Warhammer: Expedition to the Multiverse from 30k

"He must be extremely disappointed in me. He gave up on me a long time ago, just like I gave up on my scum sons. It's ridiculous that a sinner from Nostramo became an inquisitor of the empire."

Curz's words always have a hissing ending, which comes from Nostramo's language habits and is also a detail revealed when he is upset.

Koz's heart was already in turmoil when Luo Xi said that.

He had always longed to return to Terra, but when he was truly one step away from the Emperor, he was afraid.

He feared and hated his own prophecy, but he relied on it precisely. His vision of the future did not include the scene of returning to see the Emperor and being forgiven by him.

"If you have anything to say, tell the Emperor."

Luo Xi said, he took out a golden imperial double-headed eagle statue from his pocket. When it was placed in front of Koz, the double-headed eagle immediately flashed with brilliant golden light, spiritual energy surged, and a figure faintly appeared in the room.

The figure was extremely blurry, but his identity could still be recognized at a glance.

That was none other than the Lord of Mankind who suffered on the Golden Throne, the Emperor, Conrad's father.

The illusory figure gradually solidified. He stared at Curze. The Midnight Ghost's back became more and more hunched. Curze did not dare to look directly into the Emperor's eyes.

"Father." Koz finally spoke.

Conrad seemed to have prepared himself mentally. He folded his hands over his chest, hunched his back, and walked around the room by himself, trying his best to avoid the direct gaze of the emperor's shadow.

Like a ghost that has lived in the shadows all its life, avoiding the glaring sun.

"I am a loser, I am a hated guy, I know my brothers hate me and despise me, Sanguinius, Lion, Guilliman, but it doesn't matter, I hate myself too."

"I was overly obsessed with prophecies and illusions about the future. Even though Sanguinius, Dorn and the others had tried to persuade me, I could not break free from them. But all of this was just my excuse. Only if the prophecy could not be changed could it prove that it was not my fault."

Conrad tore open his wound again and showed it to his father.

"But I found out that I was wrong. On Macragge and Daven, I realized that everything was just self-deception. But I have made a big mistake. There is no turning back, father."

"My abominations are the sum of all human sins, magnified ten thousand times in me. You designed me to be a judge, an inquisitor, but I myself have committed a sin. Even the Primarch should pay for his mistakes."

Luo Xi couldn't help but close his eyes. That was the starting point of Koz's loss of control. He killed an innocent gangster boy because of his wrong prediction. The judge was tainted with sin, so he was naturally no different from those sinners.

Perhaps for other people, all of this can be compensated by "mistakes" and "errors", but Koz is different. He cannot tolerate the slightest sin, even the sin he has committed himself.

Conrad's pain was almost tangible. His sharp claws tore the flesh of his arms, and the blood of the Primarch flowed from the wound, but he seemed unconscious.

The Emperor did not speak. He waited for Curze to express all his resentment.

"But my legion and I are so cruel. We use the evil of human nature to fight and spread fear with bloody and brutal means. What are we doing for this? Isn't it to quickly conquer those planets that refuse to surrender and to punish those planets that have second thoughts?"

Curze questioned the Emperor: "Father, have I ever tried to make all humans bend to my will? Have I ever slaughtered and destroyed those aliens and human civilizations that refused to surrender, just for my own selfish desires?"

"No, no! I am doing this for the Great Crusade, for your cause! I am doing this for you!"

Conrad suddenly flew into a rage, venting his inner dissatisfaction and anger.

He was angry with the Lord of mankind, angry with his father.

"My legion and I are guilty, but we are only accomplices. We are only accomplices in the crimes of the empire, and the source of all this is you. Your conquest is unjust, and you are also guilty."

"There is no glory or justice in our Great Crusade. It is just a galactic crime. No matter how beautiful the prospects you promise are, you cannot hide those cruel means."

Luo Xi understood that Koz had indeed made progress compared to before. He had freed himself from his own sense of justice and no longer sought death blindly.

But this guy was so stubborn that he got himself into another dead end.

He believed that the actions of everyone, including himself, including the Lord of Mankind, were unjust.

Everything was a huge crime, and he felt pain and torment because of it, so he wanted to be judged by the Emperor. It was both the Emperor who judged him and he who judged the Emperor.

"Koz, Koz, you think too much, but you lack the wisdom to see through everything." Luo Xi sighed in his heart.

He understood that because of Curze's unique experience, he had never had his worldview shaped by someone like a "foster parent", even a scum like Kor Phaeron.

A distorted worldview is at least better than having no worldview at all.

Everything was figured out by him.

Including sin and justice.

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.

However, if the Emperor only used himself as a tool, what was there for the Primarchs to resent?

The Emperor ruthlessly used himself as a psychic plug, blocking him on the Golden Throne, his psychic energy being extracted all the time by the most terrifying torture machine in the universe. His pain was tens of millions times that of those 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."