Chapter 1: I'm Just an Ordinary Human, Though?
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"Just what the hell are you?!"
An Inquisitor shouted as he leveled a bolter at a man dressed as an ordinary Guardsman.
They stood in the heart of a battlefield, where bullets and las-fire flew in every direction, but the Inquisitor paid it no heed.
Though a bolter was trained on him and he had been judged a heretic, with death imminent, the Guardsman showed not the slightest fear.
Instead, he looked at the Inquisitor and grinned as though this situation amused him.
Seeing that incongruous calm and smile, the Inquisitor became even more convinced of his suspicions and sent a signal to those around him.
Several laser dots promptly appeared across the Guardsman’s body.
To capture or eliminate this person of interest, whom he had pursued for a long time by following traces scattered throughout the galaxy, the Inquisitor had brought along several Vindicare Assassins, snipers of the Imperial Officio Assassinorum.
If the man showed even the slightest sign of hostile intent, specialized rounds capable of killing a superhuman Space Marine with a single shot would precisely strike his weak points.
Knowing full well what was happening, the Guardsman smirked and raised both hands.
Then he casually dropped the flashlight in his hand—no, the Imperium’s finest weapon, a lasgun—onto the ground.
If the machine-lovers of the Mechanicus had seen it, they would have cried, "Blasphemy against the Machine Spirit!"
Or a fussy Commissar might have foamed at the mouth, yelling, "You useless screwup?!" before executing him on the spot.
Yet the Guardsman did not seem to feel a shred of hesitation.
"I have no idea what you are talking about. I am merely a Guardsman who fights for humanity."
His smiling expression never changed, but his voice pleaded more mournfully than anyone’s.
The Inquisitor’s patience cracked. He shifted the muzzle slightly and pulled the trigger.
Thoom!
At the same instant the dull gunshot rang out, the round grazed the man’s fingertips—and took his entire left arm clean off.
"This is your final warning. Tell me what you are."
The forcefulness in the Inquisitor’s voice was no act.
He truly glared at the Guardsman before him—no, at the aberration before him.
Only then did the Guardsman stop his pathetic act.
"Ah, you found me out already... I thought nobody would figure it out until the forty-second millennium, at least. It is about the middle of the forty-first millennium now... Well, you have talent. Unlike the others."
His voice was so light it seemed ready to float away, but the words themselves were anything but light.
"I will ask one last time. Tell me what you are."
At that final warning, the Guardsman’s face went expressionless.
That face was a silent signal asking whether the Inquisitor could truly bear the answer.
At the same time, the bombardment around the battlefield fell silent for an instant.
More precisely, the assault of the Imperial Astra Militarum regiment stopped for an instant.
If not for the sounds of the opposing Orks panicking at the abruptly changed battlefield, one might have mistaken it for time itself coming to a halt.
In this situation, the laser dots of even the highly trained assassin-snipers wavered.
Even the Inquisitor, his resolve forged hard by unshakable conviction, began to grow tense, his throat running dry.
"Where should I even begin explaining...? Ah, do not be nervous. I am rather pleased with you little ones for noticing me so early and coming to find me."
"Answer me."
"Hey, I am answering. There is simply so much to tell that I am considering where to start."
The Inquisitor wanted to give the order to fire on that vile being at once.
Yet an immense amount of information lay hidden in the man’s words, so he endured and waited.
"It sounds long-winded, but it is nothing much when you think about it. I am a human who has lived from the twentieth century until now, possessing the power to regenerate from injuries and resurrect after death, and capable of using passages that connect one space to another. How about it? Ordinary, right?"
"So it was you...! The Ghost!"
An Inquisitor with access to countless Imperial secrets immediately recognized his identity.
"Ahahaha, that is right. They called me that even when that bastard Emperor was still standing on his own two feet. Ah, it has been a long time since I heard that name. Not bad. It sounds pretty cool."
"Silence! You are a traitor to humanity, one who betrayed the Emperor and the Imperium!"
"Now, that is hurtful. I am a great hero who saved humanity and many worlds from a terrible war that made even Horus’s rebellion look like children playing around. Meanwhile, your Emperor did nothing but stand by and watch humanity fall into ruin."
"Silence! Answer what I asked! Where are the Primarchs and Space Marines who betrayed the Imperium alongside you?!"
"Come on, now. How could I sell out my adopted sons and grandsons? Your Imperium is far too barbaric to embrace them, so I merely let them be ‘free.’ Still, just so you know, my children have not been tainted by Chaos like the others."
"Enough! I will listen to no more of this!"
"Hey, hey! Do not—"
Rat-a-tat-tat!
Having reached the limit of his patience, the Inquisitor finally gave the signal, and the Vindicare Assassins fired upon the Ghost all at once.
In an instant, the body of the one called the Ghost was blasted apart and scattered into pieces.
The Inquisitor did not judge that the Ghost had died from this. He intended to send word of the matter to Terra and request support.
"To the Astropath, quickly! Terra must be informed! An ancient wraith has infiltrated the Imperium!"
Then an enormous voice began to resound across the battlefield.
Countless Guardsmen standing on that battlefield—no, every one of them was the Ghost, identical clones speaking in unison.
"Still, I may have enjoyed myself, but I definitely helped you. If this is how you treat me, I have no choice but to leave."
"Now that you have found me out and treated me like this, handle the rest yourselves. The game is over."
With those words, eighty percent of the Astra Militarum Guardsmen gathered on the battlefield stepped into black holes that had opened beneath their feet and vanished.
Most of the Guardsmen who had been bravely fighting as though they had thrown away their lives were suddenly gone.
The Orks began charging as they roared, "Waaagh!!"
The balance of the battle and the front line collapsed in an instant, and the green tide of the Orks began to engulf the Imperial forces.
Watching an Ork Battlewagon furiously bear down on him, the Inquisitor murmured,
"Emperor..."
His quiet words did not reach the Emperor upon the Golden Throne of Terra across this vast universe.
And so, he died, swept away by the Ghost’s small revenge.
Waaaagghhhhh
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