The moment the crimson sphere of destructive energy touched the planet's surface, the entire atmosphere trembled violently like rippling water.
A thin blue film flared into existence among the major fortified cities and settlements on the planet.
The Imperium of Man possessed similar shields capable of enveloping entire cities against bombardments and psykers, yet compared to the Rangda's version, there was still a noticeable gap.
But these energy shields weren't meant to defend against planetary destruction. If the enemy felt had came close enough to unleash the cyclone torpedoes or other types of weapons onto the planet, the war was alredy a lost cause.
The power of the Super Saiyan was unveiled at that very instant.
The ene4rgy shields didn't even hold on for a second.
The entire defense the planet could put forth was disintegrated in an instant.
On the surface, the Rangda widened all three pairs of their eyes in disbelief, frantically attempting to do…something.
But they were powerless to act, powerless to stop what was coming.
They could only watch in horror as the vast force of destruction descended from the heavens.
The entire sky turned crimson.
The massive energy sphere plummeted.
The instant it struck the planet's surface, the atmosphere twisted and boiled as though torn apart by a colossal hand.
Cloud layers evaporated, exposing the cracked ground beneath. Crimson light erupted from the impact point and swept across the globe. Mountains collapsed, oceans boiled.
The planetary crust shattered like brittle glass.
Tectonic plates were wrenched upward, vast fissures splitting continents apart as molten magma spewed skyward in thousand-kilometer plumes.
The Rangda's massive fortresses, their cities, their forge-complexes, all were swallowed by lava within seconds. Hundreds of millions of Rangda perished without even the time for a scream, reduced to ash in an instant.
Soldiers froze in panic, civilians fled in chaos. None knew what to do; death was the only certainty.
The energy sphere continued its descent, piercing the mantle and reaching the planetary core.
The core churned violently under the assault.
The gravitational field began to collapse. The entire planet swelled like an overinflated balloon, the surface bulging—and then—
BOOM!
In the soundless void of space, the explosion's blinding light seemed to shatter the vision of all who beheld it.
The planet ripped apart within its star system, fragmenting into billions of burning shards.
A shockwave spread outward in a perfect ring, sweeping across the battlefield.
Nearby Rangda vessels were all annihilated in an instant. Warships vaporized, defense satellites torn apart like paper.
Countless ships twisted and broke within the gravitational turbulence, crushed like toys in the grip of an invisible giant.
The destructive power of the planet's death was beyond terrifying.
No screams. No transmissions.
Nearly half of the Rangda fleet vanished under the onrushing shockwave, consumed before they could even react.
Light and flame devoured everything.
The surviving Rangda vessels and their lone War moon now appeared pitiful and exposed.
Axis had already been pulled back by psychic teleportation. As the portal hissed open, Kasha stood drenched in sweat, but there was an unmistakable smile on her face.
She stared at the golden figure stepping out from the roiling energy currents. She had seen Axis destroy plants before. But no matter how many times she had seen it, it never got old.
This time, the energies from the planet's destruction had disrupted her psychic signal so severely that it had taken ten times her normal effort to bring him back.
Beyond the viewport, a brilliant cosmic flower was bloomin, dazzling and almost unreal in its beauty as it appeared to Kasha's senses.
"How was it? That was a pretty firework show, wasn't it?"
"Pretty my ass. I nearly failed to bring you back just now," Kasha snapped, wiping the sweat form her face.
"Hahaha, even if you didn't, I could've flown back myself," Axis replied with a grin, stepped forward, and lifted Kasha but the waist, he planted a kiss on her sweat covered cheek, and said, "Don't underestimate my shields. I'm not about to be killed by my own powers aftermath."
Within the Imperial fleet, silence reigned.
Russ's wolf-like eyes reflected the fading blaze of the explosion. He had seen the power before. But the pure destructio his son could unleash still made this throat tighten.
Chogatai Khan's tactical visor flashed with readouts, the explosion's energy output registering as equivalent to three days of a star's total emission.
He muttered, "This isn't war… This is divine retribution. This is the Emperor's wrath made manifest."
"Axis."
Lion El'Jonson's voice rumbled through the comms, deep as the toll of a cathedral bell. "You haven't merely destroyed a planet… You've rewritten the Rangda's entire understanding of war."
Even his body trembled slightly.
Never had he imagined a single warrior could wield such force, destroying a planet as though crushing a speck of dust. But here he was witnessing such a scene himself.
The sheer magnitude of Axis's power still left him without words.
What if Axis magnified that dreadful energy sphere tenfold and hurled it into a gas giant? Lion could image the destruction he could unleash.
For a fleeting moment, the Lion wanted to ask Axis whether he could ignite a gas giant, or even a potent star.
If a blue giant were to explode, hundreds of light-years would be ravaged.
That would be a true cosmic cataclysm.
Yet he did not ask. He was afraid to know the answer. For the first time, the Lion, whose beast-like nature had never known fear, felt something akin to dread.
Who could witness such a sight and remain calm? Who could face it and not feel the weight of terror?
Clearly, if the Rangda had cleary understood how their first feet was destroyed, they woud've stopped the war then and there.
Tarta's six jointed limbs trembled in a nervous spasm.
The hololithic star map before it showed that over 47% of the fleet had gone missing in the shockwave, including the battleship that carried the royal bloodline.
