Chapter 99 The Punisher (Bonus)

Typhus tightly gripped his manreaper scythe, staring intently at Ferrus. He forced a stiff, ugly smile.

“I am genuinely thrilled by your resurrection, Lord Ferrus.”

“But times have changed. The true Gods now walk among us.”

“Join the Grandfather’s ranks. You will be gifted with unimaginable blessings and eternal life.”

“The Corpse Emperor is a relic of a dead age, and he’ll soon be buried for good. Stop clinging to your delusions, Lord Ferrus.”

The exact second Typhus finished his pitch, another voice echoed from behind the Iron Hands.

“So that is how I am viewed in your hearts. How profoundly disappointing.”

The Iron Hands immediately parted like the Red Sea, clearing a wide path.

Vane, the Emperor, and the Custodes strode right past the Space Marines, stepping directly in front of Typhus and his Death Guard retinue.

Typhus’s pupils instantly dilated the second he laid eyes on the Emperor, his legs instinctively turning to jelly.

Wait…

Why… why the hell is the Corpse Emperor here?!

Typhus knew exactly where he stood on the power scale. Bullying regular Space Marines was one thing, but going toe-to-toe with a Primarch meant he’d get instantly vaporized.

And facing the Emperor himself? Forget about it. Even if Nurgle personally showed up, the Plague God wouldn’t be able to save his ass.

“Typhus. It truly has been a long time,” the Emperor said, staring the traitor down. “Your little stunt during the Siege of Terra, seizing the Astronomican… it left quite the impression on me.”

Typhus was so utterly terrified he couldn’t even force a word out.

The Emperor’s words made it crystal clear: he was here to settle old scores.

Despite throwing around the title ‘Corpse Emperor’ and acting like he couldn’t care less about the Master of Mankind on a daily basis, when actually standing face-to-face with the Anathema, Typhus’s survival instincts were brutally honest.

Vane gave Typhus a quick once-over and genuinely felt a wave of nausea.

This was the bastard who had completely sold out Mortarion and the entire Death Guard Legion just to score brownie points with Nurgle. Doped up on terrifying amounts of the Plague God’s foul energy, his body had bloated grotesquely, his putrid skin completely fusing with his Terminator armor. Disgusting, plague-spewing smokestacks protruded from his back, constantly venting apocalyptic miasma and swarms of diseased plague flies.

Neither the Emperor nor Ferrus were in a rush to make the first move. They just stood there, staring down Typhus and his Death Guard, letting the suffocating psychological pressure steadily build up.

Even for Death Guard Astartes, whose minds were heavily fortified by Nurgle’s foul blessings, this level of sheer, crushing mental pressure was impossible to withstand for long.

“Die, Corpse Emperor!”

One of the Death Guard finally snapped. He roared and charged forward, swinging a rust-eaten chainsword directly at the Emperor.

Ferrus hefted his forgebreaker hammer, intercepting the charging traitor.

With a single, devastating swing, he swatted the Death Guard away like an annoying fly. The traitor slammed into a distant wall with a sickening, heavy thud. His entire body was instantly pulverized into a shattered, unrecognizable pile of rotting sludge.

The sickening crunch of the Chaos worshipper hitting the floor officially broke the stalemate.

The Custodes and Iron Hands unleashed a unified, deafening roar, violently pouring all of their pent-up fury onto the enemy forces.

Ferrus dove headfirst into the slaughter, his massive hammer swinging with lethal precision. In the blink of an eye, the surrounding Death Guard were reduced to nothing more than mangled chunks of meat stuffed inside ceramite casings.

The sheer speed and brutality of the massacre were genuinely terrifying.

“Typhus. It is time to pay for your past sins.”

Ferrus smashed another Death Guard into bloody paste before taking massive, purposeful strides straight toward the Herald of Nurgle.

Typhus swung his manreaper scythe, stepping up to clash with the Lord of Medusa.

“So what if you’re a Primarch?! Your era is dead and buried! I carry the Grandfather’s ultimate blessing; I am not weaker than you!”

CLANG!

The absolute second Ferrus’s massive hammer came crashing down, Typhus instantly regretted running his mouth.

A single strike was enough to send a violently numbing shockwave up both of his arms. His daemonic scythe—a weapon personally blessed by Nurgle—visibly warped and bent under the sheer kinetic force.

His basic attack hits harder than a fully charged ultimate ability! How the hell am I supposed to fight this?!

