As the Unification Wars gradually drew toward their end,
based on the vast quantity of clear, practical data gained through the prototype Michael,
the Emperor finally gave the official order to create twenty Primarchs.
He handed Erda a set of jars inscribed with strange symbols, each containing a Warp essence—twenty in all—
then coldly left the laboratory, saying he had a great work elsewhere that required his attention.
The look in Erda's eyes as she received the jars was heavy and dark.
Whether the Emperor had failed to notice her mood, or had noticed and simply ignored it, I could not say.
Personally, though, I doubted he would so much as blink at Erda's disappointment.
The only thing that mattered to that bastard was the grand undertaking of humanity as a species.
I intended to wash my hands of this Primarch creation entirely.
Michael, with no battlefield left for him to take part in, now slept indefinitely within a stasis field in the deepest reaches of the Imperial Palace.
I would do nothing more than gaze upon that cold glass coffin and play him some quiet music.
I no longer wanted to lend a hand in making the Emperor's creations.
Of course, the Custodian Guard who tried to stop me from coming here got in my way, but I was in too foul a mood to deal with them properly, so I simply tossed them out into space.
They were the men the Emperor adored so much. Surely being in the vacuum of space would not kill them.
While I sat in that deep, dark vault, listening to gentle music with my son,
Malcador came in person to persuade me.
Of course, I immediately unleashed a torrent of vicious abuse and told him to fuck off.
But he lowered his head and begged for my help, saying that only if I remained at their side to catch the flaws could a tragedy like Michael's be prevented from happening again.
"Hey, Malcador. Cut the sweet talk. You came to me because you're honestly nervous about leaving everything to Erda, aren't you?"
"...That is also true... First, calm down. Have a drink and settle yourself."
"You fucking bastard... Fine. Give me a drink."
Malcador brought out an exquisite wine from ancient Earth, acquired from goodness knew where among his private collection, and removed it from a stasis capsule.
As we drank, we gradually loosened the heavy knots inside us.
Malcador might have been an Emperor-worshipping fanatic, but there were some things about him I liked.
In the end, my resentment eased, and I joined the Primarch Project in earnest once more.
This time, rather than merely offering advice from the sidelines as a technical adviser, I personally entered the process and led the genetic modification work.
At the very least, I wanted to prevent a tragedy caused by me.
After I arrived, Erda completely withdrew from the project and disappeared somewhere, but I made no effort to seek her out.
I could imagine how she must have felt.
One day, while the work of implanting the flawless genetic maps was in full swing,
Malcador came to see me with profound concern written across his face.
Then he made an unexpected proposal.
He suggested that we include women among the Primarchs.
"So... Malcador, are you saying we should mix some girls in among the fetuses being cultivated?"
At first, I wondered if the bastard had been drinking in broad daylight, but his next words gradually persuaded me.
"Yes, precisely. When brothers are all men gathered together, they are bound to spend their time grabbing each other by the collar and fighting. For harmonious stability, should there not naturally be the presence of sisters as well?"
"Now that you mention it, that sounds plausible. Yeah... You're absolutely right. I've raised countless children myself, so I understand. No matter how many boys there were, if there was even one older sister or younger sister among them, things were much more peaceful and easier to manage."
"Then... we must first obtain his permission—"
"Let's begin immediately."
"What? Wait, making such a rash decision—!"
After all, we were improving the Primarchs' performance, not harming them, so it did not violate my pact with the Emperor.
Partly in revenge for Michael, and partly out of curiosity, I set about making the Primarchs even more perfect.
"Two... no, around three would be just right! There happen to be fetal cultivation tanks with far better compatibility for women than for the male hormone blend."
"Wait! Noah, listen to me!"
I immediately opened an interdimensional gate and flung Malcador, who was trying to stop me, off to some distant isolated region.
Now the nuisance was gone.
Without hesitation, I used the cutting-edge genetic modification technology of the Dark Age of Technology to alter the sex of Primarchs production numbers 3, 9, and 14—
into optimal female forms.
Women were naturally beautiful and alluring by default, so I ought to improve their appearance as well.
With the feeling of playing [Princess Maker], I brought out the Ark's technology through the Passage and mobilized all of it,
pouring my passion into unleashing super-science so advanced it was virtually indistinguishable from a singularity.
The results were far better than the previous data.
In particular, when I redesigned the number 14 fetus as female, it astonishingly began displaying overwhelmingly superior genetic compatibility compared to before.
