Emperor's Bane

Chapter 651: Debut

Chapter 651: Debut (End)

[They told me that Leman Russ's fleet had just completed the handover ceremony in low-Earth orbit 20 minutes ago: If we are lucky enough, we should be able to see the Hercules Fenr.]

"I don't like that ship. It's like an antique from forty thousand years ago."

【Old and decayed? 】

"Worse: gaudy."

“Just like me: This is terrible.”

As he uttered this cruel comment mercilessly, Conrad was extending his long tongue, which almost touched the tip of his nose, and licking his dry lips over and over again as a way to kill boredom: As the most famous time management master among the Primarchs, Midnight Haunter possessed many enviable skills.

For example, he could always find all kinds of astonishing ways to waste his normal working time, and then before the final deadline, he would make his work results perfectly meet the passing line with amazing speed and efficiency.

It was impossible to go any further: every extra drop of sweat shed was working for his unscrupulous gene father. It would be better to squeeze out more time and laugh foolishly at Sevatar and Shen's busying around.

It is beautifully called: the gratified look of an old father towards his filial children.

Sevatar just fell for it.

To be fair, Conrad did not think that he did anything wrong. Compared with all the Primarchs, he had worked very hard: Midnight Haunter would arrive at his office before ten o'clock every day, and would work until two o'clock before going to have afternoon tea with Morgan. Sometimes, he would even work overtime until four o'clock in the afternoon.

His hard-working attitude is rare among ordinary people nowadays.

What? You mean Guilliman?
Konrad had never considered his brother Macragge to be a human being: he had preferred to believe that it was a discounted office notebook that the Emperor had picked up from the electronics section when he was scrambling to buy Primarchs in the Warp, with only documents and spreadsheets on the desk.

There's not even any minesweeper.

Unlike him, Conrad: at least he had a deck of Spider cards with him, and when he was free, his dear sister could use his liver, lungs and spleen to draw cards and amuse herself.

不过这样的场景最近已经越来越罕见了：认真的说，摩根似乎真的很多天没揍过他了，哪怕他把脚搭在摩根的办公桌上，快乐地叼走蜘蛛女皇下午茶甜点，用她心爱的雕像玩多米诺骨牌，他的肺和肾还是好好的待在自己的胸膛里。

That won’t do: these poor little guys really need to get out for some fresh air.

And, as we all know, behind every happy fruit bat that is becoming increasingly unscrupulous and no longer diligent, there is definitely a fat lynx that is becoming increasingly decadent and no longer eager to take action.

This is very worrying.

No matter how depraved Conrad is, it doesn't matter. After all, he is a pure rotten person, a person who has lost any high interests, a piece of garbage living a stable life in the emperor's plan. Although he has been utilized by a little waste now, he has only changed from a piece of garbage with nowhere to go to a bag of garbage with his own non-recyclable trash can.

It’s actually a big step forward in life.

But Morgan is different.
If the Spider Queen also collapsed, or simply became Conrad, then who would he throw his work to? For the Emperor's sake, Conrad was just sitting there doing nothing, and Sevatar alone could not support the workload that was originally his.

Why do you see it?

It was obvious that whenever Conrad sneaked back to the Nightfall, he could only steal the midnight snack that Sevatar had saved for the night in her private room, or at most get a private letter between his beloved eldest son and Morgan's eldest daughter Virgo, so as to understand his personal debt record on the Aurora in recent times.

It was impossible to pay back the money: he just wanted to know which restaurants he should avoid before Sevatar paid back the money next time?

But in recent times, he has actually been able to get new hair growth agent every day.

To be honest, when Conrad first realized that Sevatar had worked so hard, he still felt a little guilty: driven by this pitiful conscience, the Midnight Haunter quietly changed his destination and disappeared on the tarmac.

When Sevatar returned to his room a few hours later, the Prince of Crows was shocked to find that his original storage cabinet was filled with various hair growth agents: and when he opened the cabinet used to deal with the Primarch and revealed the secret cabinet inside, he found that the bottle of hair growth agent that was really useful was missing.

Damn it, I should have put the bottle of hair loss product from the outer cabinet in here.

Conrad was naturally unaware of Sevatar's gnashing of teeth in the shadows: because Morgan's words were lingering in his ears.

[I heard that Guilliman, Jonson, and Corax are all looking for their respective missing hair tonics recently? ]

"There's one mistake: what Jonson has there is not hair tonic, but hair gel."

