Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 432 The most familiar stranger, and
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"You have to apologize for this!"

The Lord of Medusa slammed his desk with his big silver palm with a "bang" sound and scolded him harshly.

This new desk, made of refined gold and ceramic steel alloy and processed with metallographic enhancement technology multiple times after being broken several times, managed to hold up after shaking dangerously a few times, but the table top was obviously dented a little, and a deep palm print was left on it.

"Apologize? Why? I didn't say anything wrong!"

Young Fulgrim certainly heard the sound of ceramite power armor rubbing against weapons outside the gate.

But at this moment he held his head high and looked up at the other person, like a little rooster with high fighting spirit.

Although his silver brother, now wearing the Medusan Carapace made of mysterious metal, is two heads taller than the cloned Phoenix wearing only a pair of work boots, there is some mysterious genetic connection between the two - perhaps.

This made him much more relaxed or, in other words, more unrestrained when facing Ferrus Manus, who was known for his bad temper and difficulty to appease, than when facing Fabius Bile.

Of course, the three Primarchs present at this time did not know that this was not because there was a problem with the clone Fulgrim, nor was it that Ferrus Manus really could not maintain his pride as the master of Medusa and the Iron Legion in front of someone, but because of a more pure and practical reason.

"You should be thankful that you only need to apologize to me now for comparing my loyal sons with their great enemies, instead of being tied up and locked in a cage, kneeling and apologizing to my descendants - to the dead Iron Hands of Medusa ten thousand years ago - to the dead souls on Isstvan V!!!"

His chest rumbled in resonance with the Gorgon's roar, and the spread of true rage in his powerful soul not only made the Iron Hands wandering outside the door feel the trembling electricity running through the furnace chains that replaced their spines, but also the pilots and technical officers in charge of driving the Lakuan Conquest Hall Fortress were surprised to find that the fortress's main thinker seemed to immediately look very...cowardly.

The silver-iron giant glared at his new brother from under his furrowed brows with his molten silver eyes.

The other party pursed his lips tightly.

Although this is Fulgrim.

The secret testing of samples taken from him by clan pharmacists, the ancient datapad used for genetic unlocking tests, and of course the mystical connection of the soul all told Fearless Phoenix and Garuda that, although the soul's strength had weakened, this was indeed the "Fulgrim" of "this universe" that had not yet fallen into the hands of the Dark Prince.

But when your memory and soul are actually more than 10,000 years old, and the brother in front of you may only be a few weeks old in both body and soul... uh... he looks like an adult but is actually a baby in his original body, and the way he speaks and acts is really slightly different from the one you knew and were familiar with 10,000 years ago...

It's hard for you to treat him completely as a peer you know. To be honest.

