Warhammer: Starting as a Planetary Governor

Chapter 768 - 767: Savior: You Chaos Gods, how much faith do you even have to compete with me?!

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Waaagh!!!

Those workers who had received the Savior's blessing and turned green-headed and green-faced were absurdly strong.

And the longer they fought, the fiercer they became.

"Long live the Savior! Brother Eden is the strongest, cunning and brutal!"

They shouted things they did not even understand themselves, fearless as they swung hammers and tools in wild, crashing arcs.

Plague daemons and living corpses were sent flying everywhere beneath the blows, their skulls smashed apart by the sheer force.

"How is this possible?"

The Death Guard captain was in disbelief.

Even after defecting to the Lord of Plagues and witnessing all the bizarre, impossible powers of the warp, what he was seeing now still shattered his understanding of the world.

But before the vanguard commander could process it, a sharp pain exploded in the back of his head.

He had been ambushed.

An alloy hammer had slammed into his skull.

"Damn you!"

The Death Guard captain spun around and sent the attacker flying, only to discover that it was one of the green-headed workers.

He could not understand how the man had gotten behind him in the first place.

And not only that - even after being smashed into the rubble, the green-headed worker was barely hurt.

He quickly clambered back up and threw himself at other plague-abominations.

The Death Guard captain had not yet recovered from that shock when something even more unbelievable happened.

A batch of workers suddenly burst into unnatural crimson flames. They were shouting battle cries about a Lord of Terror, slaughter, and blood.

How incredibly Chaotic.

No, wait, this wasn't right at all.

Had Khorne the Blood God blessed them?!

Sensing something was wrong, he turned and saw another group of workers crouched in a corner, chanting forbidden incantations with bizarre expressions.

Then a strange Chaos warp circle appeared, summoning a number of crimson daemons that lunged into the battle.

And that was not all.

Some workers were using Aeldari combat techniques and psychic powers.

Their movements were elegant, almost dance-like.

This was wrong.

Completely wrong!

"Hiss...

I think I might've overdone it. Did I push the blessing too far?!"

Watching through the statue, Eden went a little numb.

This was definitely not what he had expected.

Then again, he had never attempted a high-tier mass blessing on this scale before. Overdoing it a little was probably normal.

He had even blasted out some of the other authorities contained within the Sun of Hope, causing the workers to display blessings associated with heretics and xenos.

It was basically a high-grade infusion of blessing power, using the workers' bodies as the medium through which that power acted.

And because of Chaos corruption, the Solar System and the warp were now deeply entangled, which further amplified the manifestation of supernatural power in realspace.

The effect was astonishing.

In the warp, the Chaos Gods were watching the Savior's every move.

The fact that he had broken through their blockade made them deeply wary, and they focused even more attention on him.

But when they saw the mighty workers blessed by the Savior and empowered with all sorts of strange abilities, the Chaos Gods fell silent.

That Savior, that Emperor of the Imperium, really did have a suspiciously mixed bag of powers.

Especially when they saw him blatantly bootlegging their authorities and handing them out as blessings. The surrounding regions immediately began to twist and distort.

"The Savior clumsily imitates the authority of slaughter and is proud of himself for it!"

Khorne ground his teeth. The blood-shadow of the god of war and slaughter swelled with towering rage.

The Savior was openly challenging his authority. It was arrogance and shamelessness to the extreme.

And not just him.

The other Chaos Gods were furious to varying degrees as well.

The Savior had provoked all of them equally, openly poaching right in front of their faces.

Fortunately, Chaos had seized a perfect opportunity this time. Once the threat of the Cursed One was dealt with, it would be the Savior's turn.

The Chaos Gods calmed themselves and looked at him with even greater killing intent.

No one could offend the authority of the gods or refuse their vengeance, not even the Cursed One.

Without question, Chaos would win in the end...

Back on the main defense platform battlefield, the Death Guard captain sensed growing danger.

The situation was getting difficult.

But even though the workers had grown stronger, the plague vanguard still held a certain advantage.

They were not on the verge of collapse.

Bzzzzz!

Then came the roar of violent engines.

