This is the bonus chapter for reaching 600 Powerstones.
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Planet Dal, the Royal Court Plaza.
The smoke hadn't cleared yet. A massive trench, carved out by Paul's knee strike, tore right through the center of the plaza.
Charles Darwin slowly stood up from the end of the crater.
The center of his black crystal chest plate was cracked and caved in. Green blood gushed from the seams of his armor, dripping onto the scorched rock and sizzling as it burned corrosive pits into the ground.
But those crimson eyes were burning with an even crazier intensity than before.
"Is that it?"
Paul hovered about thirty feet in the air. The five-colored psychic flames coating his Golden Aquilon Terminator Armor burned steady, without even a hint of a flicker.
He stared down at the grotesque, twenty-five-foot-tall figure in the trench, his tone completely flat.
"The god of the Dal race... is this all you've got?"
Charles didn't answer.
His breathing grew heavy and drawn out.
With every exhale, dark red, blasphemous energy surged from the depths of his throat. It formed twisted runes in the air before quickly fading away.
He looked up.
Those eyes, now entirely swallowed by crimson, locked onto the golden figure suspended in mid-air.
"GRAAAAAH!!!"
It was the pure, unfiltered desire to kill, dragged out from the depths of his DNA and pushed to the absolute limit by Chaos.
Charles's body started expanding again.
The profane power he had borrowed from the Blood God suddenly found an outlet, exploding out of his body like a ruptured dam.
A phantom projection behind him grew more and more solid.
Horns.
A gaping, bloody maw.
The phantom glared down at the plaza, down at the eighty thousand royal guards tearing each other apart, and down at the dying Dal soldiers.
The phantom seemed to be smiling.
And whispering that same, eternal prayer:
Skulls for the Skull Throne... Blood for the Blood God...
Skulls for the Skull Throne... Blood for the Blood God...
Skulls for the Skull Throne... Blood for the Blood God...
At the exact same time, the fresh corpses of the Dal Royal Guards scattered across the plaza started changing.
Green blood defied gravity, flowing backward out of their wounds and floating into the air as tiny beads of gore.
Then came more blood...
The shredded remains of nineteen thousand royal guards—torn apart by orbital strikes, blasted to chunks by bolters, skewered by force halberds, and mashed into paste by Dreadnoughts.
Every single drop of blood left in them was yanked out by an unseen force, rising toward the sky.
The beads merged into streams.
The streams merged into rivers.
From every direction, rivers of blood rushed toward Charles Darwin and the increasingly physical phantom of Khorne looming behind him.
Charles stretched his split jaw open as wide as it would go.
He took a massive breath.
The airborne gore vanished into his mouth, nose, pores, and the cracks in his armor like seawater swallowed by a leviathan.
His muscles ballooned once again.
The chest plate Paul had already fractured shattered completely, blown apart by the expanding pectorals to reveal churning, dark red flesh that looked like molten lava.
Right beneath his skin, his snapped ribs reconnected, healed, and reinforced themselves at a visible speed.
His pupils shifted from a bloody red to a pure, pitch black that absorbed all light.
"Golden... bug..."
Charles's voice wasn't just coming from his vocal cords anymore. It was a blasphemous, echoing rumble from deep within his chest, vibrating in perfect sync with the phantom.
"Did you really think... that was everything I had?"
He raised his twenty-foot chainaxe.
The axe's teeth snapped into reverse and spun up to three times their previous speed. The screech of tearing air was enough to rupture an eardrum.
"The Blood God grants me eternal life..."
"The Blood God grants me strength..."
"The Blood God grants me... the absolute right to slaughter insects like yo…!"
Before he even finished the sentence.
Paul vanished.
It was a speed so blistering that even Charles's Khorne-enhanced eyes could only track a blur of gold.
Paul swung his Watcher's Axe. Supercharged by his five-trait psychic energy, the disruption field crackled with dark gold lightning as it cleaved diagonally from Charles's right shoulder down to his left ribcage.
The blade sliced right through the black crystal armor, bit into the bulging dark red muscle beneath, and hit the bone...
It severed three ribs and left a gaping gouge deep enough to scrape the surface of his heart.
Green gore fountained from the wound, but the second it left his body, the phantom behind him sucked it right back inside.
"GRAAGH!!"
Charles howled in pain and pure fury, sweeping his massive chainaxe in a horizontal arc with enough raw power to chop a light tank in half.
Paul sidestepped.
The chainaxe grazed the chest plate of his Golden Aquilon Armor. The whirring teeth sent a shower of sparks flying off the psychic shielding, leaving behind absolutely zero scratches.
Paul immediately pivoted, sweeping his axe up in a flawless, rising crescent.
The target: Charles's axe-wielding right arm.
