Warhammer: Don't Call Me the God of All Machines

Chapter 369 Conrad's Redemption

If other people saw this scene, even a calm person like Rogal Dorn would probably be outraged by Curze's outrageous words.

The Night Haunter not only wants to judge himself, he wants to judge the Emperor.

He did not deny his own sins, but emphasized that the Emperor's sins were the real source.

How ridiculous it is that a traitor Primarch wants to judge the Emperor.

Luo Xi understood that Koze might not be a bad person by nature. In fact, Koze, who had just crawled out of the incubator, could be considered a born good person.

But the place where he fell was the evil star Nostramo, a decadent place full of eternal darkness and sin.

Just like a blank sheet of paper, the first thing it came into contact with was endless filth, and the subsequent crazy torture of the illusion led him to go down a wrong path.

He knows how to reflect on himself, but he is addicted to fantasy, which has led to a distorted paranoia and contradictory self-concept.

He felt pained by the reality. He had relied on fear to clear Nostramo's mind, but with his departure, evil returned in a more terrifying form than before.

He killed many people in Nostramo and maintained his reign of terror as the Night Haunter, but after all his hard work, he failed to kill all the people he should kill. After he left, the noble scum of Nostramo restored power and all his efforts were in vain.

"Father, Lord of Mankind, you needed me to be a merciless and heartless punisher, but why did you give me a heart? What exactly do you need me to do?"

"If you hadn't given me a heart, I wouldn't have suffered because of my nature, and I wouldn't have been tortured by those damn illusions. It was you who led me down this path, made me a fear in the darkness, and made me a tool of control and coercion."

"But since you gave me your heart, where were you when I was suffering? Why didn't you say a word? When my brothers didn't understand me, why didn't you tell them that my actions were all with your tacit approval?"

Roche discovered that Curze had shifted from accusing the Emperor of sin to hating him.

Just like a rebellious son, he is dissatisfied and resentful about his father's unfair treatment.

The Emperor did not favor Curze. He would compete with Russ in eating meat and drinking, and with Vulkan in hunting salamanders. He even accompanied Horus for thirty years, giving them all his fatherly love and care.

In comparison, Primarchs like Curze and Angron were really no different from being picked up.

However, the Emperor rejected Curze's accusations, saying he cared nothing for them.

He had thought that Curze would be able to make progress in Macragge.

"My son, you are too narrow-minded. Do you think you can understand what I have done and empathize with my sacrifice and pain? You cannot judge me. I have already borne all the pain."

"You cannot understand what I have done for humanity. I am willing to bear everything and give everything for the human race. I accept everything from humanity equally, whether it is beautiful kindness or hateful evil."

"I only care about one thing - whether humanity can survive, whether humanity can be superior to any other race and force, and no longer be controlled by external forces including the warp. I can do it at any cost and by any means."

Conrad was speechless. He thought the emperor would explain and defend his actions.

"From a racial perspective, there is no good or evil, only success or failure. Everything you cling to is meaningless. Yes, in my eyes, you are indeed a handy tool - but."

The emperor's tone suddenly changed and he spoke in an extremely cold manner.

"But, not only are you tools, I am also a tool. I am a tool for maintaining human civilization. I am human, and human is me. We have already become one."

Luo Xi lamented that as the only spectator of this struggle between father and son, the Lord of Mankind and the Primarch of the Empire, he had already seen the difference in thinking between the two.

Koz's vision is too narrow. All he sees is justice and evil, fairness and injustice.

However, the Emperor does not care about these things. The only thing he cares about is whether humanity can become better and whether humanity can restore the glory of its golden age. In order to achieve these, he can trample on all justice and goodness and can wantonly massacre any enemies and rebels.

He could endure the insults and accusations of countless people and become the most brutal and unjust king in human history.

Many of the Primarchs believed that the Emperor had no love for them at all and was just using them as tools.

Some, such as Angron, believed that the Emperor was just another slave master, forcing him to do things he didn't want to do.

