This is the bonus chapter for reaching 700 Powerstones.
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"Follow me."
Vance nodded and followed him into the tent area.
Behind him, [Selling Flatbread at the Terra Palace Gates]'s gaze stayed glued to his back until his figure disappeared deep into the encampment.
The interior of the tent was more spacious than it looked from the outside.
A portable field light hung from the ceiling, casting a cold, white glow. Simple moisture-proof mats lined the floor, and a few ammo crates were stacked in the corner.
Dead center, a man sat cross-legged on a military cot.
Silver-grey Gorgon Terminator armor, the Iron Hands crest on the left pauldron, the Roman numeral 'I' on the right.
First Company. Commander of the Morlock Guard.
But what really made Vance freeze the second he stepped into the tent was the sheer pressure.
An overwhelmingly suffocating aura crashed over him like a physical weight, wrapping around him from all sides. It felt like being stared down by a colossal dragon coiled in the shadows. Every pore on his body was screaming danger.
His muscles instinctively tensed up, and his heart rate spiked instantly.
It was a purely biological stress response, completely out of his conscious control. Vance's hands slowly balled into fists at his sides, his fingernails digging hard into his palms.
Then, he slowly raised his head.
Dark gold pupils.
Those eyes were looking right at him.
Five stars slowly spun deep within those irises, like some primordial laws of the universe grinding into motion.
A second later, the suffocating pressure receded like the tide.
The silver-grey figure on the cot cracked a slight smile.
"[The Imperium's Purest Inquisitor]."
Paul's voice was calm, carrying a resonant, bassy quality. "You picked a pretty good name."
Vance slowly let out a long breath, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"It's nowhere near as good as your username, [Paul Dawn]."
Paul chuckled and pointed a finger at the nearby ammo crates.
"Grab a seat."
Vance nodded, walked over, and sat down. His gaze lingered on Paul's face for a second.
It was a rugged, chiseled face that was hard to pin an exact age on. If you just went by looks, he seemed to be in his early forties. But the sheer depth in those dark gold eyes made it feel like he was vastly older than that.
"At first, my name wasn't this either," Paul began, a hint of reminiscence in his tone.
"But as I gradually began to understand the truth of this game and this world, I realized the path I had to walk. I figured out what my true purpose was."
Vance chewed on those words carefully, his brow furrowing slightly.
The game.The truth of the world.The path.True purpose.
He looked up, meeting those dark gold eyes.
"What exactly do you mean by that?" His tone was calm, but the question was completely blunt. "What do you mean by the 'truth of this game and this world'?"
Paul looked at him and shook his head.
"That's something you have to figure out for yourself."
His voice was soft. "As for your path, you already made your choice the moment you logged into this game."
Vance fell silent for a few seconds.
"Are you saying..."
Paul shook his head again, cutting him off.
"You and I are walking different paths."
"I'm not going to judge you, nor am I going to lecture you."
"And I doubt you came all the way here today just to ask me strange philosophical questions."
Vance stared at him for a few seconds before giving a slow nod.
He shoved his swirling thoughts aside and steered the conversation back on track.
"Are you guys Initial Beta players?"
"Yes," Paul nodded. "You guys already figured that out yourselves, didn't you?"
"Then did you come here to stop Fulgrim's fall to Chaos?"
Paul nodded, then shook his head.
"Fated destiny is incredibly hard to rewrite, even if we're the ones trying to break the board."
His voice was calm, but carried a heavy weight.
"But no matter how hard it is, I have to try. For the sake of Crimson Dawn's path."
"This has nothing to do with the Imperium, and it has nothing to do with Chaos."
"It's for the untold trillions of Imperial citizens who will be caught in the crossfire of the Horus Heresy."
Vance was stunned.
He stared at Paul like he was looking at a weirdo.
"But isn't this just a game?" His tone bled with absolute confusion. "Sure, it's way too realistic, and it completely copied the Warhammer lore beat-for-beat..."
"Why do you care so much about these so-called Imperial citizens?"
