touchnovel Chapter 770 - 769: Horus: Something’s off. I refuse to believe we can’t break this line!
Chapter 770 - 769: Horus: Something’s off. I refuse to believe we can’t break this line!
???Something was starting to feel very wrong.
The moment Horus's phantom saw that vast steel wall blotting out Terra and the light of the sun itself, his entire figure froze and began to tremble slightly.
Even he went numb.
"What in the warp... that's the Imperium's newly built defensive line?
Since when did Rogal Dorn and Perturabo have the skill to build fortifications like that?"
The steel wall in space was not some static structure. The giant platform arrays were still adjusting their positions.
The extended structures projecting from those platform arrays linked together, forming immense, interwoven rings.
They encircled Terra and locked down the distant orbital zone. It resembled a Dyson-sphere-like structure, except what it enclosed was the heart of the Imperium.
And all of it had been completed in an incredibly short time after the invasion began: a mobile defensive line.
Anyone knew how difficult a line like that was to assault, and what kind of price had to be paid to break it.
Forget Mortarion. Even Horus himself, the Dark Emperor, felt a flicker of desire to withdraw the moment he saw that steel wall in space.
That defensive line could make any being hesitate in fear.
"That's impossible. Absolutely impossible!" Horus said, unable to believe it. He knew those two primarchs' standards well enough.
They could not have built a defensive line on this scale, nor would they have built it in that style.
If, ten thousand years ago, Rogal Dorn and Perturabo had possessed this level of skill while constructing Terra's defenses, his armies never would have broken into Terra so easily.
In truth, even Terra's previous defenses had been breached by Perturabo with the aid of warp power, let alone by him, the one chosen by all four gods.
But now this steel wall around Terra was several times larger than the old arrays of space fortresses Rogal Dorn and the others had built, and much of the technology within it was clearly not human.
It was a defensive system constructed by combining many forms of xenos technology, stronger than any purely Imperial battle line.
"Savior... I really underestimated you," Horus said through gritted teeth.
If this line had not been built by Rogal Dorn or the traitor Perturabo, then there was only one being capable of constructing such a defense: the Savior, the Emperor of the Imperium.
He had never expected the Imperium to suddenly produce a figure like that.
He had to admit it. The Savior truly deserved to stand as the Dark Emperor's opponent, and worse, an opponent worthy of fear.
Only now did Horus fully understand why the Chaos Gods had gone to such lengths to lure the Savior out of the Solar System.
He really was a threat.
Hummm.
At that moment, the phantoms of Magnus, Alpharius, Angron, and other fallen primarchs appeared and gathered in the area.
"Horus, I've already destroyed Terra's deep psychic barriers. So now... how exactly are we supposed to break through that line?"
Magnus's crimson phantom folded his arms, gazing with arrogant expectation at the so-called Dark Emperor.
The Crimson King was best at punching holes through psychic barriers. With his aid, the Chaos Gods had managed to spread far more of their power into the Solar System.
He had already handed Chaos an enormous advantage. Now it was Horus's turn to perform and break the Imperial line. Otherwise why were they following him as supreme commander of the Chaos host?
He had already tried using large-scale sorcery to attack the steel wall in space.
But when the surging tides of the empyrean and fortress-rending rifts spread toward that defense line, they were weakened by some technological barrier.
The Chaos storms produced by sorcery could not shake the thick armored outer wall.
That meant the line would be extremely difficult to destroy through warp power. The only option left was a direct assault.
It was not just Magnus. The other fallen primarchs all turned their eyes toward Horus, waiting for the Dark Emperor and commander of the combined Chaos host to speak.
There was no helping it. The steel wall the Savior had built was simply too difficult to comprehend. They had never seen anything like it, and had no idea what the correct way to attack it was.
How were they even supposed to fight this?
All the fallen primarchs understood one thing: against a defense line like this, a single bad decision would bring down devastating Imperial retaliation and catastrophic losses.
