40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 691 73. Belated Judgment (31)

Fighting the Emperor was like grabbing a stone and throwing it at a giant with towering shoulders. You might get a little attention from him by the time you throw the ten thousandth stone, but that's about it.

He will see you from the sky and you will be smaller than a speck of dust.

The Chaos Wizard spent a brief moment making an assessment. He knew he wasn't the one who threw the stone, he wasn't that small yet, but the truth wasn't much better.

At this moment, when he looked at the emperor, it was like looking at a flower in the fog, with only a hazy outline but no specific shape. If the Emperor were the enemy he was fighting, this would be a fatal situation.

But not the Emperor.

The Chaos Sorcerer knew from the beginning that he was no enemy. The Emperor would kill him, that was for sure, but the Emperor was not his enemy.

"You are wrong." The Lord of Humanity said, his voice calm but ruthless.

The wizard looked at him.

"I am not the enemy of Dark Angel Serafax, because he has no real sense of the sins you have committed. He does not know what you have done, and he has not been distorted by the so-called knowledge you possess."

"He suffered every second of his arrival on Terra, tortured by the ruthless gap between reality and imagined ideals - he remained loyal, wizard, but you were different."

The wizard whispered in his mind in reply. He understood that the Emperor could hear it.

He thought that loyalty is a broad concept, and self-righteous loyalty or foolish loyalty is far more terrible than any evil. People who are coerced by these two will destroy everything with self-righteous good intentions.

"There is no difference between you and the former person you say you are."

Maybe, or maybe I'm not loyal. However, I understand that some fanatical worlds compile lists of heroes and saints from their own history.

They would send the list to the state church, hoping to be recognized and canonized. But the state church almost never responds. As far as I know, the state church has only officially handled such religious matters three times since you took office. And it did not respond in good faith.

"The Ecclesiarchy declares them heretics," the Emperor said slowly. "I know. The state religion believes that they are disloyal, dishonest, and traitors and traitors. Not only did they not canonize them, they also dispatched a fleet to wipe out everything in those three worlds."

They caused great catastrophe. thought the wizard. The entire star area was soaked in blood, a huge terror. I saw it with my own eyes.

"How big?" the emperor asked. "Is it greater than the blood evil you have committed with your own hands? How many people have you killed, wizard? How many Calibans have burned in your conspiracy?"

I can't remember exactly. Maybe a thousand, maybe ten thousand, what's the importance?

The wizard frowned.

He thought that these were just things that happened in another timeline. They were just stories, just like the stories parents would tell their children when they were young, illusory and distant.

The Emperor shook his head.

"You don't understand," he whispered, with more sadness than anger. "You have no idea what you did."

At this point, the wizard finally felt a little confused, but he did not let this confusion affect what he wanted to express.

What I did did not affect this place. I did kill many people, but none of them existed in our world. Their deaths don't matter to you -

"—It doesn't matter?" the Emperor interrupted.

The wizard was a little surprised.

This is not the first time he has dealt with gods. He has seen these beings display their power, and he has also seen them have emotions, anger, sorrow, and joy like humans. Although there weren't many of the latter, he did see them. So he knew that there was a small amount of common ground between gods and humans.

They have emotions, but these emotions come from human pain. In other words, gods will laugh, get angry, and cry, but the reasons are beyond human comprehension, and the manifestations are as deformed as nightmares. If we want to get to the bottom of it, we can only fall into boundless madness.

But it's different now.

The Emperor's face was full of disgust and anger, real, neither abstract nor supernatural. His emotions were real, and the reasons were understandable, just like any other human being.

The wizard began to think about this.

He had always viewed the Emperor after the Heresy as a mere god. He believes that although He is still protecting mankind, it cannot be as pure as the Lord of mankind thousands of years ago.

He had thought that such an Emperor would gladly accept the pure energy he brought and use it in the eternal war, just as he accepted the psykers ignited by the Star Torch.

In that case, even if he dies, his goal will be achieved—humanity will win.

The emperor's disgust became more and more obvious, but he still gave the wizard a firm denial. His voice was like thunder, and his face gradually became blurred, filled with golden light.

"No, you are missing one fundamental fact."

