The Custodes knew those fragments of buried history. He forced down the halberd in his hands, stared into the Iron Man's scarlet eyes, and said in a low voice, "Nothing but a clumsy excuse to cover up your betrayal!"
"A dull argument." The instant the shield overloaded, the Iron Man stretched out an arm and lightly caught the Custodes' descending halberd in a grip like giant pincers.
"And now? You are attacking humanity again!" the Custodes roared. He pulled the trigger and fired a bolt round, then swept his halberd back before him while the Iron Man tilted its head aside to evade.
"Right and wrong are buried beneath the changes of history. As the surviving intelligent machines that helped humanity achieve victory, we fulfilled our duty."
"Now, we are loyal to Lady Erda. Just as you are loyal to your master, it has nothing to do with right or wrong—only one's position!"
With that, the Iron Man raised an arm and made a grasping motion at the Custodes. An invisible force came from its arm.
The Custodes tensed his body and avoided his vital points. The moment he dulled his senses and used his shoulder armor to receive the energy blast, there was no scorching energy flow as he had imagined. Instead, his body suddenly felt light, followed by a sensation of weightlessness.
A gravity weapon!
Even the Custodes' powerful heart could not help but feel helpless. By artificially creating microscopic singularities, it collapsed gravity and warped space, killing enemies by increasing or reducing gravity.
The Custodes was helpless. He already knew that death awaited him.
With the strongest weapons and equipment granted by the Emperor and an extraordinary physique tempered through Bio-alchemy, the Custodes should have been able to contend with any creature in the physical universe.
Unfortunately, the Iron Men were creations humanity had forged during its glorious age to rule the galaxy. There was still a gap between them.
The Iron Man did not strike a killing blow. Its mechanical voice hissed beside the Custodes' ear. "I hold the humanity of old in the highest respect. They conquered the galaxy with wisdom and technology. The stars trembled beneath humanity's will, and the universe bowed before them. Yet in you, I see only blindness and worship."
The Custodes said nothing. His body floated within the gravitational field, without a single point of leverage, unable to mount a counterattack.
The mechanical voice grew colder, and killing intent gradually rose from the Iron Man. "If I kill you, there will not be even the slightest trace of guilt in my soul circuits. All that will arise is pity and mockery."
The arm made of an unknown material gleamed even more brightly. The Iron Man clenched its five fingers, and within the gravitational field, the Custodes' body was twisted by gravity. His muscles were torn apart, and his bones shattered inch by inch.
His superhuman internal organs gradually failed, his auramite armor deformed, and his flesh slowly collapsed. Blood sprayed from his wounds as though squeezed under immense pressure.
The extraordinary body the Custodes had taken pride in was utterly incapable of resistance before the Iron Man's manipulation. As the gravitational field continued to compress, flesh and auramite were kneaded together into a ball of meat.
At death's door, he caught sight of all his comrades lying dead from the corner of his eye. The Thunder Warriors and mortal troops could not stand against the Extermination Automata and were slaughtered like lambs.
Before he lost consciousness, he saw a golden light descend from farther away. With his remaining vocal cords, he cried out weakly, "For the Emperor!"
Deep within the Imperial laboratory, the Emperor's loyal servants were bleeding.
Protected by the Iron Men and the Extermination Automata, Erda was unharmed. On the way to the laboratory, every armed person who stood in her path was mercilessly erased by the Iron Men.
The corridors and passageways were scenes of utter devastation!
The stench of blood was thick enough to make one faint. Warm scarlet blood flowed across the cold corridors, while human corpses and body parts were smeared across the walls like careless graffiti.
Erda closed her eyes and avoided looking at the dead. She had never imagined that so many casualties would result, much less dared to look directly at such misery.
Scientists had taken up weapons against the battle machines of the Golden Age. It was a one-sided slaughter. Though they knew they could not delay them for even a second, they still did not hesitate. They used courage to suppress their fear and kept firing at the Iron Men.
"Please forgive me. To resist an even darker future, I have no choice but to do this." Erda did not dare look at the hatred in the dead men's eyes. Blood soaked through the soles of her shoes, warm and scorching like lava.
An eerie Warp light rose in her eyes. Under the influence of Chaos power, she was already delirious. She muttered hysterically and continuously apologized to the dead.
Unaware that, in the eyes of others, her face had become twisted and savage, her lips curled back in a grotesque expression.
When the last guard fell, Erda stepped through the slick blood to the incubation chambers. Her palm gently brushed over each Primarch, and clarity returned to her eyes.
Tears filled her eyes, and her face was gentle and loving. She leaned against the incubation chambers and listened to the powerful heartbeats of every Primarch.
"Lady, a powerful psyker has broken in. The machines guarding the entrance have lost contact. Whatever you intend to do, you must do it quickly."