The plague-abominations suddenly discovered that the engineering vehicles were all crackling with arcs of electricity, running in a state of overload.

From their vox-units came epic binary hymns praising the Machine Goddess and her great Machine Father.

Every machine spirit had fully awakened, driving the machines beyond their limits and even triggering stranger changes.

Endless motive force.

Guns that never jammed.

Infinite ammunition.

In an instant, the Imperial workers' firepower multiplied several times over, while the heavy vehicles tore across the battlefield like maniacs.

They almost ignored terrain and obstacles entirely, the machine spirits driving them back and forth as they crushed plague daemons and living corpses under their treads.

Even the Beasts of Nurgle were sent flying.

The large excavators in particular were terrifying. Their tracks threw off sparks while their arms whipped about in a frenzy, fighting with the sheer presence of Titan engines.

"Savior... how am I supposed to explain this to my kids later?"

Inside the cab of a massive excavation vehicle, the worker-driver fully unleashed the skills of his lifetime, slaughtering his way through plague-daemon positions and even smashing several Death Guard warriors to death.

He was exhilarated, but also uneasy and confused.

What was he supposed to tell his children? That their father had driven an excavator straight through a plague-abomination position and killed traitorous demigod warriors?

There was no explaining that.

In the end, all he could say was that the Savior and the Machine Goddess had blessed him, and his excavator's machine spirit had simply gone above and beyond.

Inside another heavy engineering vehicle, the driver who had been smoking his last cigarette while waiting to die suddenly discovered that his beloved machine had powered back on.

At an impossible angle, the heavy engineering vehicle had hauled itself upright again on its own tracks.

Then it started running once more.

The driver froze, his cigarette falling from his mouth, but he quickly recovered and threw the machine back into the charge.

He would keep pushing forward and show the plague-abominations that Imperial workers were not easy prey.

"Grandfather..."

The plague daemons stared in fear at the steel beasts charging at them, radiating mechanical authority.

They knew they could not withstand such force, and turned to flee, hoping to avoid the terrible impact.

But it was already too late.

They were swiftly dragged beneath the tracks and churned into chunks of meat.

Inside the cab, the driver felt a series of bumps, like rolling over speed humps.

"Die, abominations!"

He seemed to spot something, whipped the wheel, and pushed the engine speed even higher.

Throttle to the floor.

???

The Death Guard captain had only just broken free from the green-skinned workers when he turned around and saw blinding headlights bearing down on him.

Bang!

The plague vanguard commander was sent flying by a thoroughly unnatural heavy engineering vehicle.

And he recognized the driver in the cab - it was the same one from earlier.

"Mortal, how dare you profane the Maggot Messenger?"

He had taken real damage this time. As he staggered back to his feet, fury twisted across his face, and he prepared to summon maggots to devour the man in the most agonizing way possible.

But before he could cast the sorcery, Oris arrived with those golden-glowing Will family guards and surrounded him.

Then they beat the hell out of the plague-abomination commander all at once.

The Death Guard captain struggled desperately to fend them off, humiliated beyond words.

The mighty warriors blessed by the Savior were tearing apart his understanding of reality.

He was a son of the Death Lord, favored by Grandfather Nurgle himself, and yet he still was not equal to mere mortals empowered by the Savior's blessing?!

And it was not just him.

The other plague-things were in the same state.

It was utterly absurd.

A bunch of Imperial workers were chasing plague-abominations around and beating them senseless, driving them back again and again with the strength of the Savior's blessing.

The Savior, the Emperor of the Imperium, was pouring out blessing power without end, giving the workers even more strength.

The plague-things could no longer resist.

They realized that the Savior was also a mighty warp god, one who wielded unimaginable authority.

He was not someone they could oppose.

The Chaos creatures' understanding of the Savior shifted yet again.

That outcome was inevitable.

In order to save these workers, the Savior was spending faith-power without regard for cost.

This also served as a field test of his own abilities.

Under such circumstances, the kind of blessing power plague-things usually had to earn through impossible ordeals, terrible suffering, or glorious feats of war...

The Savior was handing it out like free candy.

Whoever he saw, he stuffed one into.

