Paul stood in the dead center of a sea of blood and gore.
Four thousand Dal Royal Guard corpses were scattered around him, their green blood pooling into shallow, vile ponds across the plaza.
Two hundred Grey Knight players stood silently at his back, their silver-grey Terminator armor heavily splattered with xenos viscera.
Yet, their formation remained absolutely flawless, resembling two hundred statues forged for the sole purpose of slaughter.
The kill-to-death ratio stood at an incomprehensible 0 to 4,000.
This was the crushing result of a Champion personally spearheading a specialized anti-daemon strike force against conventional infantry.
But Paul knew this was merely the appetizer.
His dark gold eyes shifted upward, locking onto the gargantuan, two-hundred-meter-tall blast doors built into the base of the Royal Court pyramid.
The doors were slowly grinding open, looking like the gaping, blood-soaked maw of an ancient leviathan waking from its slumber.
In the heavy shadows beyond the threshold, countless crimson eyes ignited in the dark. They belonged to more Dal Royal Guards—larger, stronger, and infinitely more fanatical.
And right in the absolute center of that sea of red eyes...
Through his psychic senses, Paul felt a terrifying energy signature slowly moving forward. It burned with the blistering intensity of an active forge, yet reeked of the foulest, most putrid swamp.
He was intimately familiar with the nature of that power...
He had felt something nearly identical back in the Aru Industrial Zone, and again at the Holy Anthem City.
The stench of the Immaterium.
The aura of the Blood God.
"Attention all units."
Paul's voice projected instantly across the entire battlefield via the psychic vox-link...
From the Royal Court Plaza to the outer urban sectors, from the ground forces all the way up to the orbital fleet.
"The main enemy host is about to reveal itself."
"Prepare for the true battle."
The moment the words left his mouth, he launched himself upward.
Propelled by the roaring jump pack of his golden Aquilon Terminator Armor and the colossal psychic reserves surging through his veins, he rocketed into the sky.
Fifty meters, one hundred meters, two hundred meters...
Paul hovered exactly three hundred meters above the Royal Court Plaza, suspended in the air.
The energy conduits weaving across his Terminator warplate blazed to their absolute limit, radiating a dark gold luster that effortlessly overpowered the harsh light of the Dal sun.
He spread his arms wide...
The five stars within his pupils spun in a chaotic frenzy.
Hope, Compassion, Resolve, Pioneering, Wisdom.
The essence of the five traits was rapidly transmuted into a staggering ocean of psychic energy.
Slipping free from their physical tether, they erupted from Paul's body as five distinct, visible torrents of radiant light.
Pale gold, emerald green, crimson red, azure blue, and pure silver.
The five pillars of psychic light shot toward the skies, blossoming outward like an immense canopy at the peak of their ascent. Then, they cascaded downward as a torrential rain of light, gently bathing the entire Royal Court battlefield.
Every single droplet of that rain was a microscopic psychic rune.
They bypassed all physical distance and ignored all cover, landing with infallible precision on every single unit allied with Crimson Dawn...
Whether it was an Astartes player clad in ceramite power armor, a Dawn Defense Force soldier in standard composite carapace, or even a logistics tech-priest operating an artillery piece miles in the rear.
The moment the rain of light made contact, it melted seamlessly into their bodies.
--
[How Many Floors Can You Carry a Sack of Rice]: "Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!"
[How Many Floors Can You Carry a Sack of Rice]: "I'm literally glowing gold!"
[How Many Floors Can You Carry a Sack of Rice]: "The System says I just received the 'Blessing of Hope'..."
[How Many Floors Can You Carry a Sack of Rice]: "Luck +30%! Attack Accuracy +20%! And I gained a passive 'Weakness Insight' trait!"
[Optimus Lemme Pilot You Real Hard]: "Mine is glowing green! Blessing of Compassion!"
[Optimus Lemme Pilot You Real Hard]: "My max HP just jumped by a third! And my bleeding wounds are literally knitting themselves shut!"
[Have You Been Loyal Today?]: "Blessing of Resolve."
[Have You Been Loyal Today?]: "Defense boosted. Stamina regen accelerated."
[Have You Been Loyal Today?]: "I feel like I could swing this power sword for three hours straight without breaking a sweat."
[Execute Old Man the War Criminal]: "Blessing of Pioneering."