They needed a thoroughly thought-out attack plan.
Under the gaze of the fallen primarchs, Horus's back remained motionless.
Sweat was beginning to run down him.
Faced with such a colossal line of steel and an entirely new defensive model, even he, the conqueror who had never failed, could not immediately find a proper plan of attack.
Horus stared at the loathsome steel wall in space built by the Savior, trying to use all his past experience to identify its weakness.
But in the end he saw only one thing.
Redundancy.
Absolute redundancy.
Which meant that no matter what angle the Chaos host attacked from, it would likely run headfirst into excessive defensive strength.
It was too difficult. This line was too difficult to assault!
Who taught the Savior to defend like this? Did the Imperium have so many resources and troops that it had nowhere else to put them?
Faced with the Savior's saturation defense, Horus felt his scalp go numb.
The shock it gave him was immense.
After all, the Dark Emperor had only truly awakened recently after having been cast down by the Emperor ten thousand years ago. Even if he had learned much about the Imperium's current condition, this was the first time he had seen with his own eyes just how difficult the Savior truly was.
That bastard Savior was far richer than he had ever imagined. How much more defensive power was he still hiding?
Had he piled the entire Imperium's resources onto Terra?!
Even for an empire as vast and wealthy as the Imperium, concentrating resources to that degree should have been nearly impossible.
What the fallen primarchs could not imagine was that the Savior had made it happen through the Webway, by opening new routes and deploying a logistics transport fleet several times larger than the Imperial Navy's own.
Even now, within the Departmento Munitorum and across many Imperial worlds, people still repeated the six-word maxim the Savior had brought from his homeland, a saying now tied to the Imperium's development:
"If you want wealth, build roads first."
Compared to raising armies, the Savior had poured far more energy and resources into the Imperium's infrastructure, giving the Imperium more vitality and steadily increasing the abundance of its resources.
That was something the creatures of Chaos, obsessed only with destruction and ruin, could never understand.
No matter what, the problem now stood directly before the fallen primarchs.
They had to break through the Savior's steel wall in space before they could ever strike Terra.
What had begun as a plan of unstoppable destruction had turned into a siege campaign, and the savage, violent momentum of the Chaos host began to sink.
The fallen primarchs suddenly realized that this battle might be even harder than the one ten thousand years ago.
Then, at least, they had managed to enter Terra and conduct a prolonged siege, wearing the Imperial defenders down into utter exhaustion.
But now they were stuck outside Terra and could not even get in.
What humiliation was this?
Could it be that the Savior was harder to deal with than the Emperor had once been?
Or had they themselves simply grown weaker?
As suspicion began to gather in the eyes of the fallen primarchs, Horus felt as though he were standing on a bed of thorns.
At last, he spoke.
His voice trembled, and the first thing he said was almost useless.
"My brothers, it seems we may have to alter some of our plans."
Seeing the fallen primarchs' morale drop, the Dark Emperor continued:
"This will not be easy, but we no longer have any road of retreat.
If we miss this chance, the False Emperor will not spare us. He will not spare anyone here. You all know what that hateful tyrant, that madman, is capable of!"
The fallen primarchs had to use the Shadowlight artifact to unravel the power of that False Emperor, their father.
Otherwise, once the False Emperor recovered, or fully lost control, none of them would have anywhere left to run when that being came to settle accounts.
No one would escape intact.
"We are legends of the galaxy. We have overcome endless hardships, conquered endless worlds, and destroyed countless civilizations, human and alien alike.
Nothing can stop our advance, not even this defense line built by the Savior."
Horus's eyes blazed with unwavering resolve, the same fierce fire he had once carried while leading his armies across the galaxy ten thousand years ago.
Endless warp power spread from him as he stared at the fallen primarchs.
"Do you mean to give up here, to slink back into the warp like pathetic failures?
Never!
