The firepower unleashed by the main forces of the Eldar Empire at its height, along with its highest-ranking psyker legions, was on an entirely different level from the merchant soldiers we had been fighting until just moments ago.
The Eldar main force opened the battle by hammering our camp with a colossal psychic storm.
Complex, destructive sorcery raged in every direction, warping dimensions and overturning one’s sense of time.
Countless versions of “me” on the battlefield were incinerated in an instant and transferred into the mind network, forcing us to switch into new bodies.
If the Eclipse unit had not noticed the warning signs in advance and deployed an anti-psychic barrier, the main force could have been in serious trouble.
"Ah, fuck... We were just about to win, and they had to ruin the mood."
For a moment, I came to painfully understand why, in the distant future, the Orks had been so irritated and hurled abuse when Space Marines crashed the scene of Ghazghkull and Yarrick’s passionate, pure love, right as the Orks were happily waging war on Armageddon.
I casually glanced toward the Orks, and what the hell?
Those bastards had used looted Eldar equipment to build a psychic shield with “WAAAGH!” energy.
As I stared blankly, the one who looked like the Warboss among that mob of Orks waved at me.
I awkwardly waved back and surveyed the battlefield.
Thanks to the Eclipse unit’s swift response, the damage was not that severe.
But the battlefield was currently at a standstill beneath the massive psychic storm. It was too much to keep this practice war going.
Looks like it was time to pack up the mat.
"Tch, it’s over. This is fucking boring."
Without a trace of regret, I gave the order to withdraw.
As every one of my children was swiftly evacuated through the spatial passage, and the Eldars’ psychic bombardment finally ceased—
We set off the high-yield nuclear weapons and tactical decisive weapons of Mechanica Gate, gifts we had prepared for them, throughout the city with great satisfaction, slowing the advance of the Eldar main force.
Kwwwaaaaaang!!!!
Blazing mushroom clouds bloomed beautifully throughout the enormous city, and colossal ultrasonic waves powerful enough to collapse the entire area swept across it.
I thought I could hear Eldar curses coming from afar.
Why, though? The Ork lads next door were looking at me and applauding wildly.
They really don’t know how to enjoy a war. Typical pointy-ears.
It was about time to bring down the curtain on this stage.
Taking advantage of the chaos, I prepared the final “revenge curtain call” I had long kept in the depths of my heart.
As a courtesy, I sent a signal to the Orks who had fought so entertainingly, telling them to get as far away from Calidon as possible.
Then I drew out the vengeance I had cherished for so long.
‘You bastards dared lay hands on and kill my precious children?’
This brother has a fucking narrow heart. I don’t forget grudges.
The instant all my children had completed their retreat, every “me” remaining in realspace and beyond the Webway simultaneously activated the destructive resonance code of Enuncia, the language of the universe.
While using the full computational power of the vast mind network to sustain that aberrant language code that forcibly twisted the laws of the universe—
I wove an enormous, chilling portal gate above the city.
"WAAAGH! Look at that! It’s fucking amazing!!!"
"Boss, let’s watch it from up close!"
"Ya stupid git! We gotta live first! Then we can do more WAAAGH!!!"
The Orks in the Webway beamed at the sight, while simultaneously mobilizing every vehicle and aircraft they had to get as far away as possible.
At the very moment the Eldar Empire’s main fleet had closed in and was about to surround us—
One of the “mes” left on the front line whispered mockingly at them as a representative.
"As of today, Calidon is being demolished, you motherfuckers."
Kuuuaaaaaaaa—!!!
At those words, the enormous gate overhead swung wide open, and in an instant every scrap of matter in the city began to be savagely sucked into it.
The coordinates beyond that gate—which every “me” in the mind network had forcibly linked while burning through our brain cells, aided by Enuncia—
Were a region of space under extreme gravity, perilously close to a black hole: the graveyard of the universe.
Before that absolute gravitational pull that swallowed even light, neither the Eldar Empire main force’s advanced weapons of war nor their vaunted higher-dimensional psychic barriers meant anything.
Without managing any proper resistance, the Eldar army was miserably sucked beyond the black hole’s event horizon within the gate, their limbs twisting apart as they vanished without a trace.
The splendid trade city of Calidon likewise collapsed in an instant, compressed into cosmic dust.
Every one of me in the same space had made an emergency escape the moment the gate opened.
So, imagining the utterly fucked Webway, all I could do was grin while blood poured from every hole in my body.
‘Holy shit, I almost actually died.’
If I had maintained that gate connected to the black hole for one more minute, the mind network might have collapsed.
I should avoid using this technique whenever possible.
And so, I thoroughly toyed with the alien race currently at the height of its galactic power, gathered armfuls of valuable war and combat data, and savored the finest revenge play imaginable.
