The Emperor’s Angel of Death

The plan to seize the blade with one's body was, in a sense, successful. The demon prince, rushing back, could no longer dedicate the weapon already "occupied" to Slaanesh. However, unwilling to destroy his creation and even less willing to listen to his old rival's whispers day and night, he cast it back into the world of the old crone who discovered the crystal. This left the demon imprisoned within the blade to endure the silence in the frigid crystal prison, bearing the cost of victory alone.

Whether the story was true or false, Balzhaft didn't know, but one demon in it was real, and the power of the demon blade was real too, because he had single-handedly defeated an entire Khorne warband with it.

Balzhaft forced himself into a state of high focus, avoiding the interference of the demon's whispers. The moment the demon blade was drawn, it hissed. The Slaanesh lord felt a cyan serpent tighten around his arm, its scales scraping against him. He immediately overcame these illusions, ignoring the pain of the demon fangs gnawing at his arm.

[Don't go looking for death! Run!]

However, this time the demon didn't whisper, it cursed, and with panic.

[That's not a power you can fight! If you want to die, don't drag me down with you!]

At that moment, Balzhaft felt dark power surge through his veins. He opened his mouth, spitting out a snake-like tongue. He felt a great power watching him, urging him on.

"Great Slaanesh, witness my devotion!"

The Slaanesh lord shouted, beginning his transformation. Viscous tentacles burst from his chest and neck, piercing his armor. Grotesque fat grew with each heartbeat, and his already muscular body swelled even more under Slaanesh's gaze, soon breaking free of the armor's constraints. His once smooth skin was covered with curved spines and sharp crescent blades.

In almost a few breaths, he transformed into a four-meter-tall giant, entwined with tentacles. If one didn't know better, they'd think he had ascended to daemonhood on the spot.

The somewhat apprehensive him now felt bursting with confidence, because his god was encouraging him, favoring him. Balzhaft also believed that if he could slay this powerful enemy, he would surely be promoted!

At this moment, he seemed to have gone mad, no longer considering escape, his mind filled with sweet fantasies.

"This is my devotion!"

He roared, then swung the cyan crystal longsword, sweeping away the panicked cultists in front of him.

"Follow me! Warriors of Slaanesh!"

The eager-to-fight possessed warriors also roared like beasts, various potions pumped in large quantities from the test tubes on their backs into their corrupted bodies, even their breath filled with sweet, hallucinogenic fumes.

These hallucinogenic fumes, quickly filling the battlefield, also stimulated the cultists and mutants who had been mentally shattered by the robot army, stirring up their mad courage.

"Kill!"

Balzhaft shot towards Sosiun like an arrow, and the possessed warriors began to run.

"Balzhaft, let me see how much you've improved since Lucius."

The next moment, a sword lunged straight at Balzhaft's corrupted face, scaring him into hastily raising his sword to block.

With a clang, the attacker was knocked backward by the immense force, tumbling, landing, and advancing.

"You are!"

Unexpectedly, the opponent was so swift that Balzhaft had no choice but to stop and swing his arms like windmills, trying to block.

The air seemed to be cut open, leaving behind quickly closing rifts. Balzhaft once had absolute confidence in his Whisperedge, but today that confidence crumbled. His swordsmanship, his blade, couldn't even touch the opponent, while every strike from the opponent aimed at his fleeting weaknesses, as if they knew him inside and out.

"You are!!"

Balzhaft violently shook his arm and slashed down in a cross, but his blade, which he was confident would never miss, still missed, only cleaving through the meters-thick metal floor, revealing the pipes below.

As he stared in disbelief, a blood flower bloomed on his chest, and dark purple, tainted blood splattered on the ground.

The Slaanesh lord saw out of the corner of his eye a possessed warrior being minced into pieces by a strange machine using a weapon on its arm. His eyes and cheeks twitched, and he slowly turned around.

The mysterious figure was already standing twenty meters behind him, with more than a dozen Slaanesh warriors lying beside him, their corpses still twitching.

Only then did he see clearly that it was a Space Marine, wearing simple gray power armor, without even a helmet, his short hair tied behind his head, also wielding a sharrn-a-bal sabre, but with a weapon wrapped in yellow silk hanging on his back.

Seeing the yellow silk, Balzhaft seemed to realize something, and his pupils shrank sharply.

"You haven't improved at all, disappointing, Balzhaft."

A slightly smiling, indifferent voice sounded. The man slightly raised his head, then turned around, facing the astonished Balzhaft.

"No, this is impossible, this is impossible! Captain Akkurduuna, you were clearly—"

Balzhaft was completely confused. He wasn't sure if the person in front of him was alive, or a hallucination caused by injecting too many drugs, because it was actually the long-dead former Second Company Captain of the legion, the head of the Two Hundred Swordsmen, Akkurduuna!

Amnak smiled slightly.

"Lucius reacted exactly the same way. After falling, have you forgotten the most basic four words I taught you: 'remain calm in adversity'?"

"Impossible! He's dead! He's long dead! I personally watched his relics being recovered! You're just a clone! A clone! You're definitely not him!"

Balzhaft violently waved the cyan demon blade in his hand, cutting through realspace and causing several Slaaneshi daemonettes to scream and run out.

"Fake! I'll show you that you chose the wrong face!"

As the demon blade in his hand struck down like lightning, Amnak rotated the blade in his hand to dodge. The evil blade hummed, and then swept towards him with avalanche-like force at an extremely fast speed.

At the same time, another sword in the Slaanesh lord's hand also tried to block the opponent's escape path from another direction.

The blade in Amnak's hand hummed softly, turning to lunge, successfully piercing the opponent's left arm. Flesh and bone were easily separated like smoke being cut, and the weapon representing the court swordsman fell to the ground.

"Damn it!"

Although Balzhaft didn't feel pain, he still let out a sharp gasp, and fleshy tentacles kept squirming and gushing out of his mouth, falling to the ground with a patter.

His demon blade didn't give him any sense of security at this time, and for some reason, he always forced himself to pay attention to the sword that the other party hadn't drawn yet. Although he didn't dare to admit it, he was actually very afraid, because when Akkurduuna took out his second weapon, he would be ten times, even nine times more terrifying than when he wielded a sword with one hand!

What was worse at this time was that the possessed warriors were about to be killed by the strange machines, the Slaanesh warriors in the warband were also suffering heavy casualties, not to mention the other servants, who had been slaughtered into rivers of blood by the combat robots.