At the same time, an orc army, led by a powerful orc warlord, was fighting desperately against Perturabo's main force, which was attempting to encircle and destroy them.
Suddenly, with an invisible and intangible psychic disturbance, hundreds of thousands of orcs, including the warlord, abruptly froze as if "shut down." Their eyes rolled back, arms went limp, and they stood motionless. Some, trying to flee in terror to avoid close combat with the young Astartes warriors, fell due to the momentum, collapsing to the ground.
This unexpected event puzzled the nearly thousand young Astartes who were in the thick of the action.
However, Perturabo, positioned at the front lines and swinging his power hammer to crush a frenzied female orc, quickly realized that Hera had successfully taken control of the orcs' psychic network, causing the phenomenon they were witnessing.
Before he could contact the frontline base, Li Haiming, the biological department head, sent a communication request. Seeing the alert flash on his helmet screen, Perturabo accepted the call.
"Sir, Ms. Hera of the Paranormal Control Department has assumed the role of the new orc queen. However, she mentioned that her puppet control method seems to have 'fried' the orcs' brains. In other words, they're now mindless shells with no self-awareness or intelligence."
Perturabo muttered, "Fried their brains." He guessed that, even using only a "fraction" of her psychic power, Hera's control over the orcs had still been devastating. The former orc queen, Mila, barely met the most basic psychic thresholds.
After a brief silence, Perturabo replied, "Got it. Relay to Ms. Hera that I want her to command all controlled orc puppets to the abandoned city fifty kilometers south of the frontline base. Also, your department can conduct further biochemical experiments on these orc puppets; keep their population controlled at two hundred million. Atlas already has a billion Reaper laborers, so we don't need too many orc scraps."
"Understood, Sir."
With Perturabo's instructions, Li Haiming ended the communication.
The so-called "Reaper laborers" were Reaper soldier ants and worker ants captured by Atlas after opening a spatial gate to the Halo universe. Years ago, with only a few escort ships and an elite force of barely ten thousand, Atlas had successfully intercepted a Reaper mothership of the second-tier civilization. Since then, that mothership, nearly the size of a satellite, had been fully modified by Atlas's engineering department.
The outer structure of the mothership had been reshaped into a sleeker, more human-aesthetic design, abandoning its previous giant egg-like form. Its atmosphere now closely resembled Earth's, with bright lighting and an independent ecological system. Inside, engineers constructed a mega-city capable of housing three hundred million people, aimed at supporting Atlas's interstellar colonization efforts in the primary universe. Currently, the mothership was in trial operation, not yet fully open to the public.
The Reaper soldier ants and worker ants, previously captured, had been reverse-psychically controlled using a unique wavelength decoded by Alexia. In other words, with control over this specific wavelength, Atlas had effectively become their queen.
Consequently, these controlled Reaper ants were deployed to Mars in the main universe to assist the engineering department in building colonies there.
Now that Hera had become the new orc queen, Atlas gained an additional workforce of billions of orc "laborers." But Perturabo clearly had no interest in sustaining a "useless" population. Even though Atlas wasn't obligated to pay the Reaper soldier and worker ants, these biological entities required caloric intake and hydration. The logistics of sustaining alien labor was ultimately far less cost-effective than automated Hex, Terminator, or Hunter-class robots. Every day, the company consumed billions of resources just to maintain the Reaper soldier and worker ants. The orcs, being gene-engineered from human DNA, would be another burden.
Perturabo, unlike his father, was unwilling to support a "freeloading" group. Fortunately, he held full authority in the Gears of War universe, which included the right to handle orc prisoners. Thus, he decided to reduce the orc numbers to about two hundred million, leaving enough for the biological department to conduct experiments or for them to serve as "work-till-death" expendables.
After some time, he observed the once-frozen orcs, now zombie-like and mindlessly heading forward. Perturabo led a thousand Astartes and a hundred heavily armored units to follow these mind-wiped orc puppets out of the underground city.
Back on the surface, Perturabo sat atop a Mammoth vehicle. Rather than entering the control room, he unfolded his helmet and looked up at the star that provided light to Sylla, contemplating the next steps in eradicating the Sylla's bioluminescent creatures.
Between May and June, while eliminating orcs left leaderless by Mila, they had also encountered numerous bioluminescent creatures. According to captured orcs, the bioluminescent population exceeded ten billion. These creatures had the ability to infect and assimilate subterranean organisms, increasing their numbers endlessly. If they were to be eliminated solely through force, it would cost Atlas vast resources and manpower.
