Warhammer: The 11th Primarch - The Black Emperor

The massive planet once called Araneus Prime, now renamed Necromunda, naturally saw its Iron Towers become Hive Cities.

At the bottom of the largest Hive City, black-armored warriors descended into the pipes under the curious and fearful eyes of the trapped residents.

Nareth crouched slightly as he moved through the damp and filthy sewer tunnels.

After several hundred paces, he spotted a corpse on the ground, clutching its leg, its foot mangled and bloody. Moments later, as expected, he found a Spine Crystal in the corner of a sewage pit.

The Primarch flickered forward and casually retrieved the "Lawyer" potion's secondary ingredient, placing it in his massive backpack.

The Sleepless, seeing the Primarch take interest in the coral-like crystal, began picking them up as well. Darkness and filth posed no hindrance to them.

A few dozen steps further, Nareth suddenly drew his power sword and swung it.

The blue disintegration field wrapped around the blade struck a tentacled creature leaping from the sewage. The two-meter-wide, swollen, slimy creature was shredded into pieces.

'Sludge Jelly.'

In the toxic sewage pits and sludge seas of the Hive's lower levels, where life seemed impossible, these creatures had flourished.

Sludge Jellies used their tentacles to sense prey, then pounced, wrapping their victims and paralyzing them with toxic secretions before slowly digesting them in their gelatinous bodies.

'Not a potion ingredient.' Nareth casually hacked apart another ancient Sludge Jelly.

The Hive's underlevels were dangerous; for any experienced survivor, they would carefully avoid sewage pits, shadows, and other known threats.

But for the highly perceptive Shadows of Order, these dangers were trivial. They pressed forward, slaying hostile creatures one by one.

For a while, until other threats migrated in, the desperate inhabitants of this area would find it temporarily safer.

'Based on scans, the Giant Spider was last seen in an abandoned dome, dragging off some unlucky scavengers.'

With that in mind, Nareth exited the winding pipes and entered an abandoned dome.

No sooner had he stepped inside than hundreds of creatures unfolded their wings and swooped toward the black-armored warriors.

'Ripperjacks.'

Nareth instantly identified them: hybrid creatures resembling oversized bats crossed with piranhas. Ripperjacks hunted by hanging from ceilings, snatching prey with hooked claws, then wrapping them in wings before gouging out their eyes and tearing open faces and throats.

'Primary material for the Red Priest pathway Sequence 8: Provoker.'

Deciding to preserve their intact corpses, Nareth took a deep breath. Light flickered in his eyes as he unleashed a psychic scream.

A shockwave of warp energy, carefully contained, spared his sons behind him and engulfed the Ripperjacks completely.

"Mind Shriek" shattered the minds of hundreds of Ripperjacks instantly, and they dropped lifeless to the floor.

"Fan out and search for traces of the Giant Spider."

The Shadows of Order obeyed. While they scattered, Nareth hauled the Ripperjack's bodies back to the Kingdom of Disorder.

'With the Ripperjacks secured, I only need the Skugg for the 'Provoker' potion.'

'Orks love to raise Squigs, especially the Snakebite Clan. They come in many forms, basic jumpers, edible types, even ridable ones.'

'Some jumpers can evolve into Squiggoth. They're part of the Ork ecosystem, and within the power of their gesalt field, all possibilities exist.'

He stored all the Ripperjacks' corpses in a palace within the Kingdom of Disorder. Upon returning to reality, a "Hunter" approached with a report.

"Father, I've found traces of a massive spider."

Nareth immediately summoned the other Shadows of Order and rushed to the scout's location.

There, he saw many sticky silk strands hanging from above, and V-shaped indentations on the floor and walls, distinctive leg prints.

"Track the trail."

The Shadows scattered, some inspecting the floor, others checking the walls. After a brief discussion, they agreed on the direction and led the way.

Even for native Necromundans, the Giant Spider was a legend passed down for millennia. It was both worshipped and feared, more nightmare than reality.

Everyone who encountered it had one fate: death. That's what earned it its mythical status.

Yet the underhives, where life was cheap, were never short of desperate adventurers, lured by the spider's rare meat and venom, hoping to trade one kill for a fortune and a way to ascend to the elite levels.