Even the Will family patrol hounds, the Sapphon dogs, received rich blessings.

They swelled to several meters in height, flames bursting from their bodies, and were now madly chasing after Beasts of Nurgle and daemons, biting at their backsides.

They were even fiercer than the workers.

"Grandfather, this isn't fair!"

The plague-things were furious.

They had fought for Grandfather Nurgle for thousands upon thousands of years, killing and corrupting countless lives, and still had never received blessings of that level from him.

But these pitiful mortals, who barely even knew how to fight, were receiving lavish blessings?

Even the humans' dogs were getting them!

Many plague-things completely broke at the sight.

They had betrayed humanity or thrown themselves into Chaos for the sake of gaining power.

Only to discover that the Chaos god they worshiped showed less favor to his followers than humanity's Savior did.

What bitter irony.

"Praise Grandfather!"

"Ah, that is the gaze of the Garden of Nurgle. The Lord of Plagues is looking this way. Such mercy!"

Even so, the plague-things did not completely lose hope.

They felt Grandfather Nurgle's gaze fall upon them, and excitement surged through them once more.

At last, the Lord of Plagues was about to favor his devout servants.

The workers may have had the Savior's aid, but the force behind the plague vanguard was the supreme plague god, master of disease himself -

Nurgle.

No matter what, he was stronger than the Savior.

"Pathetic mortals, you cannot stand against true divine might!"

The plague-things believed that if the merciful Lord of Plagues had turned his gaze upon them, then blessings would surely follow.

And not just that.

The other gods were watching too. Perhaps they would send down power as well.

That change restored a great deal of morale to the plague vanguard.

"Grandfather, please bestow the sevenfold blessing. Let disease and maggots unravel the Savior's power..."

As they struggled to resist the Imperial workers' assault, the plague-things began praying to Grandfather Nurgle.

Maggots and corpse-flies gathered together in praise of him.

They hoped for still greater blessings from the Lord of Plagues so they could crush the workers empowered by the Savior.

"If Nurgle personally steps in with a blessing, this is going to get troublesome..."

Sensing the disturbance in the warp, Eden frowned slightly.

If Grandfather Nurgle intervened, he would not be able to protect those loyal workers so easily anymore. They could very well all be slaughtered.

But he did not sit idle.

He drew on even more faith through the Sun of Hope, preparing to pour it in at any moment.

Within the warp.

Facing the prayers of his followers, the smile on the Lord of Plagues' face grew noticeably uglier.

His servants were asking for blessings from him, for plague-power.

That was not some simple warp energy. It was precious faith, touching the very core of his power.

It could not be handed out lightly.

"The Savior is a fool. He actually projected his own faith-power into a bunch of mortals. He has broken the rules of the warp."

The Lord of Plagues coughed up a wad of phlegm. Even he, with all his usual good humor, was feeling indignant.

No matter how generous or caring one might be toward followers, things simply were not done this way.

How could pure white faith-power be spent on weaklings?!

The Chaos Gods were like the greediest of slavemasters, instinctively and endlessly hoarding faith.

Their power was great, yes, but so was their expenditure.

And they hated losses even more, abiding by the principle that the weak held no value. Any faith-power invested had to return double.

The Chaos Gods only blessed chosen followers, granting faith-power only to those who had truly passed the test.

That way, they gained even more faith in return.

Simply put, the Savior, the Emperor of the Imperium, was wrecking the warp's operating environment.

Even the Cursed One did not pull stunts like this.

The plague-things' prayers put Grandfather Nurgle in an awkward position. He did not want to spend precious faith-power.

Every shred of it was incomparably valuable.

Spending it would mean greater losses for him, and perhaps falling behind the other gods.

But doing nothing would mean that, in this clash of faith with the Savior, the Lord of Plagues had lost.

The plague god hesitated, then turned to look at the other Chaos Gods.

The meaning was obvious.

They should all chip in together, pool some faith-power, and crush the Savior's arrogant display.

"The weak do not deserve the power of faith. To grant it would only make us weaker."

Khorne's blood-shadow vanished first, turning its gaze toward other battlefields.

