking the dust off his body.
The blow moments ago, which was enough to shatter stars, landed on him and only managed to slightly dirty the hem of his coat.
"If I remember correctly,"
Adam said with a smile,
"After the Horus Heresy, the Iron Warriors Legion you led apparently took the initiative to detonate nuclear bombs on this planet, washing the surface into a dead, silent world. Speaking of which, I'm practically helping you take a nostalgic trip down memory lane. Instead of thanking me, how can you react so violently?"
His posture was extremely relaxed, a smile on his face as if he truly knew nothing about this history.
"How dare you—"
Perturabo's reaction was precisely within Adam's expectations.
"How dare you! How dare you!"
Perturabo flew into a rage, his eyes glowing crimson, his entire body radiating a tangible aura of power with flames shooting skyward.
Accompanied by his fluctuating consciousness, the Iron Warriors executing the purge on the planet's surface simultaneously felt a bone-chilling cold, causing them to stand rooted to the spot, frozen and immobile.
Perturabo could no longer endure such an insult.
He roared as he charged forward, dragging his two weapons across the ground and carving deep trenches. Countless fractured fissures spread outward along with his footsteps, as if the planet itself could no longer bear the wrath of its former master and was gAdaming in agony.
Adam flashed a smile.
In that brief moment, he silently mouthed a sentence:
'You didn't think this was the extent of my tricks, did you?'
'What?'
Consumed by rage, Perturabo paid none of this any mind. In a short span of time, he crossed the distance magnified by reality-warping to an unimaginable degree, swinging Worldbreaker downward with immense force.
However, his footsteps abruptly froze.
A frail figure appeared before him, standing between Adam and Perturabo.
That was... his former sister, his former kin—Calliphone.
Perturabo's sister.
'Damn it!'
In Perturabo's tear-welling gaze, history repeated itself.
Worldbreaker struck its target.
Calliphone opened her eyes, raising her head to look at Perturabo—who was charging toward her, looking vastly different from her memory—with a gaze filled with worry and confusion. The two locked eyes.
At that very instant, Perturabo discovered a truth.
Calliphone recognized him.
She always did.
Blood spewed forth.
A massive hole appeared on Calliphone's frail body.
As a mortal, she was simply far too weak.
"It's you... Perturabo..."
Calliphone's throat seemed drenched in blood, her words fragmented and halting.
She looked with sorrow upon Perturabo, who no longer bore any resemblance to a mortal and looked entirely like a demon.
"...Let me tell you, my brother. You put on an air of despising love, but in reality, your yearning for love surpasses everything. You are the biggest fool I have ever seen."
Following that, Calliphone collapsed.
Perturabo stared in silence at her corpse.
He had killed his sister once again.
Once more.
With his own hands.
Even the last words left behind by his sister were no different from those in his memory.
Even knowing that all of this was the handiwork of the entity before him, Perturabo felt that he ought to be furious.
He certainly had reason to be furious.
Even knowing that anger was a total burden in such a grand battle, Perturabo should rightfully be angry.
'But.'
For some unknown reason, Perturabo could not feel any anger.
He felt only an inexplicable detachment.
Even though Perturabo could clearly hear Khorne's dissatisfied clicking of the tongue whispering in his ear at this moment—he still maintained this detachment.
A detachment akin to deathly silence.
"If your intention was merely to enrage me with this, then I regret to inform you—you have failed."
Perturabo gripped the weapons in his hands tightly.
His physique seemed to have grown much larger than before, and the aura radiating from him became even more ferocious and predatory.
"However."
His voice was so low it seemed to emerge from the bottom of an abyss, "This has once again given me a reason I cannot refuse to kill you, god from another world."
"That is truly unfortunate."
Adam raised his head with curiosity, looking toward Perturabo's face to observe his expression.
Finding none of the anticipated expressions, Adam shook his head with regret.
'Pity.'
Beneath the surface of Olympia, the battle began anew.
The two figures crashed together once again, just as they had in countless dimensions past.
And this time, Adam seemed to have completely adapted to Perturabo's attacks, handling them with even greater composure.
He didn't even attempt to summon weapons anymore; bare-handed, he strolled leisurely amidst all manner of attacks.
The power of reality-warping unfolded time and time again.
Wherever his fingertips touched, everything was brought under Adam's control.
No matter what kind of attack Perturabo employed, he could not catch his opponent's flaw, nor could he plunge the demon sword into Adam's chest once more. Neither of them could be restricted by the common sense of the physical universe.
The four dimensions of the material universe could not influence their movement in the slightest. They traversed the gaps between dimensions, expanding their domains along the way, fighting from the fluid layers of the Warp. Every fold in reality was a trace left behind by their clash.
A series of attacks flew toward each other along every axis of infinite planes like burning meteors, only to be evaded in similarly wondrous and unimaginable ways, escaping fierce explosions and destruction.
