Only Taxes and Death Are Inevitable

The Primarchs were already used to the Emperor's various Abstract Maneuver; in fact, one could say that if he ever acted normally, it would be the most abnormal thing of all.

But sometimes comparisons are dangerous. As the saying goes, "Comparisons are odious." When the Necron in front of them revealed that the Silent King hadn't taken any precautions and had essentially sold out their entire race, the Primarchs finally realized what it truly meant to be outmatched.

"This Szarekh is truly a God-Human! He's far from being a god, and not close to being human either. Why don't you stage a coup and overthrow him?"

Guilliman realized his mistake as soon as he said it. He already had a reputation for Ambition, and by saying such a thing, he had only confirmed it.

Fortunately, with their victim in sight, the four Necron Overlord were somewhat famous among the Necron, remained silent, all looking as if their mothers had just died. "We can't beat them."

"Can't beat him? How is that possible! According to what you said before, isn't Szarekh a tyrant? Why can't so many of you defeat him?"

Trazyn sighed, indicating that they still did not understand what the Silent King was. Szarekh was not someone to be trifled with; on the contrary, none of them, including Mordred, could defeat him individually.

Putting everything else aside, the Godslayer Spear in Szarekh's hand—that thing truly shattered Burning One, even Burning One in a weakened state, who was still a complete C'tan.

"As for the rest, you may not know that we Necron have something called the Overriding Protocol, and Szarekh is not a tyrant."

He wasn't initially so incompetent, though he was somewhat so; in short, he was a—a very remarkable Monarch.

Everyone could see that the four Necron Overlord were in a strange state, especially when they mentioned Szarekh, they conveyed a sense of regret, lamentation, remorse, helplessness, and even disbelief.

Whether it was Yellow Skins or a Primarch, whether it was Adeptus Custodes member or a space dog, when they saw this scene, everyone stretched their ears to listen carefully, after all, gossip is a nature etched in our genes.

As everyone began to listen attentively to the four eyewitnesses recount how the deceased became Necron, even Mordred, who was already mentally prepared, couldn't help but be amazed.

But Guilliman reacted the most strongly, after all, Primarch XIII was the most normal of all the Primarchs: "I don't understand, and you could even say he's the most contradictory Monarch I've ever seen. But overall, he's not as bad as you all previously assessed!"

Orikan, who had always served as the official astrologer, couldn't help but exclaim, "If this had happened during the Unification Wars of the Necron, then Szarekh would definitely have been a first-rate wise ruler. He was a valiant man who saved the collapsing empire from ruin."

He was even able to unify the dynasty when the empire was falling apart, giving everyone hope.

This statement seemed to unleash a long-suppressed urge to complain. The four were all Necron Overlord, but belonged to different tiers...

The empty Necrons kept praising the Silent King, one after another.

But as the four men praised Szarekh's great achievements, Guilliman felt no reverence for them, only deep resentment.

Combined with his recent self-development, Atlas's vast database of Blasphemous Experiment, and Yvraine's one-on-one Psychic Power lessons, Guilliman could see the sarcasm behind Orikan's words from a unique perspective; that faint spark of soul was flickering wildly.

This is a new ability that Guilliman developed on his own, and it is also the result of his use of his rational thinking to deconstruct Warp knowledge.

This ability allowed Guilliman to treat a person as an NPC in a game, summarizing and predicting them through his powerful data processing capabilities, and manipulating the probability of certain things through small external interventions to serve his own purposes, ultimately manipulating the entire group.

He was both an audience member and an actor, and also a director and screenwriter behind the scenes.

Upon realizing his extraordinary talent, Guilliman was quite alarmed, because he suddenly discovered that his ability seemed to be a perfect match for a certain blue Chaos Gods. So, in the end, he was still just Ambition?

But this did not prevent Guilliman from using this ability to observe, conduct big data simulations, and throw all the information he had just learned into the calculations. Then he came to a conclusion. "According to the average physiological limit of the Necron, which is less than 45 years of lifespan, the Silent King was able to accomplish such a great feat in such a short time. Although he was morally flawed and a little arrogant and unwilling to listen to advice, this is the demeanor of a wise ruler."

It feels stronger than the Emperor!

Upon hearing this, everyone looked at the Tall humanoid figure on the Golden Throne. Seeing that he had instantly become the focus of attention, the Emperor was quite annoyed and shouted, "Why are you all looking at me? So I'm not even as good as a Xenos? I am the Emperor, I am the Master of Mankind. Here, my power is unlimited, and I can do whatever I want."

Do you really think I want to sit on this Golden Throne? I'll trade places with whoever wants it; I've been thinking about retiring and running away for a while now.

