Nuceria.
A planet that had preserved "some" of the advanced technology of the Dark Age of Technology intact. A small number of still-functioning satellites moved through its orbit, while magnificent structures modeled after the ancient Roman Empire stood tall upon its surface.
By all appearances, it was a peaceful, antiquated world.
But strip away just one layer of that splendid exterior, and Nuceria was utter chaos—a godforsaken hellhole rotten to its very core.
The kings and rulers who supposedly led the planet were no more than puppets with fancy titles, pretty toys dressed up by the nobility.
True power was divided among countless noble houses blinded by greed. As a result, the planet's strength could not be united, and it remained mired in a mess even more chaotic than the Warring States period.
If the king was a puppet and the nobles were consumed by power struggles meant only to fill their own bellies,
then who would pay the terrible price?
Naturally, it was those beneath them—the common people crawling along the bottom.
The gap between rich and poor on Nuceria was as vast as heaven and earth, to the point that the people's lives were an unbroken succession of daily despair.
At this point, it would have been only natural for a large-scale bloody rebellion to erupt long ago and for a "bloody revolution" to rise up and sever the nobles' heads.
But Nuceria's nobles, who understood this hellish structure better than anyone, actively employed an excellent means of control to divert the people's resentment and attention elsewhere.
The arena.
Do not imagine a Colosseum simply because it was called an arena.
A pyramid set within a massive arena, where acid gradually rose and only the one person who reached the summit survived.
Matches where contestants slaughtered one another using every sort of worthless scrap and junk.
Matches where rampaging psykers were thrown in to fight gladiators.
Matches where barehanded gladiators hunted enormous beasts.
Hellish games were held there, and slave gladiators of every age and sex were forced into that hell to fight, whether they wished to or not.
A slaughterhouse where countless slave gladiators risked their lives to put on every kind of sensational, brutal killing show.
The people who watched the arena's mad frenzy and duels forgot the exhaustion of their days and their harsh reality, becoming drunk on the scent of blood.
The nobles took advantage of that opening to control and oppress the populace with absurd ease.
And at last, above the orbit of Nuceria—a horrific planet surpassing even Sodom and Gomorrah—a colossal presence appeared, like divine judgment itself.
It was [Red Dawn], the dimension-class space fortress that had descended from the Ark to thoroughly purge this devilish planet and save the unfortunate Primarch.
Standing in the central control room of [Red Dawn], I took in the entire view of Nuceria beyond the bridge's enormous holographic screen.
I stared down at it coldly, as if looking upon a foul-smelling sewer.
A black, murky disgust welled up from the depths of my chest.
'Did I save humanity in that horrific Cybernetic Rebellion just to witness this?'
Human nature might be cruel and selfish, but seeing people live in ignorance and madness with no vision of the future brought upon me a profound disappointment and self-loathing that could scarcely be put into words.
"Noah, what will you do?"
Veronica, who had silently watched my dark expression from beside me, quietly and cautiously asked what would become of Nuceria.
At her question, I briefly turned my head and looked around.
From the Immortals, our elite heavily armored warriors, to the ordinary ship's crew,
everyone in the control room apart from the monks and ascetics of Dharma Temple was gazing at Nuceria below with eyes full of intense revulsion.
They were people who had vividly seen and heard the horrors humanity endured during the Cybernetic Rebellion through the visual records preserved in the Ark's archives.
They also remembered clearly the noble devotion and sacrifice of those who had bled and fallen alongside me.
Yet that utterly filthy Nuceria had rendered those noble sacrifices, duties, and blood-soaked struggles wholly meaningless.
I read my children's raw emotional reactions.
Though they did not need to say a word, though their faces could not be seen behind their heavy powered-armor helmets, I could feel the disappointment and fury deep in their hearts with perfect clarity.
I looked back at Veronica.
She had closed her eyes instead, waiting only for my final order.
"...If it were up to my heart, I would wipe out the entire planet."
My voice trailed off as I turned my gaze toward the live footage of a battle in the arena displayed on the screen.
