My Life as A Death Guard (Warhammer 30K Male MC)

The vast and deep void stretched out endlessly, bathed in the pale yellow glow reflected from Graia-106.

Closer.

Even closer.

The Necron scythe-shaped ships continued along their preordained trajectory, neither slowing nor accelerating, gliding smoothly toward the Iron Warriors' main fleet.

Their steady pace was like a ticking time bomb beside Perturabo—its countdown unwavering.

Meanwhile, the Iron Warriors' cruisers surged forward, their plasma engines pushed to maximum, trailing brilliant blue flames in their wake.

Soon, the Necron vessels entered the attack range of the Iron Warriors' cruisers.

But no shots were fired.

Instead, the Iron Warriors adjusted their formation, shifting subtly into a faintly encircling stance.

Yet, the Necron ships did not retreat.

Had they been given an absolute order to advance?

According to previous battlefield assessments, these xenos—appearing almost robotic—truly seemed like mindless machines in combat.

They never retreated, never tired, never ceased their advance.

And those who commanded them wielded absolute authority—once an order was given, no subordinate disobeyed, even if it meant charging directly into the next wave of the Iron Warriors' firepower.

A shadow flickered deep in Perturabo's eyes.

'These aliens... their unyielding nature…'

Perturabo sharply cut off his own thoughts.

It's dangerous thinking.

He stood motionless on the deck of the Iron Blood, the data cables at his temple continuously feeding real-time reports from the leading cruisers, allowing him to issue commands with precision.

Meanwhile, on the surface of Graia-106, Necron aircraft had been spotted near Mining Sectors 03.

In response, Perturabo had ordered artillery support, followed by the deployment of Stormbirds and other aerial strike forces.

Nothing to be concerned about.

Let that provincial brute witness true warfare, the art of battle, instead of mindlessly piling soldiers onto the battlefield.

[Open fire.]

The command was issued, relayed with flawless precision to the vanguard cruiser squadron.

In an instant, a web of torpedoes was launched, ensnaring the Necron fleet in an inescapable net of fire, their brilliant contrails painting the void.

It's over.

Or perhaps, the Necron ships' defenses would at least prove impressive enough to catch his attention.

Satisfied, Perturabo shifted his focus back to the surface battle, where Stormbird losses were unexpectedly high—

[White Tungsten requesting emergency communication—]

[Red Copper requesting emergency communication—]

[Cinnabar requesting emergency communication—]

[...]

In a split second, dozens of emergency transmissions flooded in from the vanguard cruisers!

Perturabo immediately refocused on the data streams from the cruisers.

Yet—

After the desperate calls... silence.

Dead silence.

All around him, the officers and adepts on the bridge fell into a stunned, horrified hush.

A terrible thought flickered through Perturabo's mind like a bolt round's muzzle flash.

For 0.1 milliseconds, he forced himself into absolute calm.

He was without emotion, his heart and body forged of steel.

He accessed the main fleet's data stream.

Due to Perturabo's deep trust in sensors and his disdain for human observation, the Iron Blood had no viewport windows for direct battlefield observation.

Which meant—

The Primarch could not see the battle with his own eyes.

The signal from the Avian Servitor made Perturabo's expression change.

On the star map where the two fleets clashed, the screen was flooded with red warning symbols and grey failure indicators—not a single blue signal remained.

Then, the real-time feed arrived.

The Necron fleet still followed its dead-straight course, unwavering, unshaken—but now, their speed had surged to a level that would strike fear into any human mind!

Shattered steel drifted through the void, mingling with vivid bursts of crimson and cobalt, yet this was not the familiar sight of torpedo detonations.

Instead, the void was littered with countless cruiser fragments, echoing the dying screams of machines as they succumbed to catastrophic self-destruction.

At the forefront of the formation, the Cinnabar, an Iron Warriors cruiser, had been torn apart by the Necron fleet's charge.

And now—

The Necron fleet was hurtling straight toward the Iron Blood and its battlegroup!

