Chapter 20: The Emperor Has a Reason for Sitting on the Throne
There wasn’t any exaggerated phenomenon like in the Warp, but following the exclamation, a wave of golden flame appeared around them.
These flames only had the appearance of burning, yet didn’t harm anyone, had no heat, and merely spread out silently, climbing onto everyone except the transmigrators.
Soon, these illusionary images that looked like burning flames faded away, leaving only faint traces in the eyes of those warriors—scattered golden specks of light.
Naturally, such a vision sent the faithful into a frenzy of prayer.
Especially the Sisters. Visions they might have only witnessed on their deathbeds occurred twice in just a few hours. They all devoutly chanted hymns and began documenting the experience.
“Well done, Rameses.”
Arthur let out a sigh of relief and didn’t hold back his praise.
Back in the era before the Great Rift, getting the Emperor to show a sign wasn’t easy.
“……”
But despite having done something good, Rameses didn’t look the least bit happy—instead, he seemed as if something had thoroughly disgusted him.“Sorry.”
Rameses made a gesture of apology toward the three of them.
“I acted on my own.”
“……”
Romulus blinked.
Didn’t he just hear this exact line a moment ago?
“What exactly happened?”
Arthur was just as confused.
Since they’d already done the glorious task of digging gold from Warp sh*t earlier, the job of studying the Warp had naturally fallen on Rameses.
So no one understood why Rameses, who clearly just accomplished something major, had such a guilty expression.
“I’m guilty. I was a dumb*ss.”
Rameses, having succeeded in his attempt and saved a large group of people’s futures, was in an utterly foul mood.
Looking at the shared soul pool that everyone had contributed to for him to use, and seeing how much it had dropped, he felt like he’d just been freeloaded!
“Remember when we first landed and had that safe house in the Warp?”
He asked out of nowhere.
“Yeah.”
Arthur nodded. He still remembered there was even a roll of toilet paper in there.
“That thing was created when we first landed due to our instinctive rejection of the Warp. Essentially, it’s just a mental barrier in the Warp with some degree of concealment. Of course, Warp creatures can’t see us to begin with, so it’s basically useless.”
Rameses began explaining the principle behind the safe house.
“Then the Emperor probably identified us as some kind of Warp-born entities influenced by humanity, and that place became our physical domain in the Warp…”
“Forget it, let’s not get into that for now—you guys know being noticed by the Emperor isn’t necessarily a good thing, right?”
“Understood.”
Arthur nodded.
He’d read quite a few novels published by GW—not just the ones translated by the Lexicanum, but even chewed through English originals himself. Naturally, he knew about Chaos’s favorite pastime:
Corrupting devout followers of the Emperor with twisted delight, like forcing the righteous into depravity.
Prime targets included devout Sisters of Battle and Astartes under the Emperor’s gaze.
Many heretic daemons took pride in having a fallen Sister under their command or delighted in capturing loyalist Space Marines for sacrifice to the Four Gods, hoping to win favor and receive more powerful blessings.
So in the Warhammer world, praying to the God-Emperor and getting no response was actually the best outcome. If you got a real answer, either you were going to die or it wasn’t really the Emperor who answered.
In a way, if the Emperor noticed you while you were alive, your chances of getting noticed by the Four Gods shot way up too.
While alive, you might get tormented by various Chaos champions; once dead, you might even get dismembered in the Warp.
And often, the Emperor couldn’t protect these people either.
Because there were just too many of them—even the Emperor couldn’t cover everyone.
“And our safe house can isolate people like that. If they die, the Four Gods can’t sense them immediately, so the Emperor can calmly extract them from the safe house?”
Arthur roughly understood what Rameses meant.
“Yeah.”
Rameses nodded.
“So the Emperor used psychic image projection to tell me to expand the safe house’s range—big enough to cover a hundred people.”
“He actually wanted something larger, but like I said before, anything connected to the Warp and complex matter is super costly to generate. So I expanded it a bit, started feeling off, and stopped.”
“Then—”
Romulus, who was in charge of managing resources, turned green in the face.
Rameses pointed at the Astra Militarum and Sisters who had been marked.
“Then he marked everyone, and bailed. Didn’t say a thing. Even the daemons near my Warp projection ran off scared.”
The four of them instantly fell into dead silence.
“The Emperor’s move…”
“So we basically paid to expand a Warp warehouse for the Emperor to store his assets. Then he didn’t even pay rent, stuffed his stuff in, left, and even snatched our jobs and the glory for himself?!”
Romulus looked back at the group that had descended into religious ecstasy.
“Oh, right, he also marked all those people—so now we’re basically forced to either keep expanding the safe house or control how many of them die. Otherwise, we’ll just have to watch them drop dead?”
Everyone nodded.
Though the explanation had a bit of subjective flavor, it was essentially accurate.
And Rameses, who had directly communicated with the Emperor via psychic means, knew this was exactly what the Emperor meant.
Because for him, losing a few thousand lives was no big deal. Compared to the future of all mankind, it was a price he could afford.
“How many souls did it cost?”
Rameses marked the shared data he’d kept updated with a red flag.
“No—”
Romulus let out a shrill pop.
“No, seriously, how can the Emperor do this?!”
The guy didn’t even show a shred of goodwill. He could’ve at least put on a friendly front, right?
Just used them like tools and walked off?
“Give us something at least—a ‘thanks’ would’ve been something. Back in the Warp, he observed us through the Sisters, didn’t he? Shouldn’t he have understood our attitude?”
Everyone was getting a little mad.
Not because they felt short-changed for saving people, but because of the Emperor’s attitude.
It had that vibe of: “Protect if you want, don’t if you don’t. I’ve marked them and issued the mission, I’m off now, figure it out yourselves.” Like he had them completely in his pocket.
“Maybe it’s because he understands us too well.”
Rameses, the oldest among them, had more life experience due to personal reasons. He also understood what his freshly-graduated friends were like.
Setting aside the awe-inspiring aura their current image gave them among the Imperial citizens, these three radiated a kind of vibe that clashed hard with their surroundings.
Yeah—a kind of pure stupidity?
No, that wouldn’t be fair.
It should be called kindness.
The kind of kindness that came from growing up surrounded by a loving and healthy family, just stepping into society, and still holding beautiful expectations toward others and the world.
What do you think?
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