Starting from the Planetary Governor - Chapter 1002

Chapter 993: The Bull of Khorne and the Great Unclean One

. Human tactics aren’t actually complex.

Nor could they be.

In the fight against the Chaos forces, killing the enemy leader is a highly effective tactic that can yield a significant advantage.

Human armies excel in this regard. Their military is much more organized, often relying on the entire system rather than individual officers.

If a commander dies, there are deputies, such as the Chief of Staff, the Deputy Chief of Staff, and a series of others who can fill the vacant position. Even if all of them perish, replacements can be made from the lower ranks.

Human armies have a comprehensive system of ranks and positions that addresses this issue.

Chaos armies have a similar system, but it

‘s not as organized as the Human side. The fundamental reason is that the Chaos military’s organizational structure is fundamentally unstructured. The army relies heavily on the individual strength and prestige of its leaders.

Individual leaders form an army; a single supreme leader leads an army and has his own direct units under his command; many great leaders accept the leadership of a single figure of the highest prestige…

This tendency is common across all Chaos forces.

Such is Chaos’ nature. They need a powerful individual, a symbol of prestige, to oppress and control their subordinates through fear and authority. Otherwise, they naturally tend to become fragmented.

This is true even for the most structured Tzeentch faction. With the death of its leader, Gallardo, Tzeentch was eliminated. While significant numbers of Tzeentch cultists still existed in Terra’s orbit and within the Solar Fleet’s naval forces, they could no longer be reunited into a coherent, functioning force.

A similar situation exists with this Nurgle army.

Their leader is Zilberdur, the former Chancellor of the Imperium and now confirmed Daemon Prince of Ascension.

Unlike Tzeentch’s Gallardo,

Gallardo protects himself by hiding himself from detection. If Gu Jing hadn’t followed the clues and directly located him, then according to the coalition’s intelligence, they would have neither known that Gallardo was the leader of the Tzeentch Cult nor his exact location. This was accomplished due to a certain amount of luck.

However, Zibodu was different.

He made no secret of his intentions.

He had already appeared when the Siege of Terra began. He still used the title of Chancellor of the Empire, declaring himself the legitimate leader and commanding the Nurgle forces in military operations.

And why wasn’t he executed?

It was because it was impossible.

Zibodu certainly had means to protect himself.

His throne was always located at the heart of the Nurgle army. He was always protected by a vast army. He never advanced rashly, never left the protection of his army. He would not easily deploy his largest and most elite army. The idea of luring the tiger away from its mountain range was simply ineffective.

So, there were not many other options left.

A decisive battle, the crushing of Nurgle’s forces, and the overthrow of Zilberdur’s rotten throne, was the only option.

This current operation was precisely for this purpose.

Robert led the main forces of the Custodians and the Allied Forces, charging out of the Imperial Palace and towards the Cauldron of Corruption, a frontal assault. Martins’s elite Alliance troops would first leave the advance guard behind, then, at the start of the frontal assault, launch a swift and fierce flanking attack.

Nothing unusual; it was simply a matter of force against force, no gimmicks.

So far, progress had been relatively smooth.

Martins’s side was indeed on the enemy’s flank. While the enemy numbers were considerable, they were far fewer than on the front lines, and their strength was far inferior. They were no match for the assault of five thousand of the finest Space Marines.

In addition to these, the Battle Sisters of the Holy Lily, the Glory Guards, and the Alliance National Knights, all of whom had been prepared for combat from the orbital carriers, also descended.

Under the ground cover of Space Marines, they emerged from the landing craft with high spirits.

As Martins and his men advanced, various units joined along the way, bringing their total strength rapidly over 100,000.

The Sisters of Battle and the Honor Guards, serving as the primary infantry, were responsible for occupying and clearing the positions. The Knights Nationale, with over a thousand Titans, including eighty-nine Warmaster-class Titans, represented an immensely powerful armored force. Their

ferocious advance was a crushing victory.

Meanwhile, the battle on the other side of the front was also quite effective.

While the number of Titans wasn’t as large as Martins’s, they were all elite and effective.

