novelraw Chapter 223 223: Failure? No, I Have Already Won
Chapter 223 223: Failure? No, I Have Already Won
"Let me guess, your master Slaanesh hasn't made it back yet, right?" Zeke looked at Fulgrim, voicing the fear in the daemon's heart.
The fallen Primarch did not respond; only that serpentine tail covered in purple scales thrashed madly against the ground.
"Looks like I guessed right. In that case, I definitely can't waste time tangling with you." Zeke stepped back, turned around, and bolted.
"Cowardly human, is running all you know?" Fulgrim let out a piercing, snakelike hiss, his serpentine body tracing an S-shaped path across the floor.
Zeke paid Fulgrim no mind. He chugged a Potion of Swiftness, whipped out his Adventure Compass to track the Crone Sword, and dashed off in its direction like a wisp of smoke.
Fulgrim pursued relentlessly. Here in the Palace of Pleasure, he actually showed faint signs of keeping up with Zeke.
His face contorting, Fulgrim was certain this human was searching for something. If that was the case, he absolutely couldn't let him succeed, or Slaanesh would punish him severely.
At the thought of this, Fulgrim shuddered all over, his scales making a rustling sound. A faint look of anticipation appeared on his face, but that anticipation quickly shifted into fear.
Slaanesh's punishments were incomparably stimulating; even as a Daemon Prince, he couldn't quite handle them.
Seeing Fulgrim in hot pursuit, Zeke held the Transmutation Table in his left hand and pulled out a Blueprint with his right.
The Transmutation Table held enough EMC for Zeke to achieve total freedom with any building material.
As for the Blueprint, as long as Zeke understood the structure of a specific creation and had enough materials, he could freely manifest any construction.
So, what happens when these two are combined?
Demi God of Creation.
Mid-sprint, Zeke stomped hard on the floor, constructing thick Blackstone walls in his mind.
That Blackstone—which he was previously too stingy to use and possessed the property of suppressing the Warp—formed a massive wall between Zeke and Fulgrim, barricading Fulgrim behind it.
"Damn it, what is this?!" Fulgrim frantically halted his momentum, losing sight of Zeke.
He didn't give up, slipping into one of the mirrors lining the edge of the corridor walls.
The annoying snake spirit behind him finally vanished, but Zeke saw Fulgrim's bewitching face appear once again in a mirror in the corridor ahead.
Again? Zeke slapped the wall. The wall immediately bulged outward; a protrusion made of Cobblestone crushed all the mirrors ahead in the corridor.
Fulgrim, who had been trying to emerge from the mirror for a sneak attack, shrank his pupils and quickly retreated before the mirror shattered, narrowly avoiding the fate of being sliced in two.
Through the broken mirror shards, Fulgrim glared maliciously at Zeke, who was gradually disappearing into the distance.
Altering the terrain and creating real matter out of thin air within the Warp—this ability truly made Fulgrim feel a suffocating sense of dread.
Obstacles came one after another.
Slaanesh's guards—those graceful yet deadly Masques, the gilded Greater Daemon Amnaich, and even the terrifying Shalaxi Helbane, who made countless beings tremble—emerged one by one from the mists of desire.
Any single one of them pulled out into the real world would be a terrible influence capable of corrupting swathes of Imperial youth.
Zeke had no intention of getting bogged down in a fight. He scattered Blackstone freely, using thick Blackstone walls to block them.
The exasperated Slaaneshi units would have to expend quite a bit of effort to break through the Blackstone walls. As for the Daemonettes who could phase through walls, they were also blocked by the Blackstone's Warp-suppressing properties.
His goal wasn't to slaughter everyone in sight; finding the Crone Sword was the ultimate priority.
Wielding his Efficiency 100 pickaxe, faced with a fork in the road, Zeke chose the most brutal method: digging straight through the palace walls.
Since there was no path, he would forge one himself.
Finally, he burst into a core bedchamber permeated with an overwhelmingly sickly-sweet aroma. On a massive silk bed, a handsome Daemon Prince was just jolting awake from a debauched dream.
Zeke didn't even spare him a direct glance. With a swipe of his finger, a tomb-like Blackstone enclosure formed, completely sealing the yet-to-speak prince in darkness.
Zeke's gaze locked onto the wall. There, the final Crone Sword hung quietly.
"Got it."
Zeke stepped forward, grasped the hilt, and stored it in his inventory.
The moment the Crone Sword disappeared, the Palace of Pleasure erupted in tremors. Immediately after, a terrifying, soul-stalling pressure descended with a boom.
The Slaaneshi followers and Masques who had been frantically chasing him through the halls all felt their master's tyrannical fury in that instant.
The slithering Fulgrim let out a suppressed wail, his perfect face filled with bottomless terror. In the end, he had failed to stop this mortal.
Zeke stood in Slaanesh's private bedchamber, his retinas stripped of normal visual function.
A hundred, a thousand patches of color—indefinable by human language—exploded frantically before his eyes. The air was thick with the bizarre scent of thousands of precious spices.
She had descended.
It was an unfixed entity, constantly shifting in form, possessing both a peerless beauty capable of sinking entire galaxies, and the absurd, sinister nature of a hermaphrodite.
Slaanesh swept Her gaze over the wall; the Crone Sword was already gone.
Connecting this with the stubborn resistance She had just faced from those lowly Eldar in Commorragh, cause and effect were instantly pieced together in Her mind.
Normally, when facing a human like Zeke who could breach all six rings, Slaanesh would have welcomed them and allowed them to serve by Her side.
But the Crone Sword concerned Slaanesh's very life. Toward a blasphemer attempting to take Her life, Slaanesh's fury pressed down upon Zeke without holding anything back.
The entire Warp was trying to kill Zeke, this foreign object. Without the Emperor here, facing a true Chaos God of the Warp was still too strenuous.
At this rate, an entire inventory full of Totems of Undying wouldn't be enough.
"I surrender, I surrender!" Zeke's voice rang out abruptly.
Without any psychological burden, he put his hands behind his head. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he tossed the Crone Sword to the ground as casually as discarding a piece of trash.
"I'm giving it back to you, alright? Harmony brings wealth, let's keep the peace!"
This sudden twist caused Slaanesh, who was just about to unleash divine punishment, to abruptly halt Her actions.
It also plunged Fulgrim and the host of daemonic forces—who had just arrived at the door, ready to witness a bloody slaughter—into dead silence.
So cowardly... so mundane.
An exaggerated, bizarre mockery surfaced on Slaanesh's ever-changing face.
She carefully examined the Crone Sword dropped on the floor. It was indeed genuine. Her will swept over the entire palace, and nothing else was missing.
Could it be that this human truly just yielded out of fear?
"Look, the Crone Sword is right there. I haven't done anything." Zeke tried to persuade Slaanesh to stay Her hand.
"You've definitely heard of the Emperor's name, right? That's my ironclad buddy who drank milk with me. If you really plan on finishing me off here, He won't let you get away with it."