All they found was death.

Giant Spiders were fiercely territorial. Every intruder was dragged off and cocooned, consumed alive.

As the Order's hunting party advanced, the webs grew thicker; they had entered the spider's domain.

Nareth looked ahead. With Warp Sight, he spotted two fearsome lifeforms glowing with fear and death, clear projections within the warp, on the surface of a lake.

'Titanic Raft Spiders.'

'Today is a lucky day.'

Among all Giant Spider variants, Raft Spiders were the rarest. Their pure, gem-like eyes tempted every greedy hunter.

Nareth snatched a chainsword from a nearby "Hunter." In his hands, it was more like a dagger.

He dashed forward rapidly, reaching the sewage pool's edge.

Two near-100-meter-tall Raft Spiders skimmed the surface with eerie grace.

Despite their Titan-sized bulk, they glided on water like ghosts, yet that was a natural trait of Raft Spiders and the origin of their name.

The moment Nareth looked at them, they returned his gaze.

They instinctively sensed the terrifying aura from the small black figure. Their abdomens flexed, silk glands tensed, and web-strands lashed out like white whips.

Nareth's black eyes narrowed. Several locations on the spider glowed with spiritual energy.

'Incredible… Their entire bodies are potion materials. Eyes, fangs, silk glands, even their legs.'

To preserve these materials, he avoided using his power sword or explosive rounds.

Instead, he sprinted, his every step perfectly placed on protruding stones to stay above the sewage.

At the same time, his mind reached toward the spiders.

Boom!

His consciousness slammed into two blood-red webbed gates protecting their minds. The web trembled violently.

His eyes narrowed again. The mental strength of these spiders was astonishing. Considering they hadn't trained their will, their resilience surprised him.

He shifted focus onto one Raft Spider, condensing his psychic force into thousands of black mind-flames and hurled them at the webbed gate.

Meanwhile, his body kept moving, charging the second spider.

With three great strides, Nareth leapt, narrowly dodging a fang strike.

Through Warp Insight, he spotted a narrow gap beneath the spider's hardened shell, just where the abdomen connected.

In mid-air, he twisted, dodging falling legs.

Landing on the spider's underbelly, he plunged the chainsword into the gap and then activated its rune-engraved hilt.

The roaring blade tore through the spider's insides, carefully avoiding silk glands controlled precisely by Nareth's strength.

When the Shadows of Order arrived, they saw the blade burst out of the back of a creature.

At the same time, the other spider, mentally overwhelmed, crashed dead into the sewage lake.

Amid flying sewage, Nareth caught his falling chainsword, landed atop the spider's shell, deactivated the runes, and casually tossed it to a nearby Shadow of Order.

"Search the surrounding area."

The warriors snapped out of their shock and fanned out.

Nareth dragged the colossal Raft Spiders into the Kingdom of Entropy, thinking:

'I'm uncertain about some ingredients, but the Raft Spider's silk gland is almost certainly the main component for the 'Demoness' pathway's Sequence 6: Pleasure potion.'

'From this sequence onward, Demonesses can produce silk. The trouble is, I still haven't gathered materials for Sequence 8: Instigator'

'I have the others, but not the Catachan Brainleaf.'

In his memory, Necromunda's future underhives would be flooded with Catachan brainleaf, but Catachan hadn't yet been discovered by the expedition fleet, so its rare flora hadn't reached this world.

'I'll have to wait for the Dice of Prophecy to fully recharge. Once ready, I can use the established link to divine the starmap leading to Catachan.'

'If successful, I'll dispatch a fleet to claim the planet. Catachan would be the perfect recruiting world for the Seventh Chapter, as their core is the Red Priest pathway, the Hunters.'

Nareth's eyes lit up; he had an idea.

'Why not divine every special world I know of, assigning them as recruitment planets for each Chapter based on their unique culture and core pathway?'

'Vostroya, for instance, would be perfect for the Eleventh chapter, centered on the Black Emperor.'

The key to it all lay with the Dice of Prophecy. So, after storing both Raft Spider corpses in the Kingdom of Disorder, Nareth went straight to the third layer, Realspace to check on its progress.

...

If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.

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