"To the point where you'd rather establish a completely new faction instead of going all-in to help the Imperium thwart the Ruinous Powers' schemes?"
"Wouldn't it be better to just help the Emperor achieve his ultimate master plan?"
"Isn't the Emperor trying to forge an empire where humanity reigns supreme anyway?"
Paul looked at him, a flicker of complicated emotion crossing his dark gold eyes.
"Do you really think the Emperor's failure was purely due to the schemes of the Chaos Gods?"
Vance opened his mouth, but couldn't formulate an immediate answer.
Paul didn't wait for one. He stood up and continued speaking.
"No one can erase what the Emperor sacrificed for the survival of the human race."
"But he was way too impatient, and far too cold-blooded."
"Even without the Four Gods interfering, his grand design was never going to succeed."
"Even now, before he's permanently stuck on the Golden Throne, the entire Imperium of Man is—to its citizens..."
"...just one astronomically massive, blood-sucking machine."
Vance's brow furrowed deeply.
"Under his rule, countless Imperial citizens have never known basic human dignity. They're just treated as expendable consumables, bleeding themselves dry to feed his colossal Legions."
"Behind every epic Astartes legend you read about, there are mountains of nameless corpses paving the way."
"But look at the pages of history recording the glorious triumphs of the double-headed aquila. Have they ever once mentioned the people who gave their entire lives for the Imperium?"
"People only sing praises of the Emperor's greatness, the Primarchs' greatness, the Astartes' greatness, and the Mechanicus's greatness."
"Towering monuments and cathedrals rise up on world after world."
"Meanwhile, the Imperial citizens who literally built them with their own blood and sweat get paid pennies. They drag around broken bodies, burning through their laughably short lifespans just to keep this massive machine lurching forward."
"The people silently breaking their backs in the logistical supply chains die completely forgotten under the crushing weight of brutal, unfeeling tithes."
"Who ever sings praises of their greatness?"
"Hell, does anyone even remember their greatness?"
"Can the Emperor really not feel the suffering his citizens are going through?"
"Out of all the immensely powerful militant institutions he created, which one of them was established to protect the actual livelihood of the people?"
"He only cares about his empire and the survival of the species. He only needs overwhelming military force. He doesn't need humanity to be happy."
The tent fell dead silent.
The portable light cast a cold, white glow between the two men. Vance's fingers curled inward slightly.
"The Emperor's starting point was correct."
Paul's voice broke the silence. "But he took the wrong fork in the road right out the gate." "Because right from the start, he compromised with the Mechanicus just because they held immense power."
"He turned a blind eye, letting the Mechanicus, the nobles, the planetary governors, and all the other privileged classes run completely rampant inside his Imperium."
"Simply because their power could help him fuel his Great Crusade."
"That is what the Imperium of Man is in this era."
"Bloody and brutal. Crushing the vast majority of humanity under its heel, all under the banner of preserving the species."
"But a true Imperium of Man should be built for the people."
His voice suddenly rose, carrying an unquestionable conviction:
"Every single Imperial citizen—they are the true, indispensable power of the Imperium."
"If he lacks even that most fundamental level of ideological awareness..."
Paul looked right at Vance, his dark gold eyes practically glowing.
"With all due respect, the Emperor is not a qualified ruler."
"The survival of humanity does not require a heartless dictator acting out some self-indulgent savior complex."
Vance just sat there.
A violent storm of thoughts churned through his head.
Is the Emperor wrong?Is the Imperium really that horrible?
He desperately wanted to argue back. He wanted to say that the Emperor was doing it for humanity, that his hand was forced, that his grand design was so massive he had no choice but to sacrifice a fraction of the population...
But the words wouldn't leave his throat.
Because everything Paul just said was an undeniable fact.
The underhive scum fighting just to survive another day. The laborers working sixteen-hour shifts in the manufactorums. The Astra Militarum guardsmen shipped off to the meat grinder as literal cannon fodder...
In the grand, sweeping narrative of the Imperium, they were just statistics. Consumables.
Did they ever really experience basic human dignity?
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Next Bonus at 800 Powerstones.