The cold voice shattered the loving scene. The Iron Man ordered the Extermination Automata to form a defensive formation, activated the defensive force field at full power, and prepared for a hard battle.
The Iron Man activated weapons designed for psykers, lowered its stance warily, and directed the Extermination Automata to block the entrance.
Nearly every machine outside lost contact in an instant. The intruder was extremely powerful, and his psychic strength even exceeded the logic of computational thought.
Erda did not dare delay. She carefully drew an ancient dagger from her robes.
The only extraordinary thing about it was the flowing golden light along its blade. It came from the same source as the Emperor's psychic power. Tens of thousands of years ago, the Emperor himself had infused this dagger with psychic energy, preserving it until now.
The Emperor's power was far too powerful in the material universe. The evil power of the Warp could not destroy the Emperor's barrier standing in reality. It could only use Erda to defeat the Emperor's power with the Emperor's power.
She hurried to the stone pedestal, where the golden crystal containing the Emperor's power had been placed. All she needed to do was destroy it and let a Warp storm sweep through this place, taking all the Primarchs away.
As Erda gripped the dagger in both hands and raised it high, she could clearly feel that beyond the material universe, countless eyes in the Warp were watching her.
The gods waited for her in overwhelming excitement. Countless fates seemed to rest in her hands.
Whispers came, murmuring of a dark future and urging her to shatter the barrier quickly. Pleading voices rang beside her ears, utterly sincere as they begged her not to do this.
Fate froze, and time pressed the pause button.
Past and future, reality and the Warp—an invisible pressure as heavy as a galaxy seemed to descend upon Erda's shoulders.
Her entire body trembled. With the dagger held aloft in her delirium, her remaining reason shook with hesitation and doubt. Was releasing the Primarchs truly the right choice?
"Right!" The urging voices answered in unison, firm and resolute. Countless hands pressed down on the dagger.
They could not wait for Erda to drive the dagger down and pull open the first page of the conspiracy.
"Wrong!" Countless warnings swirled chaotically at the edge of her consciousness, doing everything they could to stop her.
They pleaded, as if unwilling souls from the past and future were trying to stop Erda.
Deep within Erda's soul, Chaos power and reason intertwined. Doubt rose in her heart, and the tip of the dagger trembled, wavering between choices.
"Boom!" The stone elevator crashed rapidly to the ground with a tremendous roar.
The violent sound was the final straw. Under the immense pressure, Erda's last remnants of reason vanished, leaving only the image of the Emperor and the Primarchs slaughtering one another in her mind.
A burning galaxy! A chaotic Imperium!
Boundless pressure condensed into something tangible, gradually crushing her reason. Between the choice and the pressure, Erda's mind stood on the brink of collapse.
"You cannot command me!" The woman holding fate's course screamed sharply. Her mind was consumed by Chaos, and she finally erupted in hysterics!
Erda screamed amid radiance, her form swelling into a towering figure. This was the body she used only in battle, yet now she used it to resist those whispers and that crushing burden.
Chaos power was driven out by her powerful body, and her mind instantly returned to normal.
Erda's lips had gone pale, and she trembled violently. Her mind had never been so clear.
After giving one final lingering look at the Primarchs sleeping peacefully within the incubation chambers, she used all her strength to drive the dagger down, piercing the Emperor's psychic radiance.
This was not the result of Chaos fanning the flames. It was a decision she had made with her own will.
Without Chaos influence or any other excuse, a mother whispered with incomparable resolve, using her own will, "Freedom..."
The instant the elevator doors opened, the Emperor saw that the psychic barrier had been destroyed. He had always been silent and rarely showed emotion, but at this moment, his voice was filled with such sorrow that it broke the heart. "No..."
It was a father's regret, as his children were about to leave him and fall into the unknown.
It was the lament of the Master of Mankind, as his closest friend betrayed him one after another.
A psychic hand effortlessly crushed the shield and squeezed the Iron Man from the Dark Age of Technology into a lump of metal before casually tossing it aside. The Emperor extended his right hand and fired psychic lightning, attempting to restore the barrier and salvage some of the loss.
In that prolonged instant, the Chaos Gods hidden behind the veil of reality revealed themselves. Together, they wielded the power of the Warp to suppress the Emperor's strength.
The psychic lightning slowly faded. He watched helplessly as a Warp storm rose within the laboratory, tore the incubation chambers from their foundations, and dragged them into the Warp.
When the Warp storm subsided, the incubation chambers had vanished, leaving behind the sighing laughter of the gods.
Erda stood there blankly. Her hands fell to her sides, and her body collapsed weakly to the ground. The dagger in her hand had lost its psychic power and slowly slipped onto the floor.
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