Chapter 123: Facing Death as a Human
"What in the blazes are you all doing! Tech-Priests, cease your actions!"
This possibility suddenly occurred in Scyvilla's mind: Lucan wanted them dead, and was even willing to let all the soldiers here be buried with him!
And the Tech-Priests did indeed stop what they were doing, but only because they had already completed their work.
"All for the Holy Machine!"
The Tech-Priests looked at the reactor before them. In another two hours, the reactor would completely overload. The process was now irreversible.
A massive amount of plasma would pour into the planet's core, and the resulting detonation would be sufficient to destroy the planetary crust, achieving the goal of destroying the entire planet.
And they too would offer themselves up for the great Holy Machine. The terror of religion lay here; believers could willingly abandon their own lives for a single word, a single command, because in their hearts, they believed they would be closer to the god they worshipped after death.
Scyvilla also realized something was wrong. He tried to call out to Aspice to leave with him, but Aspice, who had already completely lost her mind, just sat cross-legged before the reactor, tightly clutching a double-headed eagle ornament, continuously chanting prayers to the God-Emperor.
It's unknown if it was her hallucination, but she seemed to already see the Golden Throne beckoning to her.
She was beyond saving. In Scyvilla's eyes, Aspice was completely beyond saving. He could only call out to his few remaining acolytes, wanting to charge outside. He had thought he would have to fight Lucan's soldiers, but at this moment, they showed no intention of blocking them at all.
Instead, they watched as Scyvilla charged out with his acolytes.
The soldiers warped in via Psy-crystals were one hundred percent loyal. They unhesitatingly pressed the detonator.
The clustered melta bombs installed on the elevator exploded.
The extreme heat completely destroyed the only elevator leading to the upper hive, also cutting off any chance for anyone to leave this place.
As Scyvilla looked at the ruins before him, he gritted his teeth and roared, cursing Lucan's treachery, for daring to plot against an Inquisitor.
But slowly, his emotions also stabilized.
"Lucan Mongorte… what exactly are you plotting? Are you really the Emperor's Living Saint?" Scyvilla muttered.
He began to recall all the intelligence he knew about Lucan and the Mongorte Dynasty. He knew Lucan was changing the Mongorte Dynasty, and he also knew of all the measures Lucan had implemented within Agathos.
After all, so many people traveled to Agathos for trade; this intelligence was practically out in the open.
From Lucan inheriting the position of Rogue Trader to developing his current strength, how long had it taken? A little over a year?
In the history of the Imperium, a year was but the blink of an eye.
Even now, Scyvilla still scoffed at Lucan's various measures. The Imperium was so large; Scyvilla had seen no shortage of idealists, nor had he seen a shortage of people who attempted reform.
But in the end, none of them met a good end. Some died in their own naivety. The resources within the entire Imperium's territory were limited; if you didn't sacrifice the interests of a portion of the people, it would only lead to the deaths of even more.
This was a cruel truth that many people simply couldn't accept.
And there were others who were corrupted by Chaos without their knowledge. The beautiful world they tried to create was just a trap slowly set for them by the Ruinous Powers.
In Scyvilla's memory, almost no idealist could reach the heights that Lucan had, let alone also be a Living Saint of the God-Emperor.
"Could he really change the Imperium?"
Scyvilla laughed. He was laughing at himself for suddenly having such a ridiculous thought. Even the great God-Emperor himself had once been unable to achieve that so-called ideal; otherwise, the Imperium would not have been mired in this swamp for ten thousand years.
Scyvilla knew he couldn't escape. Perhaps there were still other paths to the surface here, but they simply didn't have enough time. And Lucan's actions clearly meant he needed them to disappear from this world. Even if they reached the uphive, then what?
The end result would just be a different way to die.
Scyvilla gave up the struggle. In this final period of his life, Scyvilla suddenly recalled the time before he became an Inquisitor.
Back then, he had graduated from the brutal Schola Progenium with absolutely outstanding results. At that time, he still held incredibly lofty, even what his current self would consider naive, ideals.
With his excellent results, Scyvilla had been selected by a great Inquisitor to become one of his acolytes.
He had, of course, heard of the name of the Inquisition. They were responsible for exterminating xenos and various enemies of mankind. Their supreme power even allowed them to execute high-ranking Imperial officials. Even the powerful Angels of the Emperor were subject to their restraint. In Scyvilla's eyes, this was an excellent stage.
In his youth, he had wanted to change this world with his own hands, to exterminate all darkness and evil, thinking of personally eradicating all the enemies of the God-Emperor. All heretical acts were unforgivable.
At that time, he had even dispensed justice on the streets, stopping various criminal acts, and even used his own savings to help those in need.
But later, he discovered that his mentor had been observing his actions all along. He could even see a hint of mockery in his mentor's eyes.
As if these actions were so meaningless in his eyes.
Scyvilla couldn't understand why his mentor would have such thoughts. But as he became a formal Inquisitor, as he came to understand this cruel Imperium more and more, as he learned more and more secrets, he found that he was slowly becoming his mentor.
The Imperium was rotten, rotten to the core. His mentor had even used the lives of tens of thousands to teach Scyvilla how to abandon his pitiful compassion.
Heretical acts were being carried out in a small town. Heretics were trying to sacrifice some young girls to a Chaos God.
But when Scyvilla's sense of justice kicked in and he rescued the barely breathing girls and returned to the town for treatment, the plague within their bodies erupted. The tens of thousands of residents of the entire town were all turned into walking dead within a few minutes. And Scyvilla also watched with his own eyes as the girls he had rescued turned into a pile of living, rotten flesh.
He clearly hadn't sensed any signs of contamination on these girls, but when he saw that same mocking expression on his mentor's face, Scyvilla knew that he had seen it all along.
That time, his mentor had told Scyvilla that he had to forget his compassion; it would only harm him. An Inquisitor did not need such emotions.
In subsequent missions, he even saw his mentor use evil xenos artifacts, and even Chaos artifacts, to resolve threats to the Imperium.
An Inquisitor, who was supposed to purge these things, was actively using these forbidden artifacts. If it were anyone else, an Inquisitor could even execute them on the spot.
He learned again: to eliminate these things, one must understand them. As long as it was beneficial to the Imperium, these evil artifacts could also be utilized.
His mentor's actions also taught him to be flexible, which was why he had proactively come to the lawless land of the Expanse and was willing to turn a blind eye to the Rogue Traders. He didn't feel that what he did was blasphemous; he was helping the Imperium.
But later, as the saying goes, "walk by the river long enough, and your shoes will get wet." Scyvilla's mentor was eventually influenced by those evil artifacts over time.
When his own mentor was declared a heretic by the Inquisition, Scyvilla proactively took on the mission of hunting his mentor and successfully killed him.
Looking at his already mad, physically mutating mentor, Scyvilla did not feel the same hatred as the other members of the Inquisition, did not see him as a traitor.
Because he knew very well how much his mentor had once done for the Imperium. And almost no Inquisitor of the Inquisition met a good end.
Perhaps in a few years, he too would be like his mentor...
"Perhaps it's better to die now, still in the guise of a human?"
(End of Chapter)
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