The main power room has six entrances and exits. Regardless of whether or not the ship, the Talon of Destruction, was originally designed this way, it was normal for it to become like this after being tainted by Slaanesh.

Conrad Coetzes let go of his hand, allowing Markan Ferros's heavy body to fall uncontrollably to the ground. He had not committed any serious crimes in the last two hundred years, except for many minor injuries. It wasn't the physical damage that kept him immobile, it was the mental shock that kept him awake now, a miracle that combined the strengths of the original Space Marine itself with his own tenacious willpower.

The initiators don't care about these trifles. The Nightlord's primordial body was simply wondering why the original reactor inside the power chamber, the ...... "mutated demon engine", protruded nine activated metal tentacles from each entrance.

The members of the Iron Hand were naturally aware of the fact that there was a little Tzeentch's power mixed in with this inexplicable raid. But for the crew of the Claw of Destruction, dealing with the hijacking of the main reactor, which is the lifeblood of their survival, is obviously at the highest priority, and which faction the enemy belongs to may be of some use in terms of tactical handling and deployment, but not much, so the warriors of the Iron Hand did not delve into the question - even if they had this idea, their small number of think tanks were almost all in the lower cabins, and there was no way to use psionic energy to probe at a deeper level.

But as a crew member of the Storm Boundary, Coates apparently had a different perspective on the matter.

+ "Envoy of the Throne blessed by Tzeentch", do you have any thoughts about the possible alliance between the Demon of Slaanesh and Tzeentch on this ship? +

When he was still in the Star Torch, about the "connection with Tzeentch and the Well of Eternity", Fujimaru Rika told everyone the bottom. So it's natural for him to tease the other with this – and it's not the first time.

Rika Fujimaru's reaction to this was no reaction at all.

+ Don't know. According to my quick course in demonology from the Emperor, Tzeentch is hated by all the other gods, but if it's Slaanesh, the chances of joining forces are quite high, as long as they both think "this might be fun". +

She completely ignored the first salutation in her recitation, and directly began to answer the latter question:

+ Speaking of which, what went wrong with the main power room? +

+ The plasma reactor was turned into a demon engine. +

+Hmm...... Since this is a Tzeentch, let me ask one more question: Are you sure it's a demon engine? Could it be something else that looks like a demon engine? +

+ The Iron Hand thinks so, I haven't looked at it closely. +

+ Check as quickly as you can - if it's a demon engine, it's weird. +

+ One minute. You can use this time to share your inferences. +

He made a gesture behind him to "follow, push, and standby", and then nonchalantly stepped over the cover line set up by the Iron Hand, and glided in shadow from the wide passage to the door of the main power room.

+ It's not a corollary, it just feels weird. + Rika Fujimaru's tone was a little hesitant, + Enkidu went to the lower level of the ship, where he found and destroyed a Chaos Ritual that was likely to be mixed with the power of two gods at the same time. The information I got from the middle command room said that it was only after the lower level had a problem that the main power room showed something wrong. +

Sensing Coetze's approach, many of the activated tentacles that had been dormant at the entrance also "awakened". These ugly creatures, made of the fusion of mechanical and human flesh and blood, even show a strange grace when they stretch their bodies. At this distance, the Primordial's hearing was able to pick up the sounds of the other five gates behind the wall, but the tentacles in front of him were just lazily prone in the doorway when no one was approaching, showing no desire to attack - even if he had wasted a lot of time with Phyllos near the distant front line.

It's as if they don't really care about "corrupting the whole ship", but just "preventing others from entering the power room".

+ Generally speaking, because of this apparently strongly related sequence, it should be considered that "the ritual of the lower level summoned the demons of the power room". But this is subspace, Geller's position is broken, does the demon really need that kind of ritual summoning with a massive blood sacrifice when he comes to the ship? The specifications are too high, right? +

Murmurs of sighs began to float in the air, tender as sympathetic murmurs, rich musk mixed with stench into a disgusting taste, as if forbidden secrets and blasphemous knowledge creeped on the epidermis of the tentacles. The muzzles and cannon doors of guns were revealed in the surging flesh, and the strange rays of projectiles made of human bone and chaotic energy converged towards Coz. The Astarte assault team also had to pause and raise their shields to defend in the face of this kind of battle, and for the original body, this was completely a gentle drizzle attack.

