The strongest astral army in Warhammer 40K

**The Final Defense Line on the Surface of Maca**

The hissing of the insects shattered the brief silence.

This time, they didn't overwhelm the battlefield with sheer numbers—rising from the horizon was a killing spree composed of **genetically specialized beings**. Three-meter-tall **overlord-class warriors** gleamed with bronze armor, their acid cannons humming and distorting the air; the **executioner worms** had scythe-like limbs thicker than Leman Rustank's main cannon, each step leaving lava-like footprints on the ground.

"They've evolved." Commander Krieg's prosthetic eye, Dmitri, flashed frantically, analyzing data. "The carapace hardness is 470% of what it was before, and the acid concentration—"

Before the words were even finished, an acid shell slammed into the command post, melting the composite ceramic armor like butter.

Commander Russell, the Imperial Guard commander, left a dazzling trail in his golden armor amidst the swarm of insects. Each strike of his God-Slaying Axe triggered a miniature gravitational collapse, instantly tearing the insectoids within a ten-meter radius into elementary particles. Five Imperial Guards followed closely behind in a wedge formation, their Guardian Spears precisely piercing the neural nodes of each insectoid.

"Watch out for acid splash!" Russell suddenly leaped up, cleaving the head of a Dominator-level warrior in two with his axe blade, while simultaneously dodging the spray of corrosive liquid. The Imperial Guard **Valdo** behind him was a fraction of a second slower, and smoke immediately billowed from his left shoulder armor.

There was no scream. Waldo silently severed his melting arm and, with one hand, pierced the eye of another knife-worm with his spear.

Cloned Saint Gilles' wings scattered golden dust. His power sword, "Nemesis," cleaved a hundred-meter-long psionic rift, severing three Overlord-level warriors along with hundreds of Blade Insects in half. Even more terrifying was his very existence—whenever his wings fluttered, the surrounding swarm of insects would convulse as if short-circuiting, even turning their weapons to attack their own kind.

“They fear your genetic signals.” The mechanical voice of Primarch Feralus Manus of the Iron Hand came through the battlefield communicator. His hydraulic hammer slammed one Executioner Blade Bug into the earth’s crust, then pierced another’s chest cavity with his molten gauntlet. “The Hive consciousness is resisting you.”

Saint Gilles did not answer. He suddenly spread his wings and soared into the clouds. The next second, a bio-plasma cannon with a diameter of 100 meters swept past the spot where he had just stood, turning the entire steel plain into glass.

—The Zerg fleet has begun orbital bombardment.

In low Earth orbit, the bridge of the USS Imperial Shield is being overwhelmed by alarms.

"Biological ship's main gun charging detected!" the navigator screamed. "Second shot expected in 90 seconds—"

The commander of the Imperial Fleet swiftly activated the Void Shield Overload Protocol. When the second plasma cannon struck, the pale gold shield dented like crumpled tin foil, but ultimately did not shatter. The cost was the explosion of one-third of the plasma engines due to overload.

"Request fire support from the Eternal Bulwark!" Constantine stared at the dense barrage of bio-ship signals on the sensors. "We won't last another round."

The situation took a turn for the better in the third hour.

As Sanguires stormed the Zerg command node and paralyzed local neural links with a psionic shock, the eastern Zerg swarm suddenly descended into chaos. Feralus seized the opportunity, leading his Iron Hand Terminators to breach the defenses and destroy three bio-turrets with molten bombs.

Russell then did something that shocked everyone—he ordered the Imperial Guard to plunge the God-Slaying Axe into the ground, activating an ancient device.

A golden light barrier unfolded from the axe blade, forming a pure domain with a diameter of 500 meters. Any Zerg that stepped into the barrier would disintegrate at the molecular level; even a Dominator-level warrior couldn't last more than three seconds.

“The Emperor’s blessing,” Russell’s voice carried a hint of weariness for the first time, “but it will only last twenty minutes.”

When reinforcements finally broke through the swarm's blockade and arrived, the sky over Maca had turned purplish-red—the atmosphere was filled with swarm spores, and every breath was corrosive.

The Krieg Death Legion was reduced to only 217 men. Commander Dmitri, supporting himself with his broken leg, planted the regimental flag atop the mountain of Zerg corpses. His respirator was long since broken, and his lungs were melting, but he still managed to complete one last roll call.

The Steel Hand has lost a third of its Terminators. Feralus's mechanical torso is exposed with broken pipes, and his left hand—the Primarch's hand, a fusion of flesh and machine—is gripping the throat of a Hive Overlord.

Saint Gilles's wing was broken on one side, and his golden armor was covered in traces of acid corrosion. As he knelt on one knee, the corpses of the insect swarm within a ten-mile radius spontaneously combusted, as if celebrating the temporary retreat of some terrifying being.

"Forty-eight hours have passed." Russell suddenly looked up into the void. "They're here."

As if in response to his words, the swarm fleet began a collective self-destruction. The bio-ships expanded into enormous spore sacs, exploding into viscous green clouds in orbit. These clouds rapidly condensed into a membrane, enveloping the entire planet Maca—

This is the highest level of isolation protocol for the swarm.

Ferrus's mechanical eye flashed a string of binary code: "What are they afraid of?"

