Satoru frowned, his eyes narrowing as he considered the situation. Ah, just when things were getting good; this just had to happen. Finally, he sighed and shook his head. Oh well, it's not like he had qualms about this sort of thing. But, in his previous life, Satoru avoided it as much as possible, even handicapping himself at times, just to preserve their lives. Why? He still wasn't sure – not when they've taken so much from him and given so little in return. "Humans? You're saying humans – from the Imperium – are going to attack the Craftworld?"

He'd seen the initial reports, back when the alarms first started blaring; nearly a thousand ships were headed straight towards them – gargantuan ships at that, leviathans that'd make his and Larkin's vessel look like a tiny blip. Unless the Aeldari had some kind of galactic superduper weapon, then they were fucked. Satoru didn't even have to know every single detail. He was pretty sure that, without him, they were royally fucked.

Caoimhe nodded, her eyes narrowing. The both of them stood alongside the Craftworld's War Council, where all the Farseers and military leaders gathered to discuss plans and strategies and whatnot. Honestly, Satoru barely paid them any attention. They were talking about sending out fleets or something. Of course, this was only after he supposedly gave them permission to defend themselves because the fucking idiots actually turned to him for guidance the moment their sensors started blaring. Honestly fucking stupid, but – eh. You win some and you lose some. "These... humans refer to themselves as the Mechanicus. They're closer to machines than men. They worship a Machine God they call the Omnissiah. This fleet has been hounding us for the last decade. And now, it's finally caught up."

Satoru sighed again. Hmm... he had no idea what any of that meant, but simply deduction and extrapolation led him to the conclusion that the Mechanicus were some kind of cybernetic branch of the Imperium, a combination of cyborgs and maybe a lot of robots. That was... cool as shit, honestly. Ever since he woke up in this futuristic hellscape, Satoru had been wanting to see an awesome machine and, this far, he'd been severely disappointed. He wanted to see some freaking Terminators, damn it. "Well, shit. That's not good. What are you guys gonna do?"

"Their fleet is much larger than ours," Caoimhe explained. "But, our goal is to escape; we do not have enough warriors and pilots to secure a naval or military victory. So, our only choice is to hold them off for as long as possible, while we divert the full power of the Infinity Circuit to the Craftworld's main thrusters. If we're lucky, then we can escape with minimal casualties; if we're not lucky, then the Mechanicus may be able to send in ground troops."

"Don't worry," Satoru forced a smile. A part of him was unsure about all of this. Fighting for people he had no personal connection to was... out there. Then again, he did risk a lot to save the survivors of that planet he'd woken on. Why should he treat the Aeldari any different? At the very least, these people actually worshiped him, offering him a trickle of Cursed Energy, fueling his reserves. "I'll protect as many people as I can."

Oh well, he was already in on this and switching teams now would be rather pointless. If an opportunity came up, however, then he was going to send both Larkin and Tanya to join the humans and finally be rid of them. Actually, what the hell were those two even doing, right now?

Meh. They were probably safe. Satoru doubted anything could actually hurt them while they were doing that parallel dimension bullshit of theirs.

Oh well.

"Actually, do you guys have a ritual or device that can amplify Cursed Techniques or spells? That'd be really great," Satoru grinned, the beginnings of something of a plan forming in his head. When Caoimhe raised a brow, Satoru continued. "I have... an attack that can be devastating, even to vessels as large as those, if it was sufficiently amplified. If it isn't, then it could poke a few holes, but that'd be it."

"There is... something like that, yes," Caoimhe's eyes narrowed as she frowned. "But, truth be told, that weapon hasn't been used since the days before the fall of our ancestors. No one knows how to use it, but the stories do tell us that our ancestors used it to devastating effect as it amplified their spells nearly a thousandfold. We call it the Star Piercer, an ancient artillery weapon."

Satoru shrugged. That actually sounded a bit similar to a certain ritual he'd heard about, something that forced a single Cursed Technique to go further than it should ever be capable of. But... a thousandfold... something like that could bring ruin to entire worlds. Just the thought of pushing out a Hollow Technique: Purple through such a weapon made him giddy, like a kid in a toy store. "I won't know anything until I actually see it. So, can you take me there?"