"And the 13th is here. I think you've been living too comfortably lately. I'll have to keep a closer eye on you from now on."

"Look, my father not only has a guilty conscience, he has no conscience at all."

"No, that's not it! If we had encountered His Majesty instead of the C'tan, everything would have been different."

Zalasus, who had been silent all along, stood up, pointed at the Emperor, then at himself, and said, "You've only heard the first half; we haven't told you the second half yet."

But why don't you try to guess why the Silent King is trying to save the collapsing empire? And who do you think caused all of this?

"Oh no! Could it be that..."

"That's right, it's him!"

Perhaps because they had previously ingested an excessive amount of Chaos Energy Crystal, the Necron Overlord collectively broke down, pounding their chests and collapsing to the ground in despair. "Szarekh was sensitive to the resentment he harbored towards the Old Ones due to the Necron. He should have been able to end this unjust war, but instead of ending it, he continued to maintain it, launching a fierce attack on the Old Ones with the full strength of his race."

But he was also powerful enough to unify countless dynasties that had been fragmented by defeat after the first War in Heaven, and he remains the only dictator to date, ultimately dominating the ideology of the entire Empire of the Necron.

"And at that moment, he was foolish enough to believe the lies of the Deceiver and personally exterminated his entire race. We were powerless to resist. He was powerful enough to force all those Necron into the Biotransference, and none of them survived—"

The four Necron chatted amongst themselves, and it could be said that they never intended to belittle the Silent King's abilities. On the contrary, they highly praised the Silent King's abilities and spoke about them in great detail.

Then they went on to recount in detail how the Silent King became a member of the Triarch, how he carried out a series of cruel and decisive choices to Great Purge and unify the internal forces, how he always made the worst choice, and how he saved the world with invincibility after the thunderclap.

As for why he wants to save the world, don't worry about that. Anyway, Szarekh is a powerful figure with extraordinary wisdom, whose abilities completely surpass those of the Emperor. Needless to say, his sense of responsibility is beyond question, and he also loves his entire race.

The only problem is that the Silent King always makes the wrong move, and every single time, but his powerful abilities compensate for this, so that he goes through a cycle of making mistakes and correcting them.

Unfortunately, he couldn't correct his last mistake, and then the Necron became Necron.

"This—this is indeed quite difficult to handle."

For no apparent reason, the image of a one-eyed, Sunburned Ogryn suddenly flashed through everyone's minds simultaneously—only a more powerful version of the pony.

Xiao Ma is that kind of person. You could say he's stupid, because he has both numbers and intelligence, and I've heard he also has incredible strength. But if you say he's really smart, he was initially completely fooled by fairy tales, and it took him a couple of bites of shit to wake up.

This kind of person is actually the most terrifying. Everything he does is well-intentioned, but he always manages to mess things up. And the best example of this is not Magnus, but his filial son, Ahriman.

Guilliman swore to God that after the Great Heresy, he treated every Primarch's captured legion equally. Even the then- Imperial Warmaster Zhuang Sen changed his ways, treating the offspring of these brothers as his own sons, to the point that even the Dark Angels were jealous.

The reason they later went mad and pushed for the policy of Split the Legions was because the Thousand Sons Legion had exploded, and physically at that.

"Ahriman was the first to discover that the Legion was gradually mutating due to the Primarch. In order to save the Legion and completely eliminate all the mutations, he used a Crimson Word Spell that covered the entire Prospero, which directly wiped out the Legion of nearly 40,000 people at the time, leaving less than 800 survivors."

No one killed more Space Marine than him during the entire Great Heresy. He's even more valuable Mordred, and even Prospero's world was shattered."

If you open the Imperial Star Chart, you will find that there are a large number of legions stationed on the side of the Extreme Sector closer to the Sol Sector. Serenity, Chemos, Chagoris Nightfall Star, and even Prospero are not particularly far away and can support each other.

This is why Mordred used this as the basis for building the Ultimate Wall.

Ironically, the Ultimate Wall not breached and remains the empire's most important permanent defense line to this day. It was two people who caused this defense system to collapse.

One was Mordred, who created a Maelstrom by himself; the other was Ahriman, who destroyed the entire shipping route from Prospero to the Maelstrom.

How big of a mistake can a person make? Even if you blow up your own legion's homeworld, it's still not as big a mistake as Ahriman's. After all, Mordred had a brain when he self-destructed, and he blew himself up in the no-man's-land in the center of the Milky Way. Ahriman, on the other hand, self-destructed on the spot.

However, it must be said that the high-gravity region at the center of the Milky Way is not entirely uninhabited.

To this day, those Space Squats are still wondering why their home is gone, and they are searching the entire galaxy for the culprit. The Book of Grudges remains forever blank with one name.

