The Chosen One and the Scrap Metal Collector
The world seemed to have been ripped out of existence.
When Eileen's boots stepped onto the steaming, rotting mass of flesh, everything seemed to fall silent.
She looked down.
Right at her feet, a gigantic, fly-shaped head lay amidst the carcass.
Typhus wasn't truly dead.
The wound that had nearly cleaved him in two was frantically oozing a yellowish-green gel, trying to pull the two halves back together.
"Life… cycle… I am eternal…"
The gigantic fly head was still trembling.
This little girl, barely ten years old, stood before the face of this chosen herald who had lived for millennia.
Eileen gripped the short sword, still burning with embers.
The tip pointed downwards, hovering less than ten centimeters above Typhus's murky, bloodshot compound eye.
The heat of the flames made the enormous eyeball sizzle.
"You…"
Typhus finally saw who was stepping on him.
In that instant, his healing wound stopped twitching.
A chill he had never experienced in ten thousand years, not even when facing Mortarion's wrath, shot straight to the top of his head.
It was the fear of "non-existence."
He could feel the fire on the sword. Not ordinary psionic energy, but a deadly poison capable of utterly annihilating Warp creatures.
If he were killed by this sword, there would be no chance of rebirth in Nurgle's Garden.
"You… you can't kill me…"
Typhus's voice trembled, caused by extreme fear.
He tried to struggle, but Garro's sword had severed his body; now he looked like a pitiful slug.
"I am Typhus!"
He suddenly raised his voice, as if trying to suppress his fear with his shouts, or as if appealing to someone.
"I am a blood relative of Mortarion! I am the First Company Captain of the Fourteenth Legion! I am the Lord of the *Terminatus*! I am the champion handpicked by the Father, Nurgle!"
"My name is etched on the graves of countless worlds! Even Primarchs have succumbed to my shadow!"
Typhus stared wide-eyed at Eileen, his voice becoming hysterical.
"The gods are watching me! My destiny is to eternally fight for the Father! You are merely… a lowly mortal who crawled out of the mud! How dare you… how dare you harm me?!!"
Eileen looked at him expressionlessly.
The firelight illuminated her face, making the bloodstains on her small face appear crimson.
She seemed not to have heard the string of terrifying titles. Instead, her eyes revealed a pity and mockery as if she were looking at a fool.
"Are you finished?"
Eileen took a deep breath, interrupting Typhus's roar.
She still gripped her sword with both hands, but leaned slightly forward, speaking slowly and deliberately in accented Gothic:
"Listen up, you fatso."
Eileen raised her chin. At this moment, she wasn't the Holy Maiden of the Empire, but more like the leader of the most ruthless gang in the hive.
"Standing before you is neither a Holy Maiden nor some big shot."
"I am! The boss of Old Joe's Scrap Yard in the 8th District of the Lower Hive District of the 42nd Hive City—Eileen!"
Typhus froze.
"I control three blocks of junkyards! I led a gang of thugs and fought off protection money gangs! I earned it all with these two hands!"
Eileen's eyes burned with the most tenacious, primal flame of human life.
"And your titles, either bestowed upon you by charity, or stolen by betraying your own father."
"And my titles…" Eileen's tone deepened, the sword pressing down an inch, the tip piercing Typhus's cornea.
"I earned them myself!"
"No… no!!!"
Typhus screamed in despair, feeling the heat of that mortal fire emanating from the sword tip.
"Now."
Eileen raised the short sword again, using all her strength to deliver her judgment.
"In the name of the boss of Ant Lane, and in the name of Robert's sister…"
"I sentence you to death."
*Thud!*
Without pause.
The short sword, burning with orange-red embers, imbued with Imperial energy and fused with the will of mortals, pierced Typhus's enormous compound eye like an orange-red lightning bolt.
Piercing the lens.
Burning through the optic nerve.
Going straight to the core.
*BOOM——————!!!*
Typhus's scream didn't even finish before it was swallowed by a deafening explosion of his soul.
It wasn't the sound of flesh exploding.
It was the collapse of existence.
The short sword was like a match igniting an oil depot.
Golden-red flames instantly ignited the vast and tainted Blessing of Nurgle within Typhus's body.
"Aaaaaah—No! I don't want to disappear! Father, save me—!!!"
Typhus's massive body began to convulse violently, burning.
Thick black smoke billowed from his seven orifices, from every seam of his armor.
His flesh and blood rapidly carbonized and peeled away in the golden flames.
The several chimneys belching poisonous smoke behind him melted and collapsed under the intense heat.
