This is the bonus chapter for reaching 1200 Powerstones.
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When Sacken Alar arrived in the upper hive.
The Warp aftershocks of Mist-Weaver Calidus's disintegration had not yet fully dissipated.
Blue-purple energy drifted down like dust.
Sacken stood atop a high point in the ruins, the psychic wings on his back trembling violently from emotional agitation, the purple tentacles surging from the scar on his left cheek having crawled over almost his entire neck.
He looked at the gradually dissipating blue-purple points of light in the sky, and for the first time, unmistakable... wavering appeared in his eyes.
"Lord Mist-Weaver... was slain?" His voice carried a tremor of disbelief.
That was a Greater Daemon!
One of the trump cards personally arranged by the Lord of Change, Aetaos, to stall Sanguinius!
Even against the Great Angel of the Imperium, it shouldn't have fallen so... quickly.
Behind Sacken, over five hundred figures similarly shrouded in blue-purple psychic energy emerged from the shadows of the ruins.
They were once the psykers of the Conmo Dynasty, but now they were twisted beyond recognition. Some had grown a third, constantly blinking eye on their face; some had arms mutated into rune-covered tentacles; some had sprouted mangled demonic wings from their backs.
The psychic level of every single one of them had advanced by at least an entire tier.
High-class became Master-class, Master-class became Gamma-class.
This was the grace bestowed by the Changer of Ways, and also a one-way ticket to the abyss of total inhumanity.
"No... I cannot waver..." Sacken shook his head forcefully, his fists clenched tight. "Lord Aetaos said... everything is going according to plan... the fall of the Mist-Weaver... is also part of the plan..."
He forced himself to believe this.
Because if he didn't, he would have to face another possibility.
That possibility meant that the vengeance he had been plotting for decades...
The path he had walked since the moment he accepted the whispers of the Changer of Ways, the power he had exchanged by sacrificing the entire City of the Holy Anthem hive...
Might have been doomed to fail from the very beginning.
"It won't..."
Sacken looked up, the wavering in his eyes gradually replaced by madness.
"I still have a trump card... I still have..."
Before he could finish his sentence.
A pale golden light shot over from the distance, slowly descending from the sky.
Sanguinius hovered fifty meters in front of him, his pristine white wings gently brushing the air, the Blade Encarmine angled toward the ground.
Within the Primarch's amber-gold slit pupils, there was only the intent of judgment.
"Garrison."
"Traitor who has betrayed humanity."
Sanguinius's voice was icy.
"You finally couldn't help but show yourself. Are you ready to face the Emperor's radiant judgment? To be purified for the grievous sins you have committed?"
Every word carried an overwhelming psychic pressure.
Sacken froze for a second, and then...
"Heh... Haha... Hahaha!!!"
He threw his head back and laughed, the sound piercing and harboring a colossal hatred.
"The Emperor? Judgment? Purification?"
Sacken abruptly cut off his laughter, those vortex eyes locking dead onto Sanguinius.
"Sanguinius, do you know what that so-called Emperor you worship is in my eyes?"
"Nothing but a False Emperor."
The moment those words were spoken, the entire battlefield seemed to fall silent for a second.
Even the Crimson Dawn Astartes currently clearing out the Corrupted hesitated for half a beat with their bolters.
White Scars drew a sharp breath over the regional channel, "Holy shit, this guy actually has the balls to say it..."
[Have you been loyal today]: "Damn straight, bro, spit your shit." [What Emperor, he's just a dead man.jpg] emoji pack.
[I want to lick the Golden Old Man's iced radishes]: "I disagree with your statements... you bunch of heretics, Inquisition... hurry up and come..."
Sacken's words caused Sanguinius's face to darken.
"Furthermore, I am Sacken Alar, not some Garrison Conmo! I am the sole survivor of House Alar, sent to the Black Ships by the Iron Hands eighty years ago! A member of the family that once truly ruled Aurelian IV!"
His voice grew louder and louder, until he was practically roaring.
"I never betrayed humanity, I never betrayed Aurelian IV. The true culprits behind the current situation... are you Primarchs who style yourselves as the saviors of humanity, your cold legions of steel, and the False Emperor you serve. You are the true masterminds who destroyed this planet!"
Sanguinius's brow furrowed slightly.
He didn't strike immediately, but rather listened quietly.
His transcendent Primarch senses could distinguish that Sacken's words were a mixture of truth and madness.
That bone-deep hatred... was very real.
"Continue." Sanguinius's voice remained calm. "Before you face the Emperor's judgment, I will give you time to state your case."
"Ha! Judgment? What right do you have to judge me?!"
Sacken laughed maniacally, the sound echoing through the ruins of the upper hive.
