40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 693 75. Resurrection (4)

Leon El'Jonson only felt as if he had had a long, long dream.

But he also understood that this was just an appearance. The truth is, he died, in the aftermath of the war. Moreover, even at this moment, he could still recall the unparalleled pain very clearly.

In order to escape it, the lion's thoughts began to wander aimlessly.

He was born in the subspace - this is not a secret, the primarchs have long felt it - and their bodies were created by the Emperor through genetic programming technology with great pains. They cannot be called perfect, but they are close to it. standard.

Each primarch has its prototype, which is a mixture of heroes, great men and figures from myths and legends in human history, and has preset functions. Then the muscles and bones are adjusted, and the memory of the battle is instilled, with the sole purpose of making this body worthy of the essence it carries.

Now that I think about it, it is understandable that Luojia was so religious in the early days of the Great Crusade.

After all, he was born in Colchis, a world where faith is prevalent, and the existence of the Emperor and the Primarch can just prove the theory of gods and divine sons in the local mythology of Colchis.

We are more than the Emperor's sons. the lion thought.

Caliban.

His thoughts dispersed into a small path, and along the road, he walked quietly deeper.

Caliban shaped me.

It taught me to be cruel, ruthless, and to kill when necessary. It also taught me to hide my minions and wait for the killing blow.

But these things do not belong to humans. They belong to the qualities of beasts, and are the means of survival given to stray beasts by ruthless nature. I once lived a confused life as a beast, Luther

The name came to mind, and the lion felt a twinge of pain. He doesn't understand what happened, but he still remembers him.

It was Luther and the Knights who taught me how to live as a human being.

Live, not survive. Use tableware when eating, wash yourself before going to bed, and groom your beard and hair appropriately. Be literate, read, and learn from the deaths and lessons of those who came before you. Learn to be tough, learn to be patient, learn to unite

Learn sympathy, learn mercy, learn indignation, learn virtue, learn justice, and how they should be truly practiced.

A picture quietly emerged.

"Look at them, Leon."

Standing on the wall of the fortress monastery, the black-haired knight spoke like this. At this moment, the sun was setting in the west, and he stared down. Many farmers were carrying hoes and shovels back and forth between the cultivated fields and farm buildings.

"They have been busy all day and took care of so much land. Do you think they can have a full meal when they go home tonight?"

The knight asked this question, but he didn't seem to expect an answer, so he gave the answer himself, with a complicated look and a shake of his head.

He turned his head and looked at the lion.

"After they get home, they can only eat beans or sourdough bread or something like that. Eating these things for a long time will make people weak. They are not particularly nutritious after all, but they have no choice."

"They have been living under the protection of the Knights for hundreds of years. For each acre of land, the Knights have to take away 70% of the food. The remaining 30% is in their hands, and I'm afraid there is not enough food that can actually be used for food. To 10%.”

"They have to exchange grain for winter clothes and treat their animals. Farmers are like this. They can't save any money all year round. Farming, the more they farm, the poorer they get, so they can only work hard to have children, thinking that they will be able to have children when they are older. Share some. But what can you really share?”

The knight sighed and put his hands on the edge of the city wall unconsciously. His fingers turned white and veins popped out on the back of his hands.

"Can't we charge less?" the lion heard himself asking. At that time, his voice still sounded very young.

The knight smiled sadly and shook his head again.

"This is the point of the problem, Leon, we must take it, otherwise the Knights will not be able to maintain it. You, me, other knights, servants, and precious horses - how much food does the fortress monastery consume every day? You have Have you considered this issue?"

"This is an astronomical figure. Moreover, we have to send teams to patrol and sweep the surrounding forests once a month to detect the traces of the giant beasts in order to protect them and the farmland. This is another huge expense."

The picture gradually zoomed out until it disappeared, but the lion's thoughts did not stop, and he remembered more.

This conversation took place two months after he entered the knighthood. At that time, he had got rid of his apprenticeship and had been awarded the honor, sword and knight twelve days ago.

Soon, he would clear out a nearby behemoth lair in one patrol, and then more. In just one year, the size of the cultivated land around the Knights has expanded several times.

Immediately afterwards, he proposed to the Knights to organize the servants to conduct hunting training. There are no traces of giant beasts in the nearby forests, and hunting can be used as a stable source of food.

Of course, his proposal was approved. Once formed, the team of hunters expanded rapidly. Soon, meat replaced the crops in the cultivated fields and became the main source of food for the knights. But what the lion wanted was still more. It's not just that.

The next year, he continued to take the lead in patrolling, and in his spare time, he asked his servants to pass on hunting skills and tools to the farmers. At the end of that year, all the protected farmers' homes under the rule of Alduruk Monastery, The smell of meat wafted up.

And this was just the beginning. In just ten years, the Lion unified the entire Caliban.

The giant beasts were completely slaughtered. He personally walked every inch of the land to ensure that they were completely extinct and could no longer threaten any Caliban people.

The forests were exploited for arable land, fishing, hunting, weaving. Primitive technology developed rapidly. The dirt roads in the villages and towns became stone roads, the towering walls replaced the fences and wooden stakes, and the mud houses and thatched roofs were crushed by wood and tiles.

The Lion resisted the urge to sigh.

Before he accepted the Emperor's proposal, stepped into the starry sea, and became the messenger and pioneer of the war, no one on Caliban had been hungry for a long time. That was his original ideal, the original indignation.

Since he saw the chilblain hands and sallow and thin faces of the civilians, this strange anger that came from nowhere has always lingered in his heart.

Compared with the great cause of conquering the starry sea and incorporating a thousand worlds into the empire, this ideal can be said to be insignificant, even a little ridiculous, but the Lion didn't want to think so.

