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

Chapter 662: The End of Horus (Three in One)

The Worldbreaker Hammer was forged by the Emperor himself as a weapon used to reward and commend his eldest son for his heroic battles and outstanding achievements.

But at this moment, this weapon forged by the Emperor himself blew up the head of the Lord of Mankind.

The Emperor's dazzling golden light slowly dissipated, and his sacred blood continued to flow out from the fracture in his neck, soaking every piece of land on the battlefield.

"I won?"

"I killed my father?"

Horus stared at the warhammer in his hand in a daze, stroking the blood and flesh fragments that were still stained with the residual warmth of the Emperor.

He subconsciously put the thick blood on his hand onto the tip of his tongue, and instantly a powerful shock of consciousness erupted, leaving his brain empty.

But he did not feel much joy or excitement. Instead, an endless sense of emptiness was devouring his soul.

He felt as if he was dreaming, unable to distinguish reality from illusion.

Horus turned around and looked. In the endless darkness, the Four Chaos Gods seemed to have fallen silent. There were no annoying cheers, nor discouraging boos.

The victor of the final battle returned to the ritual altar of the Vengeful Spirit, crossing the boundary between the real universe and the Warp and reappearing in a burst of eerie scarlet light.

The meaning of Horus's return was self-evident. Roxi's clenched fingers even drew blood from his palms, and Waldo beside him was ready to rush forward and fight for his life.

Horus raised his hammer high, announcing his victory to all the spectators.

But vaguely, he sensed something strange from the reactions of the four evil gods. If the Emperor was really dead, then they would definitely not be so calm.

Forget it, I was just worrying too much.

Just when Horus had some doubts and was about to check again, a figure walked up to him with determination.

It was Loken, the last of the Luna Wolf, and his rebellious son.

Loken has discarded all weapons, for any weapon is useless against Horus.

"Gavier?" Horus suddenly calmed down and stopped thinking about the Emperor.

The Emperor is dead, the first half of his life is over, and it is time to pursue his own great ideals.

"Father," Loken replied.

Horus waved his hand, and instantly the battlefield burning with flames of war turned into a tranquil lake.

Locke looked at the scene in front of him and was suddenly a little dazed. He understood where this place was. When he entered the Council of Four Kings, he swore allegiance to this lake.

"I will kill for the living, I will kill for the dead, my loyalty is to Lupercal."

"I am the Luna Wolf, the son of Horus. I will uphold my duty and guard every decision of the Wolf God."

Horus stood by the lake with his back to Loken, and his meaning was self-evident.

He blamed Loken for breaking his original oath, and his son betrayed him and was desperate to become his enemy.

"I have never regretted my choice, father."

"You are wrong. You were bewitched by Chaos and even killed the Emperor, your beloved father."

Horus was immediately annoyed. He knew Loken's integrity and stubbornness, but he did not expect that he could still refute him like this after seeing the Emperor die in front of him.

"When I joined the Council of Four Kings, I have been doing my best to assist you, advise you, and keep you calm, but it is clear that everyone except me has failed in their duties."

"Abaddon only knows how to cater to your preferences and has no brain of his own. Eichmand is too cautious and too selfish.

So when they saw you being stabbed and fell by Eugene Tamba, they lost all reason and let that beast Erebus send you to the Temple of Daven."

Loken was still talking to himself, and Horus turned around and looked at his son.

"Lorcan, in my eyes, you have always been my Sanguinius. You are just as stubborn as he is."

"I still won't kill you. I am your father. I always have been, I am now, and I will be in the future."

Afterwards, Horus planned to turn around and leave. He wanted to rebuild the empire and humanity that collapsed in the war and create a royal court of his own.

"Father!" Locke suddenly shouted loudly.

Horus paused, hoping that his son would change his mind.

"You said that you accepted the power of Chaos in order to win the battle against the Emperor. Now that you have won, why don't you disperse the filthy power of Chaos?"

"Are you still going to let Chaos control you? Are you still addicted to that power?"

"Are all your words lies? Are they just a trade-off?"

Hearing that Loken was still advising him to give up this power, Horus suddenly became furious.

