War Hammer: The reality Bender Chapter 6 6: A Reality Bender’s Logic

At the entrance to the grand hall, Rowan swept his gaze back and forth, taking in the entirety of the utterly catastrophic scene before him.

It was painfully obvious that an exceptionally brutal battle had just ravaged this space.

The vaulted ceiling, the deck plating, the surrounding bulkheads, and the primary support pillars were absolutely riddled with cratered bullet holes and scorch marks from violent detonations.

The corpses of white-haired Sisters of Battle, clad in their pristine power armor, lay haphazardly strewn across the deck in a chaotic tangle, thoroughly intermingled with the massive, armored forms of dead Chaos Space Marines.

As Rowan surveyed the slaughter, he realized there were scarcely any intact corpses remaining in the entire hall.

He could not help but feel a sudden, throbbing headache.

"It seems I wasted a bit too much ti on the way here, arriving a step too late..."

However, it was fortunate that he had at least managed to save one Loyalist Sister.

Miraculously, she was a ferocious warrior who had single-handedly slain a Chaos Space Marine clad in Terminator armor.

Considering this, his arrival was perhaps not too late after all.

"Is this... rely a mortal?"

The reaction of the surviving Chaos Space Marines was far less composed.

The tactical oculars built into their helms swept over this suddenly appearing enemy ti and ti again, yet they failed to detect a single extraordinary trait about him.

They noted that he did not even appear to be carrying a weapon.

Yet, the invisible force field currently protecting the Canoness was undeniably linked to this newcor.

Faced with an unknown threat, every true Astartes, whether loyal to the Emperor or bound to the Ruinous Powers, possessed only one fundantal response!

Moving with the synchronized precision of a deadly machine, the Chaos Space Marines simultaneously raised their bolters!

In the very next instant, a deafening roar of gunfire erupted!

The caliber of the bolters wielded by the Adeptus Astartes could easily be likened to handheld artillery, and their destructive yield was naturally far beyond any armant a re mortal could hope to wield.

Tragically for the traitors, from Rowan's perspective as a Reality Bender, this synchronized volley posed virtually zero threat.

Within the field operative manual of the Global Occult Coalition, there were three absolute prerequisites outlined for successfully executing a Reality Bender: Speed, Surprise, and Violence of Action.

Speed dictated that an execution operation, from initiation to conclusion, must not exceed a single second, as a Reality Bender's reaction ti was incredibly swift; a lethargic strike would easily be countered.

Surprise was required because a Reality Bender's abilities allowed them to rapidly adapt to any perceived threat.

This necessitated strike teams to attack when the target was entirely off guard, or to employ diversionary tactics to mask the true killing blow.

Violence of Action was simple to understand: the offensive payload must be as devastatingly powerful as possible.

The aim was to instantly overload the upper limits of the Reality Bender's localized distortion field, securing an imdiate kill before the target could rely think their way out of death.

Clearly, the Chaos Space Marines' volley had failed to satisfy a single one of these vital elents.

Every single mass-reactive bolt experienced a profoundly bizarre deviation mid-flight, as if their forward vectors had been fundantally rewritten by the interference of an unknown force.

The ceiling, deck, and bulkheads imdiately surrounding Rowan were instantly cratered by fist-sized detonations, yet the youth himself remained completely and utterly unhard.

"Ranged attacks are ineffective?"

As biological weapons originally forged by the Emperor, post-human monstrosities heavily modified by nineteen distinct surgical augntations, their combat instincts and reaction speeds remained terrifyingly sharp even after betraying the Imperium and humanity.

Half of the squad maintained a relentless suppressive fire, while the other half of the Chaos Space Marines instantly drew their chainswords and combat blades, pushing off the deck to charge directly toward their target.

Unlike the followers of other Ruinous Powers, Slaanesh's twisted blessings granted these Astartes a speed that was unearthly and viciously agile, moving like a hurricane sweeping across the surface of a world.