Fortunately, these short-skinned people don't have to worry anymore. Mordred's good nephew Abaddon, blew up the Space Squats tribe during the 13th Black Crusade and took the blame out of his own pocket to build his own prestige.

Self-proclaimed the Despoiler, the Victorious in a Hundred Battles Black Legion, Abaddon the Chaos Warmaster!

As for Mordred, he'd have to be out of his mind to admit he did it. Anyway, there's no way to prove it now that he's dead, and he can take the opportunity to take over this group of dwarves later.

"Alright, we now know what kind of incompetent leader Szarekh is, but I still have one question: why are you all so surprised by the signing of the contract? Didn't the Silent King have any doubts back then?"

"No, or rather, why should we doubt it? You are a god! You don't think we, the Necron, are short-sighted fools who believe that technology is all the truth in the world and that we can deny the divine by shouting slogans, do you?"

Upon hearing this, the Emperor's face darkened further, but this did not stop him from stubbornly insisting that he was not a god. Mordred, inheriting this family tradition, vehemently denied that he was not a god, stating that he was merely an ordinary person.

"Yes, yes, that's exactly how it feels. All you human gods are like this, no, all of us human gods are like this! Actually, I really love this feeling."

What the public doesn't know is that there are four Chaos God for humans, and five Chaos God for other Xenos in this cesspool. The biggest and most sinister one has 21 smaller Chaos God under his command.

Especially that blond hunk with terrible taste in clothes; he not only followed the mob boss, but also had an ambiguous relationship with that red-haired guy.

"In fact, whether it's Cosmic Star God or Warp Entity, you human gods are the strangest." The old general sighed, "We have shattered C'tan and destroyed countless Warp Entity, but as far as we know, only the Old Ones are willing to protect weak mortals like you, and even signed that nonsensical contract."

Shouldn't God be high above us?

A strange sour feeling lingered all around, and longing was the furthest distance from understanding.

As the old saying goes, it's not the differences that are scary, it's the comparisons that are scary.

Perhaps at this moment, everyone understood why the Necrons were so vulnerable, and why the Emperor was so highly regarded by the Xenos races. Mordred also understood why the Aeldari old prophet was so obsequious and obsequious.

It wasn't because they were so good, but simply because this world was so awful that everyone had grown accustomed to this world of competing to be the worst. And now, upon seeing this group of relatively human-like human gods, they began to feel a strange sense of fear.

Compared to those eccentric monsters, outsiders can only see the shell that the original body maintains due to its humanity, and have no idea what terrifying monsters are writhing beneath the skin.

But at least the Emperor was truly carrying a heavy burden. The Golden Throne, which even the Kabalite admired, was the most terrifying instrument of torture in the world, and the Primarch was no different.

No matter how eccentric or abstract their personalities may be, or how bizarre things they do, they can still protect one side of the community and even reason with you and negotiate terms.

Such treatment is not nonexistent, but it is extremely rare.

Normally, if I were a god, I could do whatever I wanted. When I'm happy, I'm Happy Superman; when I'm unhappy, I'm just a human. My people and their families are nothing more than disposable toys for my amusement.

The C'tan are like this, and so are the Warp God. Regardless of whether they are strong or weak, big or small, they are basically all like this. The only good-natured Old Ones who could be called a true Morality benchmark is dead!

If you ask why the Old Ones are gone, the answer is because they were good people, and good people deserve to be held at gunpoint and their entire race should be wiped out.

"But that doesn't make sense. I seem to remember a Warp Entity that was quite trustworthy and particularly fond of signing contracts, and he wasn't scammed. His name was Vashtorr."

"Hey, Second Brother, I remember you loved to collude with Xenos and Daemon. Do you know that Vashtorr?"

"What Vashtorr? I don't know, why are you asking me? Yes, why are you asking me!"

Mordred suddenly found Pepe unlovable. There must be something on her that hadn't been cleaned up properly, and she was rubbing salt into his wounds. Was he trying to sabotage his best friend? He hadn't even sabotaged him yet, and he'd already exploded.

Fortunately, the Emperor suddenly displayed a burst of humanity, easing Mordred's embarrassment. He placed his hands on the armrests of the throne, pressing down on two Necrons heads with his left and one with Necrons right, and clapped his hands, praising, "Alright, alright! From today onwards, you are all legitimate, animated metal-specialized Abhumans of the Empire! There are no traitors among you, only loyal subjects! My beloved ministers, please rise!"

Upon hearing the Emperor's words, the four Necron Overlord knelt down smoothly before everyone's eyes, shouting in unison, "Long live the Emperor! Long live the Emperor! May His Majesty enjoy Eternally Healthy!"