Forget it, forget it. Since you are so bothered by it, I will do as you say.

"I have accomplished my plan, and I have immediately abandoned it, proving that I am better than the Emperor."

"I am the master of power. When I need it, it is there. When I don't need it, I will discard it."

In front of Loken, Horus took the initiative to disperse the blessings from the Four Chaos Gods - the power of Khorne, the changes of Tzeentch, the tenacity of Nurgle and the pride of Slaanesh began to disintegrate.

The Four Chaos Gods immediately noticed the abnormality of their puppets. They angrily denounced Horus's stupidity and short-sightedness, and asked him to stop his suicidal behavior.

Horus was laughing at the four gods. He had never compromised with these lifeless beings. He also knew that these evil gods in the warp were not good things. But now his goal had been achieved and they were no longer of any value to him.

The Wolf Shepherd God's aura quickly weakened, and the power from the four gods was expelled by him.

He felt his own weakness, even Horus felt the holes in his own soul, without the glue of the warp, he was dying.

But it doesn't matter, the Emperor is dead, and he has become the winner of this duel and bet.

The one who wins between the two of them will become the Dark Lord of mankind, the supreme power that symbolizes the end and death, and Horus will be its master.

"My son Horus is dead."

At this moment, Horus, whose unrivaled power had dissipated, suddenly heard the voice of a third person. It was not him, not Loken, but the voice of a person who should have died.

It's the emperor.

Every muscle in Horus' body tensed instantly. He finally understood why the Four Chaos Gods did not show any special emotions.

Because the Emperor is not dead.

Horus' heart was instantly filled with shock, anger and fear.

It turned out that the Emperor whose head was smashed by Horus with the World Breaker hammer slowly dissipated. It was exactly the same as the Lord of Mankind, and even Horus could not tell the true from the false.

"It's Alpharius's [clone]."

"Hydra's nine-headed snake, if you cut off one head, two heads will grow back."

Horus's face changed drastically. He did not expect that the Emperor would use this trick to deceive him.

But now that he had dispersed most of his Warp power, he was no match for the Emperor.

Horus immediately called upon the Four Chaos Gods and ordered them to return the power.

But how could the four gods, who had just been rejected and fooled by Horus, be summoned and dismissed at will? They just screamed maliciously and watched Horus being knocked to the ground by the Emperor.

The Four Chaos Gods are slowly pouring their power back into Horus' body, so that he will not be killed immediately by the Emperor, but yet will not be able to recover to his full strength.

The puppet they chose was too disobedient.

He had too much personal will. Even after being corrupted by Chaos many times before and having his good will shattered by Malohurst's ritual dagger, Horus still had other ideas.

The Emperor pulled Horus up. There were wounds on his body, but what was flowing was not blood, but a kind of fluorescent light.

He used the Emperor's Claw to tear into Horus' abdomen, stabbing it hard, then twisting and tearing it counterclockwise, causing the opponent maximum pain and torture.

"Why did you kill my son Horus Lupercal?"

The Emperor pulled out his power claws, and the power of the Four Gods immediately repaired the damage he had caused.

"Why did you take control of the remains of Horus and kill my other son, Sanguinius?"

The Emperor tore Horus' arm apart again, but the Four Gods still resisted Horus's weakness, and the arm that fell to the ground, along with the weapon, returned to Horus' body as if time had gone back.

"Why did I let half of my son betray humanity, betray the Empire, and let humans kill each other?"

The Emperor used his great sword to smash Horus from head to tail, but the Wolf God who should have been dead still remained alive. He was like an immortal puppet, being constantly pieced together by the Four Chaos Gods.

“Why do you damn things always corrupt and interfere with the intelligent life in the real universe? There are many races in this universe trying to ascend, and the last one who came closest to success was the Ancient Saint.

You are responsible for the destruction of the Ancients. You took advantage of the Necrontyr and the Star Gods. You are the murderers.

Why do you always torture the souls of all living beings after death, and always make this galaxy more rotten and smelly? The subspace gathers not only negative emotions, but also positive emotions. Why do you only have negative emotions left?"

