Aethernus Vhal watched the titan creature fall before it took its first step into this haven planet. Its massive figure crashed and shook the earth as its behemoth body cratered the grounds around it. No void-being existed around him. No tide of thousands of creatures or the surge of bodies that had once charged so brazenly at him.
Scorched black earth was all that remained in the area around him. Most bodies had been turned to equally black dust.
The forest that surrounded him no longer existed for hundreds of meters.
“Is that all?” Aethernus Vhal asked the masters of the Breach, whoever they were.
He knew they could hear him. Watching from within their rift portal and commanding the army.
Though he was not sure if it was one or many that currently stood opposite him. Many questions appeared in his mind as he stood there and waited for an answer or more things to kill. Who experimented on these creatures and made them from parts of monsters? Who in their right mind would attempt to crush humanity when his ilk existed? Was it a group of people? Other dastardly humans that betrayed their own kind? Or was it another race entirely that threatened man so?
Aethernus Vhal shook his head.
He watched as the Breach trembled, struggling to keep its form after the flames he had touched upon this land. Its spell matrix had damage in his sight now. The mana within its form wavered and threatened to collapse on itself. Though someone or something was trying to repair it in real time, but was failing to keep up with the expanding damage that covered it.
“Are you not going to respond? Or should I stride into your home and–”
A voice roared within his mind. “
Aethernus Vhal smiled. “So you can speak.”
“And yet you speak to me? I shall enjoy tearing your spine out of your husk, Xenos.”
Aethernus Vhal began to march toward it. He could see the hesitation within the being speaking to him from the spell matrix recovery froze and pulsed. Stopping and going oddly as though the intent behind it wasn’t sure what it wanted at that moment.
It only took a dozen steps before a final resolution came to it.
The Breach collapsed on itself. The being had decided to cut its losses by letting the damage to the spell matrix devour the rest of it. Closing the rift with a clap of mana and sound that stopped Aethernus Vhal’s momentum forward.
He stood there for a moment just in case this was a trick. The chaos tended to have many such things when he was busy killing its denizens.
New Spell Matrix Detected
[Please Insert New Name]
Category - Flames
Rank - S+
Tips and Hints -
Ranks vary from F- all the way up to SSS+
Aethernus Vhal paused as he read the notification.
One thing immediately stood out to him.
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He wondered who they might be for a second. The flying lizard he noticed during his landfall? Or were these Watchers beings capable of turning mountains into molten magma with a single attack. Reaching the power of orbital strikes from the most powerful battleships.
The system pinged him once more, insistently asking for a new name to his skill.
Aethernus Vhal obliged.
New Spell Matrix Detected
[Flames of the Emperor’s Grace]
Category - Flames
Rank - S+
It locked in and he could feel the system copy the spell matrix he had made and file it into his system for future usage. While his memory was photographic and did not require such memory banks, it helped keep them organized and clear on his changes. Mostly so he could isolate and remove if necessary if he ever sensed anything close to the warp or corruption from the system itself.
A perfect little test to see how invasive and pure it truly was.
Aethernus Vhal turned from the battlefield and walked away. Ignoring the many notifications the system was throwing at him for new skills, abilities, levels he never needed, and new found strength it only discovered he was capable of. He could study them all at a later time.
For now, he was attempting to learn about the Breach, though the system gave scant information as he marched toward where he had sensed the human army forming.
Full Breach Event Concluded!
Victory has been achieved!
The Watchers shall rue the day they took the people of these lands as enemies!
Congratulations! Contribution Percentages - 99.99%
Rewards - …
…
…
…
Aethernus Vhal kept moving without giving it any attention, picking up his pace and crossing the distance as quickly as possible where he felt Praven’s last location.
The man was a bright fire with his new senses without the ability to hide himself.
He made a mental note to work on that as well, just in case. Having his enemies notice him from a thousand miles away and running before he reached them would not be an ideal condition to wage war within the warp. It also meant that the False Deities had time to prepare more tricks for him. A mistake he was not going to allow to happen again. He had wasted a half second feeling the malevolent touch of for a moment and it had cost him the head of a False Deity. He was not going to make that mistake again.
Aethernus Vhal arrived on the scene only to freeze and stare.
There had to be at least a thousand men and women on the ground, all snoring and sleeping in piles.
Not a single person awakened.
He wove through their numbers until he found a person he recognized through their mana signature. Anna had snuck into the army with armor that was too big and a weapon that looked to weigh more than her. Aethernus Vhal picked her up and moved her away from the masses as he marched toward where he felt Mira, the commander and coordinator of this army, lying.
Praven and a few others were by her side.
He nudged her a few times to wake her but she did not stir. He could sense flecks of his mana within their bodies. As though they opened themselves to the energies of the world with no protection at all. They would have been ruined at the first encounter of any warp entity, much less the psychi-users among them. What he found strange was that even the most basic levels of defenses were absent.
Things even the average human he had encountered would have had.
Aethernus Vhal sat down and waited for them to rise, protecting them with his presence while they slumbered.
The whole situation was odd.
Aethernus Vhal recognized the existence of these Watchers and the likelihood that they carried the SSS+ skills and classes. All of whom would likely be strong enough to threaten him, yet they hadn’t crushed humanity and the living here. Why? What purpose did they have to these Breaches and the experiment creatures they were throwing out of the rift at him.
Even the titan sized monster had been constructed to be more molten metal than living thing.
It reminded him of some of his eldest brothers who suffered tragedy and horror of body.
Placed into war machines that wrought death upon the world.
Encased in metal and armed with weaponry that rivaled the strongest chaos creatures.
Some that existed before their emperor even took to space.
Aethernus Vhal made a mental note to run his own experiments and ask important questions to both Mira and the Warden. If those were brothers, then they deserved to be freed from the clutches of the damned and chains of enslavement first. Death if necessary to break those bonds if no other choice was available or they were corrupted by the taint of the warp.
He shifted and looked back toward the army.
Men and women were beginning to rouse, even Mira and Praven were waking beside him.
