Warhammer: In the Name of Ashes

Kotos, the embodiment of the warp's greatest malice towards the human race, is also one of the many masterpieces of the dark gods.

It symbolizes the initial hostility and jealousy at the birth of human beings, and also symbolizes the tests that human beings are destined to overcome on the road to self-evolution.

It is difficult for you to use the simple word devil to summarize its existence, because it is different from all the slaves of the dark gods in the way of existence.

It has no evil or desire in the traditional sense, because all its "evil" comes from human beings themselves.

It is also completely different from ordinary subspace creatures. It does not even have a fixed form. All descriptions of it in known records come from the narrow and crude observations of humans who are limited by their soul vision.

Its existence is more like a curse, and its essence is a "cancer" parasitic on the entire human body.

Its existence is so special, and it is as noble as the master of mankind. He cannot resist the fate of his own race and harm it. He can only drive it away and seal it away in desperation;

Even the gods as powerful as Chaos cannot command it. They can only pick it from the depths of the subspace like a virus, and then carefully "plant" it into the target, waiting to bear their desired fruits.

Yes, the original Kotos had no name or nature. It was like a seed that could be manipulated by "farmers" at will.

But once you give it a chance, let it take root.

It will obtain the most unusable "waste" from the host as nutrients and grow at a high speed in a secret environment.

And when it finally grows to a level that cannot be ignored, it will spread throughout the host's body like a cancer, eating away all the "meaning" of its existence, and then break out of the body and gain freedom.

This is a race that even "gardeners" are afraid of, because in the knowledge of the Chaos Gods, this race does not lack cases of using gods as bodies.

In fact, they almost do not have the same form of existence, because based on the differences in their respective bodies, their adult bodies also have completely different appearances.

And if it weren't for the existence of gods that ignore time, no one would be able to discover among them and extract the seeds with common characteristics.

They don't even have fixed names, or the names they call them among the gods cannot be understood by humans.

But they have clear names, because each individual is destined to identify itself with its original host after completing the transformation from juvenile to adult.

This is where the name Kotos comes from.

When it stretched out its first tentacles on this race called humans, it felt the negative emotions that had been accumulated by the entire human race for tens of thousands of years. It awakened itself and also learned its own "name":

"Kotos" was born from the first trace of hostility and hatred from a race that dominated the entire galaxy - Kotos.

What a great existence its mother body is is destined to be unknown, and the gods only gained self-awakening after that existence left this universe.

But Kotos and its "brothers" were discovered by the gods and preserved.

It was also the influence of the "existence" itself of these seven brothers that caused the rules of the universe regarding the dark side of civilization to extend to both sides of the long river of time after their appearance, and eventually became a classification with "seven" as the number. (Well, Nurgle welcomed it very much, and happily incorporated this part of the divine power into his original system with 7 as the core.)

"They" were taken, collected and used by the gods for different purposes at different times.

Some have already blossomed and yielded fruit, and the fruits were snatched away by the gods when the transformation was complete.

They either become new artifacts in the hands of the gods, or they are simply swallowed by the gods and become part of their endless origins.

And some, just like Kotos, are still in the process of lurking and accumulating for a long time.

If given time, it can continue to grow. Then maybe after the transformation is completed, it will take the name of human after its own name.

But Kotos has no chance, at least in this universe with Calvin's arrival, it will never wait until the day it completes its transformation.

Calvin's killing of it did not take much time, but this does not mean that the process of getting rid of this human cancer is so easy and simple.

On the contrary, it was precisely because of the convergence of many special conditions possessed by the former that this demon, which the emperor was helpless to do anything about, easily fell under Calvin's sword.

Time is the least important evidence in this process, because in the war between beings at this level, time is the cheapest consumable.

The seemingly simple battle between the two contains not only the theological significance arising from the astronomical background (the phase between Saturn and Terra) that meets once in decades, but also represents two rare forces in this universe. High-level power, head-on confrontation limited to a certain environment.

The collision of countless rules is hidden under Calvin's careless sword.

However, the determination and confrontation of power can be traced all the way back in the long river of time, even alarming many ancient beings comparable to gods.

Countless destinies and possibilities were cut off with one sword, and the variables and changes it caused surprised even the gods.

This is the result of many accidental and inevitable collisions.

If Calvin's soul from the high-dimensional universe did not lead this confrontation, then even nobleness such as "order" would not be able to erase this special existence.

And if Calvin and the Emperor had not been prepared in advance, under the conditions of the right time and place, they would have allowed the Emperor to cover the subspace corresponding to the entire solar system.

Even though Calvin had boundless power, he was destined to regret the interference of the gods after they came to their senses.

But fortunately, Kotos died.

It dies forever under the power of Calvin's order, which is full of destruction and correction from its origin;

He also died in the helpless sigh of the gods who belatedly tried to interfere, but found that the emperor had been waiting for a long time, waiting for work.

