While another me purged Nuceria and waited with Veronica for my second adopted son,
the me who remained on Terra watched the glorious dawn of the Imperium of Man unfold right before my eyes.
After Erda's idiotic stunt dealt a devastating blow to the Emperor's plan and scattered the incubation pods containing the sleeping Primarchs across the galaxy,
the Emperor tried somehow to trace the locations of those scattered pods, but ultimately failed.
In the end, he turned the genetic material of the twenty Primarchs that remained in the incubators into gene-seed and began mass-producing Space Marines.
Any healthy child on Terra, regardless of whether they were lowborn or noble, was forcibly conscripted, subjected to numerous augmentation surgeries and brutal mental conditioning, then implanted with gene-seed.
He churned out Space Marines at the speed of a factory manufacturing goods.
I sat quietly in a distant back seat as a spectator, watching this historic moment unfold.
Ever since I had been excluded from the Primarch Project, I had fulfilled every obligation I was contractually required to fulfill for the Emperor.
Most of the supporting technologies the Emperor had requested from me had been used to create the Primarchs, and because I had kept my promise cleanly, even the Emperor no longer had any pretext to meddle with me.
Well, I still had one technological favor left to give him, but it seemed he intended to keep that as his final card.
Knowing this well, the Emperor half left me to my own devices, but assigned a Custodian Guard to shadow me in preparation for any unforeseen circumstances.
I accepted the surveillance without complaint and traveled all across Terra.
With drones and cameras, I filmed the horrific yet magnificent moments unfolding across Terra as though making a documentary, then carried the footage back to the Ark.
I documented the last remaining Church of the Thunderstone—visiting it, exploring it, interviewing its people—
the bloody battles between Thunder Warriors and techno-barbarians,
and the lives of the rulers who had surrendered to the Emperor and of the weak underclass.
Because I judged that this, too, was part of humanity's history that must not be forgotten—a legacy the Ark had to preserve forever.
After all, the Ark's ultimate purpose was to preserve and protect every legacy and every trace of humanity's existence.
Someday, when humanity's decline throughout this galaxy had subsided and the time came when I was judged able to release the Ark's advanced technology into the world, I would open everything up.
But looking at the sights spread before my eyes now, humanity still seemed to have an unbearably long road ahead of it.
Watching Thunder Warriors who had won the war and occupied cities commit needless slaughter and looting against innocent civilians made me sigh without even meaning to.
Even the Thunder Warrior Primarchs who were supposed to control them were taking the lead in those mad massacres.
It made me keenly understand why they were treated by the Emperor as disposable tools for the unification of Terra,
and why they were destined to be purged before long.
Only the Fourth Legion Thunder Warriors led by the Primarch Ushotan managed to restrain their violent impulses and maintain even a minimum of order.
But no matter how brightly a single legion shone, when it was surrounded by a gutter full of filth, it could not help looking filthy as well.
Just as they called me the Ghost, I merely recorded these moments in silence with a camera in hand—an invisible observer who existed and yet did not.
I had no responsibility or duty whatsoever in this blood-soaked place.
If someone dared to ask why I had such immense strength and power yet did nothing but watch,
I intended to personally shove "Fuck off" straight into their mouth.
I had already fulfilled every duty I had. No one had any right to criticize me.
Not even the Emperor, who was called the master of mankind.
Why was I suddenly thinking this way?
Why else?
Because of that golden banana glaring at me with sharp eyes even now, right beside me.
He was the second watcher assigned after the first one had been removed.
Where did the previous watcher go?
That idiot had the nerve to mouth off at me when I insulted the Emperor, saying, "A lazy bastard like you has no right to speak of Him that way."
So I moved him all the way up to the stratosphere and roasted him alive on reentry with atmospheric friction.
After that, the Custodian Guards, including whichever one was assigned to watch me, no longer dared to criticize my actions or words.
The Emperor had probably warned them himself.
Not to provoke me.
In any case, possessed by the spirit of a documentary director, I devoted myself to capturing the desperate scenes from the final days of the Unification Wars on camera.
And so time passed.
At last, the day of the Great Purge, destined to be recorded in history, arrived.
*
The year 669.M30.
The Unification Wars on Terra had nearly reached their end, and Terra's countless nations and factions had finally been united beneath the Emperor's golden banner.
Everywhere except one place: the blood-soaked mountains.
Mount Ararat.
Within these harsh, rugged mountains, Terra's last powerful coalition of warlords still held out, refusing to submit to the Emperor until the very end.
Heavily fortified mountain positions, superweapons left over from the Dark Age of Technology, mutated biological weapons, and even armies of cyborgs whose entire bodies were crammed full of machinery.
As befitted the final resistance capable of shaking the foundations of the Imperium of Man, they poured in every force they could muster and aimed their guns at the Emperor, as if proving what a final struggle truly meant.
