40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 166 27. One-day War (5)

Roboute Guilliman burst into the Praetor's Palace, furious like a swarm of ravenous worms, rolling in from the dark corners beyond his sight.

They crawled up to his heart and began to eat away at what little sanity was left. Guilliman knew nothing of this and just kept running.

He didn't notice that he was wearing a completely unfamiliar armor, nor did he notice that the palace floor had changed.

The floor tiles in the Archon's Palace were carefully designed by many artists. They carry history. You could even say that they are, to some extent, the history of Macragge itself.

However, what he was stepping on now was not the history of Macragge, but large tracts of rough and dirty stone, covered with blood and the crushed corpses of aliens.

He ran through them, expressing the highest degree of contempt and hatred for what he saw as the remains of the rebels. He was still restraining himself, trying to shut down his anger with reason, otherwise it wouldn't be like this.

Guilliman knew that enough people from Macragge had died today. Konnor had warned him that peace should be fought for by better means than through violence and blood. Peace achieved that way will not last long.

So he waved his arms and shouted to the insurgents hiding behind the bunker: "Surrender!"

His voice echoed between the rock walls, splitting and extending - leading wildly into the deepest depths of darkness. The insurgents sluggishly emerged from their bunkers, unarmed.

Guilliman rushed towards them, grabbed the tallest among them, and roared at him: "You betrayed Macragge, why did you do this, who ordered you to do this?!"

The man didn't answer, and there was a dull look on his pale face - for a moment, he was no longer him, but 'it'. Guilliman saw its face clearly, its light blue skin and its eighteen rapidly blinking eyes.

Huge panic surged instinctively from the bottom of his heart. Robert Guilliman didn't understand what was happening, but he knew very well that this was definitely not what humans should look like.

Guilliman clenched his hands due to excessive shock, and in the next second, with the blood splashing out from it, 'he' came back again.

Now, standing in front of Guilliman was a howling man with a typical Macragge face, with sunken eye sockets, a high nose, and a pale complexion. He has short blond hair and a strong chin.

He looked familiar.

Guilliman frowned, not delving into the familiarity. Now, what he cared about most was another thing - he had just lost control.

Remorse set in, and he began to recite a prayer.

Tarasha Euton gave it to him and taught him it when he was still young. Joden said, if you sense that you are losing control, read it—and Robert Guilliman did so.

As he chanted, his mood gradually returned to calm. He calmed down, but also forgot or ignored some things. For example, why Captain Melotus and the guards did not follow him, and why no one in this group of rebels was armed.

All kinds of doubts were connected together, so obvious and suspicious, but Robert Guilliman didn't even react at all. A fool could ignore this, of course, but could Roboute Guilliman?

No one knows the answer.

The Macragge chanted a prayer, grunted, and let go of his hand, letting the man fall to the ground, feeling his mind spin. He had calmed down, but he felt an urge to vomit.

This impulse came from his nasal cavity. He had just smelled an extremely terrible smell. It was not chemicals, but the smell of thousands of corpses. These corpses were thrown into thick piles of leaves and damp soil. Their flesh and blood disappeared and their bones rotted away.

Robert Guilliman looked at all this blankly, still reciting prayers and trying to calm down.

——But the prayer he was reciting now was no longer the prayer taught to him by Tarasha Yuton.

The aliens looked at the giant standing in front of them, looked at his face, and were silent. The alien that had been nearly killed a few seconds ago opened the tentacles on its jaws and let out a strange grunt from its throat.

They stepped forward and began to surround Robert Guilliman.

There is no mark of the Fire God on their jaws.

They are not His followers.

Harkossus has three planets.

Three.

"Who sent you here?" Guilliman stared at the rebel and scolded him sharply.

"Do you know what you have done? You started a rebellion in Macragge! Many innocent people died today, and their deaths are all on you! So tell me, yes Who sent you?"

The man didn't answer. He was very tall. His haggard eyes under his short blond hair blinked weakly, and then he made a strange grunting sound from his throat. Thin, continuous, dense - foul smell.