"Besides our universe, how many other universes have you attacked? The Chaos Disaster has definitely not spread to just one universe. You are eager to make countless universes your pastures."

The Four Gods immediately booed in disdain. They did not want to answer the Emperor's questions, but only laughed at Horus's current miserable situation.

They were not worried that Horus would be killed by the Emperor, because under the control of the power of the Four Gods, Horus might be beaten badly enough to vent their anger.

But they were confident that they had locked onto Horus's status and future, so the Emperor could not defeat Horus even if he tried every possible means.

They used Horus's ugly behavior to show their arrogance. They gave the Emperor the opportunity to kill Horus, but the Lord of Mankind was unable to do it.

This feeling of helplessness and despair on the brink of hope made the Four Chaos Gods even more obsessed.

The Four Gods may have a relatively independent and complete self-awareness, and they have their own likes and dislikes, but their essence is not some kind of powerful subspace creatures.

Their essence is closer to a concept, a rule, a natural phenomenon, and they act according to their own characteristics. If you peel off the "humanized" skin of the Four Gods, you will find that their rules of action are closer to machines.

Horus, who just seemed like a demon god, was beaten to a pulp by the furious Emperor. Without the support of the power of the four gods, no one in the real universe could pose a threat to the Lord of Mankind.

+Slaves!+
+Traitor!+
+Puppet!+
+Fool!+
The four wills took turns bombarding Horus' will, while increasing the amount of power they deployed.

Horus felt his power filling up again, and he grasped the Emperor's power claw and forcibly pulled it out of his body.

The Emperor immediately distanced himself and used his fingers to draw in the air, forming several grand pentagram patterns.

That was the signature move of his chancellor and close friend, Malcador the Mage.

However, now that it is used in the hands of the Emperor, it has even greater lethality than the original version.

The shining pentagram instantly began to spin at high speed, turning into a ball of scattered light and shadow, and then cut through Horus's armor and body with a ferocious attitude that could cut through everything.

Horus has not yet reached his peak. The Four Chaos Gods would like to see this drama of father and son killing each other last longer. It would be a huge waste for them to end this ceremony too quickly.

The black and gold armor of the Wolf Shepherd God was cut open from the ribs to the shoulders, and the bones and flesh inside were also shattered.

The Emperor's next combo accelerated, using his psychic powers to create constant distortions and explosions, while Horus continued to heal.

In the eyes of Loken and the spectators outside who could only watch but not intervene, it seemed that even if the Emperor tried his best, he could not completely defeat and kill Horus.

A strong feeling of despair came over them, and almost everyone felt suffocated.

Horus' lost power returned, and he became the irresistible, scourge-like monster again.

He knocked the emperor to his knees again and punched him in the head again and again.

He threw the twisted helmet aside, grabbed the Lord of Mankind by the hair, and dragged him towards the Dark Throne that emerged from the ritual altar.

That is the throne that symbolizes the fifth evil god. Horus wants to sit on that position with his father.

"Father, stop struggling and accompany me to complete the upgrade."

"Just now when I thought I had killed you, I felt so empty inside. I understand now. I don't want you to die. I want you to sit beside my throne and watch me achieve great feats again and again."

A black crown with eight pointed corners condensed in Horus's hand, and he wanted to put it on the Emperor's head.

However, the Emperor proved his attitude with his actions. Flames began to burn all over his body, and he used up his last bit of strength to pierce Horus' chest with the Emperor's Claw.

Horus's face was filled with anger and helplessness. Such damage had no effect on him.

In response, he plunged his Claw of Horus into the Emperor's chest.

Father and son, king and subject, master of mankind and traitor of mankind...

They stabbed each other with their deadly weapons, and their blood flowed out and mixed together, as if they had established a blood connection in an instant.

This stalemate can only last for one second, and this one second is the opportunity the emperor needs.

At this moment, Orpesson and John, who had been spectating outside the ritual altar and seemed unable to do anything, suddenly rushed into the altar.

Their movements were so swift, as if they had rehearsed them hundreds of times in advance.

Even Luo Xi looked at the two in horror, totally not understanding how they did it.

Horus needed the presence of these "audiences", so they could only be passively trapped outside the venue and could not go anywhere except the audience seats.

