Chapter 238: First of All, I Am Not a God
The harsh white light from the ceiling of the interrogation room beat down like a blade, casting a chilling gleam over the steel interrogation table.
In the surrounding darkness, the Grave Warden stood silently at the door. Since the moment they entered, the soldier hadn't moved an inch—like a motionless statue.
The lead interrogator's seat was empty. On the other side of the table, Margo silently swallowed, trying her best to shrink away from the harsh white light.
The cold sensation on her wrists was a constant reminder of her imprisoned state.
She shouldn't have spoken carelessly. For the first time, Margo realized that even words could be judged.
God, please forgive my foolishness.
Margo silently prayed. The vast emptiness of the room seemed to stretch time, giving everything a surreal, foggy feeling.
"*#?,."
What?
Margo opened her eyes and glanced sideways at the person making strange noises beside her.
Next to the Hadeshound auxiliary soldier sat Magos Korklan. Compared to Margo's simple restraints, the Death Guard had truly gone all out on this Magos—he was thoroughly bound, with every auxiliary limb forcibly restrained.
In addition, the Death Guard's Techmarine had locked every joint capable of movement and even uploaded a copy of command codes into Magos.
Throughout all of this, Korklan had cooperated with an absurdly docile attitude.
"What's wrong?"
Margo whispered to the Magos.
"They're coming soon."
Even bound from head to toe, Korklan still tried to wriggle slightly, attempting to reassure Margo that there was no need to worry.
"No need to worry—"
Korklan seemed to want to say more but suddenly fell silent, curling up among his red robes and chains.
"Quiet," Korklan whispered.
Margo swallowed again. She knew exactly what this lunatic was hinting at: the one who would judge them was about to arrive. She prayed—for at least a swift death.
The sound of armor joints clinking echoed in the silence as the Grave Warden at the door finally moved, silently pulling open the door to allow the interrogator inside.
Blinding light spilled from outside, and a tall figure entered the room—
No. That—that… the hazy silhouette from her memories, the unique pauldrons…
Margo instinctively held her breath.
Wait— oh my god. Oh my god!
Hades?! That's the Lord of the Underworld?!!
Margo was certain her entire body was trembling. Before being locked in here, she never imagined that she and this half-mad Magos would attract attention from someone so high up. Even having a regular Death Guard deal with her had already been the limit of her imagination.
But now—the upper leadership of the entire legion—Hades himself!
All because of her reckless speculations?
She had been personally noticed by Hades?!
Margo felt like she was going to pass out. The weight of the overwhelming reality crushed her. Trembling and reverent, she buried her face deep in the shadow beneath the table, desperately seeking a sliver of comfort.
Having just finished processing a mountain of paperwork, Hades sat silently at the interrogation table, eyeing the two before him with a thoughtful expression.
He motioned for the Grave Warden outside to disable the recording devices in the interrogation room. Everything that happened here would be recorded by Hades himself—and no one else.
One was a trembling Hadeshound auxiliary soldier.
The other was Magos Korklan, currently putting on the most shameless performance of playing dumb.
Hades looked at Korklan's exaggerated act and sighed deeply.
Which only made the Hadeshound soldier shake even more violently. Hades had no choice but to speak as gently as he could.
But he didn't realize that to Margo, his deep voice was like a scythe dragging across the floor—slowly scraping along her spine.
"Don't be nervous, Margo of Squad 037. I'm only going to ask you a few questions."
Margo kept her head down and nodded blindly.
Hades sighed again inwardly.
This was the same support soldier who had once shouted "For Hades!"
Of course he remembered her.
He had even suspected she might be an Alpha Legion agent. But after reviewing her records, he found… nothing suspicious.
Therefore, Hades had simply instructed the Grave Warden to keep an extra eye on her for a while and had also asked her auxiliary corps commander to pass along a message: stop with the superstitions and believe in the Imperial Truth.
Originally, that would've been the end of it. In fact, the originator of the "Lord of the Underworld" rumors wasn't even Margo—it was another mortal with a fondness for weaving tales.
But unexpectedly….
Hades turned his gaze to Korklan.
This Magos clearly knew exactly what he was doing.
Realizing that this overly nervous girl wouldn't be able to answer anything properly, Hades decided to knock some sense into Magos currently playing dumb.
