Warhammer, I'm a nanny, not your father!

Not only is he childish, he is also cunning.

Erebus felt that what Wop said today would sooner or later become a boomerang and hit the other Primarchs in the back of the head.

Chapter 64 Some Brothers, Some (6K)

"For freedom, glory belongs to Lorgar!"

"For the sake of the covenant, kill the heretics!"

The sounds of fighting between the rebels and the Covenant tore through the chilly night. The sharp cracks of flintlock rifles vibrated in the cold air, and the roar of steam engines and the wails of the dying intertwined into a cruel melody.

Slaves wrapped in coarse linen huddled on their beds in the dormitory, covering the children's ears with trembling hands, as if this war had nothing to do with them.

Despite the Covenant Army's tenacious resistance, the rebels still rushed into the temple of Ehsher Huk. The armorer guarding the temple was blown to pieces by the Crawlers' artillery fire, the towering statues were knocked down, and all the scriptures were burned, which also declared the victory of this war.

The Covenant Army was caught off guard by the rebels' surprise attack. Akshida led his troops to bypass Ehshe Huk's frontal defense by going around the sand ridge on the east side, and the crawlers easily blasted open the city gate.

Although the rebels suffered over a hundred casualties, their sacrifice was worth the victory in capturing Ehshe Huk.

"My Lord, I hope you are safe and sound."

Akshida looked in the direction of Melson. He was not praying to the gods, but only to the ancient and beautiful blessings of mankind.

After the cold came the high night. Even a crawler driven by a steam engine could not continue to travel in the high night. Moreover, Ehsher Hook was still two days' journey from Merson. They could not return to the rescue in time. Praying was the only thing he could do.

……

"Espia, you traitor!"

Triku's armored deacon arched his armored back like an enraged desert scorpion, his scimitar turning into a flash of silver lightning in his hand, vowing to cut the traitor into pieces.

He was wearing the same exoskeleton armor as Esberya. Although this armor did not have the suffocating defense and devastating firepower of the Crusader, it had an amazing advantage in mobility.

"You are accused of heresy, a crime unforgivable! I will purify your body, and the gods will judge your soul!"

Esperia was in a trance for a moment, because she had said the same thing not long ago and executed the priest of Atlantis.

As a result, she suddenly became a heretic. She couldn't refute it, but she would not give in.

She twisted her body suddenly, and the scimitar drew a deadly silver arc in the air, accurately piercing the neck seam of the opponent's exoskeleton armor.

Amidst the muffled sound of metal and flesh tearing apart, boiling hot blood gushed out along the knife groove, splashing a dazzling red color on the sand.

"Why, Espeia, why did you betray us?"

The dying armorer gasped, and the joints of his armor twitched with a harsh sound of metal friction. Finally, he fell to the ground with a thud, stirring up a cloud of dust.

Espeia lowered her head but did not look at the body of the armorer.

They had knelt together before the gilded altar of the Vahdirith Temple, and the Archbishop had ordained them as Deacons of Arms with his own hands.

He was different from her, his father was a priest of the Covenant, while she was just a commoner's child.

She was not able to stay in the coastal town, but was assigned to Atlantis.

He could have stayed there and had a bright future, but he also came to Triku.

Esperia knew why, he liked her.

But she had knelt before the archbishop and sworn to remain chaste and dedicate the rest of her life to the gods.

She had taken this vow not out of piety, but so that the Archbishop would value her more and allow her to stay in the coastal town instead of the desolate desert.

But the archbishop seemed to be able to see through her ulterior motives, and she was still exiled to Atlantis.

He came to Triku for her, but she killed him with her own hands.

"Why?" Esperia asked herself, why did she betray the Covenant and why did she follow Lorgar?

She could have told him that she was coerced and used the bodies of the rebels to beg for forgiveness from the Covenant. He loved her so much that he would definitely prove it for her.

She could return to the Covenant and exchange intelligence on the rebels for a bright future.

If she married him, the two of them, the two armour deacons, would be a powerful combination and perhaps have the hope of sitting on the archbishop's throne in their later years. Their future would be bright.

But she killed him.