For the next tenth of a second, thought pulses were exchanged between the metal Ferrus and the golden mechanical bird crouching on his shoulder at a lightning speed.
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To be honest, you look like an incompetent, angry father right now who can't do anything about his rebellious preteen son, Gorgon.
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Don't talk like you've really been a father to a prepubescent son, my friend! And when our brother can start walking, he should immediately see what he sees and naturally begin to understand. Then rely on instinct, fight and learn little by little... This is how I grew up, I don't understand why I have to explain it to him in detail - then you tell him what is right! And why he should apologize to my descendants!
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Although I have been married several times, I don't have any children, and what does it have to do with me? Mr. Jiujiu, you should teach your own little bastard a lesson.
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He's you! Shouldn't you take responsibility for yourself...wait, you were married?
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What's wrong? Political marriage, two bedrooms. Isn't this normal when you haven't put on your power armor, received your legion, and there are too many equal forces on your home planet?
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...When I conquered the entire Medusa, it was not through any political marriage, but through my own strength and actual hunting and fighting records.
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With all due respect, Mr. Gorgon of Medusa, that can't be considered a conquest. At most, you used your god-like military force to intimidate others and promised them some survival-related resources and technologies to win them over. While you were handling affairs and planning meetings and campaigns, I had already read the Geology and History of the Stenelos System (Internal Reference Edition) and all the appendix materials cited in it, and this is my conclusion. I can't believe that you just started recruiting soldiers here at that time...
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Maintaining the patience and toughness of the people here will help us to strengthen our minds, so that the Iron Hands soldiers can always maintain the purity of their hearts and the quality of their bodies.
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Yes, and then the rare teenagers who survived and were selected from such survival challenges would be killed in the Ouranus Death Match in the Broken Moon every year. After that, they would go through the transformation surgery with untold hardships and enter the Dovk Clan for recruit training. Then, they would be ruthlessly taught by the veterans not to trust the other party and to attack the other party to protect themselves when necessary... Even if they survived and were lucky enough to return to their original clan, it would still be like this...
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Wait, they really did that?
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They really did. --Yes, the veterans at the top are well-established, fight fiercely, and carefully calculate the input and casualties of each battle. The death of anyone else, including the Astartes' allies, is a cold number used to achieve victory. The Rakuan clan is even better, at least they have enough Dreadnoughts. You know? No one has counted it, but when I became interested, I collected data and made a statistics. You know, at a time when the average service life of an Astartes fluctuates around 200 years, how many veterans and Dreadnoughts are over 500 years old in the Iron Hands? And what is the attrition rate of the new recruits?
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……How many?-
...If you calculate it yourself, it won't take a millisecond. That's all. According to statistics, the training of Clan Dovk even encourages recruits to use their comrades as shields or similar behaviors, because they think that your failure to realize "don't trust anyone" led to your failure. The oldest officer in the Iron Hands who has not entered the Dreadnought has actually served for more than 1,100 years. By the way, the current clans in the remaining Iron Hands Chapter of your Tenth Legion are still full of hostility and competition, and some are even quite fierce.
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New recruits are encouraged to murder their comrades. Competition is fierce. You put it mildly, old friend, but I am suddenly fueled by a fury about returning to Medusa.
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Without any hesitation, without any mercy, without restraint, brutality and absolute disregard for death, they consider everything outside their own clan to be expendable. That's all I can say. Is it really because they have a common holy relic vault and Gorgon forge that they can still act as one chapter? Or is it because they don't have any clan strong enough to monopolize the secrets of all Mimir's treasures? I don't know. I'll leave it to you to judge and decide later.
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I had noticed some of these things at the time, such as the fanatical worship of my hands, but at the time, everything was so rushed that I thought these things could be dealt with after the war was over... There was no time to stop and sort it out... I thought that after the Great Crusade was over, I would...
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But things don't always go as planned. Right? And then you died. On Isstvan V. Along with your Elite Guard and most of the First Clan. That was the end of it.
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……

"...I choose to apologize to the Iron Hands and to everything that happened on Isstvan V...I apologize." Another voice, almost identical to the one in the thought circuit, but clearer, sounded. "But regarding the issue of both you and my descendants giving up our human parts to pursue the limit of our own perfection, I still stick to my opinion, and I will not apologize for this."

"What?" Almost subconsciously, Garuda Ferrus took the lead in interrogating the mechanical giant's pronunciation system and asked back. "How can you remember everything? You were only a few weeks old..."

The familiar man opposite him stopped talking when he heard this, and an expression unfamiliar to the Tenth Primarch appeared on his flawless face. The face of the Third Primarch now showed an expression that was completely mortal.

The voice of the Fearless Phoenix appropriately cut into Ferrus' mind, slightly dispelling his sudden urge to stretch out his silver hands and crush the phantom in front of him.
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Oh... just like in the factory in Chemos, this young clone did begin his socialization and growth in the twisted lower-level mechanical workshop of the Vesalius.

Of course, the young Primarch standing in front of him could not hear the internal communication of his thoughts. He just pursed his lips tightly and raised his eyes to look at them with an inquiring, puzzled, hesitant and extremely immature expression.

