The ancient void shield generator, its rune-etched shell still faintly humming with residual Warp energy, now severed from its foundations, was immediately teleported back to the orbital shipyard in a blinding column of light.
"Time to retreat," Qin Mo commanded, his voice preternaturally calm, despite the chaos erupting behind him.
At that moment, the deafening roar of lasfire and the staccato bark of autoguns still echoed through the reinforced bulkhead entrance, shaking centuries-old dust loose from the cavern's stone ceiling.
Grey, still holding the line, continued firing as he backpedaled, preparing for extraction.
The moment his suppressing fire ceased, the enemy forces, who had been pushing into the underground cavern, poured inside, attempting to encircle them.
At the same time, one of the enemy officers, draped in the ornate and blasphemous vestments of the Cult of the Lord of Wisdom, froze mid-step as he noticed something was wrong.
The relic was gone.
A cold sweat ran down his forehead. His lips moved silently as if to deny what his eyes had seen.
No one in the Talon System had ever truly understood the ancient technology behind the artifact. They only knew how to use it.
But now, it was in enemy hands.
And if the Imperials figured out how to deactivate it, if the city's shield was lost…
The officer shuddered, then roared in desperation:
"DON'T LET THEM ESCAPE! STOP THEM AT ANY COST, NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES!"
However, only a few soldiers obeyed.
Because no one wanted to die for nothing.
The officer had anticipated this hesitation, so he had prepared accordingly.
A moment later, his personal guard emerged from a side corridor, grim and expressionless, carrying a quad-barreled heavy stubber mounted on a servo-rig.
Without hesitation, they opened fire on their own troops.
Hundreds of soldiers were torn apart in mere seconds, their bodies ripped into shreds by the merciless gunfire. Blood misted the air, painting the cavern walls in grotesque patterns.
The unexpected slaughter stunned everyone.
The surviving heretical troopers, desperate to escape the crossfire, broke formation and surged forward, driven not by loyalty, but by sheer terror.
Right into the Thunderborns' kill zone.
They weren't foolish enough to charge blindly, but they didn't need to.
They just had to keep moving forward. Driven by fear, not orders.
The traitor officer, meanwhile, fled deeper into the tunnels, pulling out a remote detonator from his coat.
He pressed the red switch.
Immediately, all weapons carried by his own troops began to glow red.
Then they exploded.
This entire sequence of events had transpired in under a minute.
Betrayal was commonplace under the Cult of the Lord of Wisdom.
But even within their twisted doctrine, there were consequences for treachery.
Yet, despite the gruesome display of forced martyrdom, its legacy was only carnage and silence.
It achieved nothing.
Because Qin Mo and the Thunderborns had already teleported away.
The officer surveyed the ruined battlefield, his teeth clenched in fury.
"Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting…"
The cavern was charred, littered with corpses and burning debris. The air reeked of promethium and cooked flesh.
His entire regiment was dead, and yet they had achieved nothing.
If the Imperials hadn't used teleportation, if they had been forced to exfiltrate on foot...
Then maybe, just maybe, they could have been stopped.
But none of that mattered now.
....
Aboard the Orbital Shipyard
Klein watched closely as the ancient relic suddenly materialized before him.
As soon as Qin Mo and the Thunderborns arrived, he turned to them.
"What's the current battlefield status?" Qin Mo demanded.
He barely spared a glance at Klein before lifting the artifact into the air, its weight seemingly irrelevant in his grasp, preparing to bring it elsewhere for study.
But before that he needed a status update.
"As per your orders, all Legion regiments have been deployed near the smaller cities. However, you and the Thunderborns returned far faster than expected, they are likely just beginning their offensives now," Klein reported.
"Good. No unexpected developments," Qin Mo nodded.
Everything was proceeding as planned.
This war had been one-sided from the start, their victory was inevitable.
"I'm leaving this to you for now. I need to study this relic and determine how to disable the void shield," Qin Mo declared, carrying the artifact into a secure chamber adjacent to the war room.
....
Qin Mo already understood the artifact's function.
Now, he needed to figure out how to deactivate the shield.
It wasn't a difficult task. If necessary, he could construct another void shield generator from scratch.
It would just take time.
Reverse-engineering the relic, however, was even easier.
Qin Mo analyzed every detail; materials, internal mechanisms, energy source.
And then he made a startling discovery.
The artifact drew power directly from the Warp.
That explained why it had no power cables, it didn't need any.
Instead, it extracted raw energy from the Immaterium and converted it into a stable defensive field.
Though its primary function was to anchor the city into an alternate dimension, creating an inside-out defensive structure, its dimensional technology wasn't particularly advanced.
But it wasn't just a shield.
It could also be a weapon.
For anyone else, the artifact would be impossible to control.
It had no external interface, no control panel, no command port.
This was intentional, a built-in security feature to ensure that no matter who possessed the relic, it would always function as a defensive measure.
If it had fallen into the Adeptus Mechanicus' hands, they would have been unable to manipulate it.
Even destroying it would have been a nightmare.
The relic was made of an unknown alloy. It wasn't particularly strong, but it had self-repair capabilities. Every scratch healed within moments, as if the material remembered its original shape.
For a Tech-Priest, this would be an unsolvable puzzle.
For Qin Mo, however, it was trivial.
Qin Mo activated his own ability, he now called his power to reshape the material world ‹The Forge of Creation›.
With practiced precision, he rewrote the relic's controls, his fingers weaving invisible threads of intent and design, altering its very function.
He also disabled its Warp-based energy supply, replacing it with a more stable power source.
Now, the void shield could be turned off.
But there was one consequence.
Once deactivated, not just the shield, but the very dimensional anchor would collapse.
Erasing a Hive City…
Qin Mo pondered.
Was the capital city of Talon II important enough to preserve?
Could he rebuild it later if needed?
The answer was clear.
The city wasn't worth saving.
So he shut the relic down.
The moment the artifact's power supply ceased, the dimensional anchor collapsed.
Simultaneously, the entire capital city of Talon II vanished.
Gone.
Not just the void shield; every structure, every street, every soul.
All of it, erased from reality.
....
Every warship crew member conducting orbital bombardments witnessed the event.
They blinked, and when their eyes opened again, the massive Hive City that had once stood proud on Talon II's surface was gone.
In its place: barren wasteland.
As if it had never existed at all.
The artifact wasn't just a shield generator.
It was a tool of erasure.
It could anchor a city to another dimension, and if controlled properly…
It could delete that city from existence.