The Warp was convulsing in mad agitation.
The Emperor’s gaze had come to this place, and the attention of the Chaos Gods had been drawn here as well.
Every omen had already explained the truth: the Emperor’s blood in the hands of the man before them was genuine.
“Then how should I address you?”
Angrona withdrew that aggressive pressure and asked in words she made as proper and respectful as possible.
“Uh, I definitely have to keep my true name hidden, but you can call me Lancelot.
I just don’t know whether that guy, the Emperor, ever played King Arthur…”
As Lancelot said this, he suddenly noticed that Angrona’s expression had turned somewhat complicated.
Thinking she knew the Arthurian story and assumed that he, as Lancelot, had cuckolded Arthur, he immediately explained.
“Don’t worry.
I have nothing to do with that godforsaken woman Erda.
Back then, she probably lost her mind as a Perpetual, got tricked by Chaos, and opened a Warp vortex that scattered all of you brothers and sisters across the galaxy.
I swear that had absolutely nothing to do with me!”
Lancelot’s words echoed through the arena.
The moment they fell, the loyal Crimson Angels could not help taking a collective step backward.
They had been frightened.
Hell no!
I do not want to hear this!
What the hell was this ancient fossil of an old man, who looked young on the outside, actually saying?
So the Primarchs had a mother in addition to the Emperor as their father?
And that mother was the chief culprit behind the Primarchs being lost throughout the universe?
Even the normally ferocious Khârn felt half the heat in his blood go cold at that moment.
His fighting style might have been extremely savage, but in truth, everyone knew Khârn merely liked making others think he was crude so they would overlook his deep intelligence.
But now…
he began to feel that his intelligence was harming him, because he could fully understand the elder’s words.
The things this elder had just said…
A sense of absurdity appeared in Khârn’s heart.
Those matters, described in ornate words within the Lectitio Divinitatus, had taken on an entirely different appearance from this elder’s mouth, as if they were trivial household gossip.
So there had been such hidden circumstances behind the Primarchs’ scattering…
and he had never expected that, besides the Emperor as their father, his Primarch actually had a mother in this world as well.
Since she was a Perpetual…
she should still be alive…
“It doesn’t matter…
She is already dead.
She died during the Siege of Terra.”
With one quiet sentence, Angrona brushed the matter aside.
Her psychic power sensed the storm raging through the Warp, and her gaze turned toward the source of it all.
“Lancelot, since you say you preserved a sliver of hope for humanity, why have you appeared here?”
As Angrona spoke, Lancelot pulled a small portion of his attention away from the prompt on the Secret-Keeper panel.
…
Secret recorded: Erda, Mother of the Primarchs.
Secret Grade: Level One: Silent Grade.
Description: Erda, Mother of the Primarchs, did not wish for her children to become tools of the Emperor.
Under Chaos’s deception, she stirred up a Warp storm and scattered the Primarchs across the universe.
Reward: Custom Dreadnought Armor
Combat Score: +1 (Secret leaked, deducted)
Current Combat Score: 95
…
So the matter of Erda was a secret too?!
Lancelot was slightly startled.
He had not expected to trigger a leak without realizing it.
But Erda’s matter was actually only Level One?
Perhaps it was because the secret was too old and could no longer have much impact on the current Materium.
The special trait of his Secret-Keeper system was that recording secrets granted rewards.
Correspondingly, if he actively leaked a secret from his own mouth, the matching amount of Combat Score would be deducted.
Fortunately, a Level One secret only added an inconsequential single point to his Combat Score.
The reward would not be withheld, so he had still obtained a suit of Dreadnought armor this time.
But the thing was essentially an iron coffin, so Lancelot did not pay it much attention.
“Ser?”
Returning from his momentary daze and hearing Primarch Angrona ask again why he had come here, Lancelot quickly organized his words.
“In itself…
this was an accident.”
Lancelot weighed his phrasing.
“My plan was supposed to be for me to appear when the Imperium had no Primarchs standing watch over it, then use the Emperor’s blood to awaken one of the Emperor’s loyal children.
But from the look of it, I seem to have arrived too early.”
When Angrona heard this, an indescribable emotion flickered through her crimson-gold eyes.
“Do you mean that only when all loyalist Primarchs have vanished and the Imperium of Man already stands on the brink of destruction should it be time for you to appear?”
“That is not what I mean.
But even if the Primarchs disappeared, I still do not believe the Imperium of Man would truly head toward extinction.”
Lancelot gently shook his head.
In another world, even without the Primarchs’ existence, the Imperium of Man had endured ten thousand years amid storm and ruin.
Compared to this mirror universe, the Primarchs of this world still existed.
But the battlefield of his main world clearly needed his help more.
“For now, I need to know which millennium it currently is.
If possible, I need to meet the Emperor face-to-face within seven days, because I have a plan.”
“A plan?”
Lancelot looked at the loyal Primarch before him, who held the Emperor’s Sword, and said, “Yes.
I need him to pour power into his blood.
Then, on some future day, I will return.
I will return with gains far exceeding what he paid.
I will return with hope.”
“I call it…
supporting the future.”
Lancelot reached out and raised the Emperor’s blood in his hand.
Angrona stepped forward and took the vial of serum from him.
The instant that thing left his palm, Lancelot even felt a hollow emptiness inside him.
Yet at the same time, his whole body felt as light as if a tremendous burden had been lifted.
“Hoo…”
Lancelot let out a long breath, while Angrona stood before him.
She silently looked down at the quartz tube in her hand, at her father’s blood flowing inside it like a gemstone.
Then, for the first time in a long while, she sensed from Lancelot an incomparably brilliant lightness, like complete release from a heavy burden.
Angrona’s gaze fixed on Lancelot in an instant.
As the distance between them narrowed, her eyes could not help wavering slightly.
So dazzling…
Such a brilliant emotion and soul.
That was the first thing Primarch Angrona sensed from this “old friend of the Emperor” after drawing close to Lancelot.