I am the magnetic field maniac

With a piercing howl that echoed to realms beyond mortal knowledge, its blazing flames consumed Fulgrim's skin, muscle, and bone, and finally his soul!

The Ascended Primarch cannot escape, and in order to assassinate the God-Emperor he must remove his soul from the realm of Slaanesh.

But now, he could not return to the Dark Prince's palace. Facing the power of the God-Emperor, he had nowhere to escape.

The headless Ferrus said nothing. He grabbed Fulgrim's remaining soul and walked into the burning door step by step.

Only a faint hum echoed in the air

I forgive you, brother...

180. The Dark Lord

What exactly does it take to become the Dark Lord?

The Emperor is not the only one who can become the Dark Lord. In fact, if Horus had won the final battle on the Spirit of Vengeance, he could have become the Dark Lord as well.

In fact, the Four Gods had a very vicious plan. If Horus killed the Emperor, they would have a weak and mad Dark Lord... If the Emperor won, he would be too weak to be forced to join their ranks.

But even Tzeentch had not expected that the Emperor and Slaanesh would have such a great degree of awareness - both were gods dedicated to their respective races, but one happily devoured all life, while the other voluntarily became firewood for all humans.

The Cursed One was an incomplete Dark Lord, and he ultimately led the Emperor to a result that none of the Four Gods had expected.

The original Dark Lord symbolized nothingness, and after devouring all human souls, he would be promoted to the fifth god in the warp, filling the concept of nothingness. However, the cursed over-emphasized this concept in their hatred of Chaos over the past ten thousand years.

He has been promoted from the Dark Lord of Nothingness to the Pure Lord of Destruction!

When such a human lord completes his ascension, he will undoubtedly become someone who will fight chaos to the end at all costs.

Ultimately, the stirred-up subspace is doomed to lose balance and collapse... and the gods will usher in a new beginning in the reshaping of the universe.

Undoubtedly, even an extreme ruler like Khorne would not be happy with such an outcome.

The result of all things being destroyed is something that no Chaos Evil God would like to see.

Therefore, the Emperor will not die, even if the Four Gods can do it they are trying their best to delay this result.

But if this is the case, will another dark king be born?

The answer is – yes.

The most important prerequisite for becoming the Dark Lord is that your existence must be closely related to the well-being of mankind.

The former Emperor was not qualified to be promoted to the Dark Lord. As an immortal, he has experienced death in human history, but he is still himself.

But when he launched the Great Crusade, stepped onto the stage, conquered the galaxy, and became an idol worshipped by countless humans, he could no longer die.

Similarly, Horus once met this condition. He was the Warmaster, the Wolf-Shepherd God, and in the eyes of all participants in the Great Crusade, he was a great being second only to the Emperor, the second greatest figure in the entire Imperium...

By the end of the Great Crusade, the belief in Horus was almost the same as that of the Emperor.

Faith is a way to connect beliefs, and it is the simplest way for the soul to connect with other things at the supreme level.

After all, the ascended Dark Lord can only kill the faith and those related to him - just like Slaanesh's ascension did not take away those Ark Eldar who kept themselves clean and did not sacrifice to her with actual actions.

Therefore, the Chaos Gods were not worried about Horus's promotion to the Dark Lord, because at most he would be the second Slaanesh, blowing Terra up into the second Eye of Terror and then repeating the story of the Fall of the Eldar.

And now, at this moment, in the existence of the Emperor, there is still a Dark Lord who is "born".

When the Emperor stepped into the final trap set for him by the Chaos Gods, he understood everything.

What appeared before him was a familiar scene and a familiar place.

The monotonous salt marsh was churning with a sea of ​​color: coats of arms, flags, soldiers, tanks, Titans.

A hundred hands cannot point clearly, a hundred eyes cannot see everything. The Martian Mechanicus leveled the continent, moved mountains and filled the sea, reshaped the surface of the planet, all in preparation for the greatest celebration of the Great Crusade.

Ah, listen, what a familiar sound. The roar of war machines. The soldiers, with their sincerity and pride, shout their victory to the sky.

From a distance, the Titan's footsteps sounded like rare, rhythmic bursts of thunder.

The massive engine of a battle group is like a terrifying storm, enough to uproot an entire city.

Here, their numbers were tripled, and then tripled. These Martian beasts strode past the army, with millions of soldiers at their ankles.

Their huge footprints even formed new landforms on the plain.