Saint Gilles wiped the golden blood from the corner of his mouth, his wings suddenly vibrating violently: "No...it's not reinforcements..."

The tremors began. Not artillery fire, not an earthquake, but something older and darker was awakening from the subspace rift.

…………

The object hovered above the smoke-filled battlefield, like a distorted sun.

The **Golden Brain Worm**—its carapace is not biological matter, but some kind of flowing metal, its surface engraved with non-Euclidean geometric patterns. Twelve nerve cords float like crowns at the back of its head, each ending in a pulsating human eyeball. When it moves, the air makes a crisp sound like shattering glass.

"Gravity field distortion..." Sparks flew from Ferrus's mechanical eye. "This thing has a miniature black hole built into it!"

The Krieg soldiers were pressed into the ground as if by an invisible giant hand, their bones groaning under the unbearable pressure. Even the Terminator of the Steel Hand knelt on one knee, the joint servers of his power armor going off like crazy.

Only three legends remained standing, but Russell's God-Slaying Axe hummed and trembled, and golden beads of blood seeped from Saint Gilles' wings.

The golden brain worm's "gaze" locked onto them.

When that beam of light, as thick as a bucket, shot forth, space itself was ripped open—it wasn't an energy weapon, but rather **physical laws** compressed into a physical form. The rocks in its path didn't vaporize, but instead dissipated as a string of fundamental particle equations.

"Scatter!" Saint Gilles used his wings to wrap around the five guards beside him and flashed three hundred meters away. A hemispherical depression appeared where they had been standing, the walls of which were so smooth that they reflected a person's image.

Feralus was even more violent—he activated the jetpack on his back, and the mechanical arm grabbed two Iron Hand warriors to use as shields. The two warriors instantly vaporized, but the shockwave allowed him to roll successfully into a crater.

Russell's choice was the most astonishing. He thrust the Godslayer Axe into the path of the light spear, the Imperial weapon colliding with the Annihilation Beam in a supernova-like flash. When the light dissipated, the axe blade bore a molten mark, while the light spear deflected 45 degrees and struck the distant swarm of insects.

“Analysis complete.” Ferrus’s mechanical voice crackled with static. “It has a 1.8-second recharge interval after each attack.”

Saint Gilles had already soared into the sky, unleashing a cross-shaped psionic shockwave from his Nemesis Sword. The attack, powerful enough to cleave a cruiser in two, struck the cerebrate, yet only stirred up tiny golden ripples—the eyeballs on those neural cables simultaneously rotated, dispersing the damage across twelve dimensions.

Russell discovered something even more terrifying: "It's learning our fighting patterns!"

Indeed, when the Imperial Guard commander charged forward for the second time, a miniature force field suddenly appeared around the Brain Worm, perfectly replicating the gravitational collapse effect of the Godslayer Axe. Three Imperial Guards charging forward were torn to shreds by their own signature technique.

The turning point came from an unexpected direction.

"For the Emperor!" The surviving Krieg Death Legion suddenly opened fire. Although their laser guns couldn't even break through the cerebrate's force field, they successfully attracted the attention of the neural cables.

The instant the golden brain worm turned towards the mortal troops, Feralus overloaded the power hammer to its critical value and hurled it like a javelin. The electrifying hammerhead struck three nerve cords, and the human eyeballs instantly burst.

"Now!" Saint Gilles' wings suddenly unfurled to their limit, all the feathers falling away and transforming into a rain of psionic arrows. This attack finally tore through the force field, leaving fine cracks on the brain worm's main body.

Russell didn't miss his chance. As he leaped, he activated the highest authority protocol of the Imperial Guard, causing the handle of the Godslayer Axe to crack open, revealing the **liquid black stone** flowing within. This strike severed the link between the Brain Worm and the warp, causing the floating nerve cords to convulse like severed jellyfish tentacles.

The golden brain worm began to collapse.

Its metallic shell curled inward, like tin foil being crumpled by an invisible hand. Space rippled around it, and a silvery liquid, resembling tears, flowed from its shattered eyeballs. In its final moments, it emitted not the hiss of an insectoid race, but a perfectly replicated Gothic language:

"You...will also...be harvested..."

Then it exploded. Not an explosion on a physical level, but the collapse of a small-scale reality structure. Everything within a 500-meter radius—including a dozen steel hands that couldn't escape in time—suddenly turned into two-dimensional silhouettes, then shattered into basic geometric shapes and dissipated.

When the smoke cleared, only three figures remained standing.

Saint Gilles' wings were bare, dripping with golden blood; Ferrus had lost his entire left mechanical arm, the exposed cables crackling; Russell's breastplate was completely shattered, but the Black Stone Axe blade remained miraculously intact.

They watched the sky in silence—the spore canopy was receding, revealing an even more terrifying sight behind it:

Beyond the green membrane formed by the collective self-destruction of the Zerg fleet, a shadow larger than a planet is writhing within the subspace rift.

“Notify Killieman.” Russell wiped the blue blood from the corner of his mouth. “We need an extermination order.”

Saint Gilles pressed down on his shoulder: "Wait...there's something glowing in that shadow."

Indeed, in the indescribable depths of darkness, twelve golden rays of light pierced out like sharp swords.