"Someone else is gonna have to do that, Lord Satoru," Caoimhe answered, shaking his head. "I have duties here, now, greater than before. Thank to you, I have grown far stronger than any of my peers, but that power has granted me... greater responsibilities. But, having said that, I shall inform the council of your plan, Lord Satoru. Imleth, Marshall of the Swooping Cranes, has pledged himself to your service; he will take you there."

Caoimhe stepped aside and an Aeldari warrior stepped forth and fell to his knees, bowing. "Lord Britheim; I shall take you to the Star Piercer. You have my word."

"Well, then hurry up and take me there, dude; we don't have all day."

"At once, Lord Britheim!" Imleth, or whatever his name was, guided him outside the War Council Chambers. They didn't need him anymore, Satoru figured, at least, not with their planning and whatnot. He might've been the most powerful sorcerer of his time, but he wasn't a military strategist; though, Satoru mused, he could try to learn that stuff if it benefited him and, considering the absolute state of this stupid galaxy, it should be plenty useful. But, as of now, he was basically just a wall flower – a handsome, crazy hot, unthinkably sexy, wall flower. So, he was gonna make himself useful by blowing some shit up.

Imleth took him to a small, chariot-shaped ship, which flew up and away immediately as soon as the both of them stepped inside. They traversed the breadth of the Craftworld, passing over sprawling spires and high mountains, until they reached a place that appeared cold, barren, and desolate, dotted with ashen crags and cracked trees. There was something... odd about this part of the Craftworld; for one thing, Satoru hadn't even seen it or known about it since he got here. The second thing was that this place felt... dormant. It felt like he was flying over a sleeping dragon. There was a great power here, Satoru felt, coursing underneath the ground – an infinitely massive reservoir of ancient Cursed Energies.

Satoru's eyes narrowed as he glanced around. The sky above them was dark, filled with shadowy clouds and twisted arcs of purple lightning. "What... is this place?"

"This place is the graveyard of the ancients, Lord Britheim," Imleth answered. "No one comes here, my lord. This place is haunted by the souls of fallen, cursed and bound to the land itself. No one remembers what happened to them, Lord Britheim, but they're lucky to have been bound here, instead of devoured by She-Who-Thirsts and condemned to oblivion."

"They're asleep," Satoru's Six-Eyes saw and understood everything now, given the apparent context, a literal sea of souls just swimming beneath the blackened rocks and ashen fields. There were millions of them, each one a fountain of pure Cursed Energy, the weakest of them surpassing even Ryomen Sukuna's Cursed Energy reserves. Monstrous. Was this the Aeldari at their peak? Absolute fucking units, the lot of them. But, their souls were shapeless – lacking identity. At this point, actually, it was a stretch to even think of them as souls. They were little more than masses of energy.

Asleep, but also dead.

Could he... perhaps... absorb all this energy, take it for himself, fuel his ascension into a proper god.

Eh, not now, but maybe soon. Definitely soon.

Because every single Aeldari will probably hate his guts for eating their ancestors.

Unfortunately for them, Satoru didn't give a shit.

"That's it, over there, Lord Britheim," Imleth pointed at the distance, towards a lonely spire, made entirely of oily, inky black stone, covered in clouds and wreathed in lightning – dormant, just like everything else in here. At a glance, if it was placed on Earth, it was probably tall enough to pierce right through the upper atmosphere, thick enough to fit several cities in. And yet, just looking at it was difficult; it seemed as though it both existed and did not exist at the same time, kind of like Larkin and Tanya – in their base state, at least. "That is the Star Piercer, Lord Britheim. It has lain asleep and forgotten for thousands upon thousands of years."

"Looks freaking big," Satoru said. "I'll tell ya that much."

It didn't take long for the vessel to reach the Star Piercer itself, landing on what appeared to be a platform atop a flight of stairs. And from that platform was a bridge that directly to the device itself. Satoru raised a brow. "So, this is it, huh?"

