No one could blame the Emperor for cursing. Mordred looked so monstrous now that calling him a monster would have been flattering. He was nothing but an irregular lump of horribly mutated, twisted flesh.
At least an alien was still a creature. One glance, and you could roughly guess where to aim a bolter. But after searching around, the Emperor still couldn't find a face anywhere on that mass of flesh covered in eyeballs, teeth, bone spines, hair, and the like.
"When did he turn into this?" the Emperor asked. "Brian Haig."
"Five days ago. After we entered the Warp again, Father began undergoing violent mutations. The process only stopped when we reached Serenity."
Concern filled Brian's voice. As the leader of the Black Knights, all he could do was watch his Primarch suffer without being able to help. The deep sense of powerlessness left him able to place his hopes only in the Emperor, making him completely forget how he had previously cursed the Emperor for not acting like a proper ruler.
Although the Emperor was relatively humanlike, he was still reliable at critical moments. After a rough examination, he simply waved his hand to indicate that it was a minor issue. That Silly had merely eaten too much.
But before everyone could relax, the Emperor issued a baffling order:
"Go bring me Mordred's Watermelon Knife."
"Watermelon Knife?" Brian seemed to understand, but understanding it also seemed rather impossible.
"The Great Cleaver that this bastard brought back from my treasury. The knife! The big blade used for chopping people."
No wonder Brian had earned Mordred's trust. Once he realized that the Emperor was referring to the Ashen Herald, his first reaction wasn't to fetch it, but to stubbornly argue:
"His Majesty, that isn't a Watermelon Knife. It's clearly a greatsword."
The Emperor said nothing. He couldn't understand why the little fellow in front of him felt the need to correct him. Had all thirty thousand years of his life been wasted? Could he no longer tell the difference between a sword and a knife?
But Brian seemed to have gone mad. He continued giving examples to prove that it was a sword, merely one that looked like a knife. The Emperor's eyelids twitched violently as he listened.
It reminded him of the son he had just discovered. The suffocating tone was exactly the same. Furious, he slapped Mordred across the body.
"Ugh~"
"There's an old saying on Terra: 'He who understands the situation is a wise man.' I'll give you one more chance to organize your words. Tell me, what is it?"
"His Majesty, I'll go get the Watermelon Knife for you right now. I guarantee I'll complete the mission."
Watching Brian disappear in a flash, the Emperor looked back at Mordred lying on the Operating Table. Seeing that no one was around, he quietly took a gemstone from the pocket of his white coat.
But after thinking for a moment, the Emperor stuffed the gemstone back and replaced it with a Lighter whose casing was decorated with Radiant Gold, idly turning it over in his hand.
Before long, Brian came running back with the Watermelon Knife on his shoulder. In a truly bizarre touch, he had also brought a watermelon—and it was chilled.
The Emperor casually took the great blade. Under Brian's puzzled gaze, he swung it with dazzling skill, cutting the watermelon into eight perfectly divided pieces before conveniently plunging the blade into Mordred.
Splurt.
"(＃°Д°) Huh? His Majesty, what are you doing?"
Brian couldn't understand the Emperor's actions, but the Golden Giant signaled for him to stay calm. As a streak of golden Psychic Power flashed before Brian's eyes, he realized that the entire world had changed.
"See it now? Mordred turned out like this entirely because of his own stupidity. Who knows how he ended up in that damned place and drank that pot of soup? The fact that it didn't kill him means he was lucky."
As the Emperor explained, Brian indeed spotted the problem with his Primarch. Just like the watermelon he had brought over, Mordred's entire body was a sickly green, radiating a disgusting, filthy glow that made people think of a sewage tank.
"But Father hadn't mutated yet when we first found him. Could there have been poison in that shit... I mean, in the soup?"
For a Canned One who hadn't realized the existence of Chaos corruption, Brian's reaction was already remarkably calm. He was trying to use his own understanding to make sense of what he was seeing, but the Emperor mercilessly shattered his self-deception.
"No. Even the fatso wouldn't hurt Mordred right now. We're still partners, after all. As I said, this is entirely that bastard's own fault."
With that, the Emperor picked up a piece of watermelon and bit into it as he continued:
"Your Primarch drank himself stupid. Then, while unconscious, you brought him into the Warp. It was like an Ant Cow falling into a Hive City—he refused nothing and frantically devoured the Warp's little snacks.
"That's also why I didn't let him participate in the early stages of the Great Crusade. People who are starving themselves mad will always lose control of their appetites.
"But I really didn't expect this bastard to eat himself half to death. No one else could have managed that."
Listening to the Emperor's cryptic, pointed words, Brian immediately thought of the unlucky Demon Xil. It seemed their legion's little secret could no longer be hidden.
But the truly absurd part was still to come. Without giving Brian any time to react, the Emperor drew a genuine greatsword from thin air and placed it in the anxious Canned One's hands.
"To put it simply, your Primarch is suffering from indigestion. If you want him to digest everything and return to normal faster, he needs external assistance. So—
"For your father's sake, use the Emperor's Sword on him."
To help his Primarch recover as soon as possible, Brian didn't care about any of that. It wasn't as though he hadn't chopped his father apart with a sword before. He had even blasted him with a Blast with Lance—and not just once, but twice!
Before long, the laboratory rang with a puzzling series of smacks. The people outside were utterly baffled. Even the Space Marines of Atlas heard the strange sound of rodents gnawing on fruit.
On the Operating Table, Brian swung his sword at his adoptive father again and again, sweating profusely. Beneath the table, the Golden Giant frantically ate watermelon, secretly marveling that Serenity's black soil truly was nourishing.
Under Brian's tireless blows, Mordred gradually burst into flames. Driven by the Emperor's power to burn all things, the filthy forces were broken down one by one, ultimately flowing into the increasingly sinister Ashen Herald.
As for some things that were especially difficult to digest, Mordred regurgitated them amid the beating: a strange skull missing its lower jaw, a handful of feathers, metal fragments, and even several obviously suspicious triangular pieces of cloth.
Brian began to question his entire life, wondering what the hell all those things were.
After a full forty-nine minutes of "Eulering," Mordred finally returned to human form. After a bout of violent hiccupping, he suddenly opened his eyes—and saw his eldest son swinging a greatsword at his neck.
"Fuck, Brian, what are you doing? Old Man Huang, why are you just watching?"
The Emperor knew that nothing good would come out of this bastard's mouth. He strode over and smacked him hard across the face, then grabbed Mordred by his little blond hair and hauled him up.
"You rebellious son, why didn't you drink yourself to death?" Perhaps he had thought of something amusing. The Emperor wore a lecherous grin, leaned close to Mordred's ear, and whispered:
"Well? Was Nurgle's Soup tasty?"
At those words, Mordred's pupils instantly widened. His expression changed faster than a flashing light. He shoved his fingers down his throat and desperately tried to make himself vomit, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't bring anything up. In the end, he burst into tears with a loud wail:
"No!!!! You fat bastard, you and I are mortal enemies!"
Before you continue