However, they also had their top assault force—the Ten Thousand Custodians!

Not all of the Custodians were deployed, leaving a significant number behind as a backup within the inner palace. Even a mere five thousand men was a decisive force,

especially given their many signature skills.

From the secret chambers beneath the Imperial Palace, they retrieved numerous items they would never normally have retrieved. Some of these secret weapons were millennia-old secrets, inherited from the glorious era of the Emperor’s reign, or even dating back to an earlier, golden age before the decline of humanity.

Others were cutting-edge technological gadgets captured from the countless alien races and alien species slain and conquered by the Imperium during its founding crusade.

These items proved highly effective on the battlefield.

Combined with over 15,000 Space Marines and the massive Allied forces that had already landed… In this decisive battle against the Nurgle horde, while the Humans were vastly outnumbered, they relied on the superior quality of their individual soldiers and a decisive frontal assault, forging an unstoppable path.

Despite heavy casualties, they were drawing closer to their objective, the Cauldron of Corruption.

Furthermore, their elite assault force remained in pristine condition.

The human forces, attacking from two directions, seemed poised for victory.

But just as the boiling pressure of the battlefield reached its peak, a terrifying energy of a completely different, even more primal and violent

nature lashed out like a red-hot battle axe! The earth began to tremble with a terrifying, physics-defying rhythm. Even the crumbling, thousand-meter-tall buildings within the ruins of the hive groaned. Then, a metallic roar, more violent than thunder, a shudder that shook the very soul, shook the heavens and earth!

Blood-red behemoths surged from the swirling dust at the edge of the battlefield, sweeping everything away like an uncontrolled torrent of molten lava! These were not the slow, swollen creations of Nurgle, but rather the saddles of Khorne’s most furious followers—burning, wrathful bulls!

Each bull, clad in layers of armor engraved with blasphemous blood runes, rivaled the size of a miniature Titan, its crimson compound eyes blazing with a materialized thirst for bloodshed.

On its back rode a Khorne Champion, clad in crimson armor and bearing axes massive enough to split mountains!

How could such a grand battlefield be without Khorne’s presence?

At this point in the war, the persistent summonings of Khorne’s followers, day and night, finally paid off, summoning this devastating army from Khorne’s demonic realm into the real world!

This furious cavalry’s target was the very chaos of the battlefield itself—from the slow-moving Plague Legion phalanxes of Nurgle to the elite armored formations valiantly breaking through the Allied vanguard, all were indiscriminately swept up, devoured, and trampled into a slurry of flesh and metal by this devastating onslaught!

It was hard to say which side these Bronze Bull Riders inflicted the greatest devastation.

More likely, they themselves didn’t care.

Finally free to wreak havoc in the real universe, the Khorne Champions cared little for their opponents; they simply unleashed their bloodlust and destroyed everything in sight!

They thirsted for human blood, and they also loathed Nurgle’s corrupted corpses, so they attacked them all without discrimination!

Although the Bronze Bull Riders weren’t specifically targeting the human forces, their presence undoubtedly disrupted the progress of the human frontal assault.

However, this operation was costly; they wouldn’t have given up so easily if it weren’t completely hopeless.

Trapped in the Nurgle tide and assaulted by a wave of Khorne Knights, retreat was difficult.

There was no way to give up halfway; to avoid defeat, victory was the only way.

The unit led by Martins, from a minor force, became the decisive force.

…

“The time has come!” Martins’ voice cut through the legionary communication channel like a cold steel blade, piercing the minds of every warrior, instantly freezing and crushing the chaos and fear within the channel.

The devastating chaos unleashed by the Riders of the Brazen Bull swept across the front lines of the Cauldron of Corruption, plunging the Nurgle defenders into deeper chaos amidst the crushing storm of flesh and brass. Vast holes were ripped through the thick yellow-green fog of the area by the raging, bloody whirlwind.

“Khorne’s folly has torn through Nurgle’s rotten ramparts and temporarily paralyzed the blasphemous will of Ziberdur!”

