Paul's cold eyes stared through his golden faceplate, calmly watching the three hideous silhouettes rising from within the pyramid's gates.
Three Battlefield Tyrants.
Their forty-foot frames blotted out the sunlight of Planet Dal. Fused with profane energy, their heavy brass plating radiated a sickly, blood-red halo.
Six pairs of curved ram horns tore into the sky. Every single compound eye reflected pure, unfiltered slaughter.
They hovered in mid-air. No roaring. No screaming.
These were the purest, most terrifyingly cold war machines among Khorne's Greater Daemons, and they silently focused all their compound eyes onto a single target.
Paul watched the three Greater Daemons slowly box him in. He didn't move a muscle.
His voice rang out over the regional channel, calm as a millpond:
"All units, prioritize clearing out the remaining Dal forces in the Royal Court. I'll handle things here."
The regional channel went dead silent for two seconds.
[Regional Channel (Crimson Dawn)]
[You Ashe I Soraka]: "Holy shit, is Paul about to... 1v3 three Greater Daemons of Khorne?"
[Execute Old Man the War Criminal] stared at the golden figure hovering in the air.
Sure, they might just be nameless Battlefield Tyrants, defective knock-offs temporarily summoned using trash-tier Dal sacrifices.
But they were still fucking Greater Daemons!
They were living extensions of Khorne in realspace. They had survived countless Warp wars. They were literal killing machines that had butchered for thousands of years under the banners of the Chaos Gods.
A single Bloodthirster could slaughter an entire planet's PDF in half an hour.
And Paul was about to fight three of them without letting the Grey Knights interfere.
He swallowed hard before finally keying his mic.
[Execute Old Man the War Criminal]: "Chill out, guys. Paul is way stronger than you think."
Over on the edge of the plaza, Tax Bro drove his power fist straight down, caving the skull of the last resisting Dal royal guard deep into its own chest cavity. He took a second to glance at the chat.
[The Emperor's Tax Must Be Paid Even if the World Ends]: "What are you all standing around for?"
"Didn't you hear Paul? Clear out the trash mobs!"
He kicked the twitching, headless corpse away, revving his chainsword until it roared.
"Everybody, wipe out every breathing thing in this plaza that isn't one of those three big bastards! Let Paul focus on the boss fight!"
[Has White Scars Sped Today]: "Mobile infantry, on me."
"We've got two companies of Dal mechs rallying on the east flank."
The scream of jump packs ripped through the smoke.
--
The center of the Royal Court Plaza.
The three Battlefield Tyrants slowly spread out, locking into a triangular kill formation.
The first gripped a twenty-foot-long chainsword with both hands. The heavy brass rings clamped along the blade clattered against the whirring teeth, chiming like the dying wails of the brutally tortured.
It was Unfettered Fury...
A creation of Khorne's Eighth Legion, an absolute master at carving straight through any enemy dumb enough to form a battle line.
The second hoisted a massive, spiked warhammer over its shoulder. The maul's head was caked in the pulverized fragments of countless skulls, some still leaking fresh, wet brain matter.
It was Rabid Bloodlust...
A savage brute from the Sixth Legion, existing solely to pulverize targets that thought they were indestructible.
The third dual-wielded double-bladed battle axes. The blasphemous hellfire wreathed around the edges was so hot it literally warped the air a hundred feet in every direction.
It was Wrath of Khorne...
An Apostle of Vengeance from the Third Legion, personally dispatched by the Blood God to humiliate and butcher anyone arrogant enough to insult Khorne's name.
Three pairs of compound eyes simultaneously locked onto Paul.
From beneath three faceless brass plates, blasphemous, Warp-vibrating whispers echoed out in unison:
"Blood for the Blood God..."
"Skulls for the..."
"Skull Throne."
Before the final syllable even dropped, the three Greater Daemons moved.
Unfettered Fury swung its chainsword in a massive horizontal arc with the force of a collapsing mountain. The air itself shrieked as the blade tore through it.
Paul sidestepped.
The roaring blade grazed the chest plate of his Golden Aquilon Armor. The chainsaw teeth ground against his psychic shielding, violently kicking up a shower of blinding sparks.
In the split second it took to dodge, he actually looked down at the faint, superficial scuff mark left on his armor.
Is that it?
On his right flank, Rabid Bloodlust brought its warhammer crashing down toward his skull.
It was a strike heavy enough to pancake the main turret of a Baneblade.
Paul simply raised his arm.