To them, a distance of a re few dozen ters was sothing to be crossed in the blink of an eye!

Yet, there was a glaring problem.

Reflected within their retinal lenses, the face of their target appeared to be... smiling?

"Hah, walking all the way here, did you really think I ca completely unprepared?"

Along his journey to the primary warzone, Rowan, having discovered just how wonderfully cooperative Machine Spirits could be, had scavenged a substantial number of high-yield weapons.

He had utilized his reality bending abilities to aggressively soothe them, maintaining the weapons in a state of ecstatic spiritual joy.

With a re thought, the optical camouflage field cloaking the imdiate space around him dissolved, revealing a cluster of pitch-black muzzles.

Hovering suspended in the air beside Rowan like drone weapon platforms were no fewer than thirteen distinct firearms.

This included plasma pistols, ltaguns, autocannons, heavy bolters, and hellguns.

They swiveled in perfect, lethal synchronization, aiming directly at the charging enemy with murderous intent.

"What?"

Before the bewildered Chaos Space Marines could even process the sudden manifestation and attempt evasive maneuvers, the Machine Spirits of every single weapon unleashed a unified, thunderous roar.

Firing at speeds that completely defied material logic, they aggressively vented their righteous fury upon the enemies of mankind!

In the following microsecond, caught within an apocalyptic torrent of dense munitions and searing plasma, every single charging Chaos Space Marine was practically lted out of physical existence.

They evaporated like morning dew under a blazing sun.

Perhaps Astartes blessed by Khorne could have relied on absurd ranged-damage resistance to weather the storm and complete the charge.

Or perhaps those bound to Tzeentch could have manifested a specific psychic ward to escape the deluge.

Unfortunately, these Slaaneshi warriors, who heavily prioritized reflexes and agility, possessed absolutely no viable solution when trapped in a kill-zone devoid of any space to dodge.

Naturally, if the Champion of Slaanesh, Lucius the Eternal, had been present, he might have woven an impenetrable net of flawless sword strikes to deflect the entire storm of fire.

However, there were clearly no champions of such martial caliber among this warband.

It was entirely thanks to the imdiate sacrifice of these vanguard warriors, who montarily soaked up the absurd torrent of firepower, that the remaining Astartes were able to rely on their transhuman reflexes to dive behind nearby barricades for cover.

What followed next was a scene of absolute, grinding suppression.

As if the floating weapons possessed bottomless magazines, an endless storm of firepower pinned the survivors utterly in place.

Blasts of plasma, searing lta beams, and high-explosive shells scread re inches above their heads, ensuring not a single traitor could peek out to return fire.

If this continued, it would rely be a slow, agonizing death!

Given the wealth of an Astartes' combat experience, this grim realization instantly crystallized in the minds of every survivor.

Following the hand signals of a Chaos Sorcerer who had assud operational command through the chain of succession, two Warp Talons bearing twisted mutations imdiately tore through the Veil to initiate a localized warp jump.

"Oh?"

Rowan imdiately detected a bizarre surge of esoteric energy detonating directly behind him.

He sensed the barrier between the materium and the Immaterium being violently ripped open as a warp rift began to form.

Reacting instantly, Rowan casually turned around, reached out, and grabbed the forming warp rift with his bare hands, violently slamming it downward into the deck.

The two Warp Talons who had just teleported through were imdiately and evenly fused into the ceramite plating beneath their feet, dying instantly and horrifically upon materialization.

"What?"

The Chaos Sorcerer, observing this precise outco through his psychic sight, was utterly stupefied.

How had the enemy just disrupted a psychic teleportation?

He grabbed a warp rift with his bare hands?

How in the Ruinous Powers was that even possible?

Had Rowan heard the traitor's internal screaming, he would have undoubtedly replied:

"It is just reality bending, ain't it magical!"

Reality Benders were simply that inherently illogical.

Much like the Orks, if he thought he could do it, then he absolutely could!