Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 439 Network Channel

Morse walked upwards, on foot, away from the shadows deep within the palace of Terra.

The tens of meters high wall behind him contained darkness and secrets deep in the building structure. All the secrets contained therein could dwarf the instrument hall that Interex was proud of, so much so that it was suspected that the Shadow Prison was Relying on the control of the Forbidden Army, or relying on the internal things that may have been accumulated before the birth of the palace, the precarious internal checks and balances formed by themselves: If one of the things escapes from the darkness, perhaps the one who really kills the escaper will be Other dangers are more difficult to control.

In normal times, Morse would ask Malcador some questions, but he was dissatisfied with the behavior of the Forbidden Army at this time. When he arrived here, they had just finished a bloody game and removed the cyclone torpedo in orbit. They seemed to be unfinished and still full of challenges to the palace's protection level.

Most of the commanders of the Imperial Guard have followed the Emperor to Ullanor to complete their duties as attendants.

But Morse had no intention of delaying, for Perturabo was still lying in the infirmary. Devon is a red flag. He ensured that apart from the Iron Warriors, only Malcador, Magnus and himself knew of Perturabo's injury.

At least he thought Waldo was in Ullanor.

"Waldo," Morse said, his voice low, "What are you doing here?"

Constantin Waldo stood in the corridor, the humid air condensing into Dettol on his golden armor. His eyes were as calm as water, reflecting slightly in the semi-dark environment. Statues collected by warlords who were looted as trophies are arranged in inwardly concave display racks like shrines. The carefully designed dynamics make these objects appear more alive than Waldo himself.

"Waiting for you," said Waldo, "at my Lord's command."

Morse felt puzzled, a feeling that had been growing with each passing day in recent days.

He hoped his words didn't sound like questioning, "Did Malcador tell him about his old enemy Blade?"

Waldo was silent for a moment, looking directly at Morse.

"No," he said, "I was ordered to wait before the war in Ullanor began."

"It sounds like someone is trying to play prophet," Morse said. "Does he have a new plan?"

"It is a letter addressed to the Fourth Primarch," Waldo said, "but the Lord says that it is up to you to decide whether to deliver the letter to him in its entirety. Follow me."

The last part of his sentence caught Morse's attention and forced him to be patient for the rest of their excursion.

They passed through the winding and complicated roads inside the palace. Along the way, the golden-armored guards paid homage to the commander of the imperial army. The stairs became narrower as they went up. They were originally decorated with gorgeous golden railings, and suspended from the ceiling, they were shaped into a sky with wings that turned into golden flames. The Eagle chandelier is finally made of smooth polished marble.

When they arrived at the door, all that was left was a plain metal door, a simple square table inside the door, and simple seats - large enough for Constantin Waldo to sit.

A letter written on parchment was placed on the square table, giving Morse an uncomfortable feeling. He walked over and picked up the letter.

Letter paper is thick and tough, with fat and hair removed, cleaned and shaved, and set and dried in the sun to create a tough, smooth surface.

Its slightly yellowish surface surprised Morse. The letter had been written almost a hundred years ago, when the Great Crusade was at its peak. Apart from Primarch Eleven, who had just been declared missing, and the long-dead Primarch No. 2, everyone performed their duties.

But this is not sheepskin, but the skin of a soulless man.

It's enough to block any prying eyes, if they exist.

Constantin Waldo was undoubtedly the sole keeper of this secret letter.

"Can I see it now?" Morse asked symbolically, "so I can decide whether or not to tell Perturabo."

Waldo nodded, his expression unreadable.

"Don't tell me what's in it," he said, turning his back and retreating into the shadows of the room. There are no windows here, and the only light is a fluorescent strip embedded directly above the tabletop.

Morse used a spell to reconstruct his fingers, filling in the areas where the psychic energy had been neutralized. His fingers passed over the sealing wax of the letter, and the crimson wax fell off quietly.

He unfolded the folded letter paper, and every letter on it was carved by the Emperor's own hand. You could even see the unfamiliar handwriting caused by the Master of Mankind not having used a carving knife for a long time. Under the light, the semi-transparent skin of the Soulless Man could be seen. The letters themselves seem to glow.

Morse's smile disappeared during the reading process. He stared at the letter in his hand and said softly: "I think this letter will no longer be useful after reading it, right? You can turn it around, Val. many."

"My lord gives it to you," Waldo replied, "but you cannot take it out of this room."