He rested his arms on the table, interlaced his fingers, and covered the lower half of his face with his hands, leaving only his solid-colored eyes visible—eyes that betrayed no hint of what he was thinking.
"Korklan, care to explain? Why did you leave your assigned zone without authorization, and proceed to harass a mortal support trooper?"
"My lord, you must come to understand and embrace your inner truth. You can no longer run from it."
Hades. Stay calm. Stay calm.
"I want a straightforward answer to my question, Korklan."
Korklan fell silent for a moment.
"I did it intentionally, my lord."
Hades raised an eyebrow and motioned for him to go on.
"Margo's discovery completed the final piece of the puzzle. A believer's prayer truly does bring observation and response. That alone fulfills the definition of divinity—even if you yourself refuse to accept it."
Observation and response... Hades was indeed in need of information in that area, but that could wait.
He forcibly calmed his increasingly irate thoughts and spoke with finality:
"Listen closely, Korklan. I'll say this only once."
"First, I am not a god."
"Second, I am not a god."
"Lastly, I am. Not. A god."
"...Did you understand?"
Hades said through gritted teeth.
"I don't know how you came to your conclusions, Magos, but compared to Margo—who barely knows me—you've been around me for so long. What the hell are you thinking?"
Hades had never imagined that he, of all people, could be the subject of some rumor painting him as a god.
At the very least, the gods of Warhammer weren't like this. Hades distinctly remembered those days back on Barbarus, drifting through life—how was that anything but a tale of an ordinary, unlucky human?
Even his later strength came only from his physique and being forcefully infused with fragments of the Void Dragon. There was nothing godlike about him beyond that.
Besides, what kind of god worked himself half to death every day like an overworked corporate drone?
If anything, Hades preferred to think of himself as a miserable Warhammer wage slave—with zero pay, no less.
With a straight face, Hades picked up a stack of documents from the table and began to read them out one by one:
"Korklan, let's see. You've stored over 3 terabytes of argumentative material in your database."
"You've been caught spreading dangerous ideologies to the Mechanicus of Mint and Rust."
"Your assistant Jin once tried to stop you, but… you convinced him to believe your nonsense instead."
At that, Hades suddenly realized that although Korklan and Jin worked diligently in his Blackstone Lab every day, perhaps it was time he paid more attention to his employees' psychological and mental well-being.
"And finally, you attempted to lure Margo into compiling a distribution manual for your theories?"
By the time he finished reading those, the first one to fall silent… was Hades himself.
This deeply, profoundly, shook him.
Hades was stunned.
Whether it was him rushing out of the lab to fight for lunch in the cafeteria, or lying on the lab floor to sleep, or cracking dumb jokes with the servitors all day...
Korklan, after witnessing all of that, how could you still do this with a straight face?!
In Hades' mind, the first and foremost requirement for a person—or a being—to be called a god was mystery.
Whether it was something cultivated deliberately by the being themselves, or simply an aura created by distance, those things that received worship always maintained a veil between themselves and their followers—
It was this veil that allowed the believers to deify such entities.
Hades could still understand the actions of the Hadeshound units—after all, among mortal units, it wasn't uncommon for people to secretly refer to powerful Space Marines, Primarchs, or even the Emperor as "angels," "demigods," or "deities."
And the Legion had always turned a blind eye to such behavior. After all, the charisma of Primarchs and the Emperor… in a certain sense, if you changed those nouns into adjectives, it wasn't entirely wrong.
But—the prerequisite was that Space Marines, Primarchs, and the Emperor were sufficiently distant from mortals.
With the exception of Sanguinius, Hades highly doubted that the original inhabitants of the Primarchs' homeworlds had ever worshiped them as gods from the start—
Because they were close enough to people. Apart from their extraordinary abilities, their behavior still clearly revealed their human nature.
Take Mortarion, for example. At first, the people of Barbarus thought he was just some oversized freak with a disease.
It wasn't until Mortarion led the people of Barbarus to slay the xenos overlords that he began to be seen as a gifted warlord—not a god.
Only after Mortarion joined the Legion—with the power and status that came with it—and became distant enough from mortals did his reputation soar to the point where some mortals who glimpsed him on the battlefield mistook him for a demigod.
But even then, the prerequisite remained: mystique.