Of course, there was a major emergency in the family when every “me” across the universe simultaneously burst into double nosebleeds and passed out from recklessly spamming the language of the universe.
Still, even as I listened to Veronica’s stinging scolding, the sweetness of revenge lingering beneath my nose felt intoxicatingly good.
*
Kwwwaaaang—!
Having belatedly recognized the danger of the situation, the leadership of the Eldar Empire severed that collapsing section of the Webway in its entirety and cast it forever into the labyrinth between dimensions.
Having lost a major trade route and city, the Eldar Empire suffered enormous losses. They identified the cause of the incident and those responsible.
Innocent Eldar from Calidon were seized as scapegoats and met horrific ends.
But there was one crucial thing they had overlooked.
Some Orks had barely survived the devastating aftermath of the black hole and escaped into the main Webway before it was cut off.
Far in the future, they would become a pirate band known as the Badclaw Clan, a bizarre group somehow capable of entering and leaving the Webway.
Roaming the Webway, they would become bitter enemies of many Eldar, especially the Drukhari.
*
I returned to my daily life and was calmly conversing with Mother AI Veronica while reviewing a status report on the top-secret [Ark Project].
"Ugh... Let’s take a break and do this later. My head’s going to explode."
[Understood. But Noah.]
"Yeah."
[What do you plan to do with the 2,972 Aeldari prisoners we captured alive this time?]
"Oh, right. Those bastards. Shall we check whether they’re doing well?"
Instead of answering Veronica’s quiet question, I casually opened a space and observed the condition of those we had isolated in real time.
The containment zone where I had placed the Eldar was a special space known within the corporation as the “Room of Time and Spirit.”
For Eldar who had lived obsessed with every sort of stimulating and extreme pleasure, it was a space of white darkness that blocked all sensation from their peripheral nerves: numbness, silence, tastelessness, and more.
The noble meditation chamber originally designed with reverence by Dharma Temple for monks’ inner cultivation and meditation had become the most brutal site of psychological torture in the universe. All I could do was laugh bitterly.
Of course, the children of Dharma Temple smiled and said they wholeheartedly welcomed its use whenever it was meant to punish those wicked alien monsters.
At present, aside from a small number, the detained Eldar still retained their arrogant pride.
But beneath the sensory deprivation, their souls were drying out, exhausted to the limit.
"Start by taking out the ones whose minds are already half-broken and put every last one of them on Bio Aegis operating tables."
I gave the order while gazing impassively at the monitor.
"Use Pariah ampoules to permanently destroy the psychic circuitry in their cerebral cortices. Cut every tendon in their arms and legs too. Package the ones we’ve incapacitated like that as premium merchandise and sell them at a high price to our shadier clients. Those bastards will go crazy to buy them."
[An excellent profit model. Then what shall we do with the remaining proud ones who still refuse to yield and glare at us?]
"Send them into the brain surgery room too, but this time, mobilize every body-reconstruction technique we have. Remodel those pointy-ears’ bones, flesh, and genetic structure completely into human bodies."
For Eldar full of supremacist pride who regarded the entire universe as inferior, it was the most humiliating and cruel punishment that could be inflicted upon them.
"The bastards whose shells have become human can be sent to one of those frontier planets packed with nothing but screwups like convicts and criminals. Hand them over to the rulers there."
[Is that all?]
"Yeah. We just keep our hands clean and watch. The dogs are better at cooking, anyway. Tell them we won’t interfere at all in how they work them or use them. But tell them to keep them breathing and work them to the bone in the most desperate, agonizing way possible."
[True. It is best to leave this sort of thing to professionals.]
At my simple, cruel disposition, Veronica nodded with the same benevolent smile she had worn in life.
[It is a very fitting and excellent punishment for those who endangered our safety, Noah.]
"Heh. I knew you’d approve."
I immediately opened a spatial passage and forcibly summoned all 2,972 Eldar prisoners to a single location.
Then I deployed the Pariah unit Eclipse. Like taking livestock to a slaughterhouse, they dragged every chained, struggling Eldar into cold operating rooms and began the procedures.
Immediately after the body-reconstruction surgeries were completed amid grotesque screams—
The Eldar saw their reflection in mirrors: their proud, noble Aeldari bodies had been reduced to the filthy, primitive bodies of the Mon-keigh they had so despised. They lost their minds and screamed in utter despair.
Then we displayed screens before those miserable wretches, showing them real-time data of the cruel future in which they would spend the rest of their lives being worked as livestock lower than humans.
At last, those arrogant pointy-ears who had called themselves the rulers of the universe began to tremble all over and plunged into the abyss of perfect despair.
Humans really are cruel, even in my eyes.
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