Chapter 60 Dark Souls

Vane’s words absolutely broke everyone present.

Dante, Calgar, and the rest of the Blood Angels and Ultramarines were visibly twitching at the corners of their mouths. Forefather, we’re hardcore loyalists to the Emperor! Is it really a good idea for you to be shouting Imperium Secundus slogans out loud?!

Guilliman and Sanguinius simultaneously cringed, dark lines metaphorically dropping over their heads. There was no escaping this dark stain on their history. With Vane around, their reputations were completely cooked. I’m tired. Just end it all, they thought.

“Thank you for your assistance, Forefather. If not for you, I fear I would still be trapped in stasis.” Guilliman took a deep breath, composed himself, and offered his sincere gratitude.

Having grasped the authority of a War Titan, his connection with his gene-sons had deepened, allowing him to immediately glean the entire sequence of events straight from their memories.

“No need to be so polite with your Forefather. Just remember you owe me a hundred and fifty billion star systems,” Vane quipped. “If you try to default on this debt, I’m boxing you and Sanguinius up and selling you both.”

Calgar guiltily took a step back, hiding his massive frame behind Chief Librarian Tigurius. Sanguinius just looked helpless; he hadn’t even said a word, and he was still catching strays!

“I will honor it,” Guilliman agreed without missing a beat.

Of course, the Lord of Ultramar had an underlying scheme here. A massive debt meant their relationship with Vane was ironclad. Heh. Forefather, you wouldn’t want a hundred and fifty billion star systems to turn into bad debt, would you? So…

Furthermore, as a seasoned politician, Guilliman understood one fundamental truth: if someone helps you once, as long as you show a good attitude and know how to return the favor, they will definitely help you again. Therefore, this debt had to be paid—paid back over a very long term, with a meticulous payment plan, constantly borrowing more while paying it off, effectively anchoring Vane to them through inescapable financial ties.

“By the way, Forefather, what should we do with this guy?” Sanguinius tossed Magnus, who looked like a beaten dog, right at Vane’s feet.

“Oh? Did he get his back broken again? What an unlucky clown.” Vane circled the prostrate Magnus, sizing him up.

“Sylandri.” Vane looked over at the Harlequin Shadowseer, Sylandri Veilwalker. “Is your troupe in the market for a new clown?”

“Respected Forefather of Humanity, if it pleases you, we could establish an entire troupe dedicated solely to performing the comedic tragedies of Magnus,” Sylandri replied. Dropping her usual Aeldari arrogance, her tone was entirely fawning. Hey, we can negotiate. We’re totally willing to pledge loyalty to Imperium Secundus too!

Calgar, Dante, and the rest of the Imperial brass were silently floored. They had dealt with the Aeldari plenty of times, and those damn knife-ears had never once shown them this kind of respect.

“Either of you have any objections?” Vane asked, glancing at Guilliman and Sanguinius.

The two Primarchs exchanged a look and quickly reached a consensus. “As long as you’re happy, Forefather.”

“Alright then, ship him off to the Harlequins,” Vane decided on the spot.

Ignoring his agonizing pain, Magnus thrashed wildly on the ground, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Guilliman! Sanguinius! Stop him! I’m your brother!!”

“You can’t let him humiliate me like this! You can’t!”

“Save me, please! I know I messed up, just don’t let him do this to me!”

Just picturing that horrifying future, Magnus laid face-down in the dirt, sobbing like a Gretchin that had just gotten its toes stomped on.

—

Seated upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor had been keeping a close eye on the war for Macragge. Seeing his thirteenth son successfully return, claim the authority of war, and absolutely body the Khorne-possessed Berserker left him buzzing with excitement.

With the Forefather and two resurrected sons back on the board, defeating the four Chaos Gods was no longer just a pipe dream. (TL/N: I think the author is going for something like ‘The Godfather’ here)

I need to pull my weight too, the Emperor thought. Oh, right, the First is about ready to wake up. I should send him to link up with the Forefather, the Ninth, and the Thirteenth.

The Emperor had originally planned to have Lion El’Jonson wake up on some world in the Imperium Nihilus. The Lion was supposed to serve as a rallying banner, uniting panicked human factions against Chaos and xenos. But looking at the current state of affairs, that plan was going straight into the trash.

Sending the Lion to regroup with Guilliman and Sanguinius was definitely the optimal play.

The Emperor’s consciousness within the Warp took the form of an elderly king and stepped into the Lion’s exclusive domain. Every Primarch had their own unique Warp realm, a byproduct of their true Immaterium essence. The Lion’s essence was a dark, brooding forest choked with fog and crawling with monsters.

As soon as the Emperor set foot in the domain, he was intercepted by two Watchers in the Dark clad in green robes. They were short, roughly the size of children, and beneath their cloaks lay only a dense, featureless black mist.

The Watchers in the Dark were an enigmatic, ancient race tasked with guarding Caliban. They were a failsafe left behind by the Old Ones to prevent Chaos from completely devouring the materium. Now, they were also responsible for watching over the slumbering Lion, shielding him from the corrupting touch of the Warp.