Hades simply couldn't wrap his head around Korklan's logic. If nothing else, Hades was confident that he was the most human Space Marine in the entire Death Guard.
And it wasn't like he ever put on airs in front of Korklan. Sure, he maintained the serious image of a Death Guard commander in front of others, but in front of this Magos, who was already bound to his side, Hades had long stopped caring about appearances.
And even so, even so, Korklan still had the gall to call him a god?!
Hades could feel a twitch at the corner of his mouth—that kind of tight ache from wanting to pull a face but holding it in.
He silently stared at Korklan's activity logs.
This Magos had trimmed and edited quite a few of Hades' photos.
Carefully selected moments. Meticulously chosen compositions. Smoke and faint light swirling around the central figure. A solemn and silent face cast into darkness, where light could not reach—
Hades didn't even know he could look that cool.
But he also knew, very well, that most of the time he appeared in front of Korklan, he was wearing a Techmarine's wrinkled uniform, half-covered in grease, and beating the crap out of machines in the workshop like some scruffy mechanic.
As his thoughts spun wildly, Hades still couldn't figure out why Korklan was doing any of this—or what his goal was.
".…Korklan," Hades finally asked, his lips barely moving, "why do you think I'm a god?"
How can Korklan claim that he's a god when he knows the way he usually behaved?
The red-robed mechanical chunk beside the tribunal table wriggled a bit in its chains before speaking with unwavering resolve:
"My lord, because I know the truth behind the grand illusion."
"Only the most ignorant believers are fooled by appearances and actions. But I—I know, I know—"
"Those towering golden cathedrals, the servants singing flowery praise, the elaborate gestures and polished manners—it is only the most foolish mortals who are swayed by such things!"
It was like a nerve had been struck. Korklan's voice rose in fury:
"Those shallow idolaters! Deceived by handsome faces and emotional tricks! Who decided that gods must be glorious and beautiful on the outside?!"
"Mortals are merely worshipping the rulers of their own kind—mistakenly treating what they can't possess as divine by default!"
"Enough!"
Hades shot to his feet and slammed the table, a thunderous bang erupting through the room.
Bang—!
Thankfully, this was the Death Guard's private interrogation room, deep in a strictly monitored sector where no other factions had access.
Otherwise, the things Korklan had just said… would've made the hairs on the back of Hades' neck stand up.
"Korklan," Hades said sternly, "this is your final warning. Everything you just said is heresy. It's all baseless conjecture on your part. The Death Guard has never fed you ideas or information like this!"
The white light above shone down onto Hades' head, casting his face into ominous shadow against the glare.
A terrifying expression surfaced on his features.
Margo, curled up at the side of the table, could barely breathe. She could feel it—
That was killing intent.
If she had been the one receiving this lecture, she'd probably have fainted on the spot.
But to her surprise, Korklan's deliberately flattering voice rang out again—this time almost gentle, even submissive.
"Yes, I understand, my lord. Everything I've said is purely my own speculation. I've never voiced these thoughts before."
"But, Lord Hades—My Lord of the Underworld—I only wish to express that I am not one of those ignorant mortals. And that true divinity does not need to fit the traditional image."
"Why do you still hesitate? Are you hung up on not being tall enough? On your life being too rough around the edges? No—those are just appearances."
"You possess great power. You banish evil. You respond to the prayers of believers. Why cling to definitions created by mere mortals?"
Hades fell silent. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, slowly, he spoke.
"Korklan, don't use language and definitions to blur the line of principle."
He glanced at Margo.
There were things that should not be spoken in front of a mortal.
"I can tell you this: I am not a god. I understand my own existence. I remember everything I've experienced here. There are many things I cannot do. I am not some selfless, morally flawless being."
"Korklan, I don't know if it's my Black Domain that's confused you, but let me be clear: I am not a god. Do you understand?"
"At the very least—right now—there are no gods among humanity."
"If you're still confused by my abilities, I'm willing to explain them in detail. But don't treat what you don't understand as something divine."
"This so-called 'great power' and 'banish evil'—it's nothing more than my Black Domain in effect. People like you, worshiping things you don't understand… How are you any different from the ignorant fools of old who bowed down to powerful psykers?"
"My lord," Korklan's mechanical voice cut in, cold and unwavering, silencing Hades' words, "but you cannot explain the fact that you can respond to mortal prayers."
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