"When have you Primarchs of the Imperium of Man ever treated the planets you conquered through war as citizens of the Imperium? Aurelian IV? To you, it's nothing but a coordinate on the map of the Great Crusade, a line of numbers in the Imperial tax ledgers!"
He pointed at the fallen psykers behind him.
"Look at Aurelian IV! Look at this hive! Look at the legacy your Great Crusade left behind! Look at them! Look at these people you call traitors! Why did they fall? Because they were taken by the Mechanicus when they were children! Their parents murdered, their minds brainwashed and augmented! Those successfully brainwashed were placed into the Conmo Dynasty, becoming puppets for the Mechanicus's psychic experiments! Those who failed—"
Sacken's voice was hoarse, carrying a devilish howl.
"—those who failed had their frontal lobes excised, turned into psychic servitors! Turned into walking corpses with no self-awareness, only knowing how to obey orders!
"And you! You high-and-mighty butchers of war! Before you descended with your fleets, Aurelian IV was prosperous and stable under the rule of the House Blaec and House Alar!"
A light of reminiscence surfaced in his eyes.
It was from records he had found after becoming the head of the Conmo Dynasty, records that the Mechanicus had not destroyed.
"The Blaec Family maintained order, and House Alar used psychic power to sustain the ecology... The Aurelian of that time, although a mining planet, had surface vegetation, crops, and a complete ecosystem! Even if those crops didn't taste very good, they were at least harmless. We, the people of Aurelian IV, didn't need to eat Corpse-Starch synthesized from dead bodies! We didn't need to kill for a few mouthfuls of clean water! We didn't need to sell ourselves to the Four Great Factions just to survive!"
Sacken's voice spiked violently.
"It was you! It was the Iron Hands Legion! It was the Primarch named Ferrus Manus! It was you Imperial bastards who brought chaos. He gave the Blaec Family two choices: submit or die! The Blaec Family chose to refuse submission.
And then what? Then the Iron Hands took seven days to wipe the capital city of Dawn from the map!
The entire Royal Family was executed!
The psykers of House Alar were sent to the Black Ships!
The Seventh Administrative Zone collapsed and fell during the orbital bombardment, killing millions instantly!
Billions were plunged into turmoil, chaos bred, and everyone could only struggle to survive amidst upheaval, blood, and fire.
And the Four Great Factions—the Hysman Merchant Guild, the Atens Knight House, the Conmo Psyker Dynasty, and the Order of the Omnissian Mind—rose in the power vacuum and carved up the legacy!
Thus starting the enslavement of all the Imperial citizens of Aurelian IV."
He stared dead at Sanguinius.
"Tell me, great Primarch... who exactly betrayed humanity? Who is the true traitor that brought suffering to this world?!"
Sacken spread his arms wide, letting Sanguinius clearly see the civilians around him who had already been transformed into Corrupted.
"Look at them! Look at these wretched people! Why did they fall so quickly? Because they have hate in their hearts! Hate for injustice! Hate for oppression! Hate for this chaotic, lawless world!"
"Has your so-called orthodox Imperium of Man ever cared about the hate in these people's hearts?! Have you ever troubled yourselves over these people going hungry and freezing? Have you ever spared a thought for those who were casually bullied, their families destroyed? Where was the Imperium when they starved to death? Where is the salvation you preach of? Which Imperial citizen on which planet has ever seen it? Is Aurelian IV the only planet in the Imperium facing this reality?"
Sacken stared dead at Sanguinius.
"In my eyes, the Emperor you worship is no different from the Dream of the Grandfather that House Alar worshipped all those years ago! Both sit high above, both demand sacrifices, both treat mortals as pawns!"
"Oh, no, wait! Although the Dream of the Grandfather demanded sacrifices, at least its blessing granted House Alar psychic power, allowing us the ability to make crops bountiful! It allowed this mining planet, which had nothing but rocks, to once be covered in vegetation and grow food!
"It was you who ruined all of this! It was your so-called Imperial Truth that turned Aurelian IV into the hellhole it is today! And what did your Emperor bring to this world? Death, chaos, destruction, corruption, greed?"
Sacken spoke with eyes full of hatred.
"I only see that He gave you the power to kill! Gave you the authority to destroy! Gave you the hypocrisy to drag planet after ordered planet into the flames of war, just to fulfill your ridiculous, 'great' mission!
"But I... I am Sacken Alar! I am the true son of this planet! I am the only one who can bring it hope! I will use the power bestowed upon me by the Changer of Ways to rebuild House Blaec! To rebuild the glory of House Alar! To turn Aurelian IV back into a planet with vegetation, crops, and teeming with life! Instead of what it is now—a mining pit drained of resources by the Imperium, its souls enslaved by the Mechanicus, its marrow sucked dry by the Four Great Factions!"
