40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 306 26. Interlude: Death of Scholar

In the corridor of the Emperor's Dream, two figures were walking side by side. One is tall and has red skin, while the other is short and thin, and the scepter in his hand is even taller than himself.

These two people are Magnus, the original body of the Fifteenth Legion, and Malcador, the Markbearer. By this time, the meeting had ended. After bidding farewell to his guards in a few hasty words, Magnus followed the Sealbearer to the Emperor's Dream.

Of course, he hasn't given up yet.

"That was just an accident, Malcador, I still have a way to solve it! Trust me!"

The palmer stopped and raised his head to look at the Crimson King who was much taller than him.

The latter tried to remain calm, but his eyes were full of panic and doubt, and there was an unreal feeling that he was in a dream.

He seemed to feel that the Emperor's sentence and the entire Council of Nicaea were an unreal dream. None of this was real, there was no way his father could be so cruel as to turn his Legion into a joke.

"Do you know where we are now, Magnus?" Malcador looked at his appearance and suddenly asked.

"What?"

"Where are we now?" Malcador took apart the sentence with a humiliating attitude and read it word by word so that Magnus could hear it clearly.

The latter looked down at him, obviously in a overlooking manner, but his expression seemed a bit humble, and he even forgot that he should be angry at this attitude.

"Are we on the Emperor's Dream?"

"Yes." Malcador forced himself to ignore his questioning tone and did not laugh at this ridiculous question.

"We are on board the Emperor's Dream, and the Council of Nicaea is over. It's over, do you understand, Magnus? Your experiment has completely failed, and there is no chance of another Council of Nicaea being held by the Empire. ”

"But--"

"——No but, one is enough. There will be no second reason to gather all these people. Do you know how much manpower and material resources the empire has spent on this meeting? The Great Expedition has not yet begun. End, think about this."

"But I really have a way. I can save the chronicler!"

Magnus did not respond to Malcador's argument. He just waved his arms stubbornly and even squatted down to increase his persuasion. He wanted to communicate with Malcador at eye level, but the palmer simply couldn't. Too lazy to look at his one eye.

"so?"

Malcador once again suppressed the urge to sneer. He was not such a sarcastic person in the past, but he was like this for a reason now.

"Rescuing him, what can you prove?"

"At least I can prove that I have a remedy!"

"Then you can start testing again?" Makado shook his head. "Endlessly sacrificing twelve servitors to activate the blasphemous instrument, endlessly finding volunteers and throwing their souls into the warp to try their luck?"

"You don't understand, Malcador!" Magnus began to explain anxiously. "What happened to that reporter was really just an accident. I have done more than a hundred experiments, and no one has had his soul disappear suddenly like him!"

"The one who doesn't understand is you, Magnus. You have no idea what kind of place it is there. You and your legions call it the vast ocean, but this is just a one-sided name. Extremely narrow-minded.”

The palmer took a step forward and emphasized his tone: "Only the most stupid and short-sighted people will really think that subspace is a harmless and gentle ocean. You only have one eye left, and this eye can't see the slightest bit of truth. ”

Magnus froze. He did not expect that he would receive such a serious evaluation from the person holding the seal. The words stupidity and shortsightedness were like bone-corrosive poison, which began to stir up waves in the heart of the Crimson King.

He clenched his fists, and the voice he had heard not long ago echoed in his ears again - and then, in the next second, a cold psychic energy pushed him hard against the wall of the Emperor's Dream .

The world suddenly became dark, and only the palmer in black robes still stood in front of him, holding a scepter in his hand, and the light of psychic energy was as sharp as a sword in his eyes. There was no emotion on the old face, only an abyss-like calm.

"Malcador?!" Magnus shouted in shock.

He was so shocked by the sudden attack from the Seal Holder that he even forgot that he should be angry and resist. But this is just the beginning, far from the end. The palm bearer looked at him coldly and walked slowly to him.

He stared at Magnus, and for a moment, the Primarch thought the Sigil Bearer would kill him. Those eyes were too cold and contained no so-called humanity. The light of psychic energy overshadowed everything else.

Instinctively, Magnus bent his fingers and made several complicated gestures. He was even ready to recite a spell to activate the spell.

At this moment, Malcador spoke again.

"It has been two hours since the meeting ended, and you have not made any progress. You are a Primarch, Magnus. You have a physique and intelligence that far exceeds that of ordinary people. Ten million ordinary people combined cannot match it. You make comparisons, but you seem to be missing one of the most basic functions of a human being.”

The person holding the print pointed to his ear.

"You can't listen to what other people are saying," he said. "Everyone's words, even your father's, fall on deaf ears to you."

"What on earth do you want to say?!" Magnus shouted. "Put me down! Are you crazy!"

The palm bearer ignored his roar and continued to speak coldly and calmly. His voice was gentle, like a teacher lecturing to students at his desk.

"Your brothers objected to your misuse of psychic powers, so you regarded them as self-styled fools. Your lords and officials objected to you, so you called them witch hunters. You named them after a group of murderers from ancient Terra. Why do you think you are a murdered witch? They may be innocent, but you are not."

"Put me down!" Magnus yelled again. "Forget it if you don't listen, I will go find my father!"

"Really? Is this your only request?"

"You have to let me go! Listen, there is still a chance to save this. Father doesn't understand—"

"——He doesn't understand?" Macado finally sneered. "What do you think he doesn't understand? Your arrogance really opens my eyes, Magnus."

He closed his eyes and began to calm down. Magnus heard him exhaling slowly, his posture becoming older, as if he was really just an old man in his twilight years.