There were slave gladiators driven mad with bloodlust, but there were also gladiators with steadfast eyes, who refused to yield to oppression and cried out for self-determination and freedom.
After a fierce, blood-soaked clash, the match ended in the victory of the gladiator who possessed not murderous intent, but noble resolve.
But the crowd filling the arena cared nothing for the victor's noble will or despair.
Drunk on blood and flesh alone, they cried out the gladiator's name in a frenzy.
(Oenomaus!!! Oenomaus!!! Oenomaus!!!)
The gladiator called Oenomaus did not rejoice in the glory of victory despite the thunderous cheers of the crowd.
He merely looked silently down at the shackles fastened around his neck and ankles, and at the cooling corpse of the gladiator he had faced.
As I quietly watched the scene in the arena, I resumed my unfinished sentence.
"Even so, there are lotuses blooming from the mud. It is still worth sparing. We only need to cleanly cut away the rotten parts, then patiently cultivate what remains."
"People are creatures that adapt to whatever circumstances they are given."
"Exactly. Now that the decision has been made, let us begin the purge in earnest."
No sooner had I finished speaking than Veronica activated the countless secondary batteries of the space fortress [Red Dawn] all at once.
(Red Dawn, secondary batteries at four percent output. Ready to fire.)
"Just in case, limit the secondary batteries to simple destructive weaponry. If we make a mistake, the planetary crust could shift and turn this into a death world."
(Understood. I will relay the strike guidelines to the entire fleet.)
[Red Dawn] and the Ark's warships, massed enormously in orbit, fixed the adjusted sights of their secondary batteries upon Nuceria's principal noble fortresses, military cities, and splendid citadels.
Nuceria's cruel rulers were aghast at the sudden arrival of an unknown massive force and hurriedly activated shields using flimsy veil devices, relics of the Dark Age of Technology.
But to our eyes, they looked like nothing more than soap bubbles on the verge of bursting.
"Fire."
The moment my order was given, countless neutron beams brimming with pure destructive energy tore through Nuceria's sky and rained down.
It was the opening act of the purge.
The impregnable fortresses, ancient castles, and extravagant cities in which the nobles hid were swept away together with their vaunted shields, vanishing in an instant without even a trace of their forms remaining.
All that remained on the ground were the private soldiers of the surviving noble houses and their ground forces.
Continuing an orbital bombardment merely to clear out such insignificant rabble would have been like using a butcher's knife to kill a chicken.
So I immediately deployed the Ark's ground forces.
"Coordinates confirmed. Opening the passage."
(Ground combat will begin shortly. I wish you good fortune in battle.)
As Veronica's announcement echoed throughout [Red Dawn], enormous Gateway portals opened before the countless troops prepared for battle.
With the elite Immortals at the head, soldiers from each organization's directly commanded units gripped their weapons tightly and surged into the gates.
What followed was a one-sided slaughter and pacification operation.
Strategic colossal war machines, heavy tanks, and fighter craft poured down to the surface after the infantry, completely crushing the noble armies' pathetic resistance.
The nobles' private soldiers screamed, dropped their weapons, and surrendered beneath the overwhelming gap in technology and firepower before they could even begin a proper fight.
Meanwhile, the gladiators who had been forcibly driven into the arena by shackles and brain-control devices that inflicted pain and restraint were finally freed from every binding through a wide-area hack carried out by Shadow Index combat hackers.
The nobles struggled desperately to protect their privileges and wealth, resisting to the end, but they were not even as formidable as a small candle cast before a raging superstorm.
Thus, the Great Purge of Nuceria ended in total victory less than three hours after it had begun.
After every disturbance had settled, Veronica and I stepped onto the ground side by side through a passage above Nuceria's main arena.
As we slowly walked along the path cleared for us by the tightly guarding Immortals, the Nucerians lining the way looked up at Veronica and me with eyes filled with extreme fear and awe.
But I paid no attention to their stares and quietly walked forward, looking only ahead.
