(3rd Person POV)
"What? Why would you give me this chance then?" Alexei asked the ROB, who was reincarnating him.
"If you don't want to, then just tell me. I am giving you minor wishes and nothing that instantly makes you OP. That doesn't mean that I am mean or anything. It just means you have to be smart," the ROB says to Alexei. Alexei was a bit angry because he finally got his Reincarnation experience. Still, instead of getting the awesome wishes he wanted, he was told that he would only get 'minor' wishes. Something that fits into the setting of Warhammer 40k.
"Can I at least travel to other Universes as well?" Alexei asked him.
"Depends on your wishes, I suppose."
"OK then. Well, I think I know. You said it must fit into the Warhammer 40k world, right?"
"Exactly."
"Very well then. I wish for the Meta Essence of the Virus. By drinking this, I become a melting pot for viruses! It would fit perfectly in the crazy world of Warhammer, no?"
"For real? Nurgle will love you. Hmm... but you are right, that would work quite well. I can see you becoming quite a menace with that. You might even become a new race. All right, granted. I said nothing, OP, but I also said it had to fit into the Warhammer 40k universe. I guess this doesn't make you OP instantly, but it's still quite quick. Use it well," the ROB said.
"When will I get there?" Alexei asked.
"You'll see. Anything else?"
"I would like to have the ability to travel through the Multiverse. I wish to see other worlds and explore as much as I can."
"I'm not helping with that. Well then, I wish you the best of luck and hope you will 'enjoy' yourself."
.
.
(Alexei POV)
The battlefield stank.
That was Alexei's first actual realisation. Not the thunder of guns, not the scream of shells tearing the world apart, but the smell. Burnt promethium and flesh. Hot metal. Blood cooked into the dirt. But more importantly, something rotting, sickly, toxic and dry, like rot left too long in the sun.
He pushed himself up from the crater he'd landed in. Around him, the world was at war—a great war and a confusing one as well.
Black smoke could be seen everywhere, low across a blasted plain of churned mud and broken ferrocrete and rising high into the air, blocking the sun. Ruined chunks of former fortifications leaned at improper angles, their upper parts torn away by artillery. Tracer fire painted glowing lines through the smoke and dust-filled air, red and green.
Somewhere far overhead, something roared as it fell, too large and expressive to be a shell, too fast to be a transport.
Alexei stared at everything around him.
'So this is it. Welcome to Warhammer 40k.'
In the distance to his left, men in uniforms crouched behind quickly built sandbag lines. Their faces were pale, eyes wide, teeth clenched so hard he could see the strain in their jaws. One of them was shouting prayers, but not to the Emperor, that was for sure, maybe orders, maybe curses, who could tell. His voice was silent and desperate under the roar of battle.
"To your posts! Hold the line, damn you—"
The line exploded.
A shell slammed into the trenches, turning sandbags and men into a red mist. Alexei felt the shockwave hit him like a physical thing, lifting him off his feet and hurling him across the ground. He tumbled, rolled, and slammed hard into something solid.
'Just another day in paradise.'
Alexei didn't feel any pain. That should have killed him, but surprisingly, it hadn't. He understood why with perfect clarity. His body, whatever it was now, catalogued the damage, the ruptured organs, the shattered bones, and dismissed them as irrelevant variables.
He was no longer 'human' in the sense of the word. He was a melting pot, a literal melting pot, and while humans could be hosts for viruses, he was, in a sense, a hive mind of viruses.
No, calling him a hive mind wasn't strictly correct. He was more. There was more potential in him and his powers than a mere hive mind.
Viruses flooded through him, not as invaders, but as part of him, as they were created specifically to repair, adapt, and replicate.
Pain was just a signal, a reminder of what he once was or was supposed to be right now.
Something huge loomed into view through the shifting wall of promethian fire smoke.
It was a towering silhouette of ceramite, easily eight feet tall, clad in armour the colour of white bone and stained with the filth of a campaign. The trim was a dull, oxidised green, and the helmet featured a snarling, predatory vox-grill.
Alexei recognised this one... A Death Guard Space Marine.
But not one of the 41st Millennium, not the Plague Marines spreading Nurgles' delight everywhere... this was their look during the Great Crusade.
The Space Marine wielded a massive bolter; his movements were heavy but terrifyingly precise as he stepped over the shattered remains of the fortification, and he and his brothers executed the last remaining signs of life.