The Crimson King did not let this hard-won opportunity slip away from his hands. Being attacked with psychic powers was a great shame for a psyker like him, but he still had the power to counterattack.

The previous attempts to persuade him with words were just to avoid making the scene too ugly. Since Malcador didn't want to listen to him, there was no need for him to make the conversation decent.

The piercing blue light suddenly lit up from his one eye, but Malcador opened his eyes at the right time as expected, and sent Magnus out of the darkness with a wave of his hand.

In an instant, the light returned again, and Magnus fell heavily to the ground. He looked up and saw the Lord of Mankind. The latter looked down at him expressionlessly, without any emotion in his eyes, but it hurt Magnus deeply.

The Crimson King gritted his teeth, stood up, managed to speak, lowered his head and greeted: "Father."

"Magnus." The Emperor nodded slightly. "You said you were coming to find me, and now I'm right in front of you. What do you want to say?"

"I-" Magnus opened his mouth, but the words died in his throat, and he couldn't even make a sound.

After a few seconds, he organized his words and began to explain to his father: "——What happened to the reporter was just an accident, father. I still have ways to remedy it."

"Berros von Sharp."

".What?"

"His name is Belros von Sharp," said the Emperor. "You can't even remember the name of the only person who's willing to stand up for you?"

Magnus did not answer this question. For some reason, he chose to ignore it and continued to make a fuss about the 'remediation'.

"Father, I implore you to listen to me. Belros's soul is lost in the vast ocean, but this is not a big deal. Before the ocean current meter was destroyed, I used the tracking spell in the vast ocean. I I saw the place where his soul is, and now I only need a ritual to bring his soul back from there!"

"Then what?" asked the Emperor.

"Then." Magnus said this word, and his expression began to become more and more confused. In the end, he lowered his head like a helpless child.

Yes, what then? What to do next? Reversing everything? This is simply impossible, unless he uses psychic powers to tamper with the consciousness of the participants. Otherwise, how can they change their opinions after watching the whole process?

"You didn't seem to hear me when I said I indulged you too much, Magnus," the Emperor spoke calmly. "Just like every exhortation and warning you have passively forgotten before."

"Father."

"Both I and your brothers have warned you to be careful about subspace and delve into related knowledge. Unfortunately, you didn't listen at all. Over and over again, you passively or actively forgot these words."

"I am only pursuing knowledge, father." Magnus said quietly, still lowering his head. "Is this also wrong?"

The emperor did not answer, but sent out a wave of psychic energy. It was neither a gentle touch nor a 'request to talk'. This wave of waves was as violent as a tsunami, even surpassing the dangerous waves that Magnus had experienced in the vast ocean.

Its mere appearance immediately destroyed Magnus' grasp of the real world, transporting his consciousness to another world. Magnus began to scream as he stared directly into a blazing sun.

He instinctively stretched out his hands to cover his eyes to escape the light, but he couldn't do it. The psychic energy belonging to the Lord of Mankind ruthlessly forced him to open his eyes wide.

Immediately afterwards, under the influence of the endless spiritual energy surging around him, waves of vast knowledge began to blast into Magnus's brain manically. Countless puzzles swept through, so vast that even as a primarch, Magnus could only understand a small part of them.

He began to continue screaming as most of what was left was destroying him. They cannot be understood, cannot be observed, cannot even be 'seen', yet they exist.

Just realizing the logical fallacy of this was about to burst Magnus's blood vessels, and he could almost hear his brain swelling and his skull moaning.

These puzzles fundamentally destroyed his arrogance and made his so-called 'scholar' and 'sage' status look ridiculous.

What scholar or wise man would want to escape when faced with a new mystery?

"Please stop, father!" Magnus begged regardless. "I understand, I know where I went wrong!"

"Aren't you thirsty for knowledge, Magnus?" The flame looked down at him coldly. "Now you've got them."

"But I don't understand, father!" the Crimson King almost cried. "They - they, I can't understand what they are!"

"You don't need to understand, just feel, Magnus."

As soon as he finished speaking, Magnus actually started to feel it. Knowledge and puzzles washed over him like a boiling ocean. He was a drowned man tied to a rock, naked.

The sea breeze is blazing, the waves are cold, and the waves are more painful than lightning strikes. All of them just swept over him, completely engulfing him. He began to drown, for the first time in his life.

How ridiculous is this? If knowledge is compared to water, then Magnus is a free swordfish, able to swim in the sea of ​​knowledge at great speed.

But now? He was actually drowning. The knowledge he had spent his whole life pursuing was now in front of him, but he couldn't understand it at all, and was even about to be killed by them.

Between the trance of life and death, Magnus's soul and consciousness began to tremble. It was at this moment that he saw himself - to be precise, he saw a one-eyed eye, one shining with blue light. s eyes.

Not the radiance of psychic energy, but another kind of light.

The burning of the flames suddenly stopped, the perception ended, and the senses returned to reality. Magnus fell to his knees soaked all over, and his robes were as scarlet as if they were soaked in blood. The Emperor still stood before him, as if nothing had changed.

"Father?" Magnus asked weakly. "Are you there, father?"

He raised his head, but there was darkness in front of him. He saw nothing, felt nothing. This perception frightened him so much that he fell to his knees again.

"I have deprived you of your gift of psionics," the Emperor declared calmly, as if nothing had happened just now. "This is the foundation of your life and the thing you are most proud of, but it cannot be established until it is broken. You must learn it from the beginning, Magnus."

"I can't see, father." Magnus was so dazed that he almost forgot to say angrily.

"Do you think your remaining eye is real?" the Emperor asked.

He turned around and left the room.

This chapter is 4k.

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