Sacken's expression suddenly shifted, speaking with aloof detachment. "So tell me... Sanguinius... who is the true traitor?"
The ruins of the upper hive fell into a brief silence due to Sacken's words.
Sanguinius listened quietly, his expression betraying no fluctuation of emotion.
He merely shook his head gently.
"Sacken Alar." Sanguinius's voice remained calm. "You do not understand."
"The Imperium of Man wages war across the sea of stars not for the welfare of the humans on a single planet or a single sector. Everything the Imperium of Man does, including war, including colonization, including sacrifice, is for the overall continuation of the human species.
"Against the dark backdrop of the galaxy, the gains and losses of individual planets, the rise and fall of individual civilizations, must sometimes give way to the greater cause of the species' survival."
He paused before continuing.
"You also do not understand the Emperor. The Emperor's greatness does not lie in Him saving a certain group of people on a certain planet. It lies in His intent to lead the entirety of humanity to the apex of the universe, to make humanity the masters of the galaxy once more, to ensure the light of human civilization shines eternally.
"This is not something any warp entity can compare to; what warp entities give will ultimately be destruction and corruption. The Great Crusade is not for conquest, but to reclaim humanity's lost territories, to reignite extinguished stars, to bring all domains back into the embrace of the Imperium so they will not be harassed by xenos races."
Sanguinius tightened his grip on the Blade Encarmine.
"This point is cruel, I know. It means that sometimes choices must be made. We must sacrifice a portion of the people to save a greater number. We must temporarily tolerate some darkness to ensure the light is not entirely extinguished."
"You say the Emperor and the Dream of the Grandfather are no different? You are wrong, Sacken. The difference lies in the fact that the Emperor has never demanded faith from humanity. He established the Imperial Truth to sever humanity's reliance on deities. He would rather be misunderstood by billions than fail to lead humanity down the path of reason."
"And the Dream of the Grandfather?" Sanguinius's tone turned cold. "Those Warp entities, they have never cared about the survival of humanity. What they want are the souls of their worshippers, the eternal enslavement of mortals."
"You stand here today, loudly proclaiming that you will bring hope to Aurelian IV. But all you have brought is deeper despair. Look at those fallen behind you, look at this hive corrupted by the Warp—is this the hope you wanted?"
Sacken was stunned for a moment after hearing this.
Then, he erupted into a fit of hysterical laughter.
"Hahahahahaha!"
The laughter was chillingly shrill.
"The human species?! You still spout such high-sounding rhetoric even now! You don't even love the human planets that make up the human species, and you claim to love the human species?! Hypocrisy! Utter hypocrisy!"
He laughed until tears streamed down his face—pale blue tears tainted with psychic corruption.
"It's all just the False Emperor's brainwashing!"
Sanguinius did not give him the chance to speak further.
"Whether you are Garrison or Sacken," the icy voice of the Great Angel rang out. "Regardless of your reasons, regardless of your difficulties. The moment you chose to throw yourself into the embrace of Warp. The moment you used Warp to corrupt this planet, causing billions to fall and billions to die. The moment you insulted the Emperor and everything the Imperium of Man fights for."
Sanguinius gripped the Blade Encarmine tightly.
Pale golden psychic energy rose like a sun.
"You are beyond forgiveness."
The pristine white wings on the Great Angel's back unfurled completely.
"As for the matters you spoke of, after you are purified, the Imperium will investigate. If the Mechanicus is indeed guilty," Sanguinius's voice was resolute and decisive, "they, too, shall face judgment."
The instant Sanguinius's words fell...
The blue-purple psychic energy surrounding Sacken violently erupted!
Alpha-class psychic pressure expanded like a tsunami, blasting away all the ruined debris within a hundred-meter radius!
Over five hundred fallen psykers resonated simultaneously, their psychic energies linking together to form a hundred-meter-tall blue-purple psychic pillar behind Sacken!
At the apex of the blue-purple psychic pillar, the nine-pointed star mark of the Changer of Ways could faintly be seen slowly rotating.
"Just as I expected, talking to you Primarchs devoid of human emotion is useless. Come!"
"Sanguinius! Great Angel of the Imperium!"
Sacken spread his arms wide, the psychic wings on his back fully unfurled as he levitated into the air.
"Use that power bestowed upon you by the False Emperor and try... try to judge an avenger who seeks justice for his homeland!"
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It's 12 at night here and I am still awake today, so here's your bonus chapter.
It's only Thursday and I have already posted 12 bonus chapters this week, my goal to post 20 bonus chapter, so keep donating powerstones I have enough chapters!
I think today's the day we reach Rank 10!! Keep donating powerstones