Paul opened his eyes.
He looked at Charles atop the palanquin, at the hundred thousand crimson-eyed Dal Royal Guards, and at the Royal Court festooned with human skulls.
Deep within his dark gold eyes, for the very first time, genuine, unadulterated killing intent began to seethe.
It was a cold, quiet fury at seeing a creation of humanity fall so far into depravity.
"Heh."
Paul actually chuckled.
The sound carried across the plaza on a psychic wave, easily piercing through the roaring of the Dal soldiers and the oppressive aura radiating from Charles.
There was not a single shred of warmth in that laugh.
"I was wondering why there was such a lingering, nauseating stench of filth in the air."
Paul's voice, psychically amplified, rang out clearly across the entire battlefield.
"Turns out it's just a batch of failed lab experiments, reeking of the profane taint of a moronic god who knows nothing but how to hack and slash."
"No wonder you're all so obsessed with collecting skulls..."
"...After all, only the lowest, most pathetic predators use the bones of their prey as decorations to mask their own deep-seated inferiority complexes."
Charles's crimson pupils violently contracted.
The four blood-red bodyguards flanking the palanquin let out low, menacing growls, the teeth of their colossal chainaxes spinning up into a blur.
But Paul wasn't finished. He kept speaking.
"What 'Great King Charles'..."
"You are nothing more than a mistake… a mongrel created by humans."
"A monster born from the madness of scientists."
"A pathetic, miserable insect being toyed with by an evil god of Chaos."
"You survived solely because of human compassion."
"That couple who adopted you genuinely treated you as their own son."
"And you murdered them."
"You were born purely because of human technology. Without that genetic splicing, you would never have existed."
"And you destroyed the very organization that created you."
"Now, you sit on a throne built from human bones, ruling over a horde of mongrels… mutts just like you, treating the very species that created and raised you as nothing but food."
Paul shook his head. The disruptor field on the Watcher's Axe hummed to life, ethereal blue arcs of lightning dancing hungrily along the edge of the blade.
"You, and this army of yours..."
Paul raised the halberd, pointing it squarely at the hundred thousand soldiers below.
"...are nothing more than talking beasts playing dress-up in armor."
"I will utterly and completely purge you, and every last mutt that follows you."
"ROAAAR!!!!!"
Charles erupted into absolute fury.
His four arms gripped the armrests of his throne simultaneously, the adamantium and crystal shattering and warping under his terrifying physical strength.
"INSOLENT!!!!!"
The roar detonated like a shockwave, violently rattling the pavement across the entire plaza.
Charles's blood-red eyes were entirely consumed by madness. Dark red Chaos energy erupted from his body like a raging inferno.
Above his head, the vague, terrifying silhouette of a horned, gaping maw began to coalesce, and a whispering voice seemed to slither from it:
Keep killing.
Kill until this planet is nothing but skulls and blood, and you shall sit upon a true throne.
It was the manifested blessing of the Blood God.
"Lowly humans!!!"
"You hypocritical, filthy, self-righteous two-legged sheep!!! You dare pass judgment on me?!"
"When you were strong, you devoured other creatures on a whim. Now that I am strong, I devour you. What is wrong with that?!?"
Charles rose from the throne. Swathed in Chaos energy, his massive four-and-a-half-meter frame grotesquely swelled, pushing five meters in height.
His black armor cracked in a dozen places, exposing dark red, mutated muscle that writhed and pulsed through the fissures.
"When you humans ate pigs, cows, and sheep, did you ever stop to ask if they consented?!?"
"I am merely doing exactly what you did... the weak are food, and the strong do eat. Natural selection!!!!"
He laughed maniacally, his voice a sickening cocktail of twisted logic and pure, unfiltered malice.
"I am evolution! I am the apex lifeform! I am the God of the Dal's!!!!"
"You humans... are nothing but the dregs of a bygone era! You are destined for the bottom of the food chain!!!"
"The strong prey on the weak. That is the fundamental truth of the universe! It is the very first lesson you humans taught me!!!"
Around the palanquin, one hundred thousand Dal Royal Guards raised their weapons as one, their crimson eyes locked dead onto the golden figure.
Paul listened in silence.
Only when Charles's rant finally tapered off did he slowly speak.
"So, that is your logic? Because humans ate animals, humans deserve to be eaten?"
"So, you are finally admitting that you're just mimicking humans?"
Charles's expression froze.
Paul continued, "You eat humans because humans ate animals."
"You enslave humans to build a pyramid because humans once built pyramids."
