Ghostface walked out of the dim room looking completely relaxed, casually pulling the heavy isolation door shut behind him.
A few players on guard duty at the entrance immediately crowded around, asking in low voices, "How is it? That thing didn't run off, did it?"
"Nope," Ghostface shrugged, his face filled with certainty. "We've got an Eldar soul dangling as bait, and that's the ultimate irresistible delicacy for them. Why would it willingly run away? Right now, it's hungrier and more eager for dinner than anyone."
"That's good," the player let out a long sigh of relief. "We went through hell to capture this one and work out a deal. The dozen or so before this were either too frantic and got beaten to death, or they just fled straight back into the Warp. Catching one of these things alive is seriously no easy task."
"Yeah," Ghostface sighed, a hint of regret in his voice. "Too bad we don't have any ties to the Ordo Malleus—hell, we're even in an opposing faction. Otherwise, we could've just borrowed a daemon from a Daemonhunter Inquisitor instead of going through all this trouble. But whatever, at least everything is going smoothly now. The bait is in position."
---
Sometime later, a piercing air-raid siren shattered the peace of Rhea IV.
The Drukhari raiding forces had descended once again, and this time, their scale was larger than ever before. Screaming jetbikes and Raider gunships roared across the low skies, harvesting the panicked crowds below.
Planet Governor Blackwood practically crawled and scrambled his way into the temporary encampment of the Helldivers. His hat was askew, his face deathly pale, as he shrieked, "They're here! They're here! Right in the northern industrial zone! I beg of you, please go reinforce them!"
"Copy that, Governor."
The Helldivers, who had already been fully geared up and waiting, didn't hesitate for a single second. In fact, they seemed almost impatient. They quickly fired up the engines of their civilian transport ship.
---
The engines roared, and the lumbering, completely unarmed-looking transport ship swayed as it lifted off. Then, without even waiting for an escort formation, it charged blindly at full speed straight toward the airspace where the sirens were blaring loudest.
Soon enough, they arrived at the target area.
The Drukhari fighter squadrons tearing through the skies naturally spotted this clumsy giant that had suddenly barged into the battlefield.
Looking at the civilian vessel, which showed absolutely no sign of shield responses and barely possessed any anti-air turrets, the Drukhari pilots burst into malicious laughter over the comms channel.
> "Look at this, a stray fat grox?"
> "Are these low-born mon-keigh so miserable they're looking for the sweet escape of death?"
> "Or perhaps, in their extreme terror and panic, they flew the wrong way and want to deliver even more slaves directly into our hands?"
An entirely non-threatening target like this instantly triggered their desire for slaughter.
"Let me slice it open and see what's packed inside."
"No, let's do it together. Slice it up beautifully."
Four Drukhari piloting Razorwing Jetfighters reached an agreement. Pulling back hard on their flight sticks, their four fighters swept through the air like black blades, tracing elegant yet lethal arcs as they dove rapidly toward the transport ship.
They didn't use dark lances or missiles. Instead, relying on their extreme speed and the razor-sharp monomolecular bladed wings of their craft, they intended to dissect the ship like cutting a cake.
Whoosh—!
Four black shadows crossed paths in an instant.
Precise, elegant, lethal.
They sliced a perfect "X" through the sky.
In the next second, the civilian transport ship emitted an agonizing screech of tearing metal. The massive hull cleanly disintegrated in midair, severed into four pieces. The powerless wreckage, engulfed in fire and thick smoke, plummeted toward the ground, thoroughly destroyed.
"Hahaha! So fragile! Just like slicing through a piece of baby meat!"
The Drukhari laughed hysterically inside their cockpits, soaking in the thrill of destruction and looking forward to enjoying the expressions of despair on any survivors crawling out from the wreckage on the ground.
However, right in the middle of one Drukhari's laughter, the sound abruptly stopped.
An odor.
A sickly sweet, nauseating scent that could bypass a sealed cockpit and burrow directly into the depths of his soul suddenly wafted through the air.
It was a fragrance mixed with musk, rotting flowers, and some sort of unnamable, ultimate temptation.
Thump.
The Drukhari pilot's heart stopped dead in that exact instant. An absolute terror originating from the depths of his bloodline and etched into his very genes instantly froze his entire body.
That was the scent of "She Who Thirsts"! It was the eternal nightmare that their entire race spent their lives fleeing from!
Shaking, he sensed something and stiffly raised his head.
There, outside the canopy of his supersonic fighter, a creature possessing an exquisitely beautiful face but bearing horrifying crab-like claws—a Daemonette of Slaanesh—was clinging tightly to the cockpit glass, completely defying the laws of physics.
Its purple eyes stared intently at the Drukhari inside, its mouth peeling back to reveal an utterly greedy, vicious smile.
Losing control, the Razorwing Jetfighter tumbled wildly in the air a few times before slamming heavily into the ground like a black meteor, erupting into a brilliant fireball.
This sudden turn of events deeply shocked the remaining Drukhari. Their dynamic vision was superb, but that moment just now had happened too fast, and with the Warp energy interfering with their senses, they hadn't clearly seen the figure clinging to the canopy.
"Karthas? Karthas! Report status! Did your engine malfunction?"
The comms channel filled with urgent inquiries, but the voice that answered them was no longer their companion's sinister tone. Instead, it was a spine-chilling, screeching laugh that sounded like fingernails dragging across glass.