A blank sheet of music with some marks on it, but only the first few notes were written down and the first measure was not yet completed, so it could be easily filled in by later people to compose a song.

——This made Ferrus Manus suddenly realize once again at this moment with great clarity, bitterness and lucidity that the Fulgrim he knew, the first and only one who called him "Gorgon", had indeed disappeared without a trace and no longer existed.

All the Fulgrims who now existed in this world were just the most familiar strangers to him.

"I said, I will sincerely apologize for the tragedy that happened on Isstvan V. I actually vaguely remembered it within a few days of being catalyzed to the state of eighteen years old."

The cloned phoenix's face wrinkled into a ball, and his lavender eyes dodged for a moment, but he quickly forced himself to turn back and stare at the silver monument-like face of "Ferus Manus" and continued his statement, while carefully observing every subtle change in the other's facial expression.

"Although my current body and my previous self did not do all of that myself, I still remember everything."

Ferrus's thick silver brows knitted together. "The process of cataloguing the codes engraved in the flesh and blood is still working after leaving our father's laboratory. Very interesting. Continue."

"There are some things I have seen thousands of years ago that I have never seen since I was born. I can remember their corresponding names just by looking at them. No one needs to tell me, but there are no more footnotes. It's like... a certain item in the past was labeled and then stored in my genetic memory, but there is only a label. Manus, only a label. There is no related emotion, no related detailed memory, nothing more, only simply telling you 'Oh, this skull belongs to the Bargesi'. As for what kind of alien race the Bargesi are, what kind of things they have done, and what kind of civilization they have existed in this galaxy, I have no idea."

A tangled and painful look appeared on his delicate face, "It's like I have the complete memory of a person but I know clearly that he is me, but I am not him."

"Then why did you say you would apologize for this?"

Young Fulgrim thought, his brows knitted tightly together again. "Everything he gave me destined him to be me, at least the me of the past who is standing here now. If I could remove all the memories and knowledge I inherited, I would rather remove them and start from scratch with a baby's mind to learn the alphabet and babbling! But I cannot. So, Manus, forgetting the past means... betrayal."

There was something of a fatal magic about the last word that fell from Fulgrim's tongue as he addressed Ferrus Manus.

Whether it was the Silver Gorgon in front of him or the Iron Hands waiting outside the door, at this moment they all felt a chaotic rolling of feathers, claws, pincers and scales scraping past their heads, and finally the crisp sound of light hooves and some kind of gauze stepping past.

But when you look back with alert eyes, there is nothing there but emptiness.
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What was that just now? Friend? Did you monitor it? -
I don't know. I'm monitoring. The warp readings rose for a moment in an unstable past. I suspect that the nearby time flow was stopped for a moment by the invasion of warp energy. Some abominable warp creature may have been here.

"Do you think that at this point, when all the mistakes have been made and so many things and people are irreversible, your apology will be of any use? Fulgrim. Tell me."

"I don't know, but I'm sure it's better than no admission and no apology. Manus."

The silver eyes looked down at the lavender eyes for a long time, neither side giving in.

"You will be held responsible for what you have said," Iron Hand's father warned him. "You know what you have said. If you cannot convince Malkan Ferros and his companions, then after we reach Medusa, I will meet with all my sons and convene the Iron Council, and I may have to kill you myself."

The cloned Phoenix didn't ask why, they all knew the answer, he just nodded at "Ferus".

"May I go back to my cell then, Manus?"

"Go."

Watching the figure walking out of the hall with a slightly dejected look after he had spoken out the words that had been pent up for a long time, the voice of the Fearless Phoenix sounded solemnly in the mind link.
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If his memory even extended to everything that happened on Isstvan V...
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……
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So does this mean that the sampling time for cultivating his cloned specimens...
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I get what you meant now.
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The possibility that he was corrupted was further heightened.
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If that happened, I would take care of it immediately - personally.
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That's good.

(End of this chapter)