Mont saw the alien demigod coiled beneath the tower-like Warp Engine.
Mont nearly vomited from the mental shock.
It was a massive beast, nearly six meters tall, with six limbs and a bestial tail, its body covered in layers of angular chitinous armor.
Its large, deformed head was a slender triangle, with knife-slit eyes on either side of its skull.
Those eyes held intense malice, loathing, depravity, and greed.
Its robust, lizard-like legs were crouched on a massive pipe beneath the Warp Engine, two three-fingered claws capable of tearing apart vehicles plunged into the metal pipe, while the other two spread out beside its body like wings.
This creature seemed not to be a creation of this world, nor life that could be conceived in the galaxy.
It was as if it was a deep malice from a darker deep space, an emissary of some larger will within the hive city.
The moment Mont saw the monster, he felt a bone-chilling fear, his legs trembling uncontrollably.
The others around him were also frozen in place, a powerful fear assaulting their minds.
Most of them had their mouths wide open, too terrified to utter anything but silent wails.
This was a difference in life-level; that monster was absolutely not something mortals could contend with.
Mont even had the thought of fleeing; he felt utterly powerless.
He felt as if he had returned to his childhood, when his horns had just begun to sprout.
His crazed mother had rushed at them with pliers and a cleaver.
Marquite had desperately clung to his mother's leg, getting his head bloodied and his horns severed by her.
And Mont could only hide behind the cabinet, helplessly watching his brother being abused, silently sobbing softly.
The slug-like parasite in his chest constantly writhed, a slight pain stimulating Mont's nerves, making him come to his senses slightly.
No, no.
This time, he was not powerless.
Mont bit his lip, and foul blood flowed out, dripping onto his lips.
As long as he could, at the same time the monster injected the corrupted genes with its proboscis, in turn, erode its gene sequence...
Mont composed himself, suppressing the fear in his heart.
But most of the others around him had already reached their limit.
Mont was certain that as soon as one person began to break and run, the entire group would fall into chaos—
"Silence!!!"
A voice filled with powerful psychic energy spread through the amplifier to the entire underground palace.
Mont felt that the fear in his heart was suppressed in an instant.
He looked in the direction of the voice, and there, beneath the patriarch's right claw, the genestealer bishop stood, holding his staff high.
"This is the First Prophet, the Living Saint of the Four-Armed Emperor, the core and progenitor of our lineage!"
Powerful psychic energy, mixed with the Genestealer hive mind, pressed down on everyone present.
"Having seen the patriarch, why do you not bow!"
Through the loudspeakers held by the proselytizers, a voice filled with the powerful hive mind pierced into everyone's brains.
A dazed expression appeared on the faces of the people around Mont; even Mont felt that the things before his eyes became blurred.
The gloomy underground palace seemed to transform into a sacred cathedral with incense burning, and the light from the Warp Engine seemed to become the brilliant glow falling from stained-glass windows.
The genestealer bishop became a holy priest, and the genestealer distributed around became the Emperor's Death Angels.
And the six-limbed monster, nearly six meters tall, standing on that pipe, also began to become sacred.
The pipe beneath it transformed into a throne covered with scarlet velvet.
Two of its four sharp claws began to sprout pure white feathers, turning into angelic wings enveloped in a divine radiance.
Its deep purple skin turned snow-white, its triangular head became handsome, and its chitin-covered bald head grew brilliant golden hair.
In the blink of an eye, the terrifying monster transformed into a sublime Archangel with two wings, seated high upon a scarlet throne.
Those eyes, once filled with malice, hunger, greed, and cunning, instantly became gentle and sacred, as if containing love for all living beings in the mortal world.
Archangel! The Archangel was watching over them!
Mont was so moved he was almost in tears.
Archangel, our Lord of pure sacrifice,
To the deformed, You grant blessings,
To the horned, You grant acceptance,
To the blasphemous, You grant promises,
Those born with sin are those born with blessings,
Your mercy will erase all differences, unite us as one, and refine our base sins.
Praise the sacrifice of our Lord, and we too shall partake in this noble sacrifice.
A group of bloated, rotten, and fat comical little creatures urgently howled in Mont's mind.
They told Mont that what he saw before him was merely a shameless and greedy bug.
It was not a descendant of the cursed one, not that perfect Archangel, not the ninth one.
The parasite in Mont's chest tore at his internal organs, bringing him abruptly back to full consciousness.
Mont clutched his chest, enduring the pain as he looked ahead.
He had already walked most of the way through the underground palace in a semi-conscious state, and the six-meter-tall genestealer patriarch seemed to be right before him.
A chill ran through Mont's body.
How powerful that psychic energy had been just now; it was by no means something the genestealer bishop could have unleashed on her own.
It must have been the patriarch, through some means, strengthening her psychic power with the hive mind of the entire lineage.
It was just as Leman Russ had said.
Mont recalled what Alexander had said last night.
The genestealer, through psychic links, formed a kind of hive mind.
Under the control of this will, the genestealer were deluded by illusions and cognitive distortions, always believing themselves to be true humans and devout believers.
And the genestealer patriarch was the core and controller of the entire hive mind, the core of all psychic links.
As long as the genestealer patriarch was killed, the illusions and cognitive distortions covering all genestealer would temporarily disappear.
When they saw their mutated bodies and recalled their insane blasphemous acts, they would surely fall into chaos.
The opportunity lay within that.
But after taking two steps, Mont noticed something was wrong.
Hmm? That's strange? Why did the people in front stop before they even reached the genestealer patriarch?
And why did the genestealer patriarch not seem to have any intention of injecting corrupted genes?
Why were there fewer and fewer people in front of me?
Mont blinked in confusion.
As the number of people in front of him dwindled, he gradually saw things more clearly.
In front of the crowd, before the genestealer patriarch, was a huge pool.
The pool was full of foul-smelling, yellowish-grey thick liquid, with occasional bubbles of organic gas rising to the surface.
The crowd, deluded by the psychic power, looked dazed, falling into the pool with serene expressions.
Their flesh, skin, organs, and bones began to decompose the moment they fell into the pool, turning into pure biomass thick liquid that merged into the pool.
Mont held his breath, staring at the contents of the pool with an expression of disbelief.
In the biomass pool, a terrifying figure, even more Tyranid-like and massive than the genestealer, was prostrate.
That figure was stretching its four bladed limbs in the pool water.