"Transmit an encrypted message to the homeworld immediately!"
Stress-induced mucus oozed from the seams of its carapace as all three pairs of its compound eyes focused. "Code level: Apocalypse. Content is only one sentence—"
"Humans… possess a walking… shard of Star God."
The communications officer's forelimbs froze in midair, despair flickering through its bio-electric pulses, yet it silently obeyed the commander's order and sent the signal to the homeworld.
In its understanding, no living creature had ever possessed such combat power.
No ordinary lifeform could annihilate fleets, destroy planets, and still walk unprotected in the void.
In all of known reality, only one kind of being could do such a thing. They were the true gods of the material universe, the C'tan, the Star Gods.
The Galactic Empire had first learned of the Star Gods from the Necrons.
In truth, they had destroyed more than one Necron dynasty.
The destruction of that dynasty had yielded them fragments of Blackstone Matrix technology, as well as several examples of Necron science that they had later replicated.
In the core of that minor dynasty's tomb complex, they had discovered records of the star gods, the monstrus powers they wielded, and a tesaract vault containing a shard of the star gods.
It had been a trap set by the dying neocrons as a means of mutual destruction, and the rangda forces of the time had falln for it.
The tesseract had self-destructed, wiping out everything from the Tomb world to their fleets, preventing them from ever collecting enough information.
But they had learned fragments of knowledge regarding the Star Gods' power from what little remained, and what little the exploratin team had managed to transmit.
Each Star God embodied a fundamental law of the universe.
They wielded the power to reshape reality, to lay waste to worlds, and possessed inexhaustible reserves of energy.
Before they had fully awakened into consciousness, they had already begun instinctively feeding on nearby stars, consuming their energy entirely.
At their height, each Star God could annihilate star systems—several at a time—and cross entire galaxies with ease.
For reasons unknown to them, no complete Star Gods now existed. All had been shattered into shards. Yet even a shard retained the power to destroy a planet without effort.
At this moment, Tarta suspected that the golden-glowing human before him was not truly human at all, but rather a weapon forged by the Emperor of Mankind.
The Galactic Empire itself had once sought to weaponize the power of a Star God.
A scientist had proposed a hypothesis: build a device capable of binding a Star God shard and sealing it inside a living host, allowing that host to wield the Star God's power.
As the proposal didn't seem remotely possible at the time, the plan had been shelved.
Yet now, it seemed that shelving it had been their greatest mistake.
For there was no doubt, humanity had used a Star God's power. Before this war with the Imperium, they had already gathered intelligence on humanity's Primarchs.
The gene-forging of the Primarchs had made their bodies peerless in the physical universe, unmatched in resilience and power.
The Lord of Mankind must have sealed a Star God shard within the body of a Primarch, granting such terrifying might.
They had seen a Primarch once before, and had almost captured him.
Though they had failed, they had recovered fragments of his flesh, which could be used for cloning experiments.
No matter the cost, they had to create a Star God–class weapon, something that could destroy planets, to stand against this golden demon.
Tarta's three pairs of eyes twisted with fear. Mucus seeped from his shell as he gave the order with a shudder: "Retreat! All ships, retreat!!"
He was utterly broken with terror, as were all the Rangda fleet commanders.
Gone was the arrogance from when they had first set out to conquer the Imperium.
No thrill of conquest remained.
Once his order was relayed, the fleet's comms fell silent for several seconds.
"Cabocha, copy. Confirming orders, preparing to return."
"Uverto, copy. Confirming orders, preparing to return."
"Capora, copy. Confirming orders, preparing to return."
Every battleship reported to the War moon in turn.
None of the Rangda vessels hesitated. None attempted to parley with humanity.
There was only one thought among them: flee. Flee as far as possible.
Flee from this monster. From this terrifying god of destruction. From this golden demon.
But it was already too late. Axis's figure reappeared on their scopes.
He could not simply allow them to escape.
He only needed some of them to return and carry the warning, not all.
Half losses would not suffice; they should lose at least seventy percent. Only then would he permit a few ships to live and report.
Golden ki still burned around him as he slowly raised his hand, a fresh sphere of light forming at his fingertip.
"Run," Axis said, and his psychic power radiated his voice across the fleets, "Then tell your kind, humanity is not to be trespassed against."
The blazing golden sphere shot into the Rangda fleet, birthing another storm of death in the void.
The Rangda did not fire back; they ran as though their lives depended on it, because it did.
By the time Axis had annihilated over sixty percent of the fleet, only a few hundred Rangda ships remained, clustered around the War-Moon as they escaped into the Warp.
That War Moon had been spared intentionally. Axis knew that leaving only small fry alive might dilute the message.
A commander had to survive to deliver the report, to make the warning carry weight and threaten the Rangda civilization as a whole.
Once they were safely in the Warp, Tarta collapsed to the deck, breathing hard.
So close, so close to being destroyed.
No, this time he would make certain the Galactic Empire authorized the creation of a Star God weapon…somehow, no matter how impossible it seemed.
Only by harnessing a shard of a Star God to create a humanoid weapon could they hope to fight that thing.
Humanity had already done it, and they too, would.
They could not be left behind. "Just you wait, humans. When the Galactic Empire returns, we will destroy you. If you can make one humanoid Star God weapon… then we will make ten."
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Throw them stones at me!!!! come oen!!!!!!!!