The Luna Wolves led the parade, their armour painted a noble pearly white rather than the rusty green that had bedecked them since their fall to the Sons of Horus.

Following closely behind were countless phalanxes of soldiers from various legions. Not all of them had gifts from the Primarch, but in the heat of the desert, they were still full of pride, standing under the fluttering battle flags.

The Primarchs were of different temperaments and appearances. They were far apart and ascended the grand viewing platform.

From their height they could even overlook the Principate and Belligerent Titans, not to mention the other war machines.

The Primarchs, fierce and skilled warriors, each a masterpiece of the Emperor's genetic technology, bathed in, or endured, the organized cheers of the soldiers under the platform.

They walked up to the stage one by one, saluted the neat formation, enduring, bearing, and enjoying it.

Angron, holding his weapon high, was praised by his soldiers. He seemed to have become the gladiator Angnius, the invincible king of the red sand, in the arena of Nuceria, inspired by cheers and shouts.

Lorgar Aurelion, Herald of the Emperor, opened his arms... and the millions of loyal souls in the audience raised their voices higher and higher.

He was a brilliant demagogue and received shouts of admiration.

Finally, it was Sanguinius' turn, the eagle-winged son of the Emperor, the living symbol of the new Imperium.

At this moment, he was sentimental, resentful, and somewhat reluctant. The cheers he received were the loudest, but the tens of thousands of men and women gathered in the audience were too far away...

It is impossible to see how their almost devout faith flickers uneasily in the angel's eyes.

Nevertheless, when the people called upon him and pleaded with him, he drew his sword and saluted the men who lined up on the plain.

Seeing him spread his wings made the soldiers' throats hoarse with cheers. A feather fell off and floated slowly in the wind.

The imperial army that possesses it regards it as a sacred relic, and the pattern of the white feather will be forever embroidered on the battle flag as a symbol of their honor.

The Primarchs appeared on the stage one by one. Finally, the much-anticipated Lord of Humanity ascended to the center of attention of the world.

All this familiarity made the Emperor silent, and also made his thoughts surge. This was the beginning of change, from this moment he announced his withdrawal from the Great Crusade...

He was going to return to the palace to complete a greater cause that was even more important to mankind - shaping the webway.

This might have been a wrong choice. At that time, he was too eager to free humans from the limitations of warp navigation...

He was too eager to create something for mankind that could free it from the influence of evil gods before the eternal war of the gods ended.

But, have the Eldar who own the Webway ever gotten rid of the influence of the evil god?

If the Eldar, who possess the great miraculous creation of the Ancient Saints, are in such a state, can humanity's fragile webway really bring about a rational and beautiful era?

The Emperor turned and stared. He looked at his children, knowing full well that half of them would betray him -

But it was undoubtedly the departure of Horus, his most cherished son, that ultimately contributed to his fall.

He didn't really think of them as sons, did he?

He remembered what he had said to his guard La himself - these creatures who claimed to be his sons were given food called honor by him...

In fact, these things are no different from the so-called gods worshipped by humans in the ignorant ages.

The Emperor looked down upon his own sons, Horus and Sanguinius, when he faced his own Custodes, and saw them as something he hated, being worshipped as gods.

He foresaw the great rebellion, the inevitable internal unrest and division among mankind...

But he did not anticipate the final outcome, because of his excessive self-righteousness - Angron was right, the Emperor was a psychopath, a schizophrenic and arrogant bastard, a joke who ultimately lost everything because of his arrogance and self-righteousness!

Because the Emperor is a Machiavellian through and through, a man who sees all things as fools and tools that must be saved by himself.

So if he had not announced his departure from the front line and his withdrawal from the Great Crusade, what would have been the final outcome?

The Emperor thought so, and so he did it—

At the ceremony on Ullanor, he announced that he would not return to Terra, and handed over the entire Empire to Guilliman, Sanguinius, the Lion, and Malcador.

He entrusted them with the importance and necessity of the Webway, allowing them to shape the future of mankind.

And he continued to lead the troops of the Great Crusade and Horus on the expedition.

The cheers of the celebrating crowd seemed to tear the sky apart. There was not a single soldier who was not happy to have the Emperor by their side, even Horus, his face filled with joy.

But after that, what happened?

In the blink of an eye, the victory celebrations at Ullanor were gone. In two heartbeats, the Emperor stood on a rocky shore, the cold salt water reaching up to his ankles.