Thus, Perturabo had assigned the bioluminescent issue to the biological department, hoping they could develop bio-weapons that could eliminate the creatures instantly.
Just as Perturabo was contemplating Sylla's reconstruction, he heard a sonic boom from the sky.
Turning toward the sound, he saw two golden streaks descending at high speed, crashing into the northern forest about four kilometers away.
Intrigued, Perturabo ended his thoughts and looked toward the source of the crash.
The golden glow and twin trails? It almost felt like a familiar psychic signature.
Although Perturabo had little interest in psychic powers and the Warp, he possessed an extraordinary sensory ability as a Primarch. Realizing the unique psychic energy involved, Perturabo immediately understood that the arrivals were none other than his brothers.
He opened his communication channel and ordered, "The main force should continue returning to the frontline base. Mammoth 01, along with squads 014 and 017, will accompany me to the marked location for investigation." Perturabo then marked the crash site on a mini-map.
The main force did as instructed, heading back to the frontline base along with Hera's puppet orcs, while the Mammoth carrying Perturabo and the two squads advanced into the northern woods.
Thanks to its hover base and immense weight, the Mammoth ignored all obstacles and soon arrived near the crash site.
Upon disembarking, Perturabo used his unique connection with his brothers to locate the precise position of the twins. Moving to the edge of a crater, he looked down.
To his surprise, two toddlers who looked almost identical reached out their chubby hands and gave him innocent smiles.
Twins? Perturabo was momentarily stunned.
The soldiers gathered around the crater, including Tavis, Logan, and Maun, were also confused. Although they had seen the golden trails and heard the impact, they hadn't expected to find two toddlers in the crater.
"Sir, these two children are...?" Tavis asked.
"Primarchs," Perturabo replied bluntly. He walked into the crater, knelt down, and picked up his two young brothers.
Following this, the accompanying troops found themselves full of questions. Were all Primarchs "sent from above"? And yet their "Grandfather," Samuel Young, was biologically related to them…
However, Perturabo paid no mind to their speculations. He had never claimed that his father was a deity, nor did he consider himself a "child of the gods." All the talk was mere conjecture and rumor.
With his brothers, now sound asleep in his arms, Perturabo left the crater and headed toward the Mammoth, initiating a communication to the frontline base. "This is Primarch Perturabo. Connect me to Dr. Alexia Ashford in the main universe; I have a critical request."
"Yes, sir."
Hearing the communications officer's response, Perturabo said nothing further. He intended to ask Dr. Ashford to prepare the necessary nutrients for the young Primarchs, then report his "discovery" to his father personally.
Meanwhile, in West Africa's former Comoé Forest, now the Imperial Palace…
Atlas had chosen the Imperial Palace site in the depths of the Comoé ruins, the entryway to multiversal expansion. Currently spanning approximately twenty thousand square kilometers, the palace complex was 60% complete. With the assistance of AI-driven machines like Terminators, Hex units, and Forerunner Sentinels, the remaining work would likely be finished by the year's end.
Moreover, the palace's magnetic levitation rail network had connected all of Africa, with cities like Accra and Mombasa experiencing rapid growth due to their importance to Atlas. Humans, demi-humans, and elite aliens from various universes had begun settling in these cities.
The palace itself combined ancient Chinese architecture with modern technology, featuring black and gold as primary colors, with red accents on structural columns. The imperial emblem—a red Λ symbol paired with a golden dragon—adorned the exterior.
Inside an office roughly five hundred meters up in the main palace structure…
"Boss," said Apo, standing to the left of a large wooden desk, reporting to Samuel Young. "Perturabo reports that the unification of Universe One is nearing completion, with only the infected bioluminescent species posing a threat to humanity. Additionally, he has… found two newly arrived Primarchs."
Apo presented her file via
a hard-light display in front of Samuel.
"I see," Samuel said with a nod, scanning through the report. He had sensed the arrival of the new Primarchs even before Perturabo met them.
The report from the Elders also informed him that "two Descendants had arrived in Universe One."
This, along with the detail of them being "twins," left no doubt in Samuel's mind that Perturabo's charges were none other than Alpharius and Omegon, the enigmatic twin Primarchs from Warhammer 40K—known for their ambiguous loyalty and their Hydra Legion.
These twin Primarchs, identical in appearance, shared a single soul. Alpharius was the elder brother, while Omegon was the younger. In Warhammer 40K, Alpharius and Omegon led the Alpha Legion and, although they rebelled against the human empire in response to Horus Lupercal's call, their actions remained ambiguously loyal and traitorous, often "saving the empire through deception."
For Samuel, these two factors made the twins ideal for his imperial plans.
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