The Hammer of War, Chapter 56

Name: Amir Azad
Title: War-Summoner
War Points: 80,000

STR – 87
DEX – 80
VIT – 201

—

Eighty thousand War Points. That was the largest number I’d ever seen sitting in my balance since the day the System dropped into my life and turned everything sideways. It was enough to tempt me into doing something reckless. Too much currency on hand meant bad decisions waiting to happen. The more you had, the easier it was to convince yourself you needed something shiny and overpriced. Luckily, I had Alexandra, who treated brainstorming like a professional sport and never failed to point out when my thinking drifted into stupidity.

“I’m thinking I should buy the final level of [Blank],” I said. It carried a steep price—fifty thousand War Points—but it wasn’t the kind of upgrade I could ignore. [Blank] had been my single most reliable weapon against anything supernatural, the one ability I could fall back on when every other option failed. It made sense to push it as high as it would go. “That’s what’s going to put me on a level where someone like Serafall actually has to think twice before standing in the same room as me.”

Serafall had shrugged off my current level of [Blank] like it was nothing. I hadn’t forgotten that. If she had been hostile back then, I would be dead. Beings on her tier weren’t rare. Somewhere in the world there were more like her, probably worse, and the only way to prepare was to build myself a weapon sharp enough to keep even them at bay. For me, that weapon was [Blank]. It wasn’t just my first defense. It was my only guarantee.

Alexandra, of course, disagreed. She leaned back in her chair, one eyebrow arched. “You’re not thinking like a summoner. There are units you could buy with that much—units that would turn entire battlefields on their heads. A Tyranid Swarmlord. A five-man Custodian squad. Even a Warlord Titan if you’re feeling excessive. You could have any of those instead of burning fifty thousand points on one ability that already works.”

“That’s a fair point,” I admitted. “But do I really need an even bigger army right now?”

I wasn’t against the idea of throwing more meat—or armor—into the grinder. But my roster already looked like something you’d expect to find parked in the middle of a bad dream. Custodian Guard, Carnifexes, a Squiggoth that doubled as a mobile fortress, Stormtroopers, Incubi, and now a Baneblade on standby. Did I need more? Definitely yes. But probably not immediately. What I didn’t have was insurance against the upper end of the food chain, the kind of enemies that couldn’t be drowned in numbers. [Blank] had kept me alive through everything so far, and it was the one thing that scaled directly with me instead of just being more soldiers I had to manage.

Alexandra gave me a long look, the kind she reserved for when I was saying something technically correct but practically idiotic. 

“Your army is only as useful as you allow it to be,” she said finally. “And you’re still treating it like an afterthought.”

I sighed. She wasn’t wrong. But she also wasn’t me. If Serafall ever stopped smiling, no army in the world would save me. Only [Blank] would. 

So, did I strengthen my army or did I invest in myself and leave the army as it was?

“You can do both, you know,” Alexandra said. “A smaller personal upgrade now, while still keeping enough War Points to meaningfully reinforce your forces. You don’t need to treat it as a binary choice.”

I gave that a nod. “Fair point. Let’s see what the options look like.”

The [Astartes Augmentations] were the cheapest at 10,000 War Points. Solid baseline—strength, speed, toughness, all tuned up to Space Marine levels. Then there were the [Custodian Augmentations] at 30,000 War Points. That one had my attention. If it gave me anything close to what my Custodian Guard could do, it was a bargain. And then there was the [Primarch Package] at 100,000. That one wasn’t even on the table. I didn’t have the points, and even if I did, it wasn’t something I wanted to rush into.

There were other augments too, things like [Chaos Mutations], but those were out of the question. Not efficient, not reliable, and not worth the long-term risk of ending up with extra limbs or voices in my head.

I told Alexandra my line of thinking. “The Custodian Augmentations are looking very tempting. Thirty thousand points for a permanent upgrade that puts me into another league. Leaves me with fifty thousand left for the army.”

“Buy it,” she said without hesitation. “Custodians are second only to the Primarchs in raw ability. You’ve seen for yourself what even one of them can do.”

That was all the push I needed.

Which left me with fifty thousand points to spend on the army. On paper, I could buy something ludicrous—like a Tyranid Swarmlord for the full fifty thousand, or a five-man squad of Custodes for twenty-five thousand. Tempting, but not useful right now. I already had strong elites, and the Warlord Titan at 100,000 was just laughable. It would flatten anything unlucky enough to stand in front of it, sure, but I didn’t have the points and it wasn’t a practical solution to the real problem.

The real problem was numbers. My roster was a collection of heavy hitters, but heavy hitters still fell when enough bodies swarmed them. What I lacked was a proper wall of fodder to keep the enemy busy while the good units did their work. And with fifty thousand War Points in hand, I had a straightforward answer.

Hormagaunts.

At 250 points for a thousand of them, I could get two hundred thousand in one purchase. Two hundred thousand bodies to flood the field, tie up enemies, and die screaming so that the Custodian Guard, Baneblade, Carnifexes, and the rest could finish the job. And these guys were no slouches either. Hormagaunts were like the raptors from Jurassic Park, just faster, angrier, armored, and had six legs that all had bladed claws. 

I stared at the number for a long moment. “Two hundred thousand Hormagaunts. That’s… a lot.”

“That’s the point,” Alexandra said calmly. “They’d be similar to Imperial Guardsman in function, but far cheaper and far faster. They’d suit your purpose well.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “That’s a very good choice.”

