Chapter 52: Tzaangors

Kivior-2 stepped before Nimrod, his voice resolute as he declared, "On behalf of all Vostonia's altars, I accede to your demands. We shall support your ascension as Vostonia's king."

"Act swiftly, I beseech you, and purge the blasphemous heretics."

Rosicky and Wojciech Belik exchanged astonished glances. That the Sage would accept Nimrod's audacious proposal was nigh unthinkable.

Yet, upon sober reflection, they discerned Kivior-2 had little choice.

The Adeptus Mechanicus' Skitarii and many hive families had suffered grievous losses in battles against xenos. Vostonia lacked the fabled god-machines of legend, and faced with this sudden eruption of heresy, no superior alternative presented itself.

To reject Nimrod's terms would plunge Vostonia into a cataclysmic ordeal.

The Sage's calculations extended further. The fall of Piatek Shwiderski and the defeat of Kapustka had eroded his faith in the noble houses.

With utmost haste, he manipulated his data-slate, inscribing a pledge in the sacred tongue of technology and Low Gothic, sealing it with an electronic sigil branded by his mechanical tendril.

Nimrod inspected the document, nodding with satisfaction.

"As you decree, I shall depart at once."

With those words, Nimrod strode forth with purposeful steps, Maria and her companions hastening to follow.

Jorginho, awaiting their emergence, swiftly rallied his subordinates to trail the towering giant.

After advancing several kilometers, the retinue encountered a horde of Tzaangors.

A mere hundred-strong force charged toward thousands of monstrous beasts, yet not a single soul quailed.

They beheld their sovereign, Nimrod, leading the charge into the monstrous throng. With a single rush, he cleaved dozens of avian beastmen asunder at the waist, hurling hundreds more skyward.

Jorginho roared, "Advance!"

He took the lead, squeezing the trigger of his Vostonian lasrifle, newly equipped during the voyage. A beam lanced through a beast's right eye, piercing its avian skull.

[This rifle packs a punch—far superior to the junk we traded for sea-goods.]

Piatek Shwiderski, having felled a fleeing king's private soldier with a single sword stroke, caught sight of the unstoppable giant.

His mind thundered. During the sacred ritual, as agony wracked his transforming body, whispers echoed in his memory.

"Piatek Shwiderski, I grant you enlightenment. You have attained a noble form of wisdom."

"You shall undertake the divine task I bestow upon you. Go forth!"

"Prove yourself with the power I have given you. Strike him!"

The figure revealed by the God of Wisdom merged with the giant's silhouette.

Piatek's frame shuddered as the deity's words resounded.

"With the blade in your hand, pierce his flesh and draw his blood!"

"Make him bleed, and you shall ascend, forever serving at my side!"

Piatek's eyes gleamed with fervor, sensing the God of Wisdom's summons and the caress of destiny.

Zelinsky's prior words reverberated in his mind.

"You have completed the sacred transformation. From this moment, you are entwined with fate. You can instinctively sense its threads, as a beast scents prey on the wind."

Unlike those who, unable to endure the God of Wisdom's gifts during the ritual, devolved into bestial forms, Piatek was exceptional. He grasped the deeper meaning: the fate he perceived was inevitable, as certain as his slaying of the foolish Kapustka, and as assured as his imminent fulfillment of the God of Wisdom's mission.

Zelinsky unleashed a piercing howl and charged toward Nimrod.

Concurrently, Zelinsky also noted the colossal Nimrod, observing how he butchered the Tzaangors—offered to the God of Wisdom through transformation rituals—like mere refuse.

His gaze deepened, thoughts swirling.

[If I could subjugate such a mighty being, I would surely complete my enlightenment.

Thereafter, offering him as a sacrifice to my lord would garner even greater boons.]

With this, Zelinsky raised his staff aloft, channeling the power bestowed by the God of Wisdom.

Surging energies lifted him, his wings unfurling behind, tearing through his blue robe.

Nimrod, having just swung his halberd, sensed a lance-like consciousness piercing toward him.

He sneered with disdain. The will of a gene-forged Primarch already surpassed mortal limits, further fortified by the Beyonder pathways of "Lawyer" and "Savage." His resolve was unyielding as bedrock, yet someone dared assail his mind.

Following the psychic thread, Nimrod's gaze locked onto Zelinsky, hovering midair.

The heretic's still-human face blanched purple, and he plummeted to the ground.

"Leave him to me," Marlena declared, her hand flicking outward. Several Tzaangors convulsed violently, their bodies rupturing under surging bio-psychic energy.

"Very well," Nimrod assented, turning toward Piatek, who charged at him. Larger than other Tzaangors by several magnitudes, Piatek rivaled the stature of the mightiest creatures Nimrod had encountered, save for the Gnaw-Octopus.

Mid-charge, Piatek veered sharply, darting right for two steps before pivoting left in a sudden lunge.

This was the opportunity fate had revealed, the sole path to fulfill the God of Wisdom's task and claim the giant's blood.

As his blade drew within an arm's length of the black armor, Piatek glimpsed a flash of dark radiance.

In the next instant, agony seared his abdomen. Struck by a single blow, he was sent tumbling, spewing blood in great gouts.

"No! Fate showed me triumph! I was to fulfill the God of Wisdom's mission!"

Two mocking laughs rang in his ears. One, a whispering sneer, emanated from the God of Wisdom.

The other issued from the giant, who materialized before the Tzaangor, his halberd crashing down, pinning Piatek to the ground, dead.

Nimrod knew even the mightiest diviners could not pierce fate's full mysteries, let alone Tzaangors endowed with mere instinctual glimpses by Tzeentch.

Moreover, one could never ascertain whether the glimpsed fate was true or a cruel jest woven by Tzeentch or some daemon for amusement.

Nimrod withdrew his heavy halberd, noting Jorginho directing his men to advance along the left flank of his charge, steadily pressing forward.

On the other side, Maria and her two companions fought with increasing synergy, injecting combat stimms at precise moments.

His gaze shifted ahead, where Marlena utterly dominated Zelinsky. Reeling from psychic backlash, his mental assaults failed to breach the female shaman's formidable psychic defenses.

Nimrod judged that even at full strength, Zelinsky could not overcome Marlena's mind. The shaman possessed the strongest will he had ever witnessed.

[It is finished.]

As the thought crossed Nimrod's mind, Marlena raised her pale palm, thrusting it forward.

A bolt of lightning, thick as a finger, lanced toward Zelinsky's face.

Amid a scream, the Tzeentchian heretic's visage, charred black, collapsed in a heap.

With Zelinsky and Piatek's leadership extinguished, the Tzaangors' bestial instincts surged, plunging them into disarray. The chaotic horde was swiftly eradicated.

Nimrod ordered Jorginho to reorganize the surviving armed forces of the Mikhailovsk Hive and, with the others, seize the undefended spire.

He himself ventured to the underhive, where he hunted a thousand-legged serpent, capturing five more and casting them into the second layer of the "Nation of Disorder," a simulated underhive environment he had crafted.

Returning to the upper spires, he reentered the spire's palace, where he began compounding the "Assassin" potion.

...

T/N: That Assasin pathway is good and more suitable for you boys~ (lotm reader keep quit)