He did not think this was ridiculous, nor did he think that he was deviating from the original intention of the Emperor to design him - if the Lord of Mankind only needed the engine of war, only needed ruthless executioners and murderers, then why should he give them a truly free soul?

The lion firmly believed that in his father's heart, conquest was just a means of salvation.

However, the problem is that once such a huge war machine as the Empire is started, no one will stop it. The Emperor can't do it, and Lion El'Jonson naturally can't do it.

He could only watch the Calibans being forced into factories, cutting down all the forests, filling up the arable land, living in the hives, and becoming a small gear in this machine, producing killing things - bullets, or sharp blades.

The Calibans saved me. The lion thought complicatedly. They turned me from a beast into an upright person, but I failed to give the same return.

His thoughts continued to diverge.

Who else had the same experience as him?

Fulgrim? Yes, he was the son of a worker, and Chemos was liberated in his hands. It was originally a pale, gray and black mineral world. Fulgrim used his own hands to create machines that changed the environment and the landscape, making it prosperous again, even enough to brew intoxicating wine that every civilian could afford.

But he left and did not return until much later.

So the situation in Chemos is probably not optimistic.

The lion had heard that the archons there had become hedonists who did not want to make progress in the middle of the Great Crusade, and their rule was simply a mess.

Fulgrim was gone, just like me.

The lion's memories were rolling, and the Chemos people wearing white cloaks and comfortable hunting clothes came into his sight. It was a leisurely hunting trip, which happened during a gathering, a rare moment when they could talk to each other without fighting.

During the conversation, the lion inadvertently asked about Chemos, and Fulgrim showed a nonchalant attitude mixed with pain and regret.

"I don't care." He said with a fake smile at that time. "That's their world, they can do whatever they want."

Really, brother? Do you really not care?

The lion thought of his other brother again-Corvus Corax.

He felt a little heartbroken.

Fulgrim still had the opportunity to return to Chemos after the rebellion, carry out drastic reforms, and pick up the original intentions he had abandoned one by one, but Corax was different. He would never have such an opportunity again.

Nowadays, Salvation Star has become a desolate world with dangers everywhere. The Raven Guards have paid a lot to rebuild the landform with the help of the Mechanicus. However, as far as the lion knows, the progress of this matter has been very slow and difficult.

What do you think, Raven? The lion asked himself. Will you regret agreeing to accept your father's proposal and become a knife in his hand, going to one unknown and strange world after another for him, sowing death?

He didn't know the answer, but his instinct told him that Corvus Corax would never think so. He always kept things very clear, and he understood from the beginning what it meant to agree to the Emperor's invitation.

Just like me.

The lion recalled that day. Strangely, he could not remember how long the conversation took place. He only remembered that the Emperor had clearly told him what all this meant.

"You will lead a legion dedicated to killing to every planet in the galaxy. That is very different from what you do here, Lion El'Jonson."

In the banquet hall where only the two of them were present, the king in golden armor said so frankly.

"Your Knights have a set of codes of virtue. If you agree to my invitation, then you will gradually break every one of these codes in the future. You will inevitably stain your hands with blood, aliens, those who are unwilling to surrender, and even civilians."

"War will make you lose yourself. By then, the knight king I see today may only exist in the depths of your memory and become a phantom of the past."

"Why are you so clear?" The lion remembered asking this question.

"Because I have experienced this." The Lord of Mankind replied. "From a savior to a destroyer, abandoning the country you built, looking back hundreds of years later, you only see a dilapidated ruin."

"Even if you build a new utopia again, those people who believed in you and died in pain in the end will never come back."

"Then why do you still do this?"

The Emperor was silent for a long time, raised his hand, took off the laurel crown on his forehead, and spoke slowly.

"Because I have no choice."

His eyes sparkled, like tears, and like the reflection of a flickering candle.

"You will understand, although I hope you will never understand the reason. But this is the fact, Lion El'Jonson, I have no choice. Humanity must unite as soon as possible, otherwise there will be no recovery."

"You rule Caliban, which is good, but how many Calibans are there in this galaxy? You only need to be responsible for Caliban, and I need to be responsible for everyone. I can't watch them fall into the abyss and hell without knowing anything, and become food under the knife of others."

He clenched the laurel crown tightly, and his hands creaked.

"For this goal, in order to save everything, I must first become a destroyer and a ruthless conqueror. Humanity has no time. If you miss this moment, you will fall forever."

And now I am, father. The lion thought calmly.

His thoughts were still scattered, but there was one thing that was certain - he did not blame the Emperor. However, if he really had to find someone to blame, who could he find? After thinking about it, he was afraid that he could only blame himself.

The lion smiled.

But if I could do it again, I would still make the same choice. He said to himself. I would still be the Primarch of the First Legion, and I would still lead them across the starry sea and expedition every star visible to the naked eye.

In the final analysis, this is not a question of choosing to be a savior or a destroyer. There is no choice at all. The Great Crusade is a miracle that can only appear once, a shoddy and shaky miracle.

No one who is still sane should participate in it, but it is already the best future that the human race can choose.

We only have those decades. We have done the best we can. So -

The lion closed his eyes, and his thoughts finally stagnated at this moment. He no longer recalled, and no new questions were born.

At this moment, he felt only peace, as if he was in the monastery of Oduruk in the early morning, with the aroma of mills and bread lingering in his nose. Young apprentices were training in the courtyard, servants were yawning and cleaning the corridors, and knights were meditating.

There was no one starving or freezing under its walls.

- If you can, let me do it again.

Lion El'Jonson begged so humble and trembling. The pain of death had devoured his heart, but he didn't cry for it, and his tears were not shed for himself.

Let me try again. Please.

In the dark, a ray of light penetrated the darkness and reached his eyes.