For this final bloodbath that would announce the true birth of the Imperium, the Emperor drove every Thunder Warrior from all twenty legions into the mountains of Ararat.
I sat alone atop a high peak far from the battlefield, quietly watching as I captured this grand and brutal spectacle with cloaked drones.
As if to prove that they were no more than disposable tools to be used and discarded solely for the unification of Earth,
the Emperor did not provide the Thunder Warriors with even a single armored vehicle or artillery support.
No—these were not even the legions of their prime.
They had fought without rest for decades, from the beginning of the Unification Wars until this very moment.
Their equipment was in a pitiful state, and most Thunder Warriors suffered from wounds, genetic collapse, and mental instability.
The Thunder Warriors were already too ruined to be called an army. Relying only on stubbornness, recklessness, and the thick armor of their heavy Thunder Armor,
they climbed the mountain while taking the torrential barrage head-on.
Countless Thunder Warriors, once the grim reapers of Terra's battlefields and the very name of terror, had their limbs mercilessly torn apart by the enemy's superweapons.
Yet consumed by madness in their already unstable minds, they charged forward like lunatics regardless of how the battle was going.
Across the battlefield, the battle cries of madness-filled Thunder Warriors echoed through the mountain range like a pouring bombardment.
In the desperate close-quarters fighting that erupted as they advanced, the Thunder Warriors swung their weapons brutally against the enemy's grotesque biological weapons and cyborg armies.
When their ammunition ran out, some threw aside their guns and drew melee weapons.
When even their melee weapons shattered or were destroyed, some fought with their bare fists.
If the Cybernetic Rebellion had been modern warfare overflowing with advanced technology,
this battle was an utterly savage and ferocious slaughterhouse, like primitive men wielding stone axes.
Even watching it from afar, I could almost smell the thick stench of blood in my nostrils and feel the raw desperation surge up from deep in my chest.
The battle continued without rest for three full days.
Then, just as dawn broke, a golden eagle banner stained with blood and filth was driven deep into the summit of the Ararat fortress.
By winning the final Unification War, Terra had at last fallen completely into the Emperor's grasp.
But the victorious Thunder Warriors showed no elation at their victory.
They were dying slowly and miserably, like dolls whose batteries had run dry.
Then countless aircraft appeared before them, the red sun of dawn at their backs.
They were Imperial gunships.
There were so many that they nearly blotted out all the sunlight of dawn.
Enormous gray shadows fell heavily over the Thunder Warriors of Mount Ararat.
At first, the Thunder Warriors assumed the Emperor had sent the multitude of gunships to bring them home and commend them.
But their naive hopes were shattered by the aircraft crowding the skies far beyond necessity, and by the merciless bombing that poured down in unison from the gunships' undersides.
Only then did the Thunder Warriors realize it.
They had been abandoned by the Emperor.
The Great Purge had begun.
The site was reduced to a wasteland in an instant by the bombardment unleashed for the purpose of exterminating the Thunder Warriors as a race.
Then, from the gunships descending from the sky came the Custodian Guard, sent by the Emperor to ensure the Thunder Warriors' complete purge,
along with the First Legion Astartes, who would one day be called the Dark Angels, and they began the slaughter.
Enraged by the enormity of the betrayal, the Thunder Warriors dragged their mangled bodies into desperate resistance.
They entered the fortress on Mount Ararat—the very fortress they had seized with their own blood—and waged a desperate defense.
But their strength and sanity had been driven to their limits, their ammunition had run dry long ago, and above all, the despairing sense of betrayal by the Emperor caused the Thunder Warriors to collapse slowly, but surely.
That did not mean they meekly offered their throats.
In the tenacious melee battles within the fortress's dark corridors and rooms, the Custodians and Astartes also suffered considerable hardship.
A Thunder Warrior whose arms had both been severed lunged forward with a headbutt fierce enough to blow off a man's head, crushing an Astartes' power armor helmet and bursting his skull.
Others seized the suicide bombs once used by the enemy, embraced Custodian Guards with them, and died together.
Until the last of them fell, they fought screaming with betrayal and rage toward the Emperor.
By the time the purge was nearing its end, after the Custodian Guard and Astartes had suffered far greater losses than expected,
a small number of Thunder Warriors had abandoned their final resistance amid this hellish devastation and barely escaped death.
Among them were Ushotan, Primarch of the Fourth Legion, the Iron Lords, and twenty surviving Thunder Warriors who followed him.
Frankly, the state of those who had barely escaped the site of the purge was so wretched that it would not have been strange if their breaths stopped at any moment.
Ushotan himself was no exception. His helmet had been blown away by a bolter round fired by a Custodian Guard, leaving his head drenched in blood, while his right arm was torn and hanging like a rag.
Inside an abandoned mine hidden deep in the mountains, Ushotan and the Thunder Warriors said nothing.
They simply tended one another's wounds, barely extending the thread of their lives with the meager, inferior emergency medical supplies they had left.