This is a rule and also a concept. Horus almost has the power to make his words come true.

However, Luo Xi saw clearly what kind of power allowed Orpesson and the other man to break in.

The first-generation war commander took out a ceremonial dagger that seemed to be made of obsidian from his body.

This dagger, which Orpesson had carried since capturing it on Calth, once again unleashed its incredible power. Orpesson had used the dagger to create a small opening in the ritual realm created by Horus and the Four Gods, allowing him and John to slip through.

And the agent John, who seemed like an ordinary passerby, suddenly uttered a strange pronunciation that could never be imitated or copied.

In an instant, a special force that did not belong to the Warp knocked the Emperor and Horus away.

As a price, John's mouth and throat had turned into a pool of mud.

He collapsed to the ground extremely weakly. That was the [Dark Language] he learned from Orpesson, a magical language inherited from ancient Terra and engraved on the Tower of Babel.

It can be called a secret word or a spell. As long as the correct pronunciation is pronounced as required, it can unleash a terrifying power that far exceeds psychic power.

It has nothing to do with the subspace, but is a force from the purely material realm. No one knows where it comes from or why it exists.

The Emperor wanted to obtain the power of Dark Words, so he was stabbed in the kidney by Orpesson, and the two parted ways.

And now the reason why Orperson has been carrying John, a useless burden, is to enable him to unleash the power of secret words at the critical moment.

The one second that the Emperor bought with his life provided Orperson and John with the opportunity to release the Dark Word.

John used secret words to knock the Emperor and Horus away, and once again gained a second of opportunity.

John, who had turned into a puddle of mud, signaled Orpersong with his eyes, and then the first-generation warmaster pounced on him at the fastest speed in his life and threw the ritual dagger in his hand into the hand of Gaviel Loken.

At this moment, the Emperor, who was in a love-hate relationship with Horus, was emitting a strong light all over his body. This was a power that the Emperor madly despised and resisted.

The power of divinity.

Countless humans know that the Emperor upholds the Imperial Truth, but they still secretly believe in the Emperor in the endless war.

This is a human instinct, the instinct to worship the strong and desire redemption.

In this critical moment, the Emperor had no choice but to pick up the divine power. He transformed into a ray of light that merged with the concept of human beings and injected it into Loken's body.

At this moment, Loken is the last Luna Wolf and the bearer of the Emperor's will.

He held the ceremonial dagger aloft and came to the side of the Emperor's body and Horus.

This was the Emperor's ultimate move. The previous defeat, Loken's persuasion, and the cooperation between Orperson and John had all contributed to this deadly plan.

Only by giving up everything can you get everything.

Only when you are in a desperate situation can you have a chance of being reborn.

The Emperor used Loken's body to stab Horus in the back with the ritual dagger.

In an instant, the powerful and arrogant Horus fell to the ground stiffly as if he had been electrocuted.

Realizing that they were in trouble, the Four Chaos Gods screamed in anger and desperately injected their power into Horus' body, trying to make him stand up again.

However, the ritual dagger was an unexpected variable for the four gods. It was one of the fragments of the ancient relic [Enemy Blade] that Erebus stole from the Inters Federation. The Nemesis Blade was the embodiment of the concept of murder at the beginning of humankind.

It has extraordinary lethality to any human being. Even the Primarch will be contaminated and corrupted by the power it contains.

After Erebus broke the Nemesis Blade into eight pieces, he forged it into a ritual dagger for the Word Bearers to use.

Horus fell, stabbed by the ritual dagger of his father's possessed son.

Ritual daggers have always been used by traitors who have surrendered to Chaos, but this does not mean that ritual daggers are ineffective against the existence of the Chaos camp.

The connection between the four gods and Horus was severed by the ritual dagger, and Lupercal, who had been in a daze and didn't know what was going on, finally regained his faint consciousness.

This famous wolf-shepherd god, warmaster and traitor of the empire, only woke up briefly a few times in a long time.

In Spirit of Vengeance, being boarded by Leman Russ and being stabbed by the Spear of Dionysus counts as one time.

