What If...?

"Ah???"

At those words, Alvin's eyelid twitched wildly.

He strongly suspected he'd heard wrong. The Emperor was actually asking him to relight the extinguished Astronomican?

"Are you—serious?" He tugged at the corner of his mouth. Surely the Emperor wasn't planning to make him sit on the Golden Throne in his place for a few days?

He was loyal, of course, but this matter—Alvin thought they should find someone else. It wasn't a question of loyalty.

"I'm not asking you to take my place."

The Emperor's eyes seemed to possess the power to see into people's hearts. He immediately glimpsed what Alvin was thinking and raised an eyebrow. "Even if I were looking for a stand-in, what good would you be sitting on it with your meager power?"

Although the Emperor had put it rather bluntly, Alvin didn't feel offended in the least. In fact, he was quite pleased.

The Golden Throne? Whoever wanted to sit on that could go ahead!

After all, even Malcador the Seal Keeper, hailed as the most powerful Psyker beneath the Master of Mankind and beyond the Alpha Plus level, had been reduced to a skeleton after sitting on it, hadn't he?

With Alvin's puny frame, he'd be drained dry just from touching the Golden Throne, let alone sitting on it.

Even the Bloodbrides, who excelled at torturing people, had asked when they first saw the Golden Throne, "Where did you find such an incredible torture device?" They'd called it the most ingenious and terrifying torture device they had ever seen.

That made it clear what sort of thing the Golden Throne really was, despite its name.

He'd sooner die than sit on it.

But even as he breathed a sigh of relief, an even bigger question began to gnaw at him. "If you're not asking