By virtue of this alone, the two sides were somewhat on equal footing.
This resembled the great battle upon the 'Vengeful Spirit' ten thousand years ago—the clash between lord and retainer, father and son, the Emperor and Horus—yet it was different in certain ways.
The one Perturabo was fighting was not his father, but an entity from another world.
The wondrous maneuvers pulled off by his opponent remained utterly incomprehensible to Perturabo, even now that he had become the Warmaster of Chaos.
He was forced to mobilize greater Chaos power to compress the opponent's space for movement.
Yet every single time, the opponent seemed able to escape with ease.
After fighting for a while, Perturabo finally lost his patience.
Like silent iron, he rarely uttered words during battle.
Yet this time, Perturabo finally began attempting to use words to pressure his opponent.
"Just now, I have also discovered that you have completely exhausted your tricks at this point."
He said in a deep voice,
"Like a cunning rabbit, dodging left and right amidst my attacks, merely utilizing those bizarre little maneuvers of yours."
As Perturabo spoke, he swung Worldbreaker and Drach'nyen, launching a ferocious offensive.
The demon sword swept outward, forcing Adam to flee once more from a cramped dimension, completely destroying the very dimension he had just created to hide in.
"The attempt you made just now to wage psychological warfare against me is the best proof—you have no moves left. You can only use these despicable tricks to shake my mental defenses. However, you have failed."
"Yet, I am Perturabo! I am Iron! Steadfast within and without! Everything of the past cannot shake my mind! I became the master of Chaos with a clear and rational will, not its slave!"
Worldbreaker fell once more, the earth trembling violently beneath Perturabo's feet.
"And you, you are merely a rebellious traitor—a blind, foolish god who was deceived and blinded by my father, and who, upon acquiring boundless divine might, became addicted to these boring games of playing house!"
"Heh, it seems you've misunderstood something..."
Adam laughed.
He stepped lightly, side-stepping attacks that ought to have been guaranteed hits, like a leisurely stroller stepping across one bottomless, eternal pit after another.
"Then now, I shall correct a misunderstanding of yours."
Adam said with a smile while dodging effortlessly,
"First of all, you said I employed psychological warfare—that is entirely incorrect."
Perturabo let out a sneer: "Are you going to deny a fact as obvious as this?"
"No, you might have misunderstood my meaning."
Adam said,
"You probably thought I was trying to find a flaw in your heart..."
"In reality, I had no such intention whatsoever. I simply wanted to see what kind of reaction you'd have to the re-enactment of 'killing your own sister' with your own hands. That reaction was the only thing I wanted to see."
"As for the psychological warfare you imagined... that intention never existed from the very beginning."
It was as if he had taken a hammer to the brain.
Perturabo felt his reason beginning to waver.
Within this fellow's words, he could not detect a shred of falsehood.
Which meant...
'He was toying with me?'
Perturabo roared.
This time, genuine, unadulterated fury finally ignited.
"How dare you!"
'That's right, that's right!'
Adam was finally satisfied.
He looked at the face before him, now rendered hideously ferocious by anger, and revealed a heartfelt smile.
"I just wanted to see this expression of yours—this is what I wanted!"
He shouted aloud, a trace of brisk joy even tinging his tone.
Greeting Adam was an attack far more terrifying than ever before.
Death, fire, and blood transformed into Perturabo's robes, and every war in history turned into the firewood for Perturabo's power at this moment.
In this instant, he felt as though he were Khorne himself.
"GIVE! ME! GO! TO! HELL!"
Worldbreaker and Drach'nyen crashed down simultaneously, the dual destruction tearing the sky of Olympia completely in half.
"This is going to disappoint you."
Adam smiled, stepping aside to dodge.
"I can fight you here for all eternity."
While parrying, he split off a sliver of attention, casting a glance toward the real universe.
How should he put it?
Adam was not without a backup plan.
His style of doing things was never that of a fanatic who completely immersed himself in battle and abandoned everything to enjoy the slaughter.
Before coming face-to-face with Perturabo, Adam had already pondered what the Four Gods of Chaos were actually trying to achieve.
First, the factor of watching him fight Gork and Mork could be ruled out.
This plan was far too crude; it didn't fit the style of the Four Peddlers at all.
Gork and Mork were so easy to fool that Adam could brush them aside effortlessly without any impact.
Could it be that they intended to rely solely on the Warmaster of Chaos to kill him?
Wouldn't that be a joke?
How could that be possible—Adam firmly believed the Four Gods weren't that naive.
Recalling the meeting among the Primarchs and Guilliman's unique insights, Adam had grown thoughtful, realizing something was amiss.
It seemed Chaos's trump card lay elsewhere, in a place he hadn't anticipated yet.
However, it was no major issue.
After all, Adam wasn't fighting alone either.
'King against king, general against general!'