"Say!" Guilliman growled at him. "You have no choice. Who did it? Who instigated all this?!"

The man stared at him, still silent - at this moment, in this short moment, a picture suddenly flashed before Robert Guilliman's eyes.

He saw the gloomy grotto, the monsters with light blue skin surrounding him, and he also saw their rapidly blinking, dense eyes - and then everything returned to nothingness.

The silent man reappeared, his face haggard and increasingly pale, his blond hair turned into dead branches, and his lips turned an eerie green. He kept his mouth closed and never spoke.

Guilliman cursed under his breath, furious at the man's stubbornness. He began to recite his prayers and persuaded himself not to be so angry. He recited the prayers and became calmer than ever before.

This is a true peace, like lying in the forest, lying on the moist soil and letting crawlers pass through the nostrils and lips. Thick dead leaves fall from the sky, bringing the smell of decay and burying him deeply.

Guilliman opened his eyes blankly - he heard that the man finally spoke.

"Wake up," the man said weakly. "Wake up, please, wake up"

"What?" Guilliman frowned suspiciously. "what are you saying?"

There was no answer, and the man shut his mouth tightly. His face began to change, his skin and flesh turning, like the ocean or waves.

Eighteen eyes and light blue skin replaced it with the flesh turning over. Guilliman looked at the creature in confusion, and even reached out and put his hand against the side of its cheek to feel its body temperature.

"You don't have a fever," he said. "This means you are sane. Now tell me the truth, soldier. As you can see, you have no chance of winning."

He paused for a moment and pointed at the corpses scattered all over the palace behind him - corpses with slender limbs that had been turned into minced flesh and blood, but were slowly decaying at the moment. Guilliman's expression remained unchanged, as if he were really in the Praetor's Palace, and then he continued to speak.

"You don't understand yet, but you will, soldier. You have been deceived, and whatever that man promised you was not the truth. Conor Guilliman was the greatest Consul Macragge has ever known. Officer, don't you know? He has improved water conservancy projects and developed new farming methods. Everyone can afford food. Go and see the farmers outside the city."

Guilliman persuaded him sincerely.

"We are all children of farmers, you, me, Konor Guilliman - we all grew up eating crops. Do you believe that Archon Konnor is a villain? Tell me, soldier, who told you Instilled these terrible lies? And where did that man take my father-"

He stopped talking, his eyebrows knitted together in suspicion.

Father?

who? Who is it?

A light appeared before his eyes.

He saw an old man who was so ordinary that he was even a little short. The old man was standing on the side of his memory and smiling at him. His smile was full of worry: "Robert, you only have this one chance."

What? No, wait, who are you?

"He is your adoptive father."

said a voice. Guilliman turned his head and saw a man, a man with a tired face and wrinkle-free skin but still as old as a parchment roll - the man turned his head and looked at him with a sad expression.

"And you're forgetting him."

What?

"You are forgetting us," the little old man said.

"Look back, Robert. You never spoke to the rebels at that time. You killed them all. I was lying in the study and heard your roar from downstairs. I knew then that you were angry, You were scary when you got angry as a kid, let alone that day."

Guilliman covered his forehead in confusion. He felt his eyes were sore - he seemed to be crying, but why?

"do you remember?"

The old man looked at him sadly.

"Remember, Robert, you must remember that you saw me dying in the study, and you howling like a wild animal. I was poisoned, an airborne toxin. I held a gun to you. , asking you to step back.”

"You were crying, Robert, and I was dying, but I wanted to say something to you, but I couldn't, so I gave you the coin."

The old man lowered his head and extended his right hand as if offering a treasure——

A coin lay just like that in his old palm. Guilliman stared at it, confused. Grumbling from his throat, he stepped forward—

He tried to reach out and take it, but he was too weak to even hold the coin. It fell to the ground, collided with the ground, created ripples, and disappeared quickly.

The light disappeared in an instant.

Robert Guilliman recited the prayer and returned to reality. His face was haggard, and the pain had turned his face pale and yellow. He said the prayer without stopping.

besides.

I'm a bit stuck today.