Chapter 95 The Red Tear - Highway Patrol Inspector

Without hesitating, Vane instantly swapped into his Reaper of Souls Suit and drew his Bloodletter [Carnage]. Triggering his Void Ring, he teleported directly into the C’tan’s personal space and brought his flaming blade crashing down.

Big E didn’t miss a beat either; he drew his own psychic flaming sword and charged straight at the Void Dragon.

Back during Terra’s Middle Ages, Big E had already single-handedly defeated this exact shard of the Void Dragon. Now, ten millennia later—after sitting in a dark hole completely starved of energy—there was absolutely no way the C’tan could take on both Vane and the fully-healed Master of Mankind simultaneously.

It managed to hold its ground for barely a handful of exchanges before being completely overwhelmed. Vane and Big E utterly mercilessly jumped the Star God, beating it so badly that its indestructible necrodermis body was practically splintering apart, covered in glowing, critical stress fractures.

“Enough! Cease this at once!” the Void Dragon bellowed in absolute, humiliated fury as it was violently spiked into the cratered floor for the umpteenth time.

Vane and Big E slammed the brakes on their dive-bombing assault, hovering casually in mid-air as they stared down at the battered C’tan with mild curiosity.

“I have been utterly imprisoned in this wretched hole for millennia! I haven’t even done anything! Why did you two immediately start jumping me?!”

The Void Dragon used the most terrifying, booming, god-like voice possible to deliver the most incredibly cowardly complaint.

Honestly, it simply couldn’t take the physical abuse anymore. These two humans were absolute sadists, and they were literally beating it until its physical vessel was ready to dissolve. It was already just a fractured shard; if it got smashed into even smaller pieces today, reforming its consciousness would be an absolute nightmare.

A smart Star God knows when to fold, it decided.

“Look, if we actually tried to sit down and pitch our idea to you, you definitely would’ve thrown a tantrum and said no,” Vane shrugged. “It was way faster to just skip the debate and start throwing hands.”

Void Dragon: …

Bro, you could have at least tried using your words first! What kind of psycho logic is ‘skip the debate and start throwing hands’?!

Star God lives matter too, you know!

If it weren’t painfully aware that it would get completely flatlined in a rematch, the Void Dragon would have absolutely loved to fight these two monkeys to the bitter end.

Swallowing its monumental pride and raging fury, the C’tan grumbled, “You may go ahead and state your terms.”

“We need you to swear absolute loyalty to the Imperium of Man and act as our personal heavy hitter on the battlefield,” Vane stated bluntly.

“Are you joki—”

The Void Dragon was violently gearing up to refuse the insulting offer, but the second it locked onto the cold, murderous glares Vane and Big E were giving it, the C’tan decided to swallow the rest of that sentence.

Being permanently trapped in a dungeon was bad enough, but getting trapped and receiving daily, brutal beatdowns was just not on the itinerary.

I’ll just pretend to surrender for now and dip the exact second I get a decent opening, the C’tan reasoned.

With its master plan locked in, the Void Dragon officially waved the white flag. It even shrank its massive necrodermis body down into a cute, miniature, chibi-sized form, hovering obediently right behind Vane and Big E.

With the cosmic entity successfully intimidated into joining the crew, Vane and Big E grabbed Dalia and headed straight back to the Martian surface. On the way up, Vane casually tossed Dalia an Enchanted Golden Apple, fully curing her physical exhaustion and restoring her health to peak condition.

The moment they stepped out of the subterranean labyrinth, Vane received a system ping: his Mobile Fortress had successfully arrived in the Sol System.

Even better, his massive Warp Highway infrastructure project had finally connected directly to Sol. Once a fleet entered the obsidian tunnel, the highway’s unique acceleration mechanics combined with the Warp’s spatial compression would slingshot them instantly to Macragge. It was insanely efficient—arguably even faster and safer than using the Webway.

The Webway was originally built by the ancient Old Ones, and the Aeldari had simply inherited the tech. But over millions of years, even the pointy-eared space elves had completely lost the blueprints on how to actually maintain the thing. Trying to duct-tape the Webway back together using Big E’s jury-rigged methods was a massive, maintenance-heavy headache.

When you factored everything in, Vane’s obsidian Warp Highway was infinitely more reliable and practically maintenance-free.

“Let’s go do a quick quality inspection on the new highway,” Vane announced.

He fired up a portal and brought Big E straight to the massive Warp Highway transit hub floating at the absolute edge of the Sol System. He wanted to make sure the newly paved lanes were up to code, and he needed to assign a fresh batch of construction tasks to his Mobile Fortress while he was at it.

—

The exact second Vane and Big E stepped through the portal onto the transit hub, they bumped right into Sanguinius. The Great Angel was currently giving a grand tour of the obsidian infrastructure to a massive entourage of terrified Imperial bureaucrats and awe-struck Tech-Priests.

“Father!”

The Red Tear—currently acting in her manifested ship-girl form as the highway patrol inspector—lit up the moment she spotted Sanguinius. She completely ignored protocol and happily launched herself straight into his arms.

The incredibly wholesome scene caused the entire crowd of uninformed Imperial elites to completely short-circuit.

Wait, what?! Since when did the Primarchs have literal children?!

Sanguinius looked completely exasperated. With a heavy sigh, he was forced to turn around and give the deeply confused entourage a crash course on exactly who and what the girl was.

When the crowd finally processed the fact that this petite girl was the literal, living avatar of the Gloriana-class battleship Red Tear, every single person’s jaw practically hit the floor.

But absolutely no one was more emotionally devastated than the Martian cogboys.

Led by Fabricator-General Rasky, the entire delegation of Tech-Priests dropped to their metallic knees right in front of the ship-girl, chanting in absolute, fanatical ecstasy.

“This is the ultimate, divine manifestation of the Omnissiah’s unyielding power!”

“Praise the Great Omnissiah!”

“Praise the Great God-Emperor!”

Watching the mechanical cultists grovel, both Big E and the chibi Void Dragon felt their mouths aggressively twitch.

Technically speaking, the “Omnissiah” these fanatical Tech-Priests were currently praising referred entirely to the two of them.

But miraculously turning a multi-kilometer-long, apocalyptic space cathedral into a cute anime girl?

Yeah, sorry, neither of them had the power to pull off that kind of utter bullshit.

—

OR