Is he hiding his true name?
The thought crossed Roboute Guilliman's mind. He knew that his own name, Roboute Guilliman, was not his true name, but one given to him by his adoptive father. As for his birth name, likely only the Emperor knew. The Emperor had never said, and he himself wasn't certain, so Guilliman had always considered it unimportant.
If this brother of his did not wish to speak it, then so be it. After all, not a single Primarch used the name the Emperor had originally given them. Guilliman saw no need to press the issue. What was more tragic was that this one's name had been truly erased. Even his own sons...
"Hm?"
It was only then that Guilliman noticed the strange atmosphere in the room. Everyone's gaze was fixed upon Belisarius Cawl. The Space Wolves, with the exception of the unreadable Dreadnought, were baring their teeth. The Dark Angels, Iron Hands, Imperial Fists, and Black Templars had similar expressions.
"I was merely preparing for war under Guilliman's orders! Those new recruits are as pure as blank slates!"
Cawl couldn't help but shrink back behind Guilliman. At this, the crowd's gaze shifted to the Primarch.
"..."
Guilliman fell silent. He had given that order. With the Imperium fractured as it was, he desperately needed fresh troops.
But...
"Belisarius Cawl, you owe us an explanation for our gene-seed," a new voice cut in.
One group was more forceful than the others, even ignoring Guilliman's presence entirely. It was the Imperial Grey Knights. Zhou Ye's men, by contrast, showed no reaction at all. They knew the properties of Zhou Ye's gene-seed. If implanted into a mortal without Zhou Ye's preliminary treatment, it was a guaranteed death sentence.
There was, of course, a chance of survival, but it was a one-in-billions, or even one-in-trillions, chance. The people of this universe had a strong natural affinity for the psychic energies of the Warp, even non-psykers. Even the most common person possessed some psychic potential, however negligible. But they possessed no Imaginary Affinity. After becoming an Astartes, their strengthened minds could withstand the process of converting their psychic energy into Imaginary energy. But if it were given directly to a mortal aspirant, the conflict between their innate psychic potential and the Imaginary nature of the seed would cause them to die violently on the spot, destroying the seed in the process.
The failure rate was something not even the nigh-infinite population of the Imperium could sustain. So, even if Belisarius Cawl had obtained Zhou Ye's gene-seed, it would have been useless to him. Zhou Ye had based it on common gene-seed patterns, but its essence was a product of the Imaginary, not the psychic.
This was also why Zhou Ye was always cursing the Yellow Fiend. What his own Grey Knights didn't know was that in the Imaginary Prison, they had all undergone a powerful adaptive assimilation to Imaginary energy. The Imperial Grey Knights could be converted to be like his own—at its core, it was just a matter of "washing" their psychic potential into Imaginary energy. Zhou Ye's gene-seed simply made this process smoother and increased the success rate of the surgery.
Unmodified mortals and psykers couldn't handle direct contact. But for the Grey Knights, who were selected from countless candidates, it wasn't a major issue. Zhou Ye's trials were nothing compared to their own brutal selection process and the 666 rituals of psychic pressure. Their success rate was one in a thousand; Zhou Ye's was around ninety percent. Barring the exceptionally unlucky who would die on the spot, most would be fine. As for why these Imperial Grey Knights were reacting so strangely, Zhou Ye had no idea.
"I do not have his," Belisarius Cawl added quickly. These were the Imperial Grey Knights, after all. The last and most special Astartes chapter created by the Emperor. The implications were too vast; he truly did not dare to tamper with them. The main reason, of course, was that he hadn't even known of Zhou Ye's existence. And Zhou Ye was completely different from the other two unknown Primarchs. So Cawl genuinely didn't have any of that particular stock. This was a disaster he had stumbled into through no fault of his own.
"He does not have my blood, nor could he create a legion from it," Zhou Ye said, letting Cawl off the hook. He didn't have it, period. He wasn't a scumbag like the Yellow Fiend.
"My Lord, there is an urgent matter," a questioning voice came from the temporary battlefield command unit Zhou Ye had deployed.
"What is it? The Grey Knights have already deployed. They can handle the powerful daemons and Daemon Princes. There shouldn't be any units you can't deal with."
"My Lord, during the geological shifts caused by your battle with the fallen Primarch Angron, we discovered a cryo-chamber. It contains a large number of Astartes. Based on our observations, these chambers could be over ten thousand years old. We've identified the markings of the Imperial Fists, Dark Angels, and Blood Angels. And their stature is immense; they are all Primaris Space Marines, just like us. Is this a contingency you left on Macragge?"
"..."
As the voice faded, a dead silence fell over the room. All eyes turned to Belisarius Cawl, whose main body couldn't help but break out in a single drop of cold sweat.
"I have forgotten much," Cawl explained, seeing Guilliman's constipated expression. "This place... I suppose I forgot about it."
It was clear that this laboratory was supposed to have remained hidden forever. It had only been unearthed by the shockwaves from Zhou Ye and Angron's battle. It seemed that Necron Dynasties weren't the only things buried deep underground; sometimes you found ten-thousand-year-old frozen meat.
CLICK-CLACK.
"Blasphemy! Penance!!!"
The sound of a bolter being racked echoed once again as Asmodai slammed his crozius on the ground. This time, however, he didn't fly into a rage. As long as the secret of the Fallen wasn't involved, the Dark Angels were much like knights: calm, wise, and merciful. But once that topic came up, they were like rabid dogs, even madder than the Space Wolves.
"Go and take command of them. We are in need of manpower right now," Guilliman sighed, waving a weary hand. He couldn't just have them all killed. He then turned to the Dark Angels present. "If you wish, you may take them with you. I was planning to distribute the Primaris technology anyway."