"You collect trophies because humans had that habit."
"You crown yourself King because humans invented the concept of kingship."
"Every single one of your actions, your logic, your so-called philosophy... it is all just a crude, pathetic imitation of the human civilization you so deeply despise yet can never escape."
He shook his head, a trace of utter mockery touching his lips.
"You survived solely because of human compassion, yet you hate all humanity because of human malice."
"You reap the benefits of human technology... genetic engineering, energy weapons, even the very pyramid you stand upon..."
"...and then turn those exact same tools against your creators."
"Charles, you aren't practicing some grand universal truth about the strong and weak."
Within Paul's eyes, the five stars flared simultaneously.
"You are just desperately grasping for a less pathetic-sounding excuse to justify your own twisted desires."
The moment the words left his mouth, the psychic aura radiating from Paul violently spiked.
It was no longer the gentle rain of light that had blanketed the Crimson Dawn forces.
It was a raging, apocalyptic convergence of energy, like a star moments before going supernova.
Pale gold, emerald green, crimson red, azure blue, pure silver...
The five colors of psychic light began to violently weave and fuse, ultimately forging a blinding, dark gold mantle of psychic flames that cloaked every single inch of his golden Aquilon Terminator Armor.
Upon his pauldrons, the ethereal Wings of Hope manifested.
Across his breastplate, the ripples of the Spring of Compassion flowed.
His gauntlets were etched with the unyielding striations of the Mountain of Resolve.
His greaves were wreathed in the soaring gales of the Storm of Pioneering.
And his helmet was completely engulfed by the radiant starlight of Wisdom.
At this exact moment, with all five traits fully unlocked, his psychic reserves burning at maximum output, and the sheer, unbridled might of a Champion displayed without an ounce of restraint...
Paul's presence had infinitely approached that of a true Primarch, successfully breaching the threshold of demigod-level power.
Paul slowly descended from the statue.
Like a god setting foot upon the mortal plane, his boots touched the stone.
The instant he landed.
Everything within a three-hundred-meter radius of him instantly fractured and pulverized. The sheer psychic pressure forcefully compacted the rubble, forging a perfectly circular, mirror-smooth platform of stone.
"You ask me what right humans have to eat other animals?"
Paul raised his head, his dark gold eyes locking onto Charles.
"I will give you your answer."
He slowly raised the Guardian Spear. The five-colored psychic energy spiraled up the haft, ultimately engulfing the entire blade in a violently dancing inferno of dark gold fire.
The sheer thermal output of the psychic flames caused the surrounding air to warp, severely distorting the light passing through it.
"Humanity became the master of countless worlds not because we were the strongest, nor because we were the most ruthless."
"It is because humanity understands how to forge civilization from barbarism, how to establish law amidst slaughter, and how to ignite hope in the absolute dark."
"We make mistakes. We commit evils. We butcher our own kind..."
"But we never view a problem through the lens of a single, base emotion. We constantly correct our course, striving endlessly toward perfection."
"That is the path of our evolution. We rose from drinking blood and gnawing on raw meat to forging civilization. We learned to cultivate our own crops, to breed our own livestock."
"To this world, to this universe, humanity is the most perfect."
Paul took a single step forward.
With that one step, the stone beneath his feet fractured once more, the cracks racing outward like living serpents.
"But you..."
His voice suddenly spiked in volume.
"You chose the most pathetic, miserable path of them all."
"You took the darkest, vilest aspects of humanity and worshipped them as absolute truth, completely blinding yourself to all of our brilliance."
"You call yourself a King, yet you only know how to rule through terror."
"You call yourself the God of this world, yet you serve a lobotomized idiot who has nothing in his skull but slaughter."
"And now..."
Paul gripped the halberd with both hands.
The dark gold psychic flames ballooned to their absolute limit, projecting a massive, hundred-meter-tall ethereal silhouette behind him...
The silhouette bore the rough outline of a human, though its face was obscured. Spanning from its back were five pairs of majestic wings woven entirely from psychic fire.
"I will let you—you lab-grown mutt, you Chaos-corrupted ape..."
Within Paul's eyes, the rotation of the five stars reached a state of unprecedented, blinding fury.
"...personally experience..."
"...what the power of a human looks like."
The fraction of a second the words dropped, the hundred thousand crimson-eyed Dal Royal Guards moved.
Like a crashing black tsunami, they violently surged toward the lone golden figure standing in the center of the circular platform.
--
Bonus chapter at 600 Powerstones.
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