But if the Emperor used him as a mere tool, what could the Primarchs have to resent? The Emperor mercilessly used himself as a psychic plug, forcibly jammed into the Golden Throne, constantly being drained of his psychic energy by the most terrifying torture machine in the universe. His pain was a thousand times greater than that of the Primarchs.

The sacrifices and pains, the self-pity and hatred they endured seemed so ridiculous and ordinary in front of the Lord of Humanity who sat high on the Golden Throne.

It's like a child who gets a scratch and then cries to his parents.

Feeling resentful because of the neglect of my parents, I buried myself in my bed, silently wishing to grow up quickly and make my parents regret it.

"Koz has indeed made progress, but at best his ideological level has increased from an elementary school student to a junior high school student." Luo Xi complained helplessly in his heart.

"Those details he was obsessed with, those so-called justice and evil, were like wrong questions on a test paper. He was entangled in his own gains and losses, secretly sighing at the inadequacy of his grades, and even attributed the bleak reality to his father's indifference."

But all this is just playing house. The score he is worried about is completely meaningless from a broader perspective.

For an adult, are his junior high school grades of any use? He is too childish, even childish to the point of being cute.

"How important is a qualified adoptive parent to a Primarch? But let alone a bad adoptive father like Kor Phaeron, Curze doesn't even have any adoptive parents at all."

"No wonder Curze is so jealous of Guilliman and holds a grudge against Lady Euden."

Curze stared at the Emperor with wide eyes, and he found that he seemed not to really understand the Lord of Mankind.

The accusation he had prepared for so long seemed so pale and ridiculous, so light and weightless.

He did not expect that the Emperor had no intention of arguing with him about so-called justice and evil. In the Emperor's eyes there was only a naked weighing of pros and cons, only gains and losses of interests, and only love and infinite sacrifice for the human race as a whole.

For this, he could sacrifice any Primarch, even himself, and sit on the throne for tens of thousands of years.

The Emperor loves no individual, not even his son.

But he loves humanity as a whole, and for the survival of humanity he can do anything extremely cruel, including exterminating any threatening alien civilization and destroying human pocket empires that are unwilling to surrender.

"Conrad, you complained about why I gave you my heart. It's because I didn't want you to suffer. If a human being doesn't have a heart, then he is not a human being. The human heart, or human nature, is the most precious thing."

"You just made one mistake, Conrad. All other sins come from your initial mistake. No one is perfect, including me."

"You used to believe that fate is unchangeable, and you chose to make yourself a prisoner of fate, but if you choose another path and choose to believe in your own value, then you can still change everything."

The Emperor's words continued to bombard Coze's heart, like the sound of a great bell echoing in his ears, like a father who was exhausted both physically and mentally, trying to inspire his useless son.

"You can choose the original path: to be imprisoned, to let fate take its course, and finally to end up with a tragic and insane end."

"But you can also choose another path. If you are more mature, you will no longer care whether you are judged for the crimes you committed, and you will no longer be entangled in your perfect sense of justice. You should fight for those people who are still suffering from atrocities and redress the injustice of the weak."

The emperor's shadow faded, and he gave his last instructions to his naughty son.

"Actively seeking death will not bring you the freedom you want. Death is easy, and choosing to face things that are crueler than death is the real courage."

"And finally, I forgive you, son."

Finally, the psychic power contained in the statue of the Imperial Double-Headed Eagle completely disappeared, and the voice of the Emperor also dissipated. When everything began to dim, it turned back into the ordinary pendant it once again was.

The Emperor did not have much time and energy. All of his energy was focused on the macro war with the Warp and Horus.

But even so, Koz still held it tightly in his hand and stroked it carefully, fearing that he would deform it.

The emperor's most rebellious son fell to his knees. He understood his father's intentions.

Under Roche's gaze, Conrad Coates held the double-headed eagle pendant and cried like a child.

(End of this chapter)