"I've already distributed it to them," Zhou Ye added. Any chapter that had fought alongside him had been given the technology. This included the Black Templars, the Flesh Tearers, and the Space Wolves. This meant their parent Chapters, the Imperial Fists and the Blood Angels, had surely received it as well. Asmodai said nothing more. When Guilliman had originally offered the Primaris technology, the Dark Angels had accepted with little fuss. Even their entire chapter, including Azrael, had undergone the surgery. Azrael had fought Vashtorr while still recovering from the procedure. This proved that Vashtorr's combat effectiveness in the material realm was actually quite limited.
---o---
With the departure of the two Daemon Primarchs, the battle entered its final stages. Having lost Angron as an anchor, the Blood God could no longer project his power onto Macragge. After all, no grand sacrifice had been performed; the rift between reality and the Warp had never truly opened here.
So...
BOOM!!!
With a final, dull thud...
"For the Emperor!!!"
A massive cheer erupted across the battlefield. Amidst a deafening explosion and the shriek of tearing metal, the melee between the two Emperor-class Titans finally concluded. Their massive blades pierced each other simultaneously. But without continued support from its patron, the Khornate Abomination Titan was now facing Zhou Ye's entire specialized Titan legion.
Its enormous body collapsed with a thunderous crash and was instantly dismantled and torn apart by the two specialized Warlord Titans and the swarming Reaver and Warhound Titans. Zhou Ye's own Emperor Titan remained standing, a massive hole torn in its chest, but it had temporarily lost all power and gone offline.
This immense victory sent a surge of morale through the Imperial forces.
The red and pink tides were now being overwhelmed by a surging black tide of Imperial might. Countless volleys of fire swept over them, blasting the blasphemous things to pieces. But some were now letting out piercing shrieks of their own.
"NO!!!"
"This is blasphemy! Utter blasphemy! Who?! Who modified an Emperor Titan like this?!"
"Show yourself!!!"
The Imperial-aligned grease monkeys were having a meltdown. Many of them were literally spraying oil from their vents. Earlier, they too had been occupied with the massive daemon tide and hadn't had time to pay close attention. The true combat power of many Tech-Priests far exceeded that of a standard Space Marine, and before Zhou Ye's forces had arrived, they had been a crucial part of the anti-daemon defense.
Now, as the fighting wound down, they finally had a moment to process what they had seen.
First, the sight of the two wrecked Warlord Titans had been enough to make them suffocate. Then, they had seen an Emperor Titan engaging in melee with that Abomination. They simply couldn't take it. They had already gathered their Skitarii and were about to charge in to help, to protect the Imperial Titan at all costs.
Then they saw the two Titans effectively trade kills, and sparks flew from their own bodies as they spewed oil.
So...
From his command platform, Zhou Ye watched as a group of red-robed figures charged out. They were the maintenance crews for the two Warlord Titans, sworn to Macragge and its Titan Legion. As the Ultramarines' homeworld, and unlike the impoverished Blood Angels who had pissed off the Mechanicus, Macragge maintained a standing Titan Legion to protect their Primarch. In the original timeline, they had been caught off guard by the Black Legion's surprise attack. The fighting had been at such close quarters that they couldn't even use their main cannons for fear of accidentally vaporizing their gene-father. But faced with this situation, they had deployed nonetheless.
Now, these grease monkeys couldn't care less about their own wrecked Titans. A Warlord, though sacred, could still be built. But an Emperor Titan... every one lost was lost forever. They couldn't stand to see Zhou Ye using one like this.
So, when Zhou Ye's own Tech-Priests arrived on an anti-gravity STC disk with a retinue of Cherub-Automata, they were met by a circle of fuming grease monkeys.
"0101001001"
"Beep-boop-bop..."
A torrent of binary invective that no ordinary person could understand poured forth. One of the Archmagi even demanded to speak with the Magos of this Titan Legion to protest this use of an Emperor Titan. The Magos in charge of the repairs silently turned off his receiver.
After all, besides his main identity, Zhou Ye had the alias of Magos Omega 010. And that Magos was considered the highest-ranking being among these Tech-Priests. He himself had undergone no modifications. So, his Tech-Priests followed suit, only undergoing the most minimal of augmetics.
He now produced the STC template kits Zhou Ye had provided—the same kind that had repaired Rylanor and Lemont Icefang. He slapped three of them onto the Titan's hull. All the local Tech-Priests watched in stunned silence as the massive wound on the Emperor Titan began to repair itself. A single STC template of this type had its limits; one was not enough to repair an Emperor Titan. Of course, Zhou Ye could have just fixed it with a wave of his hand, but that would have been too conspicuous.
"Omnissiah be praised!!!"
Seeing the sacred STC templates being consumed, the group of grease monkeys immediately began to kowtow.
Of course, they didn't stop yelling even as they kowtowed.
From his platform in the distance, Zhou Ye fell silent.
"The Mechanicus is going to be a problem sooner or later..." he muttered to himself. One should never underestimate the weapons these grease monkeys had hidden away. For a prime example, one only had to look at the Pariah Nexus, where the grease monkeys had pulled out their secret stash and fought the Necrons to a standstill. Countless stars had been extinguished in their exchange. They often held back simply because they were worried the collateral damage would destroy important planets.
Tyranid invasion of the Shieldworlds. Imperium and Necrons team up to fight the Tyranids:
Imperium: There are too many bugs! We can't cut them all down!Necrons: These bugs' hides are too thick! Our gauss beams can't kill them!
A short while later, Imperium and Necrons are fighting each other in the Pariah Nexus:
Imperium: Infrasonic Generators! Artificial Black Holes! Planetoid Cannon Arrays! Nano-plagues!Necrons: Star-killer Devices! Neutron-purge Sweeps!
Hive Mind: "I'm starting to think someone was sandbagging me before."
---o---