On the holographic tactical map, a golden-red arrow, sharper and more determined than the previous main attack, ignored the stalemate in the front and, like a precisely thrown armor-piercing dagger, aimed directly at the single, constantly rotating yellow-green energy vortex at the core of the dense fog—the coordinates of Ziberdur’s throne!

“Phoenix, transform into the blazing spearhead of the Empire! Blood Angels, shield your flanks with flames! Saints—” His gaze seemed to penetrate helmet and space, resting on Dante. “You will be the rearguard shield, severing all pursuit and harassment! We are headed for one single destination—Ziberdur’s head!”

Orders were laws.

The formation of five thousand warriors transformed instantly like a precision war machine, their engines roaring to a breaking point, no longer concealed. The silent molten torrent erupted into a dazzling golden rainbow that ripped through the sky, piercing the heart of the Cauldron of Corruption with the speed of a massed assault!

The thin, sparse Nurgle hordes proved powerless to stop them wherever they passed!

The three-way melee frontal battle attracted the vast majority of attention. Martins’s side was not without a watchful eye, but simply could not.

With astonishing speed, they penetrated the layers of chaotic, weakened outer defenses, slamming like arrows into the final core, a solid, yellow-green miasma emanating ultimate despair!

Even the battle-hardened Space Marines’ power armor’s built-in vital sign monitors blared with piercing overload alarms.

They had been prepared for Nurgle’s toxins, each equipped with a corresponding blessed item to ward off the attack.

But this toxin of corruption proved even more terrifying than expected, as if it were the manifestation of Nurgle’s malevolent power within the material universe.

Vision was consumed by a thick, living, poisonous fog. Sounds grew muffled and distorted, and metal wailed and corroded. Beyond this ultimate curtain of death stood a scene that truly shone a light on the true nature of blasphemy—seventy-seven massive, slowly pulsing creatures of ultimate decay, as massive as hills!

Seventy-seven Great Unclean Ones!

They were the highest-ranking daemons of Nurgle’s host, the embodiment of the Garden of Nurgle’s favored creatures. Each was so colossal that one had to look up to see it, their bodies a mass of countless swollen, bursting, and oozing variegated tumors of corruption. Billions of obese maggots writhe and crawl within their wrinkled ravines of rotting flesh and exposed abdomens. Malformed bone spurs pierced their festering skin, dangling from their apex the melting remains of their victims. Foul methane emanated from their slavering maws with blasphemous whispers. With each heavy gasp, like the shifting of the earth’s crust, the war-torn earth groaned like a living thing, slumping and oozing deadly juices of corruption.

These seventy-seven profane mountains of flesh didn’t stand in random order, but rather, in a blasphemous geometric formation, precisely stacked layer upon layer, guarding their very core—a terrifying throne composed of billions of crawling maggots.

Atop the throne, a colossal figure, covered in countless plague cysts and oozing with eternal ichor, slowly raised a single eye, hotter than a furnace and filled with pure malice!

That was the ultimate form of Qibodu’s corruption and depravity!

“Humble… like maggots… crawling here…”

The grand and blasphemous voice filled with sticky phlegm and the sound of corrupt bubbles bursting resounded directly in the depths of the souls of all the warriors, with a desperate malice that made people vomit madly, “I am the Prime Minister of the Empire… the power of the Empire should be controlled by me… I will use the Empire as a sacrifice and dedicate it to my loving father… You… will eventually become the new bait… of this sea of pus…”

As its whisper wrapped in billions of germs fell, seventy-seven great unclean ones simultaneously let out a chaotic roar that dimmed the stars and was filled with endless pain!

Their rotten, bloated bodies began to squirm and crush forward, defying the laws of physics. Simultaneously, they unleashed the destructive power imbued in their rotting arms, brimming with abyssal darkness—plague bolters as vast as ancient turrets, putrefaction spray arrays humming with a deathly green light, and blasphemous scythes tearing through the thick air… The

filthy muzzles and spray organs glowed with deathly light, and the Nurgle fel energy in the air instantly thickened and solidified like a solid object. A suffocating feeling gripped every throat, and even time seemed to freeze before this blasphemous array.

Who could have imagined they would be facing such a formation?

(End of Chapter)