A Light Within Darkness.

Chaos was weird. For some, it was a horror show of terrible things. For others, it was a paradise of reality fitting their own desires. The Chaos god's realms were the most stable parts of the Empyrean due to the gods forcing their concepts upon the area and molding the area of their influence to fit their domains.

For Slaanesh everything was a metaphor for sinking deeper and deeper into your desires as her whole realm was a pit that with each level you completed you went deeper into the Prince of Pleasures realm. The first level, the Ring of Avidity was both a potent first test for Slaanesh to get the measure of their prey, but also the best method of clearing the chaff that entered their realm.

Because greed, in the end, was the most easy thing to indulge in. It wasn't even really a sin or something to be ashamed of. As everyone worked hard for their resources to spend them how they desired... Was it so wrong to have a bit extra to make their life easier?

Was it so wrong to pick up one of the quintillions of gleaming golden coins that littered the ground in a sea of glittering splendor?

But each and every golden coin was cursed to bring terrible misfortune to the person who picked them up with the intent of taking them away. Every gem was actually a demonic insect that would burrow into your flesh. Every masterpiece of a statue was instead a mortal who became too greedy and was cursed to become the very gold and precious metals they so coveted.

The first Ring of Avidity didn't have much in the way of demons surprisingly besides the almost chaos-spawn level demons that were sealed away into traps to attack people. So without demons fucking with me...

"Muahahaha! I love Slaanesh!" I cackled as I gleefully used an Earth Escape spell to swim through the piles of precious metals, gems, and everything else. But as I was swimming through the materials like they were water I had several thick bags strapped to my sides and forced open with some rods so the spatially expanded bags were basically just whale mouths sucking up everything in the fucking vicinity without mercy while I cackled madly.

A screech rang out as a gem the size of a football changed into a horrible demon with a single massive eye but without a single beat passing I cut the demon in half with a sword beam that came from my eyes and before the corpse fell to the ground I fully absorbed it with my chaotic devouring physique that was hard at work absorbing all the curses in the treasures around me.

"Oooh! Moonbloom and a Sun Blood Flower patch!" I said excitedly as I saw a rock garden that had the pebble artwork being diamonds and many plants were actually gems sculpted to look like perfect plants but in the middle of the garden were two very valuable herbs due to their ability to help nurture Yin and Yang energy within people and they had stupidly difficult growing issues. 

Moonbloom needed uninterrupted lunar energy for fifty years at least for it to grow to be even slightly useful. And Sun Blood Flowers were actually more common as they required the same thing but instead sun light. So with tidal-locked planets, they could grow in areas that have constant sunlight for millennia without issue.

So this was a nice find for myself and Ellesmere. But as I kept looking around grabbing literally everything as I swam through the piles of treasures, I felt the ground shudder and a metallic thrumming ringing before a guitar rip strummed outwards making my form shudder at how fucking loud that guitar was.

"Noise marines?" I muttered as I popped my head out of a pile of gold like a child would pop their head out of a pile of leaves that were raked into a pile and I beheld the lovely sight of a Noise Marine, one of the Chaos Space Marine chapters that followed Slaanesh was strumming its guitar/gun/flamethrower combo weapon in front of a statue of a beautiful woman.

"Hooo! Marie how I loved you! How I adored you! How I broke you and tasted the delight that was your tears for birthing me!" The Noise Marine sang and I felt utter revulsion as I realized that statue was the Noise Marine's mother I couldn't describe the abject disgust I had as it continued to sing while playing a song with its guitar to the monument of suffering. As I could see the statue was bleeding tears of blood out of its golden eyes and ears as the mother was still alive, and conscious while sealed away in the statue of gold.

Although many Chaos Space Marines were the original traitors from back during the days of the Horus Heresy. Due to their campaigns against the Imperium, general infighting, and any other number of reasons they obviously had a high turnover rate. So they needed to recruit the children that would be later turned into the new generations of Space Marines.

And of course with them being Chaos Space Marine, the process of acquiring said children was never anything pleasant. And for a child born to join the fucking Emperor's Children that followed Slaanesh? Their mother's fate was never anything reasonable or even sane.

For a moment I considered just walking away... But with a flicker of motion, I used a movement technique to blitz over the piles of gold and as the Noise Marine whirled around at the sound of the gold moving, I jumped over the string of compressed sound waves that came from the guitar that sought to bisect me and as he attempted to use his flame thrower I absorbed the flames with no change to my expression as I came down with a powerful fist that audibly snapped the Space Marines neck as I smashed the fist into the top of his head.

"Fucking monster." I spat as I planted my feet on the pauldrons of the Space Marine's armor and I grabbed his head from under his chin with a muffled scream of agony and rapture from my prey, I felt his chin give way and finally the rest of his head came off as I used my great strength to pop the monster's head from his shoulders with my bare hands.

I idly picked up the Noise Marine's guitar as I knew that cultivation had a number of musical arts that could be used, but as I stood back up I stared at the golden statue in front of myself... And wondered. 'Should I unseal to free her?' I thought with a weight sinking into my gut as I realized that unless I wanted to cut my trip through the Warp short, I wouldn't be able to bring her along.

Who knew if she was remotely sane after being sealed in the gold statue for god knows how long... Wouldn't it be easier or better just to put her out of her misery?

Normally my actions didn't really affect others for the most part except for how I unveiled that Genestealer cult and with how I nabbed Isha... But here I had the choice of doing the hard thing and taking on a burden and ending my resource gathering to help this woman out of some form of pity. Or I could just kill her to end her suffering.

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