We will drench Terra's skies in blood. We will kill the False Emperor, and we will kill the Savior!"
The Dark Emperor was gifted at rallying hearts, and he quickly reversed the gloomy atmosphere.
The Chaos host raised their weapons and roared, savage fury spreading in every direction.
"Kill the False Emperor! Kill the Savior!"
Countless Chaos beings, stretching all the way to the edge of sight, let out their defiant roar. The sound was overwhelming.
They radiated crushing pressure.
It meant the war had not yet been decided. They still had a chance to turn defeat into victory.
Chaos never yields. Slaughter. War!
"Savior... what's gotten into those Chaos abominations?"
And yet those unyielding war cries left the Imperial commanders observing the region more confused than inspired.
Weren't the Chaos abominations the invaders? Hadn't they arrived full of murderous momentum to destroy Holy Terra?
Why were they acting like the Imperium were the real villains here, like they were the ones being bullied?
Then again, any being confronting the Savior's horrifying steel wall in space would probably feel as though the other side had gone completely insane.
Without anyone quite realizing it, the Savior's steel wall in space had reversed the attack and defense roles between the Imperium and Chaos.
And under the Savior's influence, the Imperial defenders did not dare grow complacent either. They knew the Chaos Gods possessed terrifying powers.
Any lapse could plunge their defensive line into danger, or even total collapse.
If victory was not at least ninety percent certain, then what difference was there between that and defeat? No one could afford to lose this war.
Inside the Chaos hall, Horus sat upon his throne, studying the data gathered on the steel wall in space that floated before him.
His eyes were bloodshot. Even his hands were trembling under the pressure.
This was going to be a brutal battle.
It had been a very long time since he had fought a campaign this difficult. The Savior was not on Terra, but his shadow was everywhere.
"Savior, you are not my only opponent, and you will not be my last!" Horus's eyes burned with battle intent. He believed he could still find the factor that would lead to victory, and then destroy the line the Savior had built.
Dark fire raged around him as he used his immense mind, his experience, and the help of Tzeentch's chief greater daemon to search for the weak point in the steel wall in space.
No defensive line was truly invincible.
Even the terrifying defense lines of mankind's old enemies, the Rangdan xenos, had been broken in the end.
Back then, Lion and the others had been at a loss, and it was Horus who had sent the Sons of Horus bearing the strategy that shattered the enemy line.
That was the real reason the Emperor had appointed Horus as Warmaster.
Not merely personal charisma, but his belief that any war could be won, and the means to make it happen.
The Dark Emperor stared at the enormous virtual war-board suspended in the air, while the image of the steel wall in space flashed by in milliseconds.
The line's firepower had already sealed off every corridor of void. The Chaos host could scarcely get close.
The moment the Chaos armies entered range, they would face terrifying anti-void fire and be savaged by it.
He had to find, among hundreds of thousands of possible plans, the single route most likely to succeed, the one that would let him break into the interior of the steel wall.
Only then would the combined Chaos host have a chance to corrupt or destroy the line, allowing Xinlonglin to strike the Imperial Palace on Terra.
And only then would the fallen primarchs have a chance to reach the Throne itself.
"I've found it."
Suddenly, Horus slowly lifted his head, his eyes shining with a sinister light.
He had found the plan that would let them break into the steel wall in space.
Once they got inside, the Imperial defenders would lose their protective barrier and be directly exposed to the strike of Chaos. Worse still, human blood and corpses inside the line could be used to summon an endless flow of Chaos reinforcements into its interior.
The defensive line the Savior had spent so much effort building would be utterly destroyed by Chaos, inflicting an enormous loss upon the Imperium.
A line like that might have taken the Savior decades, perhaps a century, to construct.
Chaos would need only days to tear it apart.
Through his supreme military genius, combined with the power of Chaos, the Dark Emperor had turned the impossible into the possible.
It would cost them dearly, but the final great line guarding Terra would fall.
