Starting from the Planetary Governor - Chapter 1027

Chapter 1018, lonely

. After the Cataclysm, Chaos became far more active than before. Among these, there were certain special enemies, designated mortal enemies by the Angels of Death. They never publicly acknowledged their existence, but Gu Hang was already aware of their existence, and their appearances became more frequent.

These were known within the Angels of Death as “Fallen Angels,” rumored to be traitors within their ranks.

Gu Hang had known about this for a long time, thanks to the rebellion of the Unforgotten Oath Chapter, and had even contacted the Angels of Death regarding this matter.

Hunting the Fallen Angels was the Angels of Death’s highest priority, devoting a significant portion of their energy to this endeavor.

Expanding their occupied territories?

For the Angels of Death, this was far less important than hunting down the Fallen.

Honestly, Gu Hang was unhappy with this. But in the past, he had no position or ability to dictate what the Angels of Death did.

With the establishment of the New Empire, he had a more righteous stance, but the Angels of Death remained quite independent and unyielding.

Had they not accepted the induction of the Primaris Space Marines—a batch of new recruits sent via small vessels at great risk, using coordinates provided by the Angels of Death—Gu Hang would have almost suspected that

something was amiss with this fledgling Chapter. Currently, they seemed to be in no danger of corruption. Even their long history of disobeying orders wasn’t a persistent issue that needed to be addressed. Furthermore, the area they controlled, namely the Dark Side Crusade, was still far away. Given the Alliance’s conservative Dark Side Crusade strategy, reaching that area could still take decades, a significant distance.

Under these circumstances, the New Empire’s policy was to continue to tolerate the Angels of Death’s situation, even providing as much support as possible to help them maintain control of the Dark Side.

Safeguarding one-third of the universe would be a positive development, preserving vitality and avoiding the arduous task of rebuilding once peace returned to the Dark Side.

However, when Gu Hang learned about the relationship between the “weapons,” the “keys,” and the Angels of Death, he became deeply concerned about the current state of the Angels of Death.

Unfortunately, these arrogant First Legion Space Marines were accustomed to independence. They refused to abandon the territory they had already conquered in the Nightless Realm, unwilling to relinquish the over two thousand worlds already under their control, and even more unwilling to relinquish the numerous leads they held regarding the hunt for the Fallen Angels.

In reality, abandoning Nightless Realm and sailing the Monolith towards the Alliance was unrealistic.

They would have to navigate a vast expanse of occupied territory, facing an entirely unknown landscape. Rather than risking an ambush or surprise attack, it would have been better to remain in the more stable Nightless Realm.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a guarantee.

A powerful Scourge fleet captured the ever-shifting, and by definition difficult-to-determine, Monolith Monastery. This Scourge fleet presented the Angels of Death with a formidable battle, even forcing them to board and deploy a significant number of Chaos Space Marines into the Monolith Monastery’s interior, engaging the Angels of Death in fierce close combat.

The battle reached a stalemate.

But at a crucial moment, the Alliance’s forces arrived, aided by a fleet from the Blood Angels Successor Chapter.

The Alliance’s army was able to arrive because a previous expeditionary fleet, braving the treacherous conditions of the Lightning Tower without the guidance of the Lightning Tower, had arrived in the Nightless Star Region despite heavy losses.

This expeditionary fleet’s mission was to investigate the current situation in the Nightless Star Region, establish substantive contact with the Angels of Death, and determine their true attitude towards the New Empire.

They also brought with them some Primaris recruits bred using the Angels of Death’s gene-seed.

The gene-seed originated from the gene-seed bank on Mars.

Throughout history, every legitimate Chapter was required to pay a gene-seed tax to Holy Terra. This gene-seed was stored in two banks, one on Mars and the other on Holy Terra. While the quantity wasn’t inexhaustible, it was sufficient to build a large-scale, legion-level army. Naturally,

the gene-seed of the Angels of Death was among them.

The Angels of Death accepted these new recruits, accepted the Imperial Center’s assignment, and acknowledged the new Empire’s rule. This was all good news, and the expedition fleet’s primary mission had been accomplished.

However, beyond this primary mission, they still had one more task to perform.

After greeting the Angels of Death, they stopped on an ordinary planet and used their equipment to construct a Veil Gate.

This Veil Gate was small, intended to facilitate the transport of larger Veil Gate equipment directly from Comoros.

This method was far superior to the expedition fleet bringing a large Veil Gate directly. On the one hand, the equipment required to erect a large Veil Gate was enormous, significantly occupying the expedition fleet’s storage. On the other hand, its value was also high. The expedition fleet’s journey across the vast distance to the Absolute Night Realm was extremely risky, with the loss of numerous ships and even a high probability of total annihilation. Transporting the costly, scarce, and difficult-to-manufacture large Veil Gate equipment aboard ships was too risky.

Operating smaller Veil Gates, and using them to transport the equipment for the larger ones, was a much more reliable approach.

Since then, the Alliance has possessed three Veil Gates, two large and one small, within the Death Angels’ controlled territory within the Absolute Night Realm. The

Death Angels were aware of

this but remained silent, demonstrating their loyalty.

When the Stone Monastery was under heavy attack from the Scourge Fleet and locked in a bitter battle, the Blood Angels’ fringe group arrived just in time, having arrived through the Veil Gate system.

Their arrival helped the Angels of Death stabilize the situation; later, Dante arrived at the battlefield with a major force of the Angel Expeditionary Force, directly tipping the balance of power and helping the Angels of Death completely defeat and annihilate the invading enemy.

They were thanked by the Angels of Death, but were also politely asked to leave.

The reclusive Angels of Death did not want anyone to know their secrets, not even their allies who had saved their lives.

Gu Hang had told them at the time about the so-called “Key” and the special features of the Megalith Monastery, specifically warning them that Chaos would attack them again and again, relentlessly and at all costs.

They appreciated the warning but continued to maintain their distance.

Until now.

The Alliance’s intelligence system established in the Absolute Night Realm has discovered that the Angels of Death, without informing the New Empire Central, have gathered over thirty sub-groups, a total of over 20,000 troops, and a massive fleet, and are sailing towards the other half of the Absolute Night Realm that they do not control.

(End of this chapter)