Yuki and the Void Dragon were still airborne.
Very quickly, a dense defensive fire grid swept toward them.
Under normal circumstances, firepower of this magnitude could not inflict meaningful damage on a C'tan shard, but the defenses of the Arx Angelicum operated on a completely different scale.
A colossal macro-shell hurtled directly toward Yuki and the Void Dragon, its muzzle velocity vastly exceeding the reaction threshold of the C'tan—Yuki calculated that the projectile had briefly surpassed solar escape velocity over a minimal distance.
This was no conventional artillery piece; it was a macro-cannon uninstalled directly from a starship and retrofitted for planetary defense.
The brute force of the impact struck the Void Dragon squarely. The C'tan shard sustained zero critical structural damage, but the force of the momentum broke its grip, sending Yuki plummeting toward the terrain below.
The Tyranid swarms were executing their primary, total assault. Within the moat encircling the fortress, specialized aquatic bio-forms—deployed as an advance vanguard—were pushing through local hazards, while the defenders garrisoned inside the Arx Angelicum poured continuous fire down upon the breach.
Concurrently, an extraordinary volume of Mycetic Spores plummeted through the upper atmosphere. Though the anti-air grid successfully neutralized a massive proportion, the surviving spores posed a fatal threat to the interior bastions.
Yuki tracked the incoming torrent of kinetic and energy fire, leveraging his enhanced eyes to isolate gaps in the defensive grid.
With the Void Dragon momentarily delayed above, Yuki seized the momentum to execute a high-velocity impact, crashing heavily into the soil.
He raised his head to survey the immediate grid. The local garrison consisted almost entirely of mortal auxiliaries, overseen by a handful of Astartes stationed at a command node in the distance.
"I am actually human as well. I barely managed to escape back to our lines—would you believe me if I formatted it that way?"
An immediate barrage of heavy munitions opened up on his position. Yuki breached the local perimeter to duck behind a reinforced concrete barrier, though his calculations indicated the structure would yield under thousand-cycle heavy fire within seconds.
He required an exit vector within ten seconds.
Run the calculations faster!
The infantry fire momentarily faltered, but as Yuki scanned for an escape vector, he detected rocket teams advancing alongside armored armor units.
"Are these guys serious?"
Risking being torn apart by massed bolt-gun fire, Yuki vaulted clear of the cover. A microsecond later, a massive crater materialized where he had been crouching as rocket salvos and tank shells pulverized the concrete.
"Would it really be so difficult for you to simply lie down and accept bio-termination quietly?"
Yuki's current frame remained far below standard operational capacity. Had he known the resistance density would spike to this threshold, he would have authorized a tactical retreat to re-consolidate before re-engaging.
His alternate surrogate bodies were currently deployed to secondary sectors across the planet and could not be recalled to these coordinates in time.
Ultimately, preserving this specific chassis held low strategic value. Though forfeiting the progress he had made breaching the inner line was unfortunate, it was an acceptable write-off.
Yuki adjusted the chemical composition of his circulatory fluids into a volatile, high-yield explosive compound, preparing to trigger a suicide detonation the moment the chassis sustained terminal damage.
I'm taking you down with me!
Just as Yuki initialized the self-destruction sequence, a sudden psychic storm erupted from the sky.
Warp-blades spun through the air, cleanly severing the fragile bodies of the mortal soldiers. Even the power armor of the advancing Blood Angels was sliced open, their biological matter shredded and drawn back into the origin point of the storm.
Yuki cast his eyes upward as a familiar figure descended.
"Yuno? What operational parameters were you executing earlier?"
Yuno wore a distinct smile—a expression of genuine joy that felt strangely anomalous amidst the unresolved combat conditions, prompting Yuki to instinctively attempt a psychic sweep of her neural interface.
However, Yuno deployed her absolute administrative authority to block his access—an action she had never taken before.
Placing a finger gently to her lips with a playful expression, Yuno signaled to Yuki: "Restrain your impatience. Once this campaign reaches its conclusion, every log file will be fully accessible to you."
"Now, let us proceed to take total possession of this world."
As she spoke, two additional entities materialized in front of Yuki almost simultaneously.
One was draped in grey robes, emaciated and thin, yet her features remained recognizably linked to Yuno's baseline morphology.
The other possessed an unnatural physical structure, encased in dense, hyper-developed bone structures that flared outward like a non-traditional manifestation of Death personified.
