The valley lay empty of living figures.
The Custodian commander lowered his power weapon and signaled for the ceasefire.
"Clear the field…"
No sooner had the order left his lips than an eerie red light began to seep up from the blood-soaked earth.
A palpable maliciousness rolled outward, saturating the surrounding air.
Under the influence of that power, scattered flesh and shattered limbs traced unnatural arcs across the ground. They formed the petals of a macabre flower—doomed runes scorched into the soil—converging into a burning circular ritual.
Countless twisted, broken mouths surfaced within the scarlet flames, each one following a single, dreadful cadence:
"Hate… hate… hate… hate…"
Merely hearing those whispers was enough to cause many nearby Astartes and Custodians to feel lightheaded and weak.
The Custodian commander felt a chill run down his spine. Sweat beaded on his brow.
We cannot leave this be.
He bellowed, "Attack—destroy it!"
---
Far above, inside the Crimson Heaven, Orsaga reclined upon a gargantuan deathblossom-flower, an amused smile curving his lips as he watched the field of corpses below. Golariel rested beside him in his arms.
"In the name of the Chaos Gods," Orsaga intoned casually, "I crown you Daemon Prince."
The moment his words fell, a towering column of blood-red light erupted from the Crimson Heaven and shot across the void into the ritual below—arriving on Terra before the Astartes and Custodians could finish their assault.
The Ascension Rite—woven from the corpses of hundreds of thousands of Thunder Warriors—had met all its requirements.
Black clouds roiled outward across a thousand miles.
Countless bolts of lightning and spurts of raw blood converged.
In the ritual's center a figure manifested: nearly four meters tall, horned, and bearing a pair of vast wings seeded with hundreds of thousands of watchful eyes. He gripped a gargantuan greatsword wreathed in flames.
Though the form still bore traces of Arik Taranis, whatever humanity had been there was gone—replaced by unrecognizable madness and fury.
A storm of Astartes and Custodian fire struck like rain, but the attacks that had once harmed Arik Taranis meant little now. He had been elevated—his body saturated with the wrath and power of his fallen legion. Even without raising a shield, he weathered every volley as if absorbing it.
With Orsaga's blessing, Arik's strength had leapt past the rank of ordinary Daemon Princes. He now counted among the six formal tiers of power beneath Orsaga's command. As a being ascended within realspace, his new might would not be constrained by Terra for some time.
He drew a deep breath, and then opened his maw—teeth like barbed plates lining the cavernous throat—and unleashed an earth-shattering roar.
The soundwave, amplified by psychic force, became a blinding pillar of white light that shot from his mouth like a cathedral cannon.
Clouds tore. Lightning scattered. The valley shook.
The ground split into fathomless chasms that spread faster than the eye could track, rippling even the surrounding fabric of space.
Incoming munitions and the nearest foes were ground to powder in an instant. Mountains were buckled; torrents of earth and debris were hurled outward in tsunamis that traveled leagues.
By that roar alone, Arik could raze cities.
Except for the Custodian commander, nearly everyone nearby was dead or grievously wounded.
Arik moved like lightning. Before the commander could react, Arik closed with impossible speed and smashed his skull. He seized the headless body, thrust it into his mouth, and devoured it without pause.
Ignoring the remaining stragglers, he streaked away as a red blur, trailing whispered echoes—"Hate… hate… hate…"—the chorus of his hundreds of thousands of dead.
Those bindings, the legion's collective rancor, clung to him and drove him onward. They demanded vengeance.
But before vengeance could begin, there was one further task he had to complete.
---
At the Thunder Warrior encampment, silence and smoldering ruin remained. Once bustling with activity, the camp was now a conflagration; most of the legions had marched off to the feast, leaving only gravely wounded men and a few sentries behind.
Tens of thousands of fully equipped Astartes and Custodians had returned in force. The camp burned.
A towering figure appeared at its center. Arik, barely holding on to whatever remained of his sanity, had finally surrendered to madness.
"EMPEROR!!" he screamed.
A conflagration of psychic flame erupted under that howl, rising hundreds of meters into a devouring tsunami that swept everything away.
Every Astartes and Custodian immolated in those flames had their souls trapped within Arik's body. He would burn them for eternity—he would keep them imprisoned and sear them for as long as he lived.
"Power! Give me your strength!"
The corpses of the Thunder Warriors began to exude threads of black resentment. Tugged by his call, they streamed toward him and fused.
His wings grew heavier with eyes—dozens upon dozens more—and his height swelled to five meters. In that instant, Arik Taranis became the Thunder Legion incarnate.
Though his Legion number had been erased and their faith shattered, the dead's hatred fed him like infernal fuel, lending him inexhaustible strength.
..
🔥 Can't wait for the next chapter? Read ahead! 🔥
If you're loving the story, you can unlock 140+ ADVANCE CHAPTERS right now for just $4/month on my Patreon! Not only do you get a massive backlog to binge-read, but you also directly support my daily translation work. ❤️
👇 Grab your early access here:
🔗 [patreon.com/user?u=79514336]
(Or simply search for Translator-Sama on Patreon!)