40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 693 75. Resurrection (IV)

Lion El'Jonson just felt as if he had had a very long dream.

But he also knew that this was just an appearance. The truth was that he was dead, in the aftermath of the war. And even at this moment, he could still recall the incomparable pain very clearly.

In an attempt to escape it, the lion's thoughts began to wander aimlessly.

He was born from the Warp - this was no secret, the Primarchs had long felt it - and their bodies were painstakingly created by the Emperor through genetic programming technology. They could not be called perfect, but they were close to this standard.

Each Primarch has its own prototype, which is a mixture of heroes, great men and characters in myths and legends in human history, and its functions are pre-set. Then the muscles and bones are adjusted, and the memory of battle is instilled into it, with the purpose of making this body worthy of the essence it carries.
Now that I think about it, it's understandable that Lorca was so devout in the early days of the Great Crusade.

After all, he was born in Colchis, a world where faith was prevalent, and the existence of the Emperor and the Primarch could just prove the existence of gods and sons of gods in the local mythology of Colchis.

We are more than the Emperor's sons, the Lion thought.

Caliban.

His thoughts spread out into a path, and along the path he walked quietly into the depths.

Caliban shaped me.

It taught me to be cruel, ruthless, and to kill when necessary. It also taught me to hide my claws and wait for the fatal blow.

But these things do not belong to humans, they are the qualities of wild animals, the way of survival given to stray beasts by the ruthless nature. I once lived in a daze as a wild beast, and I was Luther.
The name came to mind and the lion felt a tingling pain. He didn't understand what happened, but he still remembered him.

It was Luther and the Knights who taught me how to live as a human being.

Live, not survive. Eat with utensils, wash yourself before going to bed, and keep your beard and hair well-groomed. Learn to read, learn from the deaths and lessons of the past. Learn to be tough, learn to be patient, learn to unite.
Learn sympathy, learn compassion, learn indignation, understand virtue, understand justice, and understand how to truly promote them.

A picture quietly emerged.

"Look at them, Leon."

Standing on the wall of the fortress monastery, the black-haired knight spoke like this. At this moment, the sun was setting, and he looked down and saw many farmers carrying hoes and shovels and moving back and forth between the cultivated fields and the farmhouses.

"They have been busy all day, taking care of so much land. Do you think they can have a full meal when they go home tonight?"

The knight asked this question, but he didn't seem to expect an answer, so he threw out the answer himself, with a complicated look and a shake of the head.

He turned and looked at the lion.

"When they get home, they have to eat something like beans or sourdough bread. These things make you weak after a while, and they're not particularly nutritious, but they have no choice."

"They have been living under the protection of the Knights for hundreds of years. For every acre of land they grow, the Knights take away 70% of the food. Of the remaining 30%, they probably only have less than 10% that they can actually eat."

"They have to exchange food for winter clothes and treat their livestock. This is how farmers are. They can't save any money all year round. The more they farm, the poorer they get. So they can only have as many children as possible, thinking that they can share some of the burden when they grow up. But what can they really share?"

The knight sighed and unconsciously placed his hands on the edge of the city wall. His fingers turned white and veins on the back of his hands bulged.

"Can't we take less?" the lion heard himself asking. At that time, his voice still sounded very young.

The knight smiled sadly and shook his head again.

"This is the crux of the matter, Leon. We must take it, otherwise the Knights will not be able to maintain it. You, me, other knights, servants, and precious war horses - how much food will the fortress monastery consume every day? Have you ever calculated this problem?"

"This is an astronomical figure. Moreover, we have to send teams to patrol and sweep the surrounding forests once a month to search for traces of the giant beasts in order to protect them and the farmland. This is another considerable expense."

The picture gradually moved away until it disappeared, but the lion's thoughts did not stop, and he remembered more.

This conversation took place two months after he entered the Order. By then he had already gotten rid of his apprenticeship and had been awarded the medal and sword and became a knight twelve days ago.

Soon, he would clear out a nearby beast's lair during a patrol, and then more. In just one year, the scale of the farmland around the Knights had expanded several times.

Then, he proposed to the Knights to organize the servants to conduct hunting training. There were no traces of giant beasts in the nearby forests, so hunting could be used as a stable source of food.

As expected, his proposal was passed, and the hunter team expanded rapidly once it was formed. Soon, meat replaced crops in the cultivated land and became the main source of food for the Knights, but the Lion wanted more than that.

The next year, he continued to lead patrols, and in his spare time he led his servants to pass on hunting skills and tools to the farmers. At the end of that year, the aroma of meat wafted through the homes of all the protected farmers under the jurisdiction of the Oduruk Monastery.

And this was just the beginning. In just ten years, the Lion unified the entire Caliban.

The beasts were utterly slaughtered, and he personally scoured every inch of the land to ensure they were completely dead and could no longer threaten any Calibanian.

Forests were exploited for farmland, fishing, hunting, and weaving. Primitive technology developed rapidly. Dirt roads in villages and towns became stone roads, towering walls replaced fences and wooden stakes, and mud houses and thatched roofs were replaced by wood and tiles.

The lion resisted the urge to sigh.

Before he accepted the Emperor's proposal and stepped into the starry sea to become a messenger and pioneer of war, no one on Caliban had been hungry for a long time. That was his original ideal and his original indignation.

Ever since he saw the civilians' chilblained hands and sallow and skinny faces, this strange anger that came from nowhere has always lingered in his heart.

Compared with the great cause of conquering the stars and incorporating a thousand worlds into the empire, this ideal can be said to be insignificant and even a little ridiculous, but the lion does not want to think so.