He angled the haft of the Watcher's Axe, flawlessly parrying the blow and redirecting the immense kinetic force off to his left.
BOOM!!!
The hammer smashed into the ground. Bedrock violently curled outward like a tidal wave, and the resulting shockwave blew every Dal corpse within a sixty-foot radius completely into the air.
Paul didn't budge an inch.
On his left flank, Wrath of Khorne swept its dual battle axes in a deadly, intersecting cross-slash.
One aimed straight for his throat, the other to chop him in half at the waist.
It was a signature combo that had slaughtered countless fools who dared insult the Blood God. More than a hundred powerful xenos and Eldar champions had been chopped to pieces by this exact move.
Paul glided ten feet backward.
The razor tips of the twin axes crossed exactly half an inch in front of his gorget, failing to even brush the surface of his psychic shielding.
While floating backward, he even had the time... to tilt his head slightly.
"Too slow."
Paul let the words casually roll off his tongue.
Wrath of Khorne's compound eyes instantly flooded with blood.
It had lived for untold eons. It had harvested the skulls of countless champions across a million battlefields. Never once had a piece of prey watched it swing its axes and dared to say...
It was too slow.
"GRAAAAGH!!!!!"
The three Greater Daemons ramped their assault into a rabid frenzy.
The chainsword spun up to absolute maximum velocity, blurring into a solid wheel of bloody light accompanied by the screaming wail of its brass rings.
The warhammer strikes jumped from once a second to three times a second, every single impact packing enough force to shatter a mountain.
The twin axes shifted from cross-slashes into an overwhelming blizzard of blades.
Every single arc was lethal. Every single strike was zeroed in on Paul's neck, his joints, the tiny seams of his visor.
This was the true combat state of Khorne's Greater Daemons.
The sheer fury of being humiliated pushed their power output past one hundred and twenty percent.
And Paul...
Inside a whirlwind of slaughter that would have ground an entire Astartes company into bloody paste in under three seconds, Paul... took a stroll.
Yep, exactly that. Like he was out for a walk in the park.
He took a step forward. The chainsword thrust violently toward his right ribs.
He didn't even turn his head. He just casually swiped the Watcher's Axe backward, knocking the flat of his blade against the spine of the sword and deflecting the thrust by a clean foot.
He half-stepped to the left. The warhammer came crashing down, literally grazing his scalp.
He didn't even fully dodge; he just crouched slightly, letting the massive hammer head scrape right over his pauldron before aggressively backhanding the haft of his axe straight into Rabid Bloodlust's wrist joint.
The Greater Daemon's brass gauntlet caved inward, profane blood squirting out from the crushed seams.
He pivoted cleanly. The twin axes chopped down from the front.
This time, he didn't even bother parrying. Moving to some bizarre, internal rhythm, he perfectly sliced diagonally forward to the left, slipping seamlessly through the absolute only blind spot between the two descending blades.
Then he raised his leg.
And planted a golden combat boot square into the side of Wrath of Khorne's knee.
The forty-foot behemoth violently staggered three steps backward.
Three Greater Daemons. Thirty seconds of relentless siege.
Paul didn't have a single scratch on him.
Even the psychic flames washing over his Golden Aquilon Armor were burning steadier and smoother than when the fight had started.
--
[Regional Channel (Crimson Dawn)]
[How Many Floors Can You Carry a Sack of Rice]: "...Am I hallucinating right now?"
[Optimus Lemme Pilot You Real Hard]: "Did he seriously just physically sidestep a synchronized combo from three Greater Daemons?"
[Have You Been Loyal Today?]: "He walked out of it."
"Look at his pacing. Paul isn't even doing tactical evasions, he's literally just walking normally."
[The Imperium's Last Gambler]: "Those are Greater Daemons of Khorne on the other side."
"Ancient demons with eons of combat experience."
"And a human just styled on all three of them by taking a leisurely stroll."
[Paradox Players Aren't War Criminals]: "In those thirty seconds, Paul dodged exactly forty-seven attacks. He only used his weapon to parry three times. The other forty-four were pure positional dodges."
[Paradox Players Aren't War Criminals]: "If this were a video game, his agility stat would have to be over two hundred at the bare minimum just to pull off that movement."
[Psykers Don't Die to Gunfire]: "This literally looks like Paul is fighting..."
[Grandfather Nurgle Loves All]: "AI bots?"
[Don't Ask Me My Orky Senses Tell Me It'll Work]: "Total AI bots."