What? The wizard frowned. What am I missing?

"We have not lost," the Emperor said. "The winner of the War on Terra is humanity, so there is nothing more we need to do."

"But you have never faced this war squarely. In your understanding, mankind is its loser, which has led to the rigidity of the empire, the numbness of the people, and the prevalence of darkness."

"You are wrong. The truth is exactly the opposite of what you know. We are the victors. Therefore, there is nothing here for you to change or reverse. Your knowledge and plans have been firmly held by Tzeentch from the beginning. In the palm of my hand, you are just a puppet."

The wizard took a deep breath and finally spoke in his own voice.

"The Astartes and the Auxiliary Army were willing to serve as the pioneers of the establishment of the Empire. They followed your orders across the stars, went to completely unfamiliar places to expand territory, and regained lost territory, even if they had to face countless wars. "

"Why? Is it just based on faith in the original body and faith in you?"

"The answer is definitely not that. The reason why they are willing to sacrifice here is just because they got a new ideal from your words. An ideal that is enough to unite mankind as a whole, and no longer have no clothes to wear, no food to eat, and no food to eat. The possibility of alien bullying, oppression, and even enslavement."

"But in the tens of thousands of years since the war ended, every world I have seen has been filled with suffering. The glory of the Great Crusade has disappeared without a trace, and no one can act according to the principles they once had."

“I saw the corrupt bureaucracy and administrative system, I saw civilians dying of starvation, freezing and disease, I saw the strong and strong fighting each other in the animal cages set up by the rich, until their brains were splattered. To get a little change from their fingers.”

"We once defeated them, but they came back, and they took root deeper than before. Not only that, aliens are also around, and there are demons and evil gods with greedy gazes. This is not even as good as the previous status quo, but it is enough Is it called a victory?"

The Emperor looked at him calmly and nodded.

"Why?" the wizard asked sincerely.

"On these grounds," said the Emperor.

He raised his right hand and showed the wizard a picture - a picture of war, a collection of victims, everyone included, no one left out.

From Calth to Macragge, from Nostramo to an unnamed asteroid belt, from the far reaches of the solar system to the technological laboratories of Mars.

Finally, there's Terra.

Uncommanded armed servitors stood in front of the priests to delay until they could upload the self-destruct protocol to the servo terminal.

The explosion sounded, the message was passed, and a wounded messenger ran through the trench with difficulty, taking the retreat order to a position where no one could stand anymore. He raised his gun to take over their responsibilities, not knowing that there was a team not far away who swore to live and die with the tanks.

Seven minutes after the death of the messengers, they were burned to death in the tank by the hellfire summoned by the cultists.

Similarly, the tank crew did not know that at the moment when the hellfire was ignited, a pilot who had flown dozens of consecutive missions flew over their heads.

He injected too many cardiotonic and stimulant drugs. Finally, in the extreme exhaustion and warning of fuel exhaustion, he merged with the machine soul, crashed into the ground with the determination to die, set off an explosion, and created a demonic wave. A little vacuum.

The waves caused by his death gave several Sisters of Silence some respite, and also allowed them to break into another battlefield. Here the eagle of Chogoris and the sons of the Savior are fighting with no ammunition or food.

The two legions have different styles in the past, but they can generally be attributed to winning with speed and bravery. But things are different now. In order to stabilize the battle line, they willingly abandoned their past creeds and fought on the battlefield until the last person was drowned by the demonic tide.

At the eleventh hour after their deaths, two imperial soldiers from the Ten Thousand Fu Regiment arrived here. Their armors had been damaged in many places, but their fighting spirit was still high.

One person picked it up and found a battle flag, a joint battle flag, with the marks left by the Fifth Army and the Nineteenth Army. He raised it again from the blood and corpses, while another took the eagle from his belt and hung it on it.

For the next three hours, they stayed here until the flag fell again, broken by the devil's claws, trampled under the feet by hind hooves covered with human flesh, and crushed hard until it penetrated deep into the soil.

But it will eventually be found, and it will be erected again.

Lucifer's Black Guard, one of Terra's defenders, found it and took the flag back to their base to mend it. The White Scar logo was not replaced, as was the eagle emblem, which was simply added with a black and white background.