And so, I wasted no time. The first thing I purchased was the [Custodian Augmentations] for myself, which then prompted a new window: [Do You Want to Display Physical Changes?]. It was an easy question to answer once I realized what it was asking.

The System was giving me the option to walk around looking like a [Custodian Guard]. That meant nine feet tall, broad enough to make a refrigerator nervous, and sculpted with the kind of physique that painters in the Renaissance would have killed for. Tempting, yes—but also suicidal for anyone who valued staying under the radar. There weren’t many people in the world who reached that height, and adding my name to the list would have been the fastest way to end up on every supernatural faction’s “watch closely” board. So, I answered “no.”

And then it began.

The shift was slow at first. Strange, uncomfortable, but not painful. It was as if every part of me had been given new instructions and immediately started carrying them out. Heat spread from the center of my chest through every limb, sinking into muscle fibers, tendons, and bone. The sensation wasn’t just physical. It dug deeper. I could feel the change down to the smallest unit of my being, like my body was updating itself cell by cell, strand by strand, all in perfect order. My organs shifted, becoming better versions of themselves, reforming and readjusting. 

Strength pooled into my arms and legs, quiet but undeniable. My balance shifted slightly, settling into something steadier, more deliberate. Endurance built layer by layer, until breathing itself felt more efficient, each inhale carrying further than before. Even my reflexes adjusted. My fingers twitched with precision they hadn’t had a moment ago, as if hesitation had been cut away entirely.

Then came the part I hadn’t expected. My soul—yes, my soul—was being refined. I didn’t need the System to explain it to me. I just knew. A presence stirred within me, not foreign but new, and with it came a kind of passive safeguard. A thin barrier layered itself over my essence; its sole purpose was in nudging aside any threat that brushed against me. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t flashy. It existed quietly, subtle enough that most wouldn’t notice it was there at all. It also wasn’t very powerful, but I was glad to have it all the same.

I flexed my hand into a fist, then unclenched it. The change wasn’t visible from the outside, and that was exactly what I wanted. To everyone else, I was still the same man I had been five minutes earlier. Inside, though, I was something different. Something sharper. Something stronger. Inhumanly powerful. Alien. I felt like I could lift a whole tank over my head and just start shoulder pressing it. Or break apart a Nokia 3310 with enough effort.

I checked my stats and holy shit. 

STR – 87(300)
DEX – 80(300)
VIT – 201(300)

The flat three hundred bonus to all stats meant that I’d experience the physical augmentation of the change, but receive no threshold bonus, like when I reached 200 VIT. That was fair, I suppose, but tedious. 

After that, I spent all my remaining War Points on a horde of 200,000 [Hormagaunts] and watched as all my War Points turned to zero. 

But damn was it all worth it. 

“You look bigger,” Alexandra said.

I glanced down at myself, and she wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t ballooning with veins like a bodybuilder about to step on stage, but the difference was obvious. My frame had thickened, my chest broader, my arms carrying more weight. It looked like about a thirty percent increase across the board—muscle, bone, and density. Subtle enough that it wouldn’t raise eyebrows if someone assumed I had just been hitting the gym too often and snorting lines of protein powder. Noticeable enough that I could feel it in every movement. My stance was firmer, my balance steadier.

“I feel way stronger than I was seconds ago,” I admitted. The understatement didn’t do it justice. I felt like I could push over a truck and not even break stride.

“You have two days before the Khornate Dungeon opens,” Alexandra reminded me. She was already pulling out a small binder she’d been compiling for weeks. She flipped it open with precise hands, the pages lined with names, notes, and grainy photographs clipped from public records and surveillance. Each entry belonged to a supernatural creature posing as a human—predators hiding in plain sight. She had spent most of her time in Seoul digging them out, one by one, building profiles like an accountant might build a tax audit–the perfect use of her skills as an Inquisitor.

“There should be plenty of targets to test your newfound strength against,” she said.

“Gimme the most dangerous one,” I said without hesitation.

Her brow lifted slightly, but she didn’t argue. She sifted through a few pages, then pulled one free and handed it over.

The profile showed a man named Park Ha-joon. The photo was bland—middle-aged, hair neatly parted, glasses perched on his nose, the kind of face you could pass on the street and forget immediately. According to the records, he maintained a respectable human life as a therapist, specializing in victims of assault and abuse. That was the front. The reality was uglier.

“Park Ha-joon is a vampire,” Alexandra explained. “Not a fledgling. Not one of the arrogant mid-tier predators we’ve dealt with before. Something much older.”

The file listed twelve deaths tied to him—patients found in their homes, drained of blood, no signs of forced entry, no physical evidence. The police had nothing. The Seoul Department had tagged them as unsolved, scattered among the usual mess of urban crime. Alexandra had put the pieces together where they hadn’t. The patterns were there: all women, all survivors of trauma, all connected by their trust in a man who was feeding on them under the guise of healing.

I flipped through the rest of the file. “And nobody noticed this guy’s face hasn’t changed in a century?”

“He’s careful,” Alexandra said. “Every few decades he rotates his location and changes the context of his work. But his name and appearance stay the same. Likely arrogance. He wipes memories, uses charms to smooth over inconsistencies. It’s enough to confuse police and civilians. Not enough to fool us.”

“So what does that make him?” I asked.

“I think he’s what the Sikh Demon Hunters would classify as an Elder Vampire,” Alexandra replied. Her tone was flat, clinical, but the words carried weight. “Very powerful. Very intelligent. He’s survived longer than most of his kind by being both.”

I let the profile fall back into my lap. “Great. An Elder Vampire who moonlights as a shrink. Exactly what I needed.”