"Hehehehe~ No need to panic, cuties! It'll be your turn soon! No one can refuse my embrace~"
The voice echoed directly inside their brains through the wraithbone communicators, carrying a distinct Warp resonance.
"It's the Great Enemy! It's a servant of She Who Thirsts!!"
One Drukhari let out a distorted, terrified shriek, the horror etched into his soul instantly shattering all of their pride and cruelty. For the Drukhari, death itself wasn't terrifying; what was terrifying was falling into the maw of that entity after death.
The raiding force, which had been orderly and cunning like a pack of wolves just moments ago, collapsed instantly. Any tactical maneuvers or joy of slaughter were completely thrown out the window.
"Retreat! Retreat quickly! Back to the Webway!"
Fighters and jetbikes across the sky turned around simultaneously, scrambling and racing madly toward the Webway gate.
"Don't run! You damn cowards!" inside the comms channel, a high-ranking Drukhari roared in exasperation, "That's just a single Daemonette! Merely a materialized low-tier daemon! If we combine our forces and concentrate fire, we can easily blast it to dust! All of you, turn back!"
Yet, not a single Drukhari responded to his call.
When facing the minions of "She Who Thirsts," courage and glory did not exist; there was only the instinct to survive.
More ironically, the other Drukhari noticed that the Archon who was shouting the loudest in the comms and clamoring for a "combined counterattack" was piloting the Raider that was flying faster than any other unit. The ship's afterburners were practically spitting fire as he took the lead in charging right into the Webway portal.
Ultimately, this aggressive invasion began abruptly, only to end abruptly in an absurd and comical farce.
...........
Beside the burning wreckage of the crashed transport ship, the flames were still crackling.
The Daemonette stood elegantly atop a piece of burning metal plating. Looking at the black specks vanishing into the ripples of the Webway portals in the sky, it darted out its long tongue with some regret, licking its beautiful face.
"How boring— With just me alone, it really is impossible to catch all of those slippery little roaches."
It sighed, then turned its hungry gaze toward its surroundings.
Though the transport ship had crashed, there were still quite a few survivors, as well as the Planetary Defense Force approaching from the distance. The Daemonette's eyes began to flicker with anticipation.
Granted, the souls of these humans were like watered-down, low-quality liquor—nowhere near as rich and delicious as Eldar souls—but they made up for it in sheer quantity, and these mortals couldn't run away.
Most importantly, they actually had proper souls, which made them far more appetizing than that group of "Helldivers" who had captured it and acted like they had some kind of mental illness.
Just as it was preparing to begin a slaughtering feast like a post-meal dessert, the sound of heavy, dragging footsteps came from the smoke and dust behind it.
The Daemonette turned its head, raising an eyebrow in slight surprise.
The leader of the Helldivers, codenamed Ghostface, was limping out from the ruins. His condition looked absolutely terrible; a snapped piece of rebar had pierced straight through his abdomen, and blood dripped down the seams of his carapace armor. Yet, there wasn't a trace of pain on his face. Instead, he still wore that same casual, deadpan expression.
"For a mortal, your life is fleeting," the daemon taunted, its gaze lingering on his wound, seemingly appreciating the color of the blood.
"I'm alright. Pumped full of stims, can hang on a bit longer." Ghostface calmly looked down at the rebar in his stomach. "You didn't kill them all, right?"
"I caught a dozen or so, but quite a few escaped," the Daemonette shook its head regretfully, its claws snapping. "Though I did my best, their talent for fleeing is indeed top-tier."
"Good, that's good." Ghostface nodded, unexpectedly flashing a satisfied smile.
The daemon froze for a second. "What did you say?"
"I said, that's good," Ghostface leaned against a piece of debris, taking a breath as he spoke. "I was worried you'd kill them too fast and silence them all. Since a good number escaped, the news of a Slaaneshi daemon appearing here will spread back to Commorragh with those terrified bastards."
He grinned, his teeth covered in blood. "As long as Commorragh knows this planet has the attention of 'She Who Thirsts'—even if it's just a single Daemonette—those life-cherishing perverts, no matter how greedy they are, won't dare come raiding here anytime soon. This is the best defense."
The daemon's purple eyes narrowed slightly as it truly looked at this mortal for the first time. To utilize the deterrent power of a daemon to drive away the Drukhari—this insane plan had actually been successfully executed by this bunch of lunatics.
"Since the goal has been achieved," the daemon turned around to face Ghostface, the scorpion tail behind it slowly rising, "Are you here to have me send you on your way? As a reward, I can eat your heart, using it as a side dish when I consume the souls of the other mortals."
"Send me on my way? I guess you could say that," Ghostface strained to pull a black, cylindrical object from his waist, his finger hooking into the detonator ring. "But I actually came along to send you away, too."
The daemon's pupils instantly contracted. It recognized that object—a high-yield melta bomb, and it was already on the verge of activation. It was a miracle it hadn't gone off during the crash of the transport ship.
A brilliant smile broke out on Ghostface's face as he pulled the pin without a shred of hesitation. "After all, we did promise the Governor we'd solve the problem. Leaving you here to eat an all-you-can-eat buffet 2.0 wouldn't really fit our after-sales service terms."
"You lunatic—"
BOOM!!!
A blinding white light instantly consumed them both, the extreme heat vaporizing everything within a radius of dozens of meters in a split second.
As an unwilling, furious roar echoed back into the Warp, the Drukhari threat on this planet—along with that unlucky daemon—was completely resolved by this group of "mortals."