The Death Guard marine didn't even look down at Alexei. To a transhuman demi-god sweeping a compliance zone, a ragged mortal shivering in a crater was just background noise, or target practice if they showed a weapon. He raised his boltgun, the massive barrel tracking a fleeing rebel soldier a hundred meters away.
THUM-THUM-THUM-
The heavy, rhythmic thuds of bolts exploding inside human flesh echoed through the trench line. The marine's bone-white plate was splattered with fresh mud and old soot, completely devoid of the chaotic mutations, spikes, and dripping infected wounds that defined the Plague Marines of the 41st Millennium.
These guys were clean. Grim, relentless, and ruthless, but structurally pure.
'The Great Crusade,' Alexei's mind whispered, logic piecing itself together from the depths of my old life's lore and knowledge.
'I'm in the past. Before the Heresy? During it? Fuck!'
He scrambled backwards on all fours, his hands sinking into a sickening sludge of grey ash and pulverised stone. He was not aware that he would feel like this, feel so utterly small, so insignificant... a piece of dust in a galaxy of war. His mind went into shock.
He gulped and sullied himself.
Fear... utter, naked fear in the face of his new reality.
He got what he wished for. He was, for all intents and purposes, a human with a weak 21st-century mindset, not at all accustomed to this. The Essence of the Virus didn't affect his mind from the beginning.
But Alexei could change that.
'My viral biology doesn't give me super-strength yet, but it should make me all sorts of things, like hyper-aware, if I create the necessary virus.'
The viruses humming through his veins began to change, and new ones were created, specialised to enhance his senses and spread in the air, sending back information.
They started to taste the air, cataloguing the ambient pathogens, the scorched soot, and the lingering biological forms of troops that had once been loyal to Terra but were now half-insane, mutilated things.
"Clear the bunker lines!" a harsh, amplified voice roared across the vox-network, booming from the sergeant leading the squad. "Leave nothing but ash! The Warmaster's and our Lord's orders are clear!"
The Warmaster.
A cold sweat broke out across Alexei's neck. Horus was still the Warmaster. That meant the civil war hadn't officially devastated the galaxy yet. Or... had it just begun?
'Wait! Why was the Warmaster here? These were the Death Guard, sons of Mortarion... which campaign warranted the combination of the 16th Legion, the Luna Wolves and the Death Guard?'
Desperate to get away from the advancing line of unyielding Astartes, he threw himself over the lip of the trench, tumbling down a steep, cratered embankment. He needed to find a weapon, armour, or a hole to crawl into before a stray bolter shell turned his temporary meat-suit into a puddle of useless goo.
He hit the bottom of the ridge hard, a shockwave accelerated his descent, and his spine snapped with a loud CRACK.
"AAARRRGHHHHH!!!" he shouted in pain.
Never before had he felt such pain. Never before had he thought he would have his back shattered 10 minutes after he appeared in his second life.
Several mutilated soldiers turned towards Alexei between their firing. A higher-ranked officer, with a permanent scowl on his face, fired his Plasma Pistol and then marched over. He stepped over dead bodies and through mud until he reached Alexei.
"Stand up!" he barked.
"..."
"Stand up, and fight, soldier!!" he shouted.
But Alexei couldn't.
Seeing that he wasn't moving and his lips only released pained gasps, the man levelled the Plasma Pistol at Alexei.
"The lord of Choral City doesn't need weakness such as thi--"
BOOOOMM--
An explosion impacted the ground just a few meters in front of the trench. The shockwave loosened the ground, sending rocrete and metal flying through the air. One of them managed to impact the officer's neck, severing it cleanly and crushing his body a moment later.
Everyone was buried, even Alexei.
He barely had time to register the new clusterfuck before a newly created swarm of cellular repair viruses violently stitched the vertebrae back together, allowing him to take a gasp.
He created another virus that flooded his muscles and strengthened them, allowing him to slowly dig himself out of the rubble and look around.
When he looked out across the wider plains, the sheer scale of the nightmare truly hit him.
The defenders were armed with Imperial weapons taken from the garrison stores, such as laslocks and stubbers. Their trench lines were anchored by mortar nests and fixed autocannons, set up to create interlocking fields of fire, featuring all the lethality characteristic of the Officio Militaris.
Although they were reeling from the speed of the attack, they confronted the Death Guard with Basilisks and Malcador heavy tanks that rumbled up from concealed depots beneath the ground.
However, Mortarion's Legion was unwavering, advancing right into the lines of fire, rendering the Isstvanians' artillery placements unable to accurately target their attacks, causing them to overshoot the drop zones.