[Scatter! Scatter! Σ formation!!!]

Gone was Perturabo's anger at the thought of embarrassing himself before the Death Guard.

At this moment, with his intimate understanding of fleet dynamics, he finally realized what they were truly facing.

And for the first time in centuries, a creeping sense of disbelief—no, fear—began to climb up his spine.

<+>

Hades stood frozen at the viewport, his gaze locked onto the left front quadrant of the battlefield.

Explosions bloomed continuously.

Torpedoes ignited, lances fired, their piercing beams the only light cutting through the endless black of space.

Yet, amidst those dazzling, blinding bursts of destruction, the Necrons' eerie green glow surged forth like a storm of motorcycles at full throttle, slipping effortlessly beyond the Iron Warriors' kill zone.

Too fast.

Far, far too fast.

The Necron fleet had shattered the limits of Hades' understanding.

Despite maintaining a considerable distance from the primary engagement zone, the scythe-like Necron ships still blitzed across his field of view in seconds.

From one end of the observation window to the other, they sliced through space at speeds unimaginable—and with them, the Iron Warriors' cruisers were being reduced to nothing but drifting wreckage.

The once-dense formation of the Iron Warriors' fleet had immediately broken apart like a startled flock of birds.

But Hades remained silent.

The moment the battle began, he had already sent word to Mortarion, requesting that he come witness the confrontation.

Though, knowing the Death Lord, he would likely ignore the message, too preoccupied with training his Death Guard.

So, to ensure Mortarion saw the truth, Hades recorded the moment the Necrons tore through the Iron Warriors' cruisers and forwarded it.

Beyond that, he had already ordered the Death Guard fleet into a loose formation, prepared to engage or retreat at a moment's notice.

But truthfully—

After witnessing what the Necron fleet was capable of…

Hades was no longer certain if even the Death Guard's Barbarus fleet could handle this threat.

Unconsciously, his lips pressed into a thin line.

His cybernetic left eye flashed red, its camera capturing everything, processing battle trajectories and feeding them directly into his left brain for real-time analysis.

The Necron ships had scattered the Iron Warriors' fleet like cold water dropped into hot oil, sending their formation into chaotic disarray.

Yet—

Hades soon noticed something unusual.

The Iron Warriors weren't breaking apart without reason.

On the contrary—

They were reforming.

What appeared chaotic at first glance was, in fact, a calculated maneuver to minimize losses.

Like a school of sardines in the ocean, dense, massive, but when sharks charge in, the school instantly scatters, hiding each individual fish within the mass of movement.

From Hades' understanding of both the Imperium and computational warfare, such non-linear movement might be solvable by brute-force calculations in a 2D plane.

But in three-dimensional space—with an entire Legion's fleet involved—

The sheer computational complexity would explode geometrically.

And yet…

Perturabo calculated it all… in his head?!

Hades clenched his jaw, a sharp inhalation hissing through his teeth.

The Iron Warriors' fleet never stopped moving.

They constantly shifted formations, adapting mid-battle—

And once it became clear that torpedoes were nearly useless against the Necron ships, Perturabo changed tactics.

Now, he was coordinating the fleet to fire at the absolute maximum range of their lances, hoping to bring the Necrons down before they could close the gap.

At the same time, Perturabo began predicting the enemy fleet's trajectories, preemptively positioning smaller ships at maximum firepower along their likely paths of advance.

Under the covering fire and formation protection of the main fleet, these reinforced forward ships charged directly at the weaker sections of the Necron vessels.

The Necrons had plunged deeper into the encirclement.

Here, larger battleships had already begun unleashing their full firepower.

The battlefield blurred into a chaotic maelstrom of light and fire, an overwhelming spectacle that Hades' organic right eye could no longer keep up with.

Most of the ships bore the Iron Warriors' deep gray colors, but amidst the constant formation shifts and the reflections of fire and explosion on their metallic hulls, the scene took on an illusory, dreamlike quality.

And then—

Within this haze of light and destruction…

A single emerald glow winked out.