"You are right," Morse said coldly, walking to the door of the room to relieve the discomfort caused by the soulless man's skin, "I believe that your weapon can turn it into ashes, and I entrust you to do so. "

——

"The Tyrant Star is coming, and its fate is fixed. I have seen the signs of its rise more than ten thousand years ago.

"If possible, it will be the ending that the galaxy will inevitably enter, but first, it must devour humans. Just as about three hundred years ago, we witnessed the first cry of the Dark Prince, and an arrogant race turned into a The nourishment of the new gods.”

said Morse, calmly reciting the words of the letter. His voice was transmitted within the protection of the rune formation, and therefore did not produce any echo, as if all the voices fell into a black hole.

“So for many years I was thinking about how to capitalize on its creation.”

Magnus moved forward a little in his seat.

"Use?" he repeated, holding his hands tighter: "Do you mean 'use'?"

"It wasn't me, it was your father who said this phrase." Morse raised his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes. The mood swings he had experienced in the past week were comparable to those in the previous ten years combined. "Take advantage."

+Please continue. +Perturabo said that in order for him to safely join the conversation, Mors made preparations such as drawing twice as many runes and energies as when he accompanied Magnus deep into the Warp all those years ago. .

Morse completed all this with an almost indignant mentality, and at the same time imagined the emperor's expression when he was carving words with a pen knife: he must be carving very slowly, and countless ideas about the future must have emerged in his great brain. At the same time, he would calculate every word and sentence he wrote to ensure that Morse's emotions would follow his words in the right direction.

In the Cheorwon, which has a suitable climate all year round, he felt the cold wind mixed with snow from the Corona Tower blowing over him again.

"Only equal forces can confront each other. Therefore, after I accidentally learned of the existence of the Tyrant Star, I confirmed that it would be the best, and perhaps the only, means for humans to completely expel the subspace."

"But how do we harness it, how do we yoke this power?"

Speaking of which, Morse glanced at Magnus.

"By chance, dozens of centuries ago, we learned about the properties of the Webway," Morse continued, closing his eyes before Magnus noticed him. "It was some ancient creation. , an excellent conductor with self-growing properties, and a race that has proven its resistance to the Warp. In addition, its expansion range encompasses almost the entire galaxy.

"In fact, we already discovered the fact that Magnus No. 15 discovered recently."

Magnus was stunned for a moment. He thought he was just a bystander: "Recently? What have I discovered recently?"

+It was the 'latest day' the Emperor wrote,+Perturabo said,+You are always discovering new things, Magnus. +

"I wondered at that time whether the distribution of Webway nodes in the Milky Way could form a natural psychic prohibition rune array - a rune with the Milky Way as the scale; therefore, our old friend accepted my request and provided the I probed and mapped the entire webway.

"This process is not easy. It took Erda thousands of years to complete the complete map of Purgatory, and her discovery proved my suspicion. Unfortunately, she later abandoned it and left me.

"No matter what, to this day I still want to thank her for her efforts in creating the map."

+Why did she do that? +Muttered Perturabo.

He had seen Erda's apparition, when he briefly witnessed the scene that Vastor had seen. The tall woman rebuked the Emperor for his actions as grotesque and cruel—her accusations still seemed odd enough.

"There were two things that prevented me from further exploring that year. One was the loss of the map of Purgatory, which disappointed me. Therefore, I must thank you and Konrad Coze for bringing it back to me."

When writing this, the emperor changed a line. He did not write much about the dispute between Erda and him.

"Secondly, in the current era, no one has been able to build the Webway and reshape it into the shape we need - until Morse entered the Webway entrance with the green skins. I was so surprised and delighted at that time I remember it vividly."

Morse recalled in his mind. He didn't look surprised at all, honestly. The Emperor only spoke a little slower.

"In this way, all two obstacles have been removed. Without the necessary conditions brought about by your help, I would have sealed this idea forever and never mentioned it again."

"Elda?" Magnus read this unfamiliar name and quickly put it behind him. His brain was more active than ever.

"Let me think about it... So, if we can intercept the branch lines that need to be used and really activate them - yes, I said at the time that it can isolate the mutual interference of surreal effects! Then It was a hundred and fifty years ago. Did my father know that I went to find you on your ship, Perturabo? I only mentioned this to you!