[Execute Old Man the War Criminal]: "Attack Power +30%, Movement Speed +20%. Wait a second..."
[Execute Old Man the War Criminal]: "Did I just physically dodge a Dal energy beam?"
[Execute Old Man the War Criminal]: "I normally would never have been able to dodge that!"
[Paradox Players Aren't War Criminals]: "Blessing of Wisdom."
[Paradox Players Aren't War Criminals]: "Focus enhanced, fatigue recovery accelerated."
[Paradox Players Aren't War Criminals]: "But the most critical part is the 'Mental Purity' status... The System describes it as 'Suppressing foul corruption'."
[Paradox Players Aren't War Criminals]: "Is this a specialized anti-Chaos corruption buff?"
[The Imperium's Last Gambler]: "A five-stack buff! Paul just popped a raid-wide aura!"
[Grandfather Nurgle Loves All]: "Is this the true power of a Champion... It feels like we're using cheat codes."
--
[Crimson Zealot] Chris slowly stood up from behind his barricade.
He had just fired a single burst from his lasrifle, dropping an elite Dal soldier instantly.
The beam had flawlessly threaded the needle, striking the exact weak point in the neck armor joint—a spot that usually took him at least three shots to compromise.
Now? A clean, one-shot headshot.
He looked down at his trembling hands. The muscles beneath his carapace armor pulsed with a surging vitality he had never felt before.
It wasn't a superficial, temporary spike in raw power. It felt like absolute harmony—every single biological function had been hyper-optimized to its absolute peak.
"Is this... the power of Archmagos Paul?"
Chris muttered to himself. He snapped his head up, staring at the radiant golden figure suspended high above the battlefield.
It wasn't just him.
Across the entire warzone, every single Crimson Dawn unit turned their eyes toward the sky, all looking in the exact same direction.
--
The Royal Court Gates, the Vanguard Frontline.
Tax Bro shattered a Dal heavy shock-trooper's skull with a brutal left hook, splashing black-red brain matter all over his Imperial Fists livery.
He was panting heavily... his chest heaving with sheer exhilaration.
"Listen up, everyone! Buff duration is unknown! While we have it... we crush them!"
He roared, the disruptor field of his power fist humming at maximum intensity.
Behind him, thirty Terminators formed a wedge formation, violently driving themselves into the Dal defensive line.
Every swing of their power fists was accompanied by the sickening crunch of shattered bones. Every sweep of their power swords cleared entire swaths of enemies in a neat, bloody arc.
And yet, the damage they were taking in return was shockingly minimal.
An energy beam that normally would have blown a hole straight through a pauldron now struck the Terminator armor and left nothing but a superficial scorch mark.
A Dal soldier threw himself forward, hacking wildly with a bio-axe. The blade bounced harmlessly, failing to even scratch the outermost layer of ceramite.
"A 30 percent defense buff from the Resolve trait..." White Scars laughed maniacally over the comms. The White Scars jump squad he led was crisscrossing the battlefield at eighty kilometers an hour, their jump pack trails weaving a lethal web like the scythes of the Reaper.
"...stacked with the HP boost and regen from Compassion... we are all basically mini-Primarchs right now!"
"Cut the chatter! Push forward!"
Tax Bro kicked the mangled wreckage of a Dal combat mech out of his path, his eyes locked onto the towering, thirty-meter-tall alloy gates dead ahead.
A pale yellow energy shield blanketed the doors. Waiting behind them were at least ten thousand Dal defenders, the muzzles of their heavy weapons already flashing with charging green light.
According to the original tactical projection, breaching this chokepoint was supposed to take at least twenty minutes and cost them heavily in casualties.
But now...
"Dreadnoughts! Focus your melta cannons! Turn that damn door to slag!"
"Copy that!"
Four Contemptor Dreadnoughts raised their right arms in unison. The thermal output of their melta cannons spiked to stellar-core temperatures in a fraction of a second.
Four blindingly white beams converged on the exact same point.
The energy shield held for exactly 1.2 seconds before overloading and violently shattering. Exposed to temperatures exceeding five thousand degrees, the massive alloy plating instantly liquefied into molten slag, pooling and dripping down the doorframe.
"Charge!"
--
Damn what happened, its like this story got shadow banned in 1 day.
Why are there so low number of comments and powerstones compared to just a day ago?