He regained consciousness once before his consciousness entered the warp and the fragments of his kind soul were shattered by Malohurst.

And now, he and the Emperor stabbed each other with deadly weapons, and Horus, who was stabbed in the back by Loken, finally woke up for the third time.

Only this time did he truly break away from the Four Chaos Gods and gain valuable clarity.

The wolf-shepherd god could no longer speak. There was not a trace of strength left in his body. Even the Claw of Horus was gradually squeezed out by the Emperor's body.

The Emperor, who had borrowed Loken's body, slowly supported Horus.

Horus could only move his eyes, staring deep into Garviel Loken, staring into the Emperor's eyes.

This scene may be a little weird, because Loken is now both the son and the father of Horus.

It's sad that this father and son, who were once the closest, can only look at each other in this way now.

Horus couldn't speak, but all his emotions were contained in the gaze.

The Emperor understood the meaning...

Go ahead, father!

Horus has fully understood his situation. He is a slave of darkness, a weapon that thinks it has independent will, a tool to drag humanity into the abyss and quagmire.

He was the first Primarch to be sacrificed. Horus had already died on the altar of Davin. His true will was buried deep in his soul, and he suffered a series of devastating blows.

He knew how much effort and planning the Emperor had put in to enable humans to transcend and ascend. This idea had been rooted in the Emperor's heart tens of thousands of years ago.

It was he who destroyed everything, it was he who destroyed the dream of human revival, and it was he who shattered his father's most cherished treasure.

Even now, he crushed his father.

Horus knew how much damage he had inflicted on the Emperor. Even the powerful physique of the Immortal Lord of Mankind could not fully withstand such a blow.

If the Emperor cannot hold on, perhaps he can die and reincarnate, but who knows how long it will take him to eliminate the damage.

Ten years? One hundred years? Ten thousand years? Or ten thousand years?

No one knows the answer, not even the Emperor, but can humanity afford to lose the Emperor for ten thousand years?

Humans spread across the galaxy have long been the object of the Warp's salivation. Such a huge number of souls and emotions even surpasses the sum of any other race in the galaxy.

If the subspace wants to continue invading the universe, humans will be the key that cannot be circumvented.

He was wrong, so wrong that no one could forgive him.

Billions of people died because of him, and the future of mankind was bleak because of him. Even Horus himself was unwilling to forgive himself.

The Emperor seemed to see through Horus's thoughts and transferred his consciousness back to his original body.

He could feel that Horus' body was getting colder and colder, and this great being was about to take his last breath.

The Lord of Mankind sighed and made an extremely selfish decision.

At this minute, he was not the Lord of Mankind, not the Emperor above all else, but the father of Horus Lupercal.

The Emperor ignored his still bleeding chest, grabbed Horus by the neck, and held him in his arms, hugging him like a father hugging a newborn baby.

The invincible Horus began to turn pale, his whole body trembled uncontrollably, goose bumps stood up on the Primarch's skin, and he suddenly felt very cold, a coldness that penetrated to the bottom of his heart.

Horus' lips trembled slightly, and his will tried his best to say something, even just one word.

But his health deteriorated too quickly. After all, strictly speaking, he was already dead in the Temple of Devin.

The four Chaos Gods used the power of the Warp to complete his body, and then tore his complete spiritual will into pieces, gluing them together into a being named the Traitor Horus.

In order to compete with the Emperor, the Four Gods almost completely ignored whether Horus' body would collapse. They simply gave him more, causing his body to be overdrawn to the limit.

Perturabo was right about Horus, even if he defeated the Emperor, he would not survive much longer.

By then, it will not only be Horus' body that will die, but his essence in the Warp will also be eaten by the four gods. After all, the principle of "when the rabbit dies, the running dog is cooked" has been the case since ancient times.

Horus made no sound, but he allowed his lips to tremble slightly.

He had lost his soul and glory. What else could he do except sob quietly and feel ashamed?
"I know, I've always known."

A forced smile appeared on the emperor's pale face, and he smiled like a father.

"It hurts, I understand."

"It won't hurt soon, son."

The Emperor closed Horus' eyes, held his head tightly with his left hand, and held him in his arms.