In that instant, hundreds, then thousands of orders were issued.
Across the void, mottled black clouds stretching for thousands of kilometers began to gather and shift, as evil surged through them.
Those were the aerial formations of the combined Chaos host, loaded down with daemons.
Some especially powerful daemons floated directly in the vacuum itself. They had no need to breathe and no fear of the hostile emptiness of space.
Then the dreadful tide hurled itself at the steel wall in space with maximum speed and almost no restraint.
They were attempting a shock landing.
Steel Wall in Space, Thirteenth Defense Zone command center.
Holmes, commander of the Solar Auxilia, stared at the massing Chaos abomination-host as it rushed forward and filled every inch of his vision, and he could not help holding his breath.
From his viewpoint, it looked like a stained and corrupted tidal wave sweeping down over them, leaving nowhere to escape.
He was not the only one. The other Solar Auxilia officers felt tremendous pressure as well. Everyone knew what it would mean if so many Chaos beings broke into the defensive line's interior.
"All batteries, target photic sector F1356. Fire without limit!"
Fortunately, they were not fighting alone. Orders came through at once, and Holmes issued the command to fire.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
In an instant, Holmes and the others felt the heavens themselves shaking as the tens of thousands of fortress-grade heavy guns in the Thirteenth Defense Zone opened fire at once.
The density of the barrage was so extreme that precision aiming barely mattered.
Total saturation was enough.
When that fire struck the Chaos line, it was like hurling flame into an ant colony. Every shot tore through large swaths of Chaos airborne units.
Even Chaos warships and rotten giant beasts were destroyed one after another.
This might have been the largest void war the galaxy had seen in ten thousand years. Every moment, warships and aerial units were falling in ruin, and no one had the luxury of caring.
At the very instant battle was joined, the combined Chaos host suffered heavy losses.
But they answered quickly.
Endless filth, multicolored flame, and foul mist spread outward, intercepting the Imperial barrage.
Between the two lines there now formed a wall of fire, plasma, and warp power, steadily pushing toward the steel wall in space.
At the same time, the loathsome artillery of Xinlonglin fired in from the void, disrupting the steel wall's own firepower.
Every impact put immense strain on the shields, and even resulted in the destruction of some turret clusters.
"Grandfather watches over us!"
"Ah, fate itself has shown us the path to victory!"
"Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne! Charge, charge!"
Under the bombardment of the Imperial defenders, the combined Chaos host launched what was essentially a suicidal assault, and there was something grimly tragic in it.
The vanguard absorbed all the fire, screening the assault units behind them, while their formation shifted ceaselessly under the control of the Dark Emperor.
Bit by bit, they were creating the conditions for a breakthrough.
Seated upon his throne, Horus, aided by Tzeentch's greater daemons, wielded nearly endless mental capacity and could direct every part of the host.
At every moment, tens of thousands or more orders were being issued, so that even the movement of each major unit had to be calculated exactly.
He was even adjusting fire from specific dark engines down to moving a gun barrel a few dozen meters toward the left flank.
Micro. Absolute micro.
Only that level of control could still produce victory.
"Savior!"
The Dark Emperor nearly cracked his teeth, and there were almost tears in his eyes. Never in his life had he fought a campaign so difficult, so miserly.
When poor, you micro. When rich, you saturate with firepower. Since when had the armies of the Chaos Gods ever had to budget like this?
They were giving everything they had just to defeat the horrifying void defense line the Savior had built.
Now the entire Solar System was lit by warp-fire and cannon flash. Every moment, countless Chaos beings were being destroyed and cast back into the warp.
Yet as the Chaos creatures closed on the steel wall in space, the violence, rage, and hunger in their hearts only rose higher and higher.
They knew that they were getting close to unrestricted torment and slaughter.
Victory was within sight.
Behind that wall of steel were living humans, ripe to satisfy their suppressed fury and desire.
(End of Chapter)
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