We're Going on the Great Crusade, Guess Who We Didn't Bring?

"Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west; do not bully a young man for being poor. If you have the guts, don't use your psychic powers!"

"Shut up. If I didn't use my psychic powers, what kind of Master of Mankind would I be? Speak! When did you get here?"

"I just arrived! Stop hitting me, stop it, Big Brother—ah, no! Father, I know I was wrong. I shouldn't have walked in on you and Malcador getting cozy."

Mordred would have been better off saying nothing; the moment he opened his mouth, it made people want to beat him. Even Malcador, who had been watching the spectacle from the sidelines, rolled up his sleeves and joined in.

Because he had embarrassed the Master of Mankind in front of the Sigillite, Mordred was subjected to a tag-team beatdown, Slammed onto the ground and thrashed for a solid half-hour until his face was swollen like a pig's.

It was fortunate that the Adeptus Custodes on duty were sensible enough to close the door; otherwise, if anyone else had seen this, the image of a Good Father that Mordred had just established would have been ruined.

"Why aren't you back with your legion? What are you doing here?"

Mordred, Collapsed on the Ground, wiggled his body and flipped over like a maggot. This time, he didn't dare try to get the upper hand with his words. He lifted his bruised head and searched for a long time before finding the right direction, immediately blurting out his confusion:

"Old Man Huang, why is the number of men in the Second Legion so small? Did you hide my soldiers?"

In truth, it was a grievance. After acknowledging his Good Father, Mordred had quickly discovered a major issue: the size of the Second Legion was simply too small.

Through observation, Mordred hadn't found any genetic diseases in his offspring. Aside from being a head taller than the average Space Marine, they could be described as nothing short of perfect.

Upon learning that the Second Legion had been scattered among various legions since its inception and had only recently been re-gathered, Mordred suspected that the Old Man Huang had stolen his brood.

Thinking he might have been cheated, Mordred felt incredibly miserable and immediately ordered his legion to return to eat, intending to demand an explanation.

After hearing the Inner Journey of his Rebellious son, the Emperor, his mood now settled, exchanged a glance with Malcador. Ensuring their conversation hadn't been overheard, he finally spoke:

"The entire Second Legion is here. I didn't hide your offspring at all. As for why the numbers are so low, it is entirely your own fault."

"Me?"

The Emperor Nodded, a flash of golden light appearing in his hand as he tossed an experimental log to Mordred.

"Due to your high-dimensional nature, even when you fell to Terra, you were nothing but a few scraps. Making you into a Primarch was no easy task."

"To shape your body, I had to fuse you into the already failed Number Two. Even then, I couldn't stabilize your form, but I am not a man who accepts failure easily, so..."

"So what?" Mordred was truly panicked now. Heaven Knows what kind of cursed things the Emperor had stuffed inside him during his creation.

Fortunately, the Emperor didn't play the riddle-master this time and readily revealed the rest.

"So I stuffed in all the scraps left over from creating the other Primarchs. But at that time, there were too many Warp fragments, so I added some Star God Fragment—or, to be more precise, Star God dandruff."

"This is what made your Gene-Seed adaptation extremely difficult."

Mordred found it hard to describe his current mood. He felt like someone who had bought a puppy, only to realize after raising it that it was a mutt—and what was even more infuriating was that he was the dog.

This was where the difference in emotional intelligence between the Emperor and Malcador became apparent. Seeing the silly child's mental state falter, the Emperor only spoke of experimental data, while Malcador handed Mordred a cup of tea.

With a bitter heart and trembling hands, Mordred chewed and swallowed the hot tea, cup and all, before asking:

"Then do I have no merits at all? Just like how every Primarch has a different role, give me some positive feedback!" Mordred still wouldn't give up; he desperately wanted to hear an objective evaluation from the Emperor.

"Of course you do. I am the greatest scientist in the Empire. Although it sounds a bit rough, you can look at it from another angle."

"How so?"

"For example, you are very likely to possess the civilization of Number One, the technique of Number Three, the open-mindedness of Number Four, the wisdom of Number Ten, and even the loyalty of my Sagittarius. In short, anything is possible."

Mordred laughed silently. After briefly sorting out who those examples were, he wore a smile that looked worse than crying.

"Then aren't I just a total piece of trash?"

"I will not allow you to insult my offspring like that." The Emperor denied it flatly; he would never admit that he had conducted the experiment with the mindset of making use of waste.

Perhaps because of the earlier beating, the Emperor's flickering emotional intelligence occupied the high ground as he comforted him:

"Even if you don't trust those brothers you haven't met, you must trust me! You have inherited a part of my traits."

"Then what merits do you have?"

Mordred thought it over, but he really couldn't find any human traits in the Emperor. Yet, the Golden Giant seemed completely oblivious as he pointed to his own face and said:

"Charisma. You have inherited my peerless charisma, which far exceeds that of ordinary people."

"But what use is this junk to me? Don't tell me I'm supposed to go be a Roman mother like you... hmm~"

Before he could finish the second half of his sentence, Mordred felt a shiver run through his entire body, as if something terrible would happen if he spoke those words. He couldn't help but shut his mouth.

After learning this secret, Mordred quickly associated it with the grassland hallucination that appeared when he was struck by the lance of light that day.

In terms of results, Mordred really shouldn't complain. After all, if it hadn't been for the Emperor's sudden inspiration at the time, Rambo and the others might have been gone.

Perhaps for other purposes, or perhaps as a rare form of compensation, before the Emperor kicked Mordred back to his legion and ran off with his own men, he gave him some unprecedented privileges.

First was the "return gift package" that every Primarch received, such as tax exemptions on their homeworld, chartered ruling rights over surrounding worlds, and years of tax-free status.

In short: I don't have time to manage you, so you handle the operations yourself. Whatever you conquer is yours, as long as you don't cross the Empire's red lines, you can do whatever you want.

The only special condition was that the Second Legion didn't have to participate in the Great Crusade immediately; the Emperor gave Mordred a degree of freedom that could be called indulgent.

Even Malcador spoke up, promising that even in the current tense stage of the Empire's startup, he would Deployed an Arch-Magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus to the Second Legion, so that they would have everything they needed.

However, after this ten-billion-subsidy package, the two Old Ones gave Mordred one small task: to establish a starport in the vicinity as soon as possible, bringing the surrounding sectors under total Imperial rule to serve as a supply station for the front lines of the crusade.

Honestly, being hit with such treatment—the kind that would make the Butcher's Nail wetware weep with envy—Mordred actually felt a sense of guilt, wondering if perhaps he had thought too poorly of others.

Watching the Dream Fleet vanish in a flash, the Blonde Hair big guy, who had just been kicked back into Serenity, sighed for a long time before noticing a group of oversized tin cans staring at him with eager eyes.

"What are you looking at? From now on, your father here will be hanging out with you lot. Hurry up and take me to see our flagship. By the way, where did that Goff go? Why Didn't See him?"

"Uh, well, Goff, he... he's sick! Yes! He's just sick, and he's probably in the Duelling Cage doing some rehabilitation training right now."

The company commanders chimed in one after another, quickly casting Goff to the back of their minds as they crowded around their Primarch and boarded the Stormbird.

Meanwhile, inside the Duelling Cage, the former Legion Commander Goff was being brutally beaten by a mob while trying to defend the helmet that had been touched by his father's own hand!

"Gwah—Hand Over the helmet, quickly!"