Just as every process had been perfectly completed,
Malcador appeared with the Emperor and Erda amid rumbling thunder and lightning, wearing an aggrieved expression.
"What have you done?!"
"Ah, you're going to burst my eardrums. Just look at this first."
The Emperor glared at me with cold eyes steeped in rage,
but I shamelessly held the Primarchs' brilliant genetic stability data before his eyes in reply.
"See? Can't you see how stable the data is? And maybe you don't know because you've never raised children, but a household needs a few daughters mixed in if you want peace."
The Emperor looked at me, then replied coldly.
"Such trivialities are irrelevant. They are merely tools to be used for humanity's eternal grand undertaking—nothing more and nothing less."
"Crazy bastard. I knew you'd say that."
At that brutal declaration, Erda's gaze turned coldly toward the Emperor.
"...It would be a waste to discard them, so we will proceed as is."
"Hey, don't ever introduce yourself as a human anywhere. Fuck, even a rebel AI would shake its head at you."
In the end, because their genetic compatibility had risen dramatically, the Emperor did not overturn the project.
But in return, Custodian Guards assigned to watch me remained constantly at my side, and I was forcibly removed from the Primarch Project.
Erda, an authority in genetic engineering, took over my vacant position.
Unaware that this was the worst, most arrogant choice he could make,
I knew the entire future, yet stayed silent and obediently stepped down, determined to spite the Emperor.
I took out my frustrations by mercilessly riding the Custodian Guards assigned to watch me.
At the same time, I traveled all across Earth with those hulking Custodian Guards in tow,
wandering aimlessly through the kingdoms of Terra that remained unconquered, blanketed in ignorance and savagery.
And at the end of that road, I saw the last small church remaining on Earth.
Thus I passed my time leisurely on Terra.
I recorded the final moments of unconquered techno-barbarian kingdoms and sent the footage to the Ark.
And while continuing my odd journey of sampling strange local foods—
at last, that incident came.
Unable to endure her children being treated as the Emperor's tools, Erda threw the Primarch incubation tanks through a Warp gate, scattering them throughout the galaxy before vanishing without a trace.
I laughed uproariously inside while keeping a blank expression on my face, then returned to the laboratory.
The underground laboratory was shaken by the Emperor's colossal fury and psychic storm.
Malcador, veins bulging, barely managed to calm the Emperor down.
I watched the Emperor's impotent rage in silence with the eyes one would give an idiot, munching on popcorn.
No matter how furious he became, what had already happened could not be undone.
Of the twenty Primarchs scattered to every corner of the galaxy... one name suddenly came to mind: Angron, who was fated to suffer the most brutal and tragic destiny in the original work.
Personally, I found Angron's story unbearably pitiful.
Originally, as a child, Angron had possessed a purity that made him weep whenever he was forced to kill another.
Every time he took a life, an unerasable wound was left in his heart, and he had been sensitive enough to suffer from that pain.
But then the Butcher's Nails were driven into his skull, condemning him to live in eternal agony.
And he was granted the tragic fate of killing with his own hands the father and teacher he had sincerely followed.
Even after his rebellion failed, while fleeing, he soaked snowballs in his own blood for his starving subordinates.
He was a warm-hearted Primarch.
Yet Angron had received the most dogshit treatment from the Emperor of all the Primarchs.
I can't possibly leave him as he is.
In the end, I resolved to defy the great current and intervene in fate myself.
I immediately awakened another Noah, who had been sleeping comfortably in a hibernation pod at Dharma Temple.
Though he complained that he still had roughly seven hundred years before he was due to awaken, once the awakened Noah received a real-time synchronization through the mind network of everything that had occurred on Terra thus far, including the incident involving the lost Primarchs, he activated the base without hesitation.
"Holy shit, I can't pass up a sensitive literary Angron."
Of course, he was a Primarch who could pulverize people in an instant merely by twitching the muscles of his arm.
That only made me look forward to it more.
Noah assembled the Immortals, the Ark's elite military force, along with the armies of every institution and Eclipse, the specialist force of great psykers.
Then, leading one of the eleven colossal space fortresses in our possession, [Red Dawn], and a small fleet, he activated the portal.
The destination was Nuceria, the world where a hellish slave arena awaited.
Before the incubation pod arrived, we were going to cleanse that fucking destitute hellhole.
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