Esberya's fingertips unconsciously wiped the blood on the scimitar, and memories came flooding back.

The figure of the young man in the fluttering white robe became clearer and clearer in the burning scriptures. There seemed to be nebulae flowing in the depths of his violet eyes. When she stared into those eyes, it seemed as if she saw the brilliance of the entire galaxy frozen in that stunning glimpse.

The young man's handsome face was illuminated by the firelight and was radiant with divine light. Even the blood drops on his cheeks looked like rubies adorning the statue.

He said he was not God, but was he really not?

Esperia didn't believe it.

He said that the gods were false and that faith was a fetter.

Then she would listen to him, abandon the false gods, and break the shackles of faith.

Because of the gods she had never seen, and because the gods stood before her.

Esperia's eyes swept over the gradually cooling corpse. The rebel fighter was clumsily stripping off his exoskeleton armor.

The same training, the same vows, but they parted ways at the crossroads of fate.

He was still trapped and struggling in the lies woven by the gods, but she chose to follow Lorgar to break the shackles of faith and shatter the lies of the gods.

"Commander Esberya." Van Mogel walked towards him with a worried look on his face. "Do we really not need to go back to help Meyerson?"

Esperia asked, "Don't you believe in Lorgar?"

Van Mogel was startled, and Esperia said, "I believe him."

God will not lose, no matter who the enemy is.

……

"If anyone is destined to bear the shackles of faith, let me do it."

Lorca stood quietly on the blood-stained sand, his violet eyes lowered, staring at the corpses on the ground.

The hem of his white robe was soaked in blood, leaving a dark red trail on the cold, dry sand.

Those eyes, shimmering with the brilliance of nebulae, revealed divine compassion.

Neither Akshida nor Esperia completely abandoned their faith. They simply changed the object of their faith from the gods to Lorgar.

Even when Esberya knelt in front of the sea of ​​fire in despair, Lorgar could see the fanatical fire of faith burning in her eyes.

They all regarded him as a god and the covenant and the gods as heresy.

Lorgar knew this would lead to endless trouble. They now regarded him as a god because they had never seen a true God. If one day the gods showed them true miracles, perhaps they would abandon him just as they had abandoned the Covenant and return to the gods' arms.

Lorgar is not a god and cannot change their ideas.

He could have killed them and given them true liberation, leaving no hidden dangers.

But he was too kind and he didn't want to hurt those who followed him, even if they followed him for the wrong reasons.

They believed in and followed him, albeit with false beliefs, but they practiced his ways, and they made great sacrifices and were happy to do so.

Is there really someone in this world who would be so angry that he would want to kill those who devoutly believe in him just because they follow him because of their faith?

Lorgar couldn't do it, so he could only endure their beliefs and suffer alone.

Lorgar hoped they would die in glory liberating Colchis, but if any of them survived the war, he would make proper arrangements for their future.

Luo Jia looked back at the group of young men standing in the biting cold wind behind him. Their chapped lips were bluish purple, and tiny ice crystals condensed on their eyelashes and hair ends, falling with their trembling breaths, but they still held their heads stubbornly high.

They are the Circle of Ashes, and they are the ones who can truly practice His Way.

"I am not a god," Lorgar told them again and again, "We are human."

……

"The Covenant lost five thousand elite warriors and all settlements around Atlantis. They are no longer able to mount another offensive in the short term."

Lorgar said it easily, but everyone else understood that without Lorgar, these 5,000 Covenant troops alone would be enough to destroy the rebel uprising.

Lorgar: "Esperia, you know the Covenant better than we do. How long will it take them to gather their army and launch a massive attack?"

Esperia: "Vahadiresh's Covenant Army has a standing strength of only 20,000 men. This 5,000-man advance force is already a quarter of their total strength. According to normal tactical logic, to annihilate their vanguard, the rebel force must be at least 20,000 strong."

"To crush the rebels, the Holy Covenant will mobilize at least 50,000 troops, which will require the transfer of garrisons from surrounding towns. Assembling the troops, along with the preparation of food and supplies, will take approximately ten days."