Charles's combat instincts made him jerk backward, but he was half a second too late.
The Watcher's Axe bit straight into his right elbow. The disruption field severed tendons, arteries, and bone in a fraction of a millisecond...
His right forearm, along with a chunk of its armor, was lobbed clean off at the joint.
The twenty-foot chainaxe and the hand still gripping it tumbled through the air before slamming into the rocky ground a hundred feet away with a massive crash. The chainsaw teeth were still whirring uselessly against the dirt.
Charles's roar twisted into an inhuman screech that sounded like a cross between a wounded animal and a true demon.
He thrashed wildly with his remaining left arm, desperately trying to punch Paul into a pulp.
But it was no use.
Paul didn't even bother dodging.
He let the chaos-infused fist slam right into his pauldron. His psychic shielding flared for a split second, cleanly distributing the blunt force across his entire suit.
Then he raised a golden boot and kicked Charles square in the shin.
A sickening, crisp crunch of breaking bone rang out.
Paul's movements were liquid, terrifyingly efficient, without a single wasted motion.
He swung for the fourth time. The blade chopped into Charles's left shoulder, slicing diagonally along his collarbone and completely dismembering his left arm, bringing half the shoulder blade along with it.
Green gore fountained from the gaping stump.
Charles tried to push off with his legs and leap backward to buy himself some space.
But the very instant he left the ground, Paul's axe sank deep into his upper right thigh, detaching the entire leg cleanly at the hip joint.
Charles crashed back to the earth.
Paul stepped forward, dragging his blade casually across Charles's left knee.
The once undisputed ruler of Dal, the tyrant who controlled the planet, the so-called apex predator named Charles Darwin...
Was now nothing more than a fleshy stump, lying flat on his back in a pool of his own making.
Both arms severed at the shoulder, his right leg gone, and his left reduced to a jagged nub above the knee.
All that was left was that ape-like head still hooked to a spine, attached to a twitching torso completely soaked in green blood.
Paul slowly touched down.
His Golden Aquilon Terminator Armor stepped into the puddle of gore. The green liquid splashed against the psychic shielding and immediately vaporized into hissing steam.
He walked right up to Charles's face, lifted his right leg, and pressed a golden combat boot firmly onto his ugly, split-jawed head.
He didn't press down hard.
It was just enough pressure to keep Charles pinned, but not enough to crush his skull.
"You..."
Charles forced the words out from the back of his throat, gagging on blood froth and shattered teeth.
"You... can't... kill me..."
"I am... the god of the Dal... I was chosen by the Blood God..."
"Blood God?"
Paul cut him off.
"Do you have any idea how much power I actually put into beating you just now?"
Charles glared up at him with those crimson eyes.
"Thirty percent."
Paul said calmly.
"To be completely exact, thirty-two percent of my psychic output, and maybe forty percent of my physical strength."
He looked down at the hideous ape head pinned under his boot, a cold, mocking smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"You're ten thousand times easier to beat than Lorgar."
A hint of confusion flashed in Charles's pupils.
Who the hell is Lorgar?
"Lorgar... at least forced me to fight seriously for ten whole minutes."
"But you..."
He shook his head.
That unspoken, absolute contempt drove Charles crazier than any insult ever could.
"RRAAAAGH!!!"
"I am King Charles!!!"
"I ruled this planet for three hundred years!!"
"I am the god of the Dal race!!! I am—"
Paul shifted his weight, pressing his boot down harder.
Charles's head was shoved deep into the gore. Half his face was submerged in the green slurry, reducing the rest of his rant to pathetic, choking gurgles.
"Shh."
Paul whispered.
"Keep it down."
"I'll kill you in a minute."
"Right now, I want you to keep your eyes wide open and watch..."
He lifted his head, looking out across the sprawling plaza.
"Let's see how much that Blood God you worship is actually going to save you."
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In the regional channel, [Paradox Players Aren't War Criminals] dropped a message:
"Did Paul just say..."
"That Lorgar was easier to beat than this monkey?"
[Have You Been Loyal Today?]: "...Yeah."
[The Emperor's Tax Must Be Paid Even if the World Ends]: "Holy shit."
[Has White Scars Sped Today]: "Holy shit."
[How Many Floors Can You Carry a Sack of Rice]: "Holy shit, so Paul actually went toe-to-toe with a Primarch? And won?"
[Execute Old Man the War Criminal]: "No, guys, the real takeaway here is that Paul is this ridiculously broken at only thirty percent power?"
[The Imperium's Last Gambler]: "The actual point here... is that he literally told this xenos you're ten thousand times easier to beat than Lorgar."
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Next week gonna big again. It will be 100 Powerstones for 1 bonus chapter again!
For now though you can join my Patreon.com/AHumanMadeMOFO to read 30+ chapters ahead.