The burning didn't just affect matter; it burned directly into the subspace through some unseen connection.
*Crack—!*
It was the sound of some kind of chain breaking.
With the "true death" of Typhus, the core anchor, the Nurgle Realm, forcibly pulled into the real universe, instantly lost its powerful support.
"Oh no! My precious!"
Not far away, the Great Unclean One, locked in combat with Cole, suddenly let out a panicked cry.
Its enormous body began to turn transparent, like a holographic image with a poor signal.
"That was too fast! Grandpa hasn't had enough fun yet! You annoying little flame!"
The Great Unclean One angrily swung its flail, but its weapon turned into green smoke in mid-air.
"We will return… we will definitely return…"
The mountain-like demon deflated like a punctured balloon, then was forcibly sucked back into the rapidly closing Warp rift.
The plague demon army, Death Guard, Nurglings…
Without the support of the plague core, they collapsed like puppets with broken strings, turning into puddles of foul-smelling black sludge.
A few seconds later.
Where Typhus had stood, only a pile of dry, black ash, still smoldering, remained.
The short sword was stuck atop the ash, its flames fading, yet the weapon now gleamed, as if cleansed by some divine intervention.
Eileen stood beside the ash.
She remained in the position she had thrust the sword into, using it as a crutch to keep from collapsing.
"Huff… huff…"
She gasped for breath, her legs finally giving way, her knees buckling, and she collapsed to her knees.
It was over.
That terrifying, disgusting monster that had killed so many people had finally turned to ash.
"Ms. Eileen!"
Covered in blood, Sicarius rushed over. He tossed aside his power sword and scooped Eileen from the ashes.
"Apothecary! Come quick!"
Cole also approached, halberd in hand. The Imperial Guard commander looked at the ashes, then at the exhausted Eileen; even through his visor, his tremor was palpable.
"True… death," Cole murmured, "not even a trace of the soul remains. This is a judgment only our Lord can deliver."
"We… won?"
Sergeant Varo leaned against a rock, clutching his still-bleeding ribs, watching the sky gradually clear.
The oppressive, suffocating yellow-green poisonous cloud was dissipating, and the long-absent starlight shone through gaps in the clouds onto the ravaged battlefield.
"Yes, we won."
Sicarius checked Eileen's condition and breathed a sigh of relief.
"She's just exhausted and has a few fractures. Her vital signs are stable."
He looked at the little girl in his arms, his tone softening with unprecedented gentleness.
"You did it, boss of Ant Lane. You saved the battle."
Eileen barely opened her eyes, looking at Sicarius's dirty face, and weakly forced a smile.
"Then… could… I have a tactical supply…"
"When we get back, you can eat as much as you want." Sicarius laughed.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The few remaining mortal auxiliary soldiers hugged each other, celebrating their survival in such a massive battle.
Even the usually tense Cole relaxed his grip on his weapon slightly.
Just when everyone thought everything was settled…
[Don't rush to celebrate.]
Old Huang's voice rang in Eileen's mind without warning.
The voice carried a rare hint of worry.
Eileen's heart skipped a beat: "Old Huang? What's wrong? Aren't the monsters all dead?"
[The monsters here are dead.]
Old Huang spoke rapidly.
[But just now, while that big fat guy (the Great Unclean One) was leaving, I glanced at the entire planet's Warp echo through that not-yet-fully-closed rift.]
[Something's happened in the Southern Hemisphere.]
"The Southern Hemisphere?" Eileen paused, "That's... Robert's side?"
[Yes.]
[There's an extremely massive, disgusting power erupting over there. Its intensity... is ten times stronger than that Typhus from before.]
[That's Mortarion, the Primarch of the Death Guard.]
Eileen felt her blood run cold: "Robert... Robert's not that strong? He has so many tanks..."
[No matter how many tanks, it's useless. That's a Primarch-level deathmatch.]
Old Huang's voice became unusually heavy, as if each word weighed a ton.
[I sensed it... Robert's life force... is waning.]
[That feeling of being eroded by some kind of virus. Could it be that Typhus's "Plague of God"?]
[Eileen, hurry!]
[We need to get there immediately. If we don't hurry...]
[Your newly adopted brother might be going to die today.]
Eileen's pupils suddenly contracted.
She grabbed Sicarius's arm guard, her nails scraping against it with a grating sound.
Her slightly flushed face, which had been flushed from victory, instantly turned deathly pale.
"Robert..."
Eileen's voice was filled with extreme terror as she looked up towards the Southern Hemisphere.
"Quick… take me to the Southern Hemisphere!"
"Robert… he's dying!!"