Warhammer: Empire Reboot

This is the "divinity" of the Primitive.

Kobayer was a die-hard materialist.

He can replicate every atom in a carbon chain, but he cannot sculpt the divinity of subspace.

This flaw was fully exposed when Abaddon led the Black Legion into the laboratory.

When the clone Horus saw Abaddon, its genetic memory still contained a vague impression of "Horus" as the "First Company Commander," so it commanded Abaddon to kneel down.

Abaddon's entire senses were focused on confirming one thing: whether this thing before him carried the soul pressure of the person he had once knelt before.

His lightning claw pierced through Clone Horus's chest, killing it!

Byr learned a lesson from that failure: a Primarch without a soul is, at best, just a super-sized Space Marine.

But the story doesn't end there.

Bayer spent another thousand years studying "divinity".

He dissected countless demon samples, psionic brain tissue, and fragments of warp creations in an attempt to find a way to infuse soul energy into clones.

He failed countless times.

Then, he succeeded once.

He created a perfect clone of Forgrim.

Bayer didn't know the exact reason for that success, which was the most painful thing for him.

He repeated the same steps, using the same equipment and materials, but only that clone spontaneously drew soul energy from the subspace during the cultivation process, forming a complete Primarch-level soul structure.

It is possible that there is some kind of warp affinity in the genetic template of Forgrim, the Primarch of the Emperor's Son, that he has not yet fully understood.

It could also just be a probabilistic event.

After enough attempts, a low-probability event will eventually occur.

Whatever the reason, that clone of Forgrim was perfect.

The moment it emerged from the petri dish, Bayer knew this time was different.

The clone's eyes look off!

All the previous protoclones, Horus, Feralus, and several other failed attempts, had empty, blank eyes when they first came out of the culture dish, like machines that had just been turned on.

There's something in the eyes of this Fugrem.

Conscious and capable of judgment.

There is an innate, inherent arrogance etched into the very genes of the soul.

It glanced at Bayer.

That glance made Bayer feel a sense of pressure, as if he were being looked down upon.

The Primarch's dominance was perfectly replicated in that clone.

What happened next confirmed Bayer's worst fears and predictions.

The clone, Forgrim, stood in the laboratory and looked around.

Its gaze swept over Bayer's assistants, Newtype guards, and several Chaos Space Marines who had defected to Bayer.

The Space Marines knelt down.

The bloodline resonance between the Primarch and the Space Marine was activated at that moment.

But what truly broke Bayer's defenses was not the Space Marines' reaction.

It is his new human.

Those new humans he designed from scratch, who claimed to have broken free from all the shackles of the old human genes and whom he regarded as the perfect racial prototype, all knelt down the moment they saw the clone of Forgrim.

They knelt on the ground, gazing up at the clone radiating the original's aura with an expression of piety that Bayer had never seen on their faces.

Bayer watched all of this with a cold eye.

Then he came to a conclusion that he would ponder for the next few millennia.

Genes determine destiny!

This Fulgrim is pure, uncorrupted by Slaanesh, without the memories of his fallen state, and without ten thousand years of madness.

It is a perfect blueprint on a blank sheet of paper, noble and arrogant, with an obsessive pursuit of beauty and perfection.

But it is precisely this perfection that is the problem.

Primarchs are born rulers.

This is a fundamental attribute etched into both the soul and the genes.

If Bayer leaves behind this clone of Fogrem, his laboratory will become Fogrem's laboratory within days.

His new humans will become Fugrim's army.

He himself will be reduced from creator to vassal!

It took Bayer so many years and a lot of effort to finally break free from the control of the Emperor, Horus, Abaddon, and the Chaos Gods.

He will no longer allow himself to be a slave to any Primarch.

He would never allow that to happen.

Therefore, he traded the perfect clone of Forgrim to the figurine king, Tarasin.

They traded it for a batch of rare alien gene samples and a safe network route.

He sold a perfect piece of work as a bargaining chip.

Because he can't control it.

This is the most regrettable decision in Bayer's 10,000-year scientific career.

Bayer watched the surveillance footage of Mortarian slaughtering the Imperial Guard and muttered to himself:

"I can clone the original's body, and occasionally I can even get lucky and create one with a soul, but I can't control them."

"What a pity!"

"Otherwise, if I had a Primarch army, who would dare to hunt me down..."

He placed the half-finished drink on the control panel.

"How are the evacuation preparations going?"

He turned to ask the control room behind him.

"The Imperial Guards and the Newtype squads can't hold them off for long; they must..."

There was no response from the control room.

Bayer turned around the instant he realized something was wrong.

At this moment, all of his New Human guards fell to the ground.

An uninvited guest had appeared in the control room at some point.

The man was holding a data panel from Bayer, flipping through the research notes on it with great interest.

Behind that man stood a group of guards, staring at him coldly.

Bayer's brain completed the identity deduction in 0.3 seconds.

Only one person on the dark side of the empire fits this set of characteristics.

“Losen, the Dark Side Master, you’ve finally found me.”

"You arrived faster than I expected."

Lawson flipped the data panel to the last page, read the contents, and then put it back in its place.

Like a cultured visitor who, after finishing reading a book in someone else's study, puts it back on the shelf.

He said calmly, "The great scientist has good judgment. Do you know why I came to you?"

Bayer's lips twitched slightly.

"I previously abducted a lot of civilians from the Empire's dark side—hundreds of planets, billions of people in total—because I ran out of cultivation materials. You know how fast scientific research consumes resources; a single gene model, from design to validation, requires at least tens of thousands of live samples, but..."

He pointed to the Plague Corner that was currently hovering beside Lawson.

The horn was fixed in place by Lawson using some kind of psychic power.

"Now that I have that thing, I no longer need to capture people from the Empire. The material problem is solved."

He spoke slightly faster: "I can give you back the civilians of the Empire that we lost before, with better alternatives. New humans have more than three times the physical strength of ordinary humans, ten times the disease resistance, and their reproductive cycle is shortened by half. I will give you 100 million to compensate for your population loss. You won't lose out on this deal."

However, Lawson shook his head: "I came to see you for more than just that."

Bayer's facial expression remained unchanged, and he slightly adjusted the grip of his right hand inside his robe pocket.

There was an emergency syringe pre-loaded with a deadly biochemical toxin.

It's used for injecting oneself.

If the situation gets out of control, the toxin will kill his current physical body within 0.5 seconds, triggering a consciousness transfer protocol.

This is Bayer's standard insurance measure in the face of threats for the past 10,000 years.

"Bayer".

"Your crimes are enough for the Empire to execute you a hundred times over," said Lawson.

"But I can give you a chance to work for me. You can continue your research—genetic modification, new humans, stem cell culture, protozoan cloning technology—you can continue in any direction. The condition is that all projects must be approved by me. In exchange, you will receive the Empire's top-tier research resources, a genetic research team worth millions, and a guarantee of safety from the Inquisition."

Bayer did not expect Lawson to make such a demand.

Then he was amused.

"Your Excellency, the Master of the Seal."

"Your proposal is flawless in terms of business logic. It's very reasonable to exchange resources for results and security for loyalty. If I were an ordinary scientist who cares about experimental funding, is worried about personal safety, and hopes to do research peacefully within the framework of an institution, I would accept it."

He stopped smiling: "But I'm not an ordinary scientist."

Bayer pulled his hands out of his pockets.

He spread his hands out in front of Lawson, almost as if he were displaying a piece of his collection.