Standing before him was a cliff hundreds of meters high - the surface was extremely steep, and loose and cracked rocks kept falling off the cliff, falling into the water not far away, splashing out white spots.

This is the "present". And on the top of the cliff is the "future"...

The emperor climbed to the top of the cliff with some difficulty, and what he saw was a scene that had not changed at all.

The Heresy still broke out, but it broke out in the opposite direction from Terra.

Guilliman replaced Horus as Chaos's chief corruptor, and encountered a similar situation as Horus on his return to Terra - this time, he was corrupted by Chaos in order to save his mother, the Lady Jotun.

Sanguinius, too, chose to save his son, who was tormented by the bloodthirst and the Black Rage, and was forced to become a puppet of Chaos. And the Lion, he was eventually corrupted by everything on Caliban.

Some loyalty turns into betrayal, while some betrayal turns into loyalty.

Because the Emperor was by his side, Lorgar was not fooled by the two scumbags, Erebus and Kor Phaeron. Even though he was still confused, he still followed the Emperor.

The same was true for Horus. Even though his body was pierced by his enemy's blade this time, he was not sent to the Temple of the Serpent by Abaddon.

There is not much to say about this story, because the subsequent developments do not seem to make much difference.

The crusade, led by the Emperor himself, culminated in his activation of two Blackstone fortresses to forcibly sew the Eye of Terror shut...

But then the explosion of Terra and a new Eye of Terror torn open under his feet made everything take a sharp turn for the worse again.

The offensive and defensive situation was reversed in an instant, and the original great rebellion showed a trend in the opposite direction... and in the end, everything became a decisive battle between the Emperor and Guilliman, who was blessed by the Four Gods, on the Macragge's Glory.

Once again the Emperor ascended the throne to suppress the Rift, but this time he was to suppress the unstable Eye of Terror, and he sat on the black glazed prototype obtained from the White Scars.

Terra was finished, but Cardia became the new Terra.

Fate does not seem to have changed drastically.

The emperor returned to the cliff again.

He looked down at the calm sea. He had just experienced the possibility of another world line... but this only made the Emperor's will stronger.

The Emperor had already understood the same truth, just as he had told Ra ten thousand years ago.

If you choose the destination of your journey, but the only thing you can see is the destination, you may not see the man-eating monster under the water, nor the capricious sea breeze.

Where will the wind take you? East? West? South? North?

Will it throw you out of the boat, or just tear it apart and sail away? There may be hidden reefs under the water, and you will never be able to find them before they grind against your hull.

Even if you reach the shore after going through untold hardships, the only thing that may welcome you is the black muzzle of a gun from the residents on the shore.

Fate has countless possibilities, but for those who manipulate the thread of fate, it can lead it to a fixed result -

The Emperor hated all of this. He would rather accept the complicated and chaotic fate than endure a world led to an inevitable outcome.

The Emperor was not shaken by this at all, and this may have angered the one who created the world line.

So, it was shattered, and a possible timeline was annihilated, replaced by a new scene.

In the vast tunnel, the demon flew in the cloud. Something was tempting its senses and rubbing its skull.

An existence that has known violence and bloodshed. Ah, the dead Eldar city, it must be hiding there.

Just as when they had arrived, there was no sign to let the other imperial troops know whether they had left.

Around the retreating army, the towers of the Eldar became increasingly ethereal, and were eventually swallowed up by the mist. But these towers could not serve as a sign to tell people whether they were still in the City of Miracles.

Have they passed through this unclear webway and entered a place they have never been to?

Minutes and seconds pass by without any meaning for the men and women fighting here due to unreliable timing.

One tunnel after another, fighting and retreating, endlessly.

Nearly endless numbers of enemies hammered at the Ten Thousand and the Sisters of Silence.

Every tunnel and branch leading to the Imperial Underworld is filled with rebels, warmachines, and creatures of the Warp.

Only behind the wreckage of chariots and Titans could the defenders get a chance to breathe. The war had finally torn off all its pretense, and at least in the city, they could still pretend that this was a siege of equal strength.

Now, people finally saw clearly that the enemy was as huge as the ocean of Terra... and they were just a dead leaf drifting in the waves.

The attack never stops at the rear of the team. Even a tiny capillary is ambushed by rebels and their demonic reinforcements.

The enemy overran the Imperial rearguard at will and drove deep into the retreating columns.

The Ten Thousand Guards and the Sisters of Silence almost bled dry, but still couldn't save this place.