Yuki processed the visual data. Are these the remaining sub-conscious entities?
If so... Death, Famine, Pestilence, and War—the Four Horsemen of the Tyranid Apocalypse had fully checked into the grid.
As he finalized the deduction, Pestilence and War converged on their position.
"The One. We have arrived on site. The Leviathan fleet stands ready for your direct allocation."
Yuno turned her eyes toward Yuki. "My love, we have reached the terminal phase of this war. Both twin moons have been fully subjugated. At this node, are you willing to place Hive Fleet Aether under my direct command?"
"Without hesitation, my love."
Yuno's aura flared with supreme authority as she raised her hand: "Then let it be declared—Hive Fleet Leviathan, Hive Fleet Aether, and Hive Fleet Chronos, initialize full-scale, total offensive operations!"
Immediately following the command, Yuno unspooled a quiet, encrypted directive to her inner network: "Maintain a defensive fleet perimeter outside the Baal system, and stand prepared to execute a full jump-retreat at a moment's notice."
"What is the rationale?" Yuki queried.
"I have registered extreme, anomalous psychic fluctuations within the Empyrean. I compute that the destruction of Cadia will occur significantly ahead of our estimated timeline."
Yuki's expression turned solemn. He fully comprehended the severe implications: the destruction of Cadia and the resulting warp shockwaves would temporarily sever the synaptic link between the hive fleets.
Furthermore, the temporal distortions caused by the manifestation of the Great Rift would allow Imperial battle-fleets to arrive as timely reinforcements.
In Yuki's historical data banks, the battle for Baal had felt like a matter of months to the planetary defenders, whereas decades had elapsed for the galaxy outside.
"Yuno, I will deliver this absolute victory to you no matter the cost."
Unexpectedly, Yuno offered a gentle, serene expression. "It matters not. This was merely a minor objective. Even if the baseline trajectory remains unalterable in the end, I am already entirely content."
Yuki was caught completely off guard. What fundamental shift had occurred within Yuno? Had they not spent these past decades striving relentlessly toward this exact outcome?
Did Yuno not fully understand his motivations?
Reaching out, Yuno softly touched Yuki's cheek. "It is fine. I will accept and encompass everything that you are."
Yuki fell silent. He disliked this dynamic—he harbored a deep distaste for constantly relying on her, for always being the one comforted and forgiven.
Why did Yuno place zero demands upon him? Why did she not push him harder, demand higher performance metrics, or hold him to harsher standards?
He could not compute it.
Setting the abstract thoughts aside, Yuki resolved that even if Yuno viewed the outcome with casual indifference, he would personally bring this resolution to a definitive end to resolve his own internal node.
"I understand."
"Everyone, advance on the Arx Angelicum. Let us see if Dante can maintain his legendary composure this time."
Observing the theater through the sensory arrays of his Necron constructs, the Silent King had been meticulously tracking every phase of the engagement.
The scale and threat profile of the Tyranid swarms far exceeded his preliminary calculations.
The combined forces of humanity, the Necrons, and the unexpected daemonic incursions had managed to liquidate less than half of the total Tyranid bio-mass present in the system. Yet human military assets were already eighty percent depleted, and his own deployed Necron legions had been entirely destroyed.
Lacking souls and living sacrifices to sustain their anchor in realspace under the relentless assault of the Tyranids, the Khornate daemons were rapidly banished back into the Empyrean.
The strategic trajectory was dire.
The true primary macro-fleets of the Hive Mind were vastly larger than this force—in reality, the echelons present here represented little more than an advance reconnaissance vector of Leviathan.
"It is time to unbind additional C'tan shards—"
Szarekh's processing matrix abruptly stalled. High above the battlefield, his visual arrays locked onto a figure that defied every logical parameter in his databases.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA! COME ON, COME ON! BLAST THEM! KILL THEM ALL!"
A construct possessing an structural signature near-identical to the Void Dragon was soaring through the upper atmosphere, continuously raining high-yield energy bombardments down upon the terrain. Szarekh briefly calculated whether his optical feeds had suffered an error.
It was only after re-verifying his physical chassis that he confirmed the reality of the data feed.
Why was a shard of the Void Dragon present in this sector?
Why was it actively refusing to attack the Tyranids?
Did those ancient entities not share an absolute hatred for all organic life?