Ushotan silently confronted the hopeless reality in which they found themselves.
In truth, he had known.
He had known that the Emperor would abandon them one day.
Even in the eyes of himself, their lord and Primarch, the Thunder Warriors were uncontrollable ticking bombs utterly unsuited to an Emperor harboring the grand ambition of conquering the galaxy.
Even so... he had never imagined they would be butchered and purged so mercilessly, like trash being thrown away, without even a shred of honor or pride.
Ushotan trembled with betrayal at the realization that the Emperor intended to erase them completely from Imperial history.
And Ushotan was not alone. The other surviving Thunder Warriors who had followed him felt the same.
"...Primarch, what do you intend to do now?"
A Thunder Warrior missing one arm asked Ushotan in a low, ragged voice.
The situation was already as miserable as it could be. Even knowing full well that it was hopeless and there was no answer to be found, the Thunder Warriors looked to him.
They wanted, if only a little, to think about something called the next step rather than the reality into which they had fallen.
They wanted somehow to deny that all they had left was a filthy death.
So they watched Ushotan's lips.
Hearing that question, Ushotan fell into the deepest contemplation of his entire life.
He, too, had been driven too far into an extreme situation to imagine a next step.
Ushotan heaved a difficult, hollow sigh and spoke softly.
"...I do not know either."
At that empty answer, a deep and mournful silence descended upon everyone within the abandoned mine.
"But."
At Ushotan's resolute word, everyone who had sunk into silence raised their heads and looked at him at once.
"We will not meet our end this way, in vain. We will protest the unjust sentence imposed upon us by the Emperor, and we will resist to the very end."
At that determined declaration, the Thunder Warriors nodded in silence.
They knew it well. What Ushotan had just spoken was, in practical terms, no different from suicide.
Yet if their lives had little time remaining anyway, they had resolved to burn fiercely until their final moment, then fall in glory.
"Ah, isn't that a rather extreme choice?"
A casual voice tore through the air, shattering the solemn and grave atmosphere of the abandoned mine in an instant.
With their battle instincts still alive, the Thunder Warriors immediately gripped their weapons and tried to assume attack positions toward the mine entrance.
"Stop!"
At Ushotan's weighty shout, the Thunder Warriors all froze in place.
"What brings you here, Ghost?"
At Ushotan's question, I slowly revealed myself, having watched this entire catastrophe from behind a stealth field.
"No need to bare your teeth and be so wary. I have no intention of harming you. Ushotan, you know this well, don't you? I'm not someone obedient to the Emperor."
"...Yes, I know. So what is your purpose? Why did you come looking for us?"
"Well. If I had to put it simply, it would be a waste. Honestly, a warrior like you was rare even in the distant past. It would be far too great a waste to let such talent die a worthless death like this."
"Then... do you mean to take us in?"
"That's right. I will completely heal you. And I will give you a true reason to live, something far more worthwhile than running into the Emperor and dying."
"On what grounds? How are we supposed to trust you and follow you?"
"Then are you planning to go die like dogs? Is your goal to charge the Imperial Palace barehanded without the slightest hope, and burn up gloriously? Sure, there may be some who sympathize with your unjust treatment or take your side. But even so, it will be perfectly meaningless resistance."
"Even so... everyone here means to go, fully aware of that tragedy."
"That is an utterly foolish choice, Ushotan. I will tell you a small part of the great truths of this world, and the Emperor's true plan that he keeps hidden. In accordance with that, I will give you a true reason and purpose to live."
"...I will at least hear you out."
To Ushotan, who had been half persuaded by my words, I told only a very small part of my design and the truths of this cruel world.
But that small part alone filled Ushotan's twisted face with immense shock.
"...Is this truly the truth?"
"It is. Follow me, and you will learn much more beyond it."
"..."
"Will you choose?"
After a long silence, Ushotan finally opened his tightly shut mouth.
"...Ghost, I will follow you."
"Good. Then from now on, call me Noah instead of Ghost."
And so I led Ushotan and the twenty surviving Thunder Warriors to [Steadfast Will], one of the Ark's eleven colossal space fortresses.
There, I began advanced biological treatment that would save them at the root of their affliction.
After surgery that completely reconstructed, down to the cellular level, bodies that had been collapsing from genetic defects and contamination,
I implanted them with a special gene-seed I had newly refined from the genes of my precious first son.
Unlike the twenty types of gene-seed designed by the Emperor,
the gene-seed I had created from Michael's genes likewise contained Warp-borne and biological power too immense to fully take hold without a long adaptation period.
Ushotan and the twenty Thunder Warriors—no, the warriors who would now be called the Burning Ones, the Seraphim—fell into a deep sleep within transparent glass tubes filled with biological cultivation fluid for specialized stabilization.
They would now awaken at the very moment, far in the future, when my son returned to my embrace.
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