Alex wasn't concerned by the wavering within the Expeditionary Force; this level of impact was already considered mild, merely private discontent among the troops.
The truly alarming situation would be when Alex had to start calculating how to use three thousand Astartes Monks to slaughter three million Astra Militarum.
As this thought flashed through his mind, he subconsciously touched the plasma pistol at his waist, its cold metallic feel reminding him of the danger of such an idea.
Don't think this is a fantasy; in this galaxy shrouded by the shadow of the Warp, the corruption of Chaos often spreads faster than the deadliest virus.
Perhaps it's just a Hive City worker secretly collecting an eight-pointed star emblem, or a Planetary Governor unknowingly learning a name that shouldn't be uttered, and in the blink of an eye, tens of billions of lives on an entire planet will turn into lunatics prostrating themselves before altars of flesh.
By then, if killing tens of billions of people on a planet can't reverse its fall, the Inquisitor should issue an extermination order.
Speaking of which, a common misconception needs correcting—slaughtering an entire planet's population is not called an "extermination order."
A true extermination order involves using cyclonic torpedoes to blast continental shelves into glass, using plasma incinerator cannons to melt Hive Cities into lava lakes, completely transforming an entire planet into a desolate world that even the Tyranid Swarm cannot reclaim or reuse.
The Imperium cares whether adamantium veins and STC Templates fall into alien hands. As for the billions of mouths crowded like cockroaches in the Bottom Nest?
The Inquisition's archives describe them merely as a string of numbers, and that string of numbers is likely the official population count compiled by the Department of Internal Affairs centuries ago, which doesn't include the "people" in the Bottom Nest who have never even paid their tithe to the Imperium.
This sounds like a hellish joke, but when you see the trillions of conscription applications the Terra Council receives monthly, or hear about an agricultural world having to implement a "birth lottery" system due to population explosion, you'll understand that for the Imperium, periodically reducing the population through heresy trials is a form of alternative mercy.
This is also why the Imperium doesn't care about human lives, because the Imperium's manpower is truly inexhaustible!
And based on what Alex knows about the Blood Oath Society, the Inquisition's purge will likely be far more than just tens of billions of people.
It has been said many times before: this is a branch sect of the Ecclesiarchy that has widespread influence among the lower classes in the Mariupol Sector. Their daily missionary activities involve providing medical aid to those lower-class people who lack medical care!
One can imagine how many people have come into contact with the Blood Oath Society and received their treatment!
According to the Inquisition's usual tradition, not only will the entire Society be uprooted, but every preaching hall they've used, every patient they've treated, and even every street where people merely used the same water purification system as them, will be marked as a "purification zone."
Believe me, in such matters, the Imperium will not hesitate to have the fleet come over and perform a thorough cleanup with Macro Cannons.
This is also the main reason Alex is cautious about this matter, because he genuinely holds the power to decide the life and death of tens of billions of people with a single thought, and potentially tens of billions of innocent people.
It's very possible that with just a tremor of his hand, billions of people could instantly turn to ashes.
If it were a game, Alex would never hesitate. As a war criminal with over 500 hours of game time in every major P-game title, who hasn't clicked on a planetary explosion?
The "16.8B organisms purged" popping up on the screen would just be an inconsequential number; he would even smile at the "xenocide" achievement that popped up.
But this isn't a number in a game, a cutscene; it's tens of billions of living, breathing people!
Every one of them is a vibrant life, with their own parents, family, and friends; they cry, they laugh, they worry about their livelihoods, they strive to survive—they are all living people just like Alex.
He still can't bring himself to see them as mere numbers, to decisively dispose of them for certain reasons.
It's easy to order a company to its death on the battlefield; after all, the Astra Militarum's conscription oath clearly states: "Your life belongs to the Emperor."
But what about the civilians huddled in air-raid shelters? No one told them when they paid their tithe that one day, due to a tremor of an Inquisitor's pen, their entire street would become coordinates for orbital bombardment.
But ordinary civilians are different; soldiers die on the battlefield so that they don't have to die.
Perhaps this is why Inquisitors must undergo rigorous trials to earn that Inquisitorial Rosette. Those trials are not just about honing combat skills, nor reciting Ecclesiarchy doctrines.
But something more cruel, more fundamental—they must learn, when necessary, to personally extinguish the last shred of weakness in their hearts.
Because sometimes, mercy, conscience, and a sense of justice can truly cause problems.
If an Inquisitor hesitates for a second, the corruption of Chaos might spread throughout the entire Star District; if he shows a hint of compassion, the seeds of heresy will take root in the hearts of thousands. The Imperium does not need indecisive saints; it needs ruthless executioners, arbiters who can issue extermination orders without flinching amidst the cries of billions.
This is also why veteran Inquisitors are either madmen or fallen ones.
Their souls are steeped in blood and ashes day after day, their ears echo with the screams of the purged, and before their eyes appear the faces of the civilians they personally sent to the pyre.
But they cannot waver, cannot repent, and cannot even show the slightest hesitation.
Because once they show weakness, the enemies of the Inquisition will pounce like hyenas to tear them apart.
On one side are the wails of countless innocent lives dying by their command, and on the other is the duty to protect more people, and to ensure they live as humans.
This immense sense of fragmentation and heavy responsibility can truly drive a person mad.
Some choose madness, using more extreme methods to numb their guilt; others choose to fall, embracing Chaos in despair, just to escape the endless moral dilemma.
And those remaining Inquisitors who still possess conscience and morality, while constantly eroding their last bit of humanity, are also treading the old path of their predecessors: either becoming extreme madmen or becoming heretics who need to be purged.
In this purgatorial galaxy, all beauty, morality, and conscience will be worn away by brutal reality.
And this is precisely the Inquisitor's destiny.
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