When we reached the end of the path, the surviving Nucerian nobles were gathered in the middle of the bloodstained arena like fish strung together, their entire bodies fitted with the same heavy restraint devices they had once put on slave gladiators.
And the stands around the arena were packed with countless Nucerian residents, filled with fear and doubt.
Through Shadow Index's communications network, the scene was being broadcast live through media outlets across all of Nuceria.
In effect, every human being on the planet was witnessing it.
I walked into the center, where every gaze had gathered, and proclaimed to all Nucerians,
"From this moment onward, Nuceria is under our rule.
Many things will change from here on. New laws, a new order, a new daily life. You are likely all feeling profound fear. Having witnessed the merest fraction of our power just now, that is only natural.
But I promise you one thing with certainty: whatever you may fear, you will at least live lives far more worth living than the terrible days you spent in this hellish land."
Having finished my declaration, I pointed at the nobles dragged into the center of the arena, who were fitted with harsh restraint devices like slave gladiators.
"To cast off the remnants of the old age and open a new one, I will now begin Nuceria's final match."
At that proclamation, not only the crowd gathered in the arena but every Nucerian watching the screens held their breath in disbelief.
To them, the nobles had been absolute and terrifying rulers whom they had never dared resist their entire lives.
Yet the appearance of those men now was exactly the same as that of the lowly slave gladiators at whom they had once shouted red-faced and sprayed spittle.
"The gladiators competing today are the nobles who have oppressed and ruled you while wringing out your blood and sweat. For this final match, give them your most generous cheers and applause!!!"
The instant I finished, colossal jeers and frenzied cheers, enough to shake all of Nuceria, roared out like a storm.
"The one and only man who survives to the end among them will receive a full pardon for every crime, in recognition of his contribution to opening the new age. I wish good fortune to all 13,411 noble gladiators."
Countless camera drones swarmed into the sky above the huge arena, as vast as an endless plain.
The nobles' twisted faces, crushed by despair and terror, were captured in naked detail and transmitted across the entire planet.
As this was an execution ceremony commemorating the end, I had no intention of letting it end half-heartedly.
The Ark's medical personnel, equipped with the highest medical technology, would remain on standby at all times. So long as the thread of life had not been severed—or even if they died—they would be revived and treated again and again, their lives extended indefinitely.
And upon this vast arena, every bizarre and cruel game the Nucerian nobles had inflicted upon the pitiable gladiators would be reproduced exactly.
For a very long time, terrible bloodshed and screams would likely fill this arena.
"Liberator!!!"
"Savior!"
"Breaker of chains!!!"
Behind me as I left the arena, the frenzied hymns and cheers of countless Nucerians surged forth.
I slowly turned around at the edge of the platform and raised a hand.
"Begin the match."
At those brief words, pitiful screams erupted within the arena, mingling with the crowd's mad cheers.
Thus Nuceria's final gladiatorial games began, continuing without pause for the long span of one year and five months.
At last, the noble who became the final survivor and victor was pardoned for all his crimes, as promised.
However, the moment he won, all advanced medical care was completely withdrawn. He was then cast naked and mortally wounded into the very center of Nuceria's urban district.
Over the dying final noble, Nucerians filled with fury and resentment slowly drew near, casting their shadows over him.
Then, together with the noble's final agonized death cry, Nuceria's tainted history was completely purged.
Veronica and I directed the planetary redevelopment of purged Nuceria in person, waiting for the Primarch Angron to someday fall from the sky.
As Angron's name had meant "Child of the Mountain" in the original history, his incubation pod was certain to fall somewhere within one of Nuceria's ancient mountain ranges.
The two of us toured the mountain ranges across Nuceria side by side, installing surveillance equipment and carefully narrowing down the projected landing coordinates.
Above all else, we began keeping watch for the Eldar bastards who, in the original story, had received a prophecy and tried to kill the young Angron.
Their appearance would mean
that Angron was about to arrive on Nuceria.
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