?!

Inside the Death Guard command chamber, it was as if even breathing had stopped.

The hurried clatter of boots echoed down the corridors, far too loud, yet no one paid attention anymore.

Through the open doors, Mortarion stepped forward, his gaze immediately drawn to the observation window ahead.

The Primarch froze.

Unlike the mortals who could not comprehend the battle, unlike Hades, who required his cybernetic brain to keep up,

Mortarion saw Perturabo's command at a glance.

'This…'

Silhouetted against the light, Hades stared in disbelief at the still-flaring lance beams and firebursts.

But—

Even the death of a single star could not dim the brilliance of an entire constellation.

The Necron fleet was about to bring the Iron Blood—as well as the Iron Warriors' other ship—within their firing range!

On the Necron ships, their gauss weapons began to glow even brighter, the barrels aligning their aim—ready to unleash blasts containing the shattered remains of dead stars.

The Iron Warriors' ships grew ever more frenzied, and another few green lights flickered out.

The Iron Blood, dragging along its majestic frame, gathered up her skirts and began retreating, her shields shimmering like gemstones adorning her gown.

But within the intricate folds of that billowing dress, an arsenal of death lay watching—

Their gaze locked onto the Necron fleet, insignificant ants before her towering presence.

Just as the two sides were about to—

<+>

Necron Dirge-class Raider 0879.

Aboard the Necron vessel, the silent warriors continued their work without pause.

As low-tier constructs, the Necron soldiers aboard this raiding ship possessed no independent consciousness.

When the Tomb World's intelligence detected that the fleet above Graia-106 belonged to the same enemy force attacking their ground troops,

And when the size and strength of the fleet met the minimum extermination criteria required by protocol (which, in truth, was the Iron Warriors' main force, supplemented by a portion of the Death Guard fleet),

The Necron ships were dispatched to purge the void of these intruders.

The Necron nobles slumbered deep below.

Their rest was not to be disturbed.

These meddlesome xenos had to be expelled—

No one was permitted to interrupt the Necrons' eternal slumber.

Forcibly awakening the nobles prematurely could lead to unforeseeable damage to their higher consciousness,

And their already time-worn minds could no longer withstand such strain.

Now—

With their primary target within range, the programmed Necron warriors initiated their pre-attack protocol, conducting a comprehensive data scan on the enemy flagship.

#￥%...&***&%￥?!

A familiar yet terrifyingly distorted signal pulsed through the Necron network—

Not long ago, this very ship had contained trace amounts of C'tan shard energy.

????!!!!

An Alpha-level alert erupted across the Necron Dirge-class Raider!

These frantic, flickering data bursts shot directly into the Tomb World's core intelligence on Graia-106.

The information was far beyond normal parameters—

And combined with the existing wear and tear on the Tomb World's consciousness,

It created a brief but catastrophic cognitive lapse.

[PROTOCOL ERROR. WARNING. STUTTER. STUTTER. STUTTER.]

<+>

Mining Sectors 03 - Combat Zone

The Iron Warriors, locked in battle, stared in disbelief.

The once-relentless tide of Necron warriors suddenly froze in place.

For the first time, the fallen did not resurrect.

Above, in the sky

The Necron aircraft, which had once moved like phantoms through undefended airspace, began plummeting.

On the ground

The Necron raiding ships, moments away from breaching the Iron Warriors' central stronghold, came to a dead halt.

And Perturabo seized the opportunity.

In the span of mere moments, the Iron Warriors' forces shredded the immobilized Necron ships into fragments.

The one responsible for all of this, however, simply stared blankly out the observation window.

The victory was undeniable, yet—

Even as Hades' cybernetic left brain ran countless simulations,

None of them predicted this outcome.

The Necron ships had simply… stopped.

What the hell just happened?

[Deep within the depths of Tomb Graia-106… it opened its eyes.]

—For the first time, the Necrons intercepted a signal from Hades.

[Beyond ■■■, its gaze turned toward him— with interest.]

<+>

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