"Ten days, seventy small days," Lorgar said. "That gives us some precious breathing space. Espeia, Axida, hurry up and train the resistance. We need to launch a new offensive within five days."

Esberya and Akshida nodded seriously. Any order given by Lorca was sacred and they had to complete it.

The rebels now have four 'cities', with no shortage of water and food, and a total of 100,000 slaves.

However, due to the limited number of weapons and equipment, and the fact that a large population is required to maintain the settlements, the maximum number of rebels they could arm was only 10,000.

Ten thousand against fifty thousand, and it was the straw sandal army against the regular army, there was no chance of winning at all.

But as long as Lorca is here, their chances of winning are one thousand percent!

Why should the Covenant, which believes in false gods, fight against the rebels who have the true God?

Lorgar: "I need to be away for a while. Erebus will lead you in my place for the next two days."

"Yes, my lord."

……

According to the Empire's standards for dividing the world, Colchis can be classified as a dead world.

It's too hot, too cold, and the days and nights are each 85 hours long.

Colchis is three times the size of Terra, but more than 97% of its area is barren mountains and deserts, and only the ocean areas at the poles are habitable.

But humans still survived tenaciously in this world. The Colchis people are generally more resistant to heat and cold than humans in other worlds. This is a legacy left by the targeted genetic optimization of the Golden Age.

Before the Age of Strife, this world also had a developed civilization, and the broken rings that can be seen at night are irrefutable evidence of this.

The metal debris floating in Colchis' orbit surrounded this desolate world like Saturn's rings. Just from what Lorgar saw through the astronomical telescope, he could make out the wreckage of hundreds of ancient spaceships.

They rotate slowly outside the thin atmosphere, their broken keels like the skeletons of giant beasts, their twisted armor plates reflecting the cold light of the stars, and faint arcs of electricity occasionally bursting out from their broken engine arrays, as if telling the story of the glory and fall of that lost era.

Lorgar: "I will rebuild it."

Lorgar gazed at the starry night sky. The desert was silent at night. There was only him and Wop, without the annoying Erebus.

Lorgar hated Erebus as much as he hated Curze.

This lucky mortal had been following Wop before he met him.

Whenever he wanted to be alone with Wop, Erebus would shamelessly stick to the two of them and he couldn't get rid of him.

Lorgar could understand what kind of feelings Erebus had for Wop. It was similar to his but different, because Erebus's feelings for Wop were definitely not as deep as his.

"Colchis or the Orbital Ring?" Wop asked.

He was using an astronomical telescope to observe the star ring, which Lorgar had found in the treasure house beneath the Melson Temple. It was also the only thing he had actively asked for.

"Everything, I will fix everything and put it back on track."

This quiet moment seemed to freeze time, becoming an eternity that belonged only to the two of them. Lorca wished that such nights could last forever.

He often fell into conflicting thoughts in the quiet night breeze, and when his violet eyes gazed at the stars, a trace of melancholy that was difficult for ordinary people to detect would appear in them.

If he could strip away this body that carried his mission, and shed the halo of his original form, perhaps he could truly extend this moment of peace into eternity. No longer needing to worry about the galactic wars, no longer needing to shoulder the fate of humanity, he could simply be the child beside Wop, craving warmth.

Normal children of his age would still be playing coquettishly in their parents' arms and learning to speak, but he lost the privilege that belonged to him because he was forced to grow up.

But fate had already woven cause and effect into the paradox: precisely because he was the Primarch forged by the Emperor himself, Wopp traveled across the stars to meet him.

But this inherent burden is destined to separate them from each other.

Wop: "If the Golden Fleece we found is indeed an STC, we hold the key to rebuilding civilization. When Colchis returns to the Imperium, the Mechanicum will volunteer to help you repair the orbital rings if you ask them. I believe that under your leadership, Colchis will become as prosperous as Terra."

"Would you like Colchis like that?"

"of course."

"Will you like it better than Terra?"

Wop shook his head: "Terra is my home planet."

Lorgar was not disappointed, as he understood Wop's special feelings for his home planet.

Even though there are trillions of planets in the galaxy, some of which are more perfect than Terra, the home planet is priceless.

Just like my father.