Malcador admired the Chief. He admired him from the bottom of his heart.
Almost everything the Chief had done could be called saintly, displaying humanity's unyielding spirit of self-improvement to the fullest.
He himself stood at the pinnacle among scientists, engineers, inventors, and innovators. Yet while his fellow colleagues gradually ceased to regard themselves as part of humanity, he stubbornly held to the principle of humanity first.
His greatest enemies were the colleagues who had once worked beside him. With his own intellect alone, he had confronted and battled those equally brilliant humans.
Yet it was precisely that overly perfect radiance that stirred Malcador's deepest instincts of caution.
He understood human nature too well, and he understood too well the process of creating an "idol."
He had personally participated in shaping the concept of the [Emperor]: taking Neoth, a Perpetual who had originally merely possessed immense psychic power, and step by step placing him upon a divine pedestal, molding him into a pillar of humanity's spirit and forging an almost perfect leader.
Throughout that process, he had been both a participant and a clear-eyed observer.
He knew that Neoth beneath the Emperor's radiance had also known confusion, anger, pain, and even calculations that were not entirely honorable.
The Emperor's greatness lay in his eventual triumph over those negative aspects of humanity and his choice to sacrifice and devote himself to humanity as a whole. But he had never been born perfect.
Yet the image of the Chief presented in this account was far too... flawless.
He possessed extraordinary wisdom capable of unlocking the Old Ones' treasures. To save humanity, he had unhesitatingly abandoned all worldly things and spent a thousand years seeking a hope that might or might not have existed.
Though humanity during the Dark Age of Technology had