Yuki's plan had actually succeeded.
Yuno sat within the biological command chamber, chitinous conduits pulsing gently at her side. When the neural signals from the scout spores confirmed that the Ultramarines' main force was returning to Macragge at full speed, her slender fingers paused for a moment.
"They actually fell for it?"
On second thought, it made sense. Macragge was not only the political heart of the Five Hundred Worlds but also the irreplaceable home world of the Ultramarines, where the sleeping Primarch Guilliman rested. Given these factors, any other outpost or fleet became a chess piece that could be sacrificed. Although the splinter fleet Yuki led was limited in strength and not enough to truly threaten Macragge's existence, the Ultramarines dared not gamble. They chose to abandon their tactical advantage to ensure their home world was safe.
"Then—now it is our turn."
A cold curve formed at the corner of Yuno's mouth. She plunged her consciousness into the ocean of the Hive Mind, sending out precise hunting orders through the neural cords. The Hive Fleet, which had been lurking in the shadows of the asteroid belt, began to awaken, their biological engines emitting a low-frequency hum.
"Devour them."
The defensive fleet left behind by the main force looked like nuts with their shells removed. The first volley of spore torpedoes poured out like a torrential rain, tracing countless fluorescent green trails through the void. Chitinous turrets spat barrages of acid, and the living warships lunged at the isolated Imperial fleet like a pack of sharks smelling blood.
Watching the Imperial signals blink out one by one on the tactical psychic projection, Yuno whispered, "Hmm, they aren't much, but they'll do as a small snack."
Yuno's consciousness floated through the Hive Network like stardust, omnipresent. She did not care for specific battle reports or casualty figures, much like a star does not care how many moths are burned by its radiance. Victory or defeat on the battlefield, the movement of fleets, the gain or loss of sectors—these things, so vital to mortals, were to her merely data fluctuations in nutrient absorption rates.
Only in front of Yuki would she deliberately set aside this indifference belonging to a supreme being. She would learn to speak with a human tone, mimic the emotional expressions of flesh-and-blood creatures, and even allow herself to temporarily forget her identity as the "Great Devourer." It was like a planet altering its rotation just for a single flower; this abnormality was more moving than any romantic words.
To the billions of other beings in the universe, she remained the ultimate nightmare at the top of the food chain—a colossus capable of devouring stars and eroding galaxies, the final echo at the end of civilization.
At this moment, as she felt Yuki's aura drifting further away in the psychic network, she realized the hollow feeling brought by this separation was harder to endure than the failure of any strategic plan. The Hive Mind was not supposed to generate such intense personal attachment, yet that figure had carved a unique mark into her eternal existence.
She loved him more than she knew.
Amidst the slight trembling of thousands of neural cords, she whispered in a voice only she could hear, "Come back soon, my love."
Eleven woke up once more. She opened her eyes and noticed her slender fingers had become softer, with the vitality of youth pulsing beneath her skin. For years, she had followed the footsteps of the "Emperor's Envoys," fighting in various corners of the galaxy. But most of the time, she was just one of many powerful psykers. Without the aid of a specialized psychic amplifier on a warship, her power fell far short of colleagues who could connect to the psychic network at any time.
"How powerful the Emperor's envoys are."
She looked into the distance; she could not see their forms, but she could feel their psychic presence. The psychic network they constructed was so magnificent that even a weak existence like her could gain unprecedented power by connecting to it.
"Eleven, He wants you to connect to the network and deliver death to the enemy."
The command entered her consciousness directly. She closed her eyes, connecting her psychic power to that multicolored network without reservation. In an instant, the universe shed all its disguises before her eyes. Warships were no longer indestructible steel beasts but transparent models woven from energy ley lines and glimmers of consciousness. She could see the weakest nodes in every enemy ship's shields and hear the most secret fears in the hearts of every crew member.
This state could not be maintained for long; Eleven had to resolve this quickly. She slowly raised her hand, her fingertips touching no control interface, guiding the torrent of psychic energy rushing through her veins purely with her will.
The lead cruiser acted as if it had struck an invisible reef, its hull emitting a tooth-grinding metallic wail. Void shields shattered like water struck by a stone. This was not just the psychic power of the entire Hive Fleet; Yuno was here, and another advantage of the Aether Fleet was that it was the only one that could "borrow" power from the main fleet. What Eleven was channeling was a portion of the main fleet's mental strength.
The entire warship was snapped in two at the engine compartment. What erupted from the breach was not a conventional explosion but eerie blue psychic flames that greedily devoured everything in their path.
The captain of the second ship had just issued an emergency turn command when Eleven's psychic power entangled every inch of its armor like a spiderweb. The space in front of the bridge began to warp and fold; the thousand-meter-long steel vessel crumpled into a twisted metallic sphere in the silence of the vacuum, like tinfoil crushed by an invisible hand, with occasional arcs of electricity flickering between the folds.
The other two warships poured a dense barrage toward her simultaneously. Iridescent fire pierced the darkness, only to strike a pale purple psychic barrier kilometers away from her, dissipating into stardust after rippling outward. Eleven simply flipped her palm, and the two ships turned and accelerated uncontrollably like puppets on invisible strings, eventually colliding head-on.
The fire of the explosion bloomed silently in the vacuum.
When the last enemy ship disintegrated in the psychic storm, Eleven slowly withdrew her consciousness, and the power flowing in her blood gradually settled. She looked down at her still-slender hands; His power was so vast.
At the other end of the bridge, the "Emperor's Envoys" exchanged meaningful glances. They knew who the "Emperor" Eleven worshiped really was, and they knew she had, in a sense, mistaken her object of faith.
"Following His will," she whispered, her eyes shimmering with the lingering glow of psychic power.
"I say, Neuron Tyrant Alpha, she won't suddenly discover the truth later, will she?"
"Hmm... Brother Cerebrate, that's hard to say."
"But even though Eleven seems intelligent, she always feels like a Carnifex."
These conversations, of course, were not heard by Eleven. And she would never disobey His will.