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Ferrus unleashed a relentless, brutal barrage of hammer strikes, aggressively driving Typhus backward before finally launching him across the room with a colossal blow.

Despite his impossibly thick, bloated hide, Typhus’s chest was violently caved in, causing foul pus and rotting juices to geyser everywhere.

“If I’m going to hell, I’m dragging you with me!”

Typhus let out a deranged, desperate roar. His bloated body violently erupted, spewing a lethal cloud of toxic miasma and an endless, suffocating swarm of plague flies.

“You think a cheap parlor trick like that is enough for mutual destruction?”

Crackling lightning violently flared in Ferrus’s eyes, and his heavy hammer was instantly wreathed in blinding arcs of electricity. As the lightning intensified to a blinding glow, he brought the hammer crashing down onto Typhus.

A furious shockwave of lightning detonated outward. The dense swarm of plague flies was instantly engulfed in the electric blast, dropping to the floor as scorched, carbonized husks. The lethal miasma was violently dispersed by the blast in an instant.

The hammer connected directly with Typhus’s head. The terrifying kinetic force instantly pulverized his skull, violently splattering rotting brains all over the nearby walls.

Just like that, the First Captain of the Death Guard was brutally executed by Ferrus Manus. His shattered, traumatized soul immediately fled back into the depths of Nurgle’s Garden.

With Typhus dead, the remaining Death Guard were nothing more than lambs to the slaughter. They were swiftly and utterly eradicated.

Meanwhile, out in orbit, the Imperial fleet had claimed total victory, completely wiping out the Plague Fleet.

Vane had spent the entire battle watching from the sidelines, absolutely refusing to get his hands dirty fighting these walking biohazard trash cans.

The second Typhus was flatlined, a system prompt popped up in front of him.

[Quest Completed: Dawn of the Primarch Era.]

[Rewards Acquired: Campaign Progress +10%.]

[Title Acquired: Pioneer of a New Age.]

“Dorn, Vulkan, and Corax… have they all officially made it back to the Imperium?”

Vane was a little surprised to see the prompt, but he quickly figured Big E’s psychic dream-calls had successfully done the trick. Answering the call, the Primarchs had likely already returned to Terra or their respective homeworlds, automatically triggering the quest completion flag.

Vane casually swiped the prompt away, only for another one to immediately pop up in its place.

[New Campaign Quest Triggered: Defeat All Traitor Primarchs.]

[The Traitor Primarchs condemned humanity to suffer and struggle in the dark abyss of the universe, denying them their rightful salvation. They must pay the ultimate price for their sins.]

[Objective: Defeat all Primarchs who betrayed humanity and aligned themselves with the Chaos Gods.]

[Rewards: Campaign Progress +10%.]

[Title Acquired: The Punisher.]

“The sixth campaign quest just popped up. I wonder what the remaining four are going to be. Beat down the Orks, deal with the Squats, wipe out the four Chaos Gods?”

Vane muttered inwardly as he looked at the prompt, simultaneously pulling up his quest log to review his active objectives.

He currently had three active campaign quests on the board: deal with the Necrons and C’tan, crush the T’au Empire, and defeat the Traitor Primarchs.

“Let’s handle the T’au Empire first.”

Vane decided to go for the easiest target.

Out of these three quests, the T’au Empire was undoubtedly the softest target. The Necrons and C’tan were scattered all over the galaxy, and nobody even knew where all the Traitor Primarchs were hiding. The T’au Empire, on the other hand? They weren’t particularly strong, and their territory was completely fixed. If he didn’t roll them over first, who else would he pick?

Plus, that envoy he had spoken with last time had left him utterly speechless.

Those T’au were arrogant to the absolute extreme. They knew practically nothing about the horrifying reality of the galaxy at large, yet they were blindly confident they were destined to conquer the entire thing.

Anyway, the quest only required him to defeat the T’au Empire. It didn’t specify exactly how he had to do it.

Vane decided to skip the usual mindless slaughter this time around and serve the T’au Empire something a little different.

The T’au Empire’s fanatical belief in the Greater Good had already generated a powerful echo in the Warp, actively manifesting as the Goddess T’au’va. Vane’s master plan was to get his hands on this Goddess and use her to influence the T’au race directly, forcibly mutating them to awaken their psychic potential and vastly strengthening their soul reflections in the Warp.

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