175. Round Table Talk (Conclusion, Courage and Mental Trauma, 4k)

In the end, the old man never answered the question.

Was it that he did not want to, or that he did not dare?

His sons all had their own answers—in any case, after the old man dissolved into golden radiance, the conference room sank into silence once more. And this time, they remained silent longer than all the previous silences put together.

The Glyph Array, too, tactfully refrained from disturbing their thoughts.

This so-called artificial intelligence, built from complex technology, was becoming more and more human. Its original version, the Magic Array Hub, had been the same. The latter evolved every day; the countless humans aboard the Vengeance were providing it with a great many emotions to observe. One day, it would give birth to a true "self."

And that gave rise to another question.

What, exactly, was the self?

Roboute Guilliman was pondering that question now.

Humanity was a vast whole. They had many things in common, and many personal specialties as well.

Guilliman was one of them, and what he was best at was thinking. He could use his ocean-vast store of knowledge and terrifying analytical ability to instantly deduce the state of a battlefield. He could even remember the name of a Departmento Munitorum official he had met forty years ago. Yet he could not arrive at an answer to this question.

Here, he was loyal.

There, he had been a traitor.

Why? Was it destiny, or character?

Or perhaps personal will amounted to nothing beneath the gaze of the Evil Gods. The so-called self they took such pride in was merely a plaything in the palms of gods, and free will did not, in truth, exist at all.

A terrible thought began to gather and take shape in his heart—*If I cannot decide any of