"Your Majesty, I later abandoned that project because it required too much energy! I was even afraid that my father would use his life to complete it, because that was the only equivalent energy I could think of in the universe. source……

"So, is it the Tyrant Star? Use the power of the Tyrant Star he mentioned to power runes on a galactic scale? I asked why I was asked to paint walls all over the world and fill up those Tutmons... But those greenskins were not that stupid, they learned it so quickly...I was surprised and happy at the time, really..."

+I think, yes, it’s the Tyrant Star. + Perturabo thought thoughtfully. Even if he didn't understand the rules of psychic operation, he could make an analogy with mechanical creations.

"Next, in my plan, the only thing we have to do is to ensure the integrity and absolute sealing of the Webway, and when the Tyrant Star truly breaks through the curtain, its carrier happens to be at the hub of the Webway formation. ”

"The throne room!" Magnus blurted out, "The golden throne!"

He muttered excitedly while calculating, and the new possibilities made him excited. This was enough to show that he was indeed taught and raised by his biological father in his early years.

"...Yes, the rune modified by the Emperor can extract the power of the Nightmare Sun. We just tested it before! We only need to change the Golden Throne... This will be a balance between the inside and outside, the balance of power between the Tyrant Star and Chaos , let them throw witchcraft at each other themselves!

"We only need to divert part of the network tunnel, cut those dozens of sections - to be safe, we can use double the number of sections, cut them off the main route, and then seal them! Why hasn't anyone thought of it? Oh, we want to occupy the entire galaxy, come on Make sure those webway runes are under our control, of course... The Great Crusade, this is the Great Crusade, the Throne!

"So - what is the carrier of Tyrant Planet?"

At the end of the thought, a question jumped into Magnus's rambling inferences, leaving him stuck in place.

Until the Emperor proposed this concept, he had always believed that the Tyrant was some kind of spontaneous phenomenon in the Warp. He was annoyed that he had such a big blind spot in his thinking.

"The Emperor is responsible for that part," Mors said, making no attempt to hide his displeasure. "He can indeed make the Tyrant Planet come to life at the right time and place."

"This is your father's decision. He intends to regard this as his last job as emperor... After that, he plans to step down from office and leave all the affairs of the empire to Horus and Malcador. The two of them will fight for ten thousand years.”

+Good. +Perturabo said, considering that this letter was actually written to him.

"As for you, Perturabo, you may have to be a maintenance worker, clearing the network channels and protecting those pipelines at any time." Morse said, paused, "The letter also has an ending."

He continued to recite the letter. After reading it once, he memorized every mark on the letter.

"I never thought that someone would choose to part ways with me knowing my plans. Yet, it happened. So don't blame me for not telling you sooner, my friends, my children. "

Morse read out the following group of pronouns, which made his throat feel like a blockage, even though he knew that this was a deliberate word play by the Emperor.

How could the Emperor believe that after reading that damn letter, he wouldn't abandon him like Erda? Could it be that these two personal names are what he relies on? No, that's not it. What he really relies on is the Nightmare Sun that has emerged - which means that the prelude to the Emperor's dream has been played.

The Emperor made sure that any piece he could move would find that he had only one way to salvage what was left of the game: to continue his plan.

"Some people may try to prevent the birth of the Tyrant Planet. They are cautious, their nostalgia for the past holds them back, and superficial discussions of morality blind their vision. But human history cannot end in hesitation and timidity.

"You know that Cartago's general crossed the Alps and used half of his troops to gain the entire defenseless Rome; Agincourt's longbowmen made a key turning point in a hundred years of war; the sea marchers crossed three hundred Miles to the supply and base of the South... This is the true lesson that history has taught us, and you have witnessed it all."

Morse swallowed the unforgivable epithet at the end of his sentence, not wanting to read his name in front of Perturabo.

"You give and you receive. This is the only law for us to ask for rewards from fate."

Morse stood up and walked aside: "I'm done reading."

As his epilogue ended, the other two Primarchs in the room simultaneously fell into thinking.

"How did Father get it?" Magnus whispered to himself. "A galaxy-wide rune? Then there would be no more sorcery! Mortarion couldn't use numerology - oh, I want to go back to Prospero—"

+You can use Cheorwon's scratch paper first, Magnus. +Perturabo saw through Magnus' subtext with ease. +Morse, is this...all of it? +

"No, because I'm the one who gets to decide which part of the letter gets passed on to you," Morse snorted. "As for the rest of it, it's never going to happen."