“Destiny has shifted,” the Emperor stated. “We have new allies in play, and our plans must adapt. Wake the Lion early. His brothers need him.”

The two green-robed Watchers exchanged a silent look. After a brief pause, they stepped aside, clearing the path.

The Emperor walked past them, venturing deeper into the dense woods along a narrow dirt trail until he found the Lion sleeping upon a massive boulder. The once handsome and youthful Lord of the First had aged into an old man with greying temples.

Reaching out, the Emperor gently touched the Lion’s face, a flicker of guilt flashing in his eyes. In that fleeting moment, he truly looked like a father.

“My firstborn, my Dark Angel. Don your armor once more,” the Emperor whispered. “Be the sharpest sword for humanity, for this civilization teetering on the brink of annihilation. Cleave through the encroaching darkness for the poor souls suffering in agony, and bring them salvation and hope.”

Following his words, a master-crafted suit of power armor—pitch-black with deep green accents—materialized over the Lion’s body. After armoring his son, the Emperor lingered for another moment, simply watching Lion El’Jonson, before finally turning away.

He also left behind a blessed, master-crafted power sword somewhere within the realm; the moment the Lion desired a weapon, it would come to him. Then, the Emperor stashed the Emperor’s Shield in another part of the forest, tasking a Warp beast with guarding it. Once the Lion mastered his newfound strength, he would be able to slay the beast and claim the shield.

His errands complete, the old king avatar departed the dense woods, returning to his eternal stalemate against the four Chaos Gods.

A long while later, the fully armored Lion slowly stirred from his ten-thousand-year slumber. Finding himself in an unfamiliar, dense forest, his immediate instinct was to find a way out.

He noticed a lot of bizarre phenomena: blood-red thunderstorms roaring across the distant sky, an old king sitting in a lone boat, and a massive shadow lurking beneath the ocean’s surface. The Lion tried to piece together the truth behind these sights but came up entirely empty-handed.

When he attempted to swim across the ocean to question the old king in the boat, the Watchers in the Dark materialized just in time to stop him.

“The shadow in the water will tear you apart,” they warned.

The Lion could sense the emotion backing their words; they held a deep cocktail of disgust and terror toward whatever lurked in the depths. “Where am I?” he asked.

“Home,” was the Watchers’ maddeningly simple reply.

Getting nowhere, the Lion tried a different angle. “Then what am I supposed to do?”

“Follow your nature.”

The Lion gleaned absolutely zero useful intel from the conversation, but after the Watchers vanished, he spotted a small dirt path. Following it, he emerged from the dark woods and stumbled upon a human farm. An old farmer in simple clothes was dozing against a combine harvester.

The Lion approached, offered a greeting, and asked, “Where is this place?”

The old farmer gave the massive armored giant a very weird look but answered the question anyway. “Stranger, you’re on Macragge.”

—

The Chaos traitors were completely expelled from Macragge by the Imperial loyalists. The zones corrupted by the taint of Chaos were fully cleansed with Vane’s help, restored to their former glory, and arguably ended up looking even more vibrant than before.

During this time, Imperial reinforcements who had caught wind of the invasion finally managed to punch through the terrifying Warp storms and arrive at Macragge. When they were told that Sanguinius and Guilliman had returned, they were absolutely floored. It sounded like complete fiction until they saw the two Primarchs with their own eyes.

Once they learned that it was Vane, the Forefather of Humanity, who had brought the Primarchs back, these battle-hardened veterans paid him the highest possible respects, practically venerating him as the ultimate avatar of hope in this grimdark era.

With Cadia fallen and the Imperium violently ripped in half, the return of two Primarchs was a monumental game-changer. It breathed fresh hope into the hearts of countless souls who had been drowning in despair.

As the military forces gathered on Macragge continued to swell, the Tetrarch of Macragge proposed hosting a massive victory parade. They wanted to use the event as a massive PR campaign to broadcast the return of the Primarchs to every single world in the Imperium.

“A grand ceremony will admittedly burn through a lot of manpower and resources, but it will be incredibly effective at quelling public panic and keeping their hopes for the future alive.” After chewing on it, Sanguinius and Guilliman greenlit the proposal.

Inside a conference room on Macragge, Sanguinius and Guilliman were deep in the weeds discussing the logistics of rebuilding the Imperium and organizing the upcoming festival. Vane, who was just sitting on the sidelines acting as the mascot, was about to take a quick nap when a system prompt suddenly popped up in his vision.

[Your projection has conquered the Dark Souls world. Unlocked Dark Souls mod. Unlocked Crafting Recipes: First Flame, Dragonslayer Spear, Soul of Cinder Greatsword, Firelink Greatsword…]

Following the notification, a flood of memories from the Dark Souls universe rushed into Vane’s mind.

—

Next Bonus at only 900 Powerstones!

OR