He did not find this ridiculous, nor did he think that by doing so he was deviating from the original intention of the Emperor in designing him - if the Lord of Mankind only needed an engine to start wars, only needed ruthless executioners and murderers, then why should he give them a truly free soul?

The lion firmly believed that in his father's heart, conquest was just a means to salvation.

However, the problem is that once such a huge war machine as the Empire is launched, no one can stop it. Not the Emperor, and certainly not Lion El'Jonson.

He could only watch as the Calibans were forced into factories, cut down all the forests, filled in farmland, and lived in hive cities, becoming a small cog in the machine, producing things that killed - bullets, or sharp blades.

The Calibans saved me, the lion thought. They transformed me from a beast into a man, but I failed to give them back. His thoughts continued to wander.

Who else has the same experience as him?
Fulgrim? Yes, he is the son of a worker, and Chemos was liberated in his hands. It was originally a pale, gray and black mineral world, and it was Fulgrim who used his own hands to create machines that changed the environment and landforms, making it prosperous again, and even enough to brew intoxicating wine, which every civilian could afford.

But he left and didn't come back until much later
Therefore, Chemos's situation is probably not optimistic.

The Lion had heard that the Archon there had become an unenterprising hedonist by the middle of the Great Crusade, and his rule was a complete mess.

Fulgrim is gone, as am I.

The lion's memory was surging, and he saw the Chemos man in a white cape and a comfortable hunting suit. It was a leisurely hunting trip, which happened during a gathering, a rare time when they could talk to each other without fighting.

During the conversation, the Lion casually asked about Chemos, and Fulgrim showed an indifference mixed with pain and regret.

"I don't care," he said at the time with a fake smile. "It's their world, they can do whatever they want."

Really, bro? You really don't care?

The lion thought of his other brother, Corvus Corax.

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He was a little heartbroken.

Fulgrim still had a chance to return to Chemos after the rebellion, carry out drastic reforms, and pick up the original intentions he had abandoned one by one, but Corax was different. He would never have such an opportunity again.

Today, Salvation has become a desolate world, full of dangers, and the Raven Guards have made great efforts to restore the land with the help of the Mechanicus. However, as far as the Lion knows, the progress has been very slow and difficult.
What would you think, Raven? The lion asked himself. Would you regret agreeing to your father's proposal, becoming a knife in his hand, going to unknown and strange worlds for him, sowing death?
He didn't know the answer, but his instinct told him that Korvus Corax would never think so. He always kept things very clear, and he understood from the beginning what it meant to agree to the Emperor's invitation.

Just like me.

The Lion recalled that day. Strangely, he could not remember how long ago the conversation took place. He only remembered that the Emperor had told him clearly what it all meant.

"You will lead a dedicated army of killers to every planet in the galaxy. That will be very different from what you do here, Lion El'Jonson."

In the banquet hall where only the two of them were present, the king in golden armor once said this frankly.

"Your Knights have a code of virtue. If you accept my invitation, you will gradually break every rule in this code in the future. You will inevitably have blood on your hands, including aliens, those who are unwilling to surrender, and even civilians."

"War will make you lose yourself. By then, the Knight King I saw today will probably only exist in the depths of your memory, becoming a phantom of the past."

"Why do you know this so clearly?" the lion remembered asking himself.

"Because I have experienced this," the Lord of Mankind replied. "From a savior to a destroyer, abandoning the country I built with my own hands, looking back hundreds of years later, I only saw a dilapidated ruin."

"Even if you build a new utopia, those people who believed in you and died in pain will never come back."

"Then why do you still do this?"

The emperor was silent for a long time, raised his hand, took off the laurel wreath on his forehead, and spoke slowly.

"Because I have no choice."

His eyes sparkled, like tears, or like the reflection of a flickering candle flame.

"You will understand, although I hope you will never understand the reason. But this is the fact, Lion El'Jonson, and I have no choice. Humanity must unite as soon as possible, otherwise there will be no recovery."

"You rule Caliban, that's good, but how many Calibans are there in this galaxy? You are only responsible for Caliban, but I need to be responsible for everyone. I can't just watch them fall into the abyss and hell without knowing anything, and become food for other creatures."

He clenched the crown so hard that his hands creaked.

"To achieve this goal, to save everything, I must first become a destroyer, a ruthless conqueror. Humanity has no time. If we miss this moment, we will be doomed forever."

And now I am, father, the lion thought calmly.

His thoughts were still scattered, but there was one thing he was sure of—he did not blame the Emperor. But if he really had to find someone to blame, who could he find? After thinking about it, he could only blame himself.

The lion smiled.

"But if I could do it again, I would still make the same choice," he said to himself. "I would still be the Primarch of the First Legion, and I would still lead them across the starry sea, to every star visible to the naked eye."

Ultimately, this is not a question of choosing to be a savior or a destroyer. There is no choice at all. The Great Crusade is a miracle that can only happen once, a shoddy and shaky miracle.

No sane person should participate in it, but it is the best future that the human race can choose.
We only had those few decades. We did the best we could. So --

The lion closed his eyes, and his thoughts finally froze at this moment. He no longer recalled, and no new questions came up.

At this moment, he felt peaceful, as if he was in the Audruk Monastery in the early morning, with the aroma of mills and bread lingering in his nose. Young apprentices were training in the courtyard, servants were yawning and cleaning the corridors, and knights were meditating.

There is no longer anyone starving or freezing under its walls.

——If possible, let me do it again.

Lion El'Jonson pleaded like this, humbled, trembling. The pain of death had eaten away his heart, but he did not cry for it, and his tears were not shed for himself.

Let me try again. Please.

From somewhere in the darkness, a ray of light penetrated the darkness and reached his eyes.

(End of this chapter)