And its death is like a dose of adrenaline, which has an immediate impact on the fate of the entire human race and even the entire universe.

As the biggest executor, Calvin was the first to bear the brunt, and most of the power that Kotos had accumulated over tens of thousands of years became the nourishment in the process of replenishing his soul.

The influence of a small number of rules at the conceptual level, after a chain reaction in the origin of the universe, spreads to the entire human race and even all sentient beings in the entire universe.

Throughout the galaxy, whether within or outside the Empire's jurisdiction, all humans were connected at this moment and felt that a dark cloud seemed to be lifted from their souls.

And all the direct descendants of Calvin were even more blessed. Under the rewards of the rules of the origin of the universe, a trace of golden blood was born from scratch and was born in their gene seeds.

The emergence of the former means that the fate of the entire human race has changed after the fall of Kotos. The hostility and jealousy at the source of the struggle no longer become lambs shrouded in the power of the gods.

Maybe the gods are destined to rebuild the channel of this power in other ways, but at least now, in the past tens of thousands of years of human history, the clouds that the gods have shrouded over the human race have dissipated a little bit. .

The latter is even more insignificant. The blessings received by the sons of Calvin in their souls and bodies may be an extremely important thing to the Order of the Holy Hammer and the Inquisition.

But if their fate is placed in the context of the entire human race, then their promotion is only an insignificant part.

But these are all things for later. As for Calvin, at this time, he has been submerged in the "legacy" of Kotos.

The huge negative emotions were like a huge wave with no end in sight, pouring into Calvin and escaping in all directions.

After the latter discovered that even the full absorption could not keep up with the speed at which this power was pouring in, in a flash of inspiration, he decided to forge the "Kotos-killing Sword" in his hand into a divine weapon on the spot.

This move is obviously more in line with the will of the universe. Instead of throwing this part of power into the body of Calvin, an outsider, it is obviously more interested in keeping this part of power in the universe under the guidance of rules and instincts.

The saying that when times come, heaven and earth all work together, is talking about Calvin's current situation.

Countless rules spontaneously helped Calvin complete this casting, even though he had no experience or knowledge of such work at all.

After the source of order was purged, immeasurable negative emotions poured into the sword in Calvin's hand.

In conjunction with this concentration of power, countless fine gold and true silver spontaneously rose from the mantle, and under the guidance of rules, melted into liquid and poured towards the sword blank in Calvin's hand.

Calvin watched as this ancient long sword in the style of an Astartes training sword visibly grew in front of him like a living thing.

And the core of the power left behind by Kotos after his death spontaneously fell on the sword slave at the moment when the sword body first formed.

Buzz!

A low buzz spread from the center of the psychic storm, and the remnants of power in Calvin's hand were dispersed by the power from the artifact itself.

After the casting was completed, this artifact showed itself to Calvin in a brand new form. It was a white-gold sword that was three meters long and one and a half palms wide, with silver-gray wings extending from both sides of the sword.

Calvin felt the energy pulsating from the sword as if it were alive, and the source of the interaction with his power in his perception was the huge, blood-colored, vertically pupiled magic eye in the center of the sword.

"Truth! Imperial truth!" Calvin couldn't help blurting out.

This is not his will, but this sword or even the embodiment of the rules of this universe.

It is not even related to the nature of the artifact, but is a faithful exposition of the law and righteousness that Calvin executed on the sword in all its forging, under the most egalitarian and indifferent rules of the universe.

In the solar system, the battle on Calvin's side has finally come to an end.

But outside the solar system and even at the level of the entire subspace, the battle between the gods has just begun.

And this is especially true for the Lord of War.

The bloody figure on the brass throne, after trying several times to intervene with power but being pushed back by the emperor, could only unleash an endless rain of blood in the Kingdom of God to vent his rage.

After a short period of brewing with the Kingdom of Khorne as its core, the huge, bloody subspace storm, under the full force of the Lord of War regardless of the consequences, tore apart the barrier between reality and subspace, raging throughout the galaxy. Within the territory of the human empire.

For example, Shalish who is in charge of joy, Xin Liezhi who is in charge of variables, and Nurgle who takes life and death as his god's name, chose to sit back and watch after a period of unclear speculation and evil laughter.

This is not their handiwork.

Especially since they had been reminded of the fall of Kotos by the reminder of fate, they no longer even thought of taking advantage of the situation to rob this "unripe fruit".

Against the background of endless time, the bored gods are like a group of old people playing cards on the street corner after retirement. They are always full of extraordinary interest in the disputes and struggles between neighbors.

Well, there's also the malice hidden behind the smile, ready to take its place at any moment.

The war never stops, the war always goes on.

Perhaps mankind today still relies on the appearance of Calvin to gain a slight upper hand in this struggle concerning the fate of the race;

But looking at the entire dimension of time and even destiny, there is still a long way for them to struggle and resist...

renew. Good night!