Six-Eyes revealed to him all the incantations and ritual arrays that circled the base of the structure. And then, Satoru understood immediately. The structure functioned by absorbing a Cursed Technique from a central ritual array. A clever combination of spells and incantations, inlaid upon the very material of the Star Piercer would then copy and replicate that spell over and over again, a thousandfold, before the device could hold it no longer and shot it right out of the tip. There was a cute little aiming mechanism too, though the whole Craftworld would probably have to turn and point the Star Piercer right towards the Mechanicus Fleet for it to actually hit anything.

The trickiest portion of it, he supposed, which was also probably the reason why the Aeldari could no longer make it work, was the fact that the arrays themselves were fucking invisible. Whoever came up with this shit must've been a fucking idiot. Or, maybe the Aeldari used to be able to see this shit and now they can't?

Satoru had no idea.

The more curious part, however, was the method with which the Star Piercer derived the necessary energy to actually replicate the Cursed Technique a thousand fold; it did so by drawing power directly from the Cursed Realm, siphoning and draining immense amounts of power, which would then be molded into shape by the various incantations. Now, wasn't that a very interesting little nugget of information? Because it essentially told Satoru how he could steal the raw energies of the Cursed Realm, to take from the infinite sea of Cursed Energies. The device did so by piercing the veil between the realms, but only temporarily, kind of like sticking a syringe into a water-filled bag, sucking out a bunch of the water, pulling out, and then patching up the little hole to prevent leakage.

Something like that. And was that not quite the coincidence? Because Hollow Technique: Purple could be used to do just that – theoretically, anyway. It'll take a lot of practice.

However, he wasn't going to do anything about it for now. "Contact whoever's in charge of piloting the Craftworld. Tell them to make sure the Star Piercer's aimed right at the enemy fleet. I'm about to light up the stars."

"Right away, Lord Britheim!" Imleth ran back towards the vessel and sped off, leaving Satoru alone.

He gathered Cursed Energy to his legs and leapt over the bridge, landing on the city-wide platform that held up the Star Piercer. Satoru turned his gaze to the sky and grinned. Already, the Craftworld was moving – the perks of being a messianic figure, he guessed – turning so that the side that held the Star Piercer was facing the Mechanicus Fleet. They were really putting all their eggs in the Gojo Satoru basket, weren't they?

A hundred massive ships sped towards the Craftworld. But they did not, for whatever reason, fire their weapons. A fleet that large could probably easy overwhelm the outer defenses of this Craftworld. So, why hold back? His only conclusion was that they were looking for something; they wanted the Craftworld intact for whatever machinations they might have. As for what they're actually here for... no idea.

They're not getting a chance to look for it, anyway.

"Oh well, I better not disappoint." Satoru grinned as he sprinted towards the central Ritual Array, which lay nestled on an awkward place on the device, which would make it even harder for the Aeldari to figure out how the fucking thing worked. But, with Six-Eyes, Satoru found it essentially immediately.

"Blue... Red... Hollow Technique: Purple," He closed his eyes and gathered the technique into a tiny space right between his hands, a condensed singularity. If he was right about how the device worked and he was right most of the time, then it should mimic the intensity of the initial Cursed Technique. And so, Satoru poured as much Cursed Energy as he could into the Hollow Technique: Purple. Blue and Red screeching at his flanks. And then, when he could no longer hold onto the convergence of Infinity, Satoru shoved it right into the Ritual Array.

Immediately, every single incantation, every single ritual circle, lit up with purple lights. An ocean of Cursed Energy surged into the Star Piercer as it drew power from the Cursed Realm. Satoru memorized the motions, down to the atomic level, and grinned.

Perfect.

It took mere seconds for the Star Piercer to be primed, the whole structure brimming with Cursed Energy. The ground shook and the air hissed. All of creation, for a single moment, went quiet. And then, the cosmos lit up. Satoru's eyes widened as a thousand purples went screeching towards the Mechanicus Fleet.

And then, the structure crumbled.


AN: Chapter 32 is out on (Pat)reon!