With shells bursting all around, the Death Guard pressed on relentlessly, with Terminator Power Armour units and heavy support squads toppling gun towers and breaching bunkers. Tactical squads stormed through trench after trench, methodically sweeping away all life with powerful and swift volleys of bolter fire.
Gunships roared in, dropping Vindicator and Land Raider tanks to assault the bastions and high-walled revetments made of slab-like granite that shielded the city from the plains to the west and fight the defenders, Basilisks and Malcador heavy tanks.
The close barrage from both sides of the wall soon took its toll, and the great bastions were left in smoking ruins.
Their fate was sealed when...
FFFFFFFFFFF...BBBRRROOOOOOOOMMMM---!!!
The earth violently buckled.
A sound like the sky and the ground being violently ripped in half shattered Alexei's eardrums. A concussion wave of sheer acoustic force slammed into him, throwing him flat on his face.
Again.
Through the shifting wall of black promethium smoke and localised firestorms, a literal mechanical mountain stepped into Alexei's view. Thanks to the enhanced sensory viruses that had spread through the air, he could 'see' it finally.
Titans. And a lot of them.
A maniple of Titans from the Legio Mortis made an earth-shaking landing to the west of the city.
They unleashed the incredible destructive power of their turbolasers and gatling cannons against the wall, pulverising the battlements and causing the granite to melt and flow like molten wax.
Dozens of Warhound Scout Titans of the Legio Audax moved across the battlefield, and larger variants could also be seen from the Legio Vulpa. But that most striking and fear-inducing sight was, without a doubt, one of them.
"Dies Irae..." Alexei muttered.
It was an Imperator-class Titan, roughly 45 meters tall, an apocalyptic walking monster of death. It was the smallest known Imperator-class Titan, as far as Alexei knew.
He knew about it, because it was such a famous one, who fought during the Siege of Terra and... and...
An apocalyptic monument of adamantium, plasma weaponry, and the certainty that you would die.
Unlike other Imperator-class Titans, Dies Irae didn't carry cathedrals on its head, which was the main reason why it was roughly 15 to 20 meters taller than those of its kind.
And yet, it was still massive. Its forward-slanted body blocked out what little remained of the burning sky. Its ridiculously large weapon arms, mighty Plasma Annihilator and Hellstorm Cannon, glowed, spitting white-hot death into the distant towers of a sprawling, majestic metropolis and killing any machine or tank on the defenders' side.
...
Alexei's breath left his lungs. His heart stopped for a full two seconds.
'The Dies Irae. The Death Guard is attacking the inner trenches as they advance towards that palace. The massive spires of a cathedral-like city burn in the distance.'
Alexei spun around, his viral senses suddenly tuning into the sky above. The clouds were parting, torn to shreds by the atmospheric friction of descending objects.
Drop Pods.
But those weren't just bone-white coloured Death Guard drop pods.
Through the smog, he saw the pale, elegant violet and gold of the Emperor's Children Legion raining down near the heavily fortified Precentor's Palace and its environs, which housed the seat of government.
He saw the brutal, blood-splattered white and blue of the World Eaters Legion slamming directly in the plazas which adjoined the palace and formed the principal arterial intersection of the city's transport network, where resistance had likely manifest quickly.
And further to the east, south, and the middle, the sea-green hulls of the final Space Marine Legion drop like a meteor shower on the vast and complex structures of tomb-spires, shrines and temples.
That colour. Those weren't the Luna Wolves... the 16th Legion were known throughout the Great Crusade as the Luna Wolves. But the colours Alexei saw were not that pristine white, they were known for.
This was the palette of the Sons of Horus.
Four Legions. One city.
The name of the metropolis the officer had mentioned earlier flashed in Alexei's mind with the absolute clarity of a death sentence: The Choral City.
"Oh man... oh god, oh man..." he muttered.
His voice was trembling as he pressed his back against the burning mud of an inner trench wall.
He had been wrong. This wasn't the Great Crusade at all. This was not the moment of humanity's glory.
"I am right at the start of the Isstvan III Atrocity! FUUUUCCC--"
.
Alexei scrambled backwards, hiding behind a wall of mud, his newly formed mind racing.
0005.M31.
The fifth year of the 31st Millennium.
He wasn't just dropped into any random skirmish. The ROB had cast him straight into the opening act of the Horus Heresy, the most catastrophic and tragic civil war in human history. This was his opening move, the first stage of it all.