【No wonder. 】

Morgan nodded.

[I was wondering why his hair seems to be thinning recently.]

[It feels different to the touch.]

The Lord of Avalon shook his head.

[If that's all, that's fine. ]

[But the hair growth agent in Vulcan's room also disappeared. ]

【Isn't this a bit too much: right, Conrad?】

"……Well……"

"That's another question: I just stopped by Vulkan's room."

【Go get hair growth agent? 】

"No: I just thought that since the other three brothers were in trouble, it would be unfair for Vulcan to be the only one to be unscathed. Wouldn't he feel that he was being targeted, so he simply made an extra trip."

[You really care about him.]

"We are all brothers."

"Besides, didn't I leave Shen's credit card number as compensation?"

Conrad's eyes drifted away silently.

"And, to be honest, I didn't expect that Vulcan's private vault would contain his hair growth potion. In order to open it, I had to withstand the firepower of at least two Warhound-class Titans and was almost sent to the infirmary. But it turned out to be a bunch of hair growth potions, skin creams, and night care packages. It seemed that his dark skin could be saved."

[You should be thankful: Vulkan thought someone was trying to steal the artifact he created.]

"I have this idea."

Speaking of this, Midnight Haunter unexpectedly felt a little resentful for no reason.

"But I was caught by Vulcan just as I opened that damn safe. He was actually quite happy because it was rare for a brother to visit his room. He also wanted to find someone to test the three-dimensional defense system he had just built. He didn't expect that I would be willing to help before he even asked."

"He also said that if I asked him directly next time, he would be happy to give me a gift after I helped him."

[You really didn't take anything away? ]

"no!"

Faced with his eldest sister's questioning, Conrad bared his fangs like an angry mountain cat.

"I didn't even notice!"

【Didn’t you notice?】

"That's right!"

"Who would have thought that the shoe cabinet-like thing at the door of his bedroom was actually his weapon storage rack! The pile of scrap metal on it was the weapons he had just made. Any one of them could easily penetrate the Primarch armor I was wearing at the time!"

"By the Emperor, when Vulkan came back, he thought I was a thief from somewhere, so he grabbed the coffee pot in his hand and threw it at me: the damn thing flattened my shoulder armor in one go, and almost took away half of my ear."

What about the coffee pot?

"Nothing happened!" [……]

"Honestly, sister, I sincerely suggest that you get along well with our fire dragon brothers. Visit each other more often, and it would be best if you could give each other some gifts. Even if you can just take out a pair of slippers from his room, they might become a galaxy-famous artifact in ten thousand years, and you can easily kill an Astartes Chapter Master or a greenskin warlord with one blow."

How can you be sure?

"I found a little bit of adamantium in the slippers under his bed."

[Nostramo's?]

"of course not."

Conrad shook his head.

"Don't you know? The universe where Nocturne, Vulcan's home planet, is located is located in the southernmost part of the Great Vortex. Although it is barren and chaotic, it is generally rich in mineral reserves. As long as he can build a complete set of industrial facilities, it will sooner or later be transformed into a powerful productivity, and even build several auxiliary military units with luxurious equipment."

【How do you know so much? 】

"I have to know about Nostramo's overseas business competitors."

【Just Vulcan? 】

"He is the main rival, but there are also a few who are more threatening in the future, such as our brother Mortarion, who has recently become obsessed with the primary industry of raw material exports: My market share in Corax is gradually being squeezed out by Mortarion. After all, the distance between the two of them is too close, and I can't win a price war at all."

[Can't you just go your own way with Corax? Remember the joint operation between your two legions more than a decade ago? Corax was even willing to lend you his flagship when you asked.]

"That's because the Midnight Lords took the initiative to undertake the task of direct combat."

Conrad recalled that memory, and a soft smile brushed across the corners of his mouth: What the Midnight Haunter did not tell Morgan was that he actually felt that letting the Eighth Legion take the initiative to undertake frontal combat missions was not a completely good thing for the Raven Guard.

It is true that the casualties suffered by the descendants of Corax in that joint operation were not heavy, far less than those of Conrad's Night Lords, but if the Raven Guards continued like this for a long time, lacking experience in frontal combat and relying only on Corax's tactics behind enemy lines, then the entire legion would sooner or later suffer from this problem.