Koz was even in the mood to send a message while evading:

+ I can't say if you're living for yourself. +It's completely impossible to see how he did it, but all ranged attacks, even if they seem to hit, just pass through them as if they were in a phantom or air. + After all, you've never had anything called a "ritual" when you need to summon something. +

+…… Can this be the same! + Rika Fujimaru's voice sounded a little puffy, + In addition, the fact that the plasma reactor was turned into a demon engine itself was also suspicious. +

A tentacle swept towards Koz with a lightning bolt, and as if he had expected it, he avoided it with only a slight sideways turn, and even carved several parallel deep wounds on it with the lightning claw that he opened. As a result, the tentacles emitted a scream that could drive mortals crazy in an instant, and even the Terminator team behind him stopped for a moment, but Coz himself was not affected in the slightest.

+ How to say? +

+Isn't the Demon Engine made like "fusing demons into a mechanical structure"? I've done something similar in Vision, so I know how it works. But, even if it's a demon, do you think they can get into the plasma reactor and control its mechanism? That's a plasma reactor, the main reactor that can propel a battle barge! The energy of the physical universe is undoubtedly energy, and even if the demon enters it, can he still have a life? +

Because it is a direct conversation with the mind, the efficiency of reciting information is far faster than the language itself. In the moment that this thought was passed through and received by Koz, he had quickly severed the screaming tentacles with the pair of lightning claws of Mercy and Forgiveness, and poured him with viscous and foul-smelling purple blood, which was clearly clearly polluted by chaos, and the original body did not bother to pay attention to it.

The move visibly enraged the enemy, and the remaining eight massive tentacles were noticeably more active, and the waves of subspace surged, and the ubiquitous forces of chaos began to heal the damage inflicted by the regenerated tentacles. And at the moment when they danced wildly, the Terminator team behind Koz began to fire as ordered—using ranged weapons scavenged from the Iron Hand.

+ Isn't there also a huge demonic engine like the Chaos Titan? What's more, demon-powered Chaos ships don't seem to be uncommon. +

Coates strode forward, the massive body as light as a falling leaf in the stormy onslaught of screaming creatures. He moved fast and slow in a strange and unpredictable course, while being sliced through the obstacles of his tentacles like butter by the dissolving force field and the lightning claws wrapped in the emperor's psionic energy, propelled as if he were in a no-man's land. For the Iron Hand Commandos, the distance was like a moat in front of him.

+ In that case, it's not faster and safer to start with the Ponderor Array at the main console than to start corrupting from the main power source. +

+ It is true. +

As he spoke, he had already sliced through the last disgusting layer of defense on his tentacles, tore open the already desecrated adamantite door with brute force, and looked inside the power room.

+ Your inferences are correct. +

Fighting demonic creations in subspace almost always turns into a never-ending war of attrition, so Coetz quickly retreats after a glimpse. And for the original body, that moment of peeping was enough for him to see all the details clearly.

+ There are some manifestations of Chaos Runes inside, but the reactor itself is mostly intact. +

Coetzes retreated in an instant, and the Terminator team that received the order slowly retreated while keeping shooting. And at this time, Rika Fujimaru asked a new question:

+ Then now a new question arises: if the plasma reactor is intact, then why is the ship barely afloat almost exclusively on backup energy - where does all the energy from the main power source go? +

+ That's because—+

Coetzes himself stopped this intuitive reasoning. He had thought that the ship's power system was massively offline because the Iron Hand itself had physically cut off all the energy transmission lines of the main power source. Extrapolating the results in normal logic, this does create energy supply problems – but is it really?

The reason why they want to cut off all the energy pipelines so extreme is because there is chaos corruption spreading along the pipelines. In other words, if such extreme treatment had not been carried out, the entire Claw of Destruction would have been completely corrupted by Chaos. At that time, it was clear that the pipeline was still exporting energy normally: traces of safety accidents that Coates had seen along the way, as well as Fellos's memories of it, confirmed this.

- Then the problem arises, now that all the energy pipelines have been cut off, the energy in the intact plasma reactor has nowhere to go, and it is long overdue to break through the tolerance threshold of the shell and produce an explosion. But even at Coetze's recent glimpse of the main power room, he saw no sign of reactor overload.

Where does all the energy it outputs go?

There is also a small chapter at six o'clock. Wait for me to come to my workstation.

(End of chapter)