He disdained wasting faith-power on the plague vanguard.

After that, the Lord of Change and the Lord of Excess also quietly disappeared, ceasing to pay attention to this region.

Clearly, they had no interest in contributing either.

This battlefield belonged to the Lord of Plagues. The ones dying here were plague daemons. What did that have to do with them?

And besides, even if the entire plague vanguard was wiped out, it would not affect the course of the war.

This was only one line out of dozens. It would be broken eventually anyway. No real harm done.

The phantom of Grandfather Nurgle stood there with his rotting great belly, his expression growing even uglier. Even the Nurglings around him did not dare make a sound.

After thinking it over, he decided to grant the plague-things some blessings after all.

Among the Chaos Gods, the Lord of Plagues was relatively generous.

But before he could act, he sensed another fluctuation from the Savior's side.

He turned to look.

The Savior had already gathered even more faith-power, as though ready to fight him in a direct battle of faith.

It was almost provocative, a wary sort of challenge meant to stir his anger.

"Does it really have to come to this?"

Grandfather Nurgle's already green face went nearly black.

Quietly and stingily, he withdrew the faith he had been about to spend, and his figure slipped away in embarrassment.

Unless the Chaos Gods had truly reached a life-or-death moment, they would not mobilize massive amounts of faith-power for battle.

Pouring great quantities of faith into such a tiny battlefield simply was not worth it.

In short, his faith reserves were not as rich as the Savior's. He could not spend them with such reckless abandon.

"Tch. You Chaos paupers really think you can outspend me in faith?"

Eden cheerfully gathered up the faith-power he had amassed, then casually threw another wave of blessings onto the workers.

He had no intention of ascending to godhood anyway.

He could use faith however he wanted. If too much of it piled up, it just became a nuisance.

What if he ended up like the Emperor, with so much accumulated faith-energy he could never spend it all?

Wouldn't that be a disaster?

Back on the main defense platform battlefield -

"Grandfather!"

"No... he's abandoned us!"

The plague vanguard realized that Grandfather Nurgle had left and cast them aside, and immediately fell into total despair.

Soon after, with the help of the Savior's blessing, Oris and the others killed the plague vanguard commander, the Maggot Messenger, and routed the entire plague advance force.

Even so, the descendant of House Will still faced the pressure of death despite his triumph.

They had only defeated the plague vanguard.

The true plague host had not yet attacked.

Any one of those enormous rotten void-whales could bring them mortal danger.

Yet not long after, Oris received a new transmission.

"Praise the Savior!"

Wild with excitement, he announced to everyone:

"The Savior has saved us! A transport fleet sent from Holy Terra has arrived to extract us. We will live on, carrying our honor with us!"

Oris then activated the self-destruct system and led the survivors in a rapid evacuation, boarding the transports.

The great Savior would send down holy light to guide the convoy back within Holy Terra's defensive perimeter, preventing the ships from being disrupted by the chaos-churned void.

The transport fleet extracted Oris and the others and withdrew toward Terra's inner defenses at top speed.

Behind them, the main defense platform - the Wall of Arat demolition site - was utterly destroyed.

But from within the flames of that destruction, one abominable rotten void-whale after another emerged, gliding forward in pursuit.

Oris and the others stared at the decayed giant beasts chasing behind them, a horror-black tide bearing down from the rear.

That was the true plague host.

It was vast, unstoppable, and more than capable of crushing this tiny transport fleet at any moment.

"Unforgivable. Catch them. Destroy them!"

Standing atop the head of a rotten void-whale, Mortarion's face turned even greener as he ordered the plague host to pursue.

He could not tolerate the continued survival of these lowly mortals who had humiliated the Death Guard.

Pop.

Then, in a blur, the plague host passed beyond some kind of blackstone interference barrier, and the void around them suddenly revealed a new sight.

???

Mortarion turned toward Holy Terra - and shook like a man struck by lightning.

He had seen Terra's true defensive line.

It was so overwhelming, so incomprehensible, that the Death Lord's voice trembled as he issued his command in what was nearly a scream:

"Break off pursuit!"

(End of Chapter)

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