And his right hand took the ritual dagger from Loken's hand.

He felt the cold touch of this embodiment of the concept of human murder, and then his muscles began to exert force. The Emperor's right hand pushed the ceremonial dagger, piercing Horus's body from behind and directly into his heart.

Horus' body suddenly stiffened as if he had been electrocuted, his stomach was still twitching and trembling, veins bulged on his neck and forehead, it seemed that his body was still struggling and unwilling to die.

A stream of icy air flowed along the ritual dagger into the heart, and the next moment, the greatest heart in the galaxy, second only to the Emperor's, stopped beating.

The Emperor's eyes moistened, and a drop of crystal clear blood and tears fell on Horus' forehead and seeped into his dead body.

In fact, he did not tell Horus that not only Horus missed those thirty years, but the Emperor also missed those thirty years.

Horus exchanged thirty years of his life, which accounted for the vast majority, for thirty insignificant years of the Emperor's life, but the latter remembered it with nostalgia.

"I forgive you." The emperor's voice was barely perceptible, as if it had never appeared.

As the words rang out, a tear shed from Horus's tightly closed eyes, full of incomparable bitterness and happiness.

The Emperor's tears slid down Horus's high forehead, and after a few seconds of chasing, merged with Horus' tears.

They are father and son, ruler and subject, enemies, and confidants.

However, only after death can their bodies embrace each other and their tears blend together.

This is a great sorrow, the eternal curse imposed on humanity by the Warp and Chaos.

It makes fathers and sons become enemies, brothers turn against each other, idealists abandon their ideals, and kind people fall into evil.

It is the original evil, the abyss of everything, eternally thirsting for all that is good.

The Emperor's ideal is to fight it and free humanity from this eternal curse.

But did he succeed? It seems not, because he couldn't even protect his beloved son.

But did it fail? It seems not, the Emperor is still alive, the Primarchs are still alive, and they have won a tragic and heroic victory in this war.

Horus' lifelong wish was to be able to stay with his father forever. Although he could no longer do so now, his tears fulfilled this long-cherished wish.

At least at this moment, no one, no God can separate the two mixed tears again.

The screams and complaints of the Four Chaos Gods gradually faded away with the demise of the carrier, and the haze shrouding the Spirit of Vengeance also dissipated without a trace.

Luo Xi came to the emperor and looked at the leader of the rebellion with a complicated expression.

"Purity and hope have been shattered. Only a firmer faith can guide us forward."

"The entire galaxy will burn for a long, long time."

The Emperor held Horus in his arms and murmured softly, as if he was coaxing his son to sleep.

"Will we win?" asked Roxie.

The emperor turned around and just smiled, without answering yes or no.

No one can answer this question, not even the Emperor.

There is no such thing as omniscience and omnipotence in the world.

"I don't know if we can win, but I know we cannot lose," the Emperor replied.

Luo Xi looked at the devastation and suddenly felt something in his heart.

"This war is over, but my mission has just begun."

The Emperor patted Roshi's shoulder gently with his hand.

“There is darkness before our eyes, but don’t be afraid. Work hard, be bold, and keep moving forward with your head held high.”

"Our civilization walks in the darkness. No one knows when it will reach the end, when it will reach the dawn, when it will see hope. But we know one thing -"

"When the sun rises, everything will be beautiful and everything will be fine."

Luo Xi nodded heavily, he already understood what the emperor meant.

The Horus Heresy has ended, but this does not mean that the dawn has come for humanity.

As long as the Warp can still affect humans and Chaos still exists, then even without Horus, there will be others who will become Chaos minions and slaves of darkness.

"Only from outside the universe can one obtain the power to negate the universe."

Roxi murmured, and he looked towards Terra, where the people of the Empire were working hard to clean up the battlefield, eliminate the remaining enemies, and begin to restore the human home planet to its former prosperity.

He looked at the sun. This yellow dwarf star had witnessed too many joys and sorrows. In its billions of years of life, human beings were just a moment.

"It's time for me to set off." Luo Xi said.

...End of this volume
　I have finally finished writing the volume on the Great Rebellion, Wuhu!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)