Yes, Conrad knew that the Raven Guard had no shortage of frontal combat troops. They had well-established artillery and armored units, but there was a huge gap between having these troops and being able to use them. Even the Astartes could not easily cross it.

But Night Haunter never warned his brother about this issue, just as he had explained long ago that everyone must have a flaw to provide others with a solution when needed, and the Raven Guard was the flaw he left for Corax.

As a countermeasure, the Night Lords Legion was eliminated from this weakness.

You know, the Midnight Lords Legion back then also faced almost the same problems. There were all kinds of unorthodox tactics prevalent within the legion, and they were helpless in the face of real head-on combat and large-scale troop operations. It took Conrad a lot of effort to correct the problems of the Eighth Legion, but even so, correcting them was not a complete solution.

The entire empire knew that Conrad's Midnight Notaries were unmatched in small-scale brawls and urban street wars, but once the scale of the battlefield was expanded to hundreds or thousands of soldiers fighting each other, the Eighth Legion would often run out of steam: their experience on the Ghoul Stars made them particularly good at raids, melees, quick fights and efficient retreats, but they had almost no experience in long-term tug-of-war battles.

This is not difficult to understand.

Because in most of the combat experiences of the new generation of the Eighth Legion, spending several days or even more than ten hours on a battlefield is undoubtedly tantamount to seeking death: if you delay a little, you will find that the subspace channel that originally sent you here has completely changed. What's more, only a dozen minutes have passed on the battlefield, and when you go out again, years have passed. Thirty or forty years have passed in the blink of an eye.

Conrad had several such examples under his command: ten-year recruits who had served for fifty years.

Thinking of this, Midnight Haunter couldn't help but smile. Although it was a bit despicable to laugh at his own offspring, it was indeed fun: especially when he saw Sevatar losing his hair in worry over a bunch of canceled promotion lists and obituaries.

Oh yes…hair.

Midnight Haunter's gaze quietly shifted to his eldest sister with silver hair.

Morgan should have some reliable hair growth potions.

Damn it, it's already the 30th millennium, and humans haven't solved the fundamental problem of hair loss: the same thing happened to his great father of genes. He had a full head of beautiful hair, but half of his sons were bald.

and many more……

Does this mean that their idiotic genetic mother...hmm...

Conrad was lost in thought: until the Spider Queen's slap brought him back to reality.

【Wake up, Conrad, you haven't answered my question yet. 】

"Ah? Ah."

The ghost nodded.

"You mean Corax? How do you say it..."

He held his head in distress.

"That guy Corax was taught too rigidly by you and the Emperor. I tried so hard to make him lively. He was indeed willing to lend me his Glorious Queen, but that was because I was his best brother. And as the commander of the legion, he had the qualifications."

"However, when it comes to any livelihood issues related to Redemption Star, our brother thinks he has no right to make decisions on his own. He has handed over his home planet to a Redemption Committee that he trusts the most. The committee is composed of mortals, and they decide on all kinds of livelihood issues, such as who to buy the mine from."

[They chose Mortarion? ]

"In order to win over the Redemption Star as a major customer and allow his beloved Barbarus to complete the initial industrial upgrade, the Lord of Death actually agreed to set aside an exclusive area on Barbarus for the Redemption Star business team, and guaranteed that there would be no toxic gas pollution in the area. He has already done this. What do you think I can do to compete with him?"

【It's really impressive. 】

Morgan snorted lightly, and his words were full of affirmation for Mortarion: Although his relationship with the Lord of Death has never been good, and their social relations can be said to be poor, but speaking objectively, Mortarion still has many advantages that Morgan agrees with.

At least more than Magnus.

If they had to cooperate, Morgan would rather work with Mortarion than Magnus: the Lord of Death was certainly not as easy to control as the King of Prospero, but if the problem was handed over to him, there was a high probability that he would not mess it up, which made people feel relieved.

As for Magnus...

Well... never mind...

Let’s think of something happy.

Morgan's eyes began to drift, and soon caught what he wanted.

【Conrad.】

"I'm here."

[Please help me check: How long will it take for the Emperor's flagship to arrive? ]

【Notify me when you arrive. 】

[Don't let that old bastard get away? ]

"Run away? What do you mean?"

[He's been avoiding me lately: avoiding the new script I wrote for him.]

"That's it? Did you arrange dozens of death sentences for him in the script?"