Warmaster Horus Lupercal, Primarch of the 16th Legion and most beloved son of the Emperor, had been corrupted by the Dark Gods of Chaos and had secretly turned against the Emperor.
Horus, who had been given the position of Warmaster by his father and was a strategic and social genius, immediately set about creating a plan to overthrow the Emperor.
While still pretending to be the loyal Warmaster of the Throne of Terra, Horus wove a web of deceit and betrayal in preparation for open rebellion. This was necessary as he knew that not all of his brother Primarchs would join him. Some he was sure would join him, some were undecided, and some he was 100% certain wouldn't join under any circumstances.
Rogal Dorn, Sangunius, Roboute Gilliman, Corvus Corax, the Lion El'Jonson, Leman Russ, and Vulcan would never join him, of that he was certain.
As part of his strategy, he sent Primarchs Lion El'Jonson, Roboute Guilliman, and Sanguinius to the outskirts of the Imperium to ensure they could not interfere with his plans.
Meanwhile, he gathered the Legions whose Primarchs he had successfully turned to his cause: Primarch of the 3rd Legion Fulgrim and the Emperor's Children, Primarch of the 12th Legion Angron and the World Eaters, and Primarch of the 14th Legion Mortarion of the Death Guard.
Horus knew that the most important thing for the rebellion to succeed was unity. But there were those within their legions who were more loyal to the Emperor than to the Primarchs themselves. Those were mostly those who had been born on Terra.
To purge their own ranks of those who would remain loyal to Terra, Horus had some 200,000 Astartes assembled in the Isstvan System, ostensibly to counter an anti-Imperial rebellion on Isstvan III.
In total, one Imperator Titan, several Reavers and over one hundred thousand Space Marines were deployed to the surface at four different locations. The Death Guard and Titans were assigned to the fortifications west of the city to pin down the enemy army and gradually eliminate it. The World Eaters were responsible for securing the major roads within the city. The Sons of Horus were tasked with capturing the temple and quickly eliminating the corrupted Warsingers. The Emperor's Children were dispatched to the palace, where the leader of the rebels was located.
.
More drop pods crashed down from the upper atmosphere, their retro-thrusters roaring as they slammed into the fortification lines. Heavy ramps slammed open, and more grim, silent warriors of the Space Marine Legions poured out into the trenches, setting up heavy bolters and consolidating their positions.
Alexei forced his broken legs to snap back into place. The Meta Essence of the Virus worked beautifully, much to his relief, knitting bone and sealing ruptured tissue as if it were nothing more than a minor inconvenience and strengthened them. He stood up, lunging toward the nearest group of white-armored giants.
"Get into the bunkers!" Alexei screamed, his human voice sounding pathetically insubstantial beneath the roaring artillery.
He seemed to have fully lost it, not even thinking about what his actions would cause. Who would listen to him? The enemy seemed to be insane and mutilated, and there he was shouting betrayal.
"Get below the surface! Seal the blast doors!"
A Death Guard sergeant turned his skull-like helmet toward him, his heavy bolter tracking Alexei's movement with cold indifference.
He didn't say anything but pulled the trigger.
BOOM--
The bolter shell shot through the air and reached Alexei. However, because of sheer luck, several pieces of shrapnel from a nearby explosion got in the way and caused the bolt round to detonate before it pierced his body.
The explosion threw Alexei off his feet and disoriented him. He was filthy, bloody, in pain and overall out of his depth. He tried to move away, but the long and strong steps of the Astartes.
He stood above Alexei, pointing his weapon at him, and was about to fire without care in the world, like this was normal to kill an unarmed, basically naked man.
"You don't understand!" Alexei shouted in panic, crawling back, ignoring the transhuman dread emanating from the giant. "The fleet! The communications are dead! Look at the sky! They aren't sending reinforcements; they are going to kill us all! Get inside the underground catacombs now! Virus bo--"
BOOMM--
The Space Marine shot Alexei in the stomach, causing the entirety of his midsection to explode violently. Due to the reinforcement viruses, the heart and above were still relatively intact.
"kk..grbbb..."
The Death Guard halted when he heard the gurgling sound. He turned to Alexei, who still trembled. Blood and gore were everywhere. The Space Marine was about to move when Alexei's arm lifted shakily.
Watching the strange display, the Death Guard saw Alexei lift his arm and point his hand at him. But then he turned it around and showed him the middle finger. He grinned bloodily as he coughed up his insides.
BOOM--!