Without the slightest hesitation, he knelt down with remarkable decisiveness. After all, when surrendering, the most important thing is to be magnanimous and sell oneself for a good price.

As for saving face, we can completely discard that. What's wrong with being Abhumans? From now on, we're legitimate human citizens. We have to cling to this powerful force. Even if you kick me, I won't leave.

And then again, we Necron love to cling to powerful figures; back then it was the C'tan, and this time it's the Emperor.

The Aeldari next door are masters at clinging to powerful figures, while the reason we Necron are so dejected is because we failed to maintain our initial connection with those powerful figures.

If they could really continue the lineage and restore the Aeldari Empire's 60 million-year reign, that would be utter nonsense. So what if they had a good father? Now we have a father too!

Since things have come to this point, the necessary procedures still need to be followed. Mordred didn't learn anything else from her good brother Vashtorr, but she did learn one good quality: the importance of having a sense of contract.

Since a contract had been signed, it needed to be formal and standardized. Both parties immediately compiled an inventory of all the assets under the three Necron Overlord and used this information to negotiate with each other.

As the saying goes, you have to love what you do. Since it's a negotiation, you have to argue your case. Mordred, however, shamelessly brought along Isha, who had fallen to the position of Grand Steward of the Imperial Palace, her own prized Twin Red Blossom Staffs, Ji Yalan, and the old prophet Hal, who had been visiting the Commorragh brothels with the Emperor.

To make up the numbers, Guilliman even called over his secretary Ephraime, forming a luxurious team that included Aeldari and one of the five Atlas Four Heavenly Kings.

It must be said that the one who understands you best is always your opponent. With old and new grudges combined, the Aeldari advisory group will absolutely not let these Necron an easy time.

Perhaps she had heard some rumors, or perhaps Isha was being dishonest; in any case, on the third day of the negotiations, the Shadowseer Sylandri, who had been tricked half to death by her boss and then captured by Mordred for interrogation with a magical pill that amplified her senses by 300 times, came over.

He said that he was representing Cegorach as a member of the advisory group in the negotiations, and that he would absolutely not allow any of you adults to suffer any losses.

After Sylandri's elaborate ritual, the clown who had been hiding behind the scenes finally appeared and possessed Sylandri's body.

As expected of a deadbeat who can sit at the same table as Emperor, the Deceiver, and Tzeentch, now that they've joined forces, even though they've never met, Cegorach and the Yellow Skins have instantly taken a liking to each other.

There were countless ridiculous agreements and hidden clauses, so many that they could crash the Necrons's logic processing core. For a whole month, they did nothing but think about how to trick each other.

The result was obvious: after revising version 7412 and adding 136 amendments, the document, which was less a contract and more like a servitude agreement, was finalized.

After the contract was signed, fearing that the Necrons might renege, the Emperor directly exerted his power in the void, delivering a powerful blow to each of the Primarch still outside, ordering them to hurry back to Terra to sign the contract.

Finally, when this contract, which was many times more sacred than Rogue Trader charter, bearing the Primarch's signature, blood imprint, and the Emperor's blood imprint, and consisting of 23 copies, was finalized, the four Necron Overlord and all the Necrons under their command officially became legitimate demi -Abhumans of the Imperium of Man.

Then, Mordred, utterly devoid of humanity, grabbed the four half-brothers who had just sworn an oath of brotherhood, while the other Primarchs surrounded them, trapping them in the middle:

Looking at the new leader with his strange gaze, who had even begun to touch them inappropriately, Trazyn and his companions, who had just obtained their Imperial green cards and whose illusions hadn't completely shattered, were quite puzzled. "Great Commander, and Your Highnesses, what are you trying to do?"

"Well, it's nothing special, it's just that now that you've become legitimate Abhumans of the Empire, how about paying the Imperial Tithe of your tax debt?"

"I just checked with Guilliman, let's round it down to 6000!"

I thought it was something serious, but it's just collecting taxes. Why are you making such a fuss? Anyone who didn't know better would think we were going to tear them apart.

"We understand, it's just collecting taxes. It's our duty as law-abiding citizens. We were once powerful and wealthy, with mountains of gold and silver that we could never spend. Don't round it down for us. Is it 6,000 Gold Dog Coins?"

"Not Gold Dog Coins."

"So that's the Throne Gelt?"

"Not really." Mordred took the time to explain that the Empire didn't actually have a legal tender; it mainly operated on a barter system. Items like the Gold Dog Coins were valuable because they were made by combining Adamantium with various precious metals.

"That's 6000 what?"

"That's 60 million years of Imperial Tithe!"

"..