Their position was eventually engulfed in flames amid the twisted form of the Word Bearers, and was buried beneath the crumbling walls. A few more hours later, it was found by a group of Imperial Fists evacuating the lost fortress.

They guessed what this flag had experienced, so they added a touch of yellow to the battle flag. They traveled a long distance with this flag and found a remnant army, including the Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Blood Angels. The battle flag was thus recast.

The Iron Hands provided materials, the Salamanders lit a crude fire, and the Blood Angels painted the surface with blood. This army was finally destroyed right below it. At the cost of death, they blocked the enemy several times their own number. Successfully dragged in the support of Mortarion's heirs.

The Death Guard picked up the flag from the top of a hill of friendly corpses.

They could detect the peculiarity of its material, which was very similar to the metals the Iron Hands were accustomed to using. They could also see the forge mark that the Sons of Vulkan had left on the flagpole. And on the surface of the flag, once you see the craftsmanship of the Blood Angels once, you will never forget it again.

Blood soaked it, making black and white, yellow and gray merge into one, and also dyed the eagle emblem with blood, making it scarlet. The warriors of the 14th Legion swore to it that they would never let it be covered in dust.

The warsmith once held it and struggled forward, throwing it out at the moment before activating the bomb in the breastplate. The only remaining Emperor's children once pulled it out from the corpse, laughing loudly and running to another beginning.

Wolves and war dogs once gathered under it, roaring to declare their will. The Ultramarines and Dark Angels once held it high, swearing by their respective homelands that they would let it - let those dead - see the arrival of victory with their own eyes

And now, it was floating in front of the Chaos Sorcerer. It was still stained with blood and mottled, but the flag was much larger. It was placed in a transparent glass case, and all the troops who had fought in the Battle of Terra could find their emblems on it.

The wizard was silent, and the Emperor spoke again. His voice was as loud as thunder as described in the myth, and his face was also drowned in pure golden light.

You come to see the gods, and you will get the gods.

"The victory of this war was forged by their fighting, bloodshed and sacrifice. You have never seen all this, so you think they are not doing well enough, so humans will lose."

The gods roared angrily.

"But, are you qualified to slander them like this? Sooner or later, those who associate with darkness will fall into darkness. The dark angel named Serafax died 10,000 years ago, and what remains is only a body, doing self-righteous hard work."

"But what have you done? Your hands are stained with blood, slaughtering innocent people, robbing warships, sacrificing lives, summoning demons, and trampling on hope. Lose? Who is the loser, can't you see clearly? Your master is the loser!"

"You are self-righteous and have become His puppet, using each other with Him, usurping one world after another for Him, allowing His injuries to recover and His power to be reunited - and you are so stupid that you can't see the truth!"

"Do you think that what you have done, the so-called energy you brought, and the souls of these innocent people can help us reverse the outcome of that war? Reverse what? Turn victory into failure, and let the blood shed by the victims be wasted?!"

The wizard wanted to speak, but the gods did not allow it. In a trance, he heard a few laughs and the sound of feathers scraping that he was very familiar with.

Tzeentch seemed to say something, but he refused to listen. Everything in the past came to his mind, and the wizard indifferently looked for the key. He no longer had time to care whether he should feel ashamed, shocked or sad at this moment.

From the beginning to the end, he had only one goal. But now it seems that this method does not work.

Then change it.

He suddenly spoke.

"The timeline of the Battle of Terra cannot be changed, right? Then why don't you kill me?"

Thunder resounded, and the god answered.

The wizard slowly exhaled a turbid breath.

"So that's it." He murmured to himself. "The Lion is the key, and the First Legion is also the key. Terra needs them to rekindle the Star Torch and let support come."

"Wrong, Serafax."

The golden light faded, and the god's ruthlessness and violence all dissipated, leaving only a face with pity.

"Everyone is the key." The emperor said. "Like you."

"Me?" The wizard stared at him in amazement. This was the first time he showed such obvious emotions.

"How many dead Lions have you taken away? Is their essence still in your hands?"

A loud buzzing sound came from the wizard's head, and the Emperor still looked at him meaningfully.