Chapter 496: Lord Regent of the Sigillite, I Miss You
I am the Emperor of Terra. It was I who stood forth when the domains of Man were shattered, ending the centuries of warlord anarchy that had choked the Throneworld. It was I who led Humanity back to the Sea of Stars.
I am the Emperor of all Mankind. I achieved what even the Old Ones could not, creating twenty-one peerless scions to stride across the galaxy. Together, we scoured the ignorance of the Old Night and extinguished the rising xenos empires, elevating Mankind to its rightful zenith.
I am the Emperor of all Mankind. Even now, as the Imperium wanes, I stand eternal upon the Golden Throne, my Astronomican guiding a trillion souls through the dark.
I am the Emperor of all Mankind. How, in the name of the stars, have I ended up trapped in this office—and a dozen other offices across a dozen other planets—wasting my existence on administrative quotas?
The Emperor stared at the mountain of directives piling up before Him. He listened to the scratching of styli as the Primarchs drafted detailed protocols centered on His own person. The rustle of shifting parchment was a constant rhythm until—thud—a fresh stack of files was dropped onto the peak of the paper mountain, awaiting His executive sanction.
The Master of Mankind kept His face flat.
After the strategic meeting had concluded, He had not departed. Agreements had been struck; now came the labor.
Currently, His avatar within the Dawnbreaker fleet served as a terminal to link with His other vessels across the sectors. He had to ensure that the protocols established here were enforced. He couldn't simply give His word and then "forget" it once He returned His primary focus to the Golden Throne.
The Dawnbreakers were constantly "recharging" Him with pure soul-essence, diluting the erratic influence of the Imperial Creed and allowing Him to maintain a lucid, singular will.
But... why was there so much paperwork?
Guidance on the initial development of the Webway? He was willing to do that. Tracking the soul-shards of Sanguinius? Necessary. Cataloging Golden Age technological patterns? Well within His capacity. Transferring the metaphysical assets of the Legion of the Damned? Acceptable.
But why was He the sole executor for everything? Was there no one else in the entire Imperium capable of filing a report?
And then there was the AI Governance Protocol. He had agreed to act as the "Moral Supervisor" for the Sector-level logic engines, but why did He have to micromanage the local institutional frameworks of individual planets? These weren't even Sector capitals. Surely they could just conduct a mass recruitment drive and worry about "culture" and "ecology" later, once the Great Enemy was broken?
Staring at the files, the Emperor felt He was witnessing a hunger greater than any Tyranid Hive Fleet.
These layers of administration grew like biological tissue, expanding and coiling until they threatened to swallow Him whole. The paper mountain felt like a Great Beast of the Warp, its deep, ink-stained maw opening to whisper in His ear:
Emperor... though you are bound to the Throne, though your aspects are fractured and your apotheosis looms... you still have much to do. You are not permitted to rest.
As the Emperor's features were wreathed in the light of His own majesty, his aura began to swell into a sovereign, all-encompassing pressure.
Under Corax's surprised gaze, Guilliman and the Lion became visibly more cautious.
Corax frowned at the girl-avatar. Despite the borrowed flesh, the figure before him remained the same: a mortal man, weary beyond measure.
But to the others, He was still the God-King of Terra, the being who had given them life and conquered the galaxy. The power radiating from Him made it difficult to look directly at His form.
He was magnificent. He was divine.
But above all, he was busy.
"Emperor," Romulus said, breaking the spell. He stepped forward and patted the avatar on the shoulder. "I remember Malcador once said of You: 'Charismatic, brilliant beyond measure, an architect of miracles... but utterly lacking in patience.' You prefer the direct, the simple, the violent solution to complexity. If a problem annoys You, You 'skip' it. If You can't skip it, You give a nonsensical answer to end the conversation—"
Romulus slid a file titled [EXECUTIVE FRAMEWORK FOR AI MANAGEMENT] into the Emperor's hand.
"Fix this one first."
To be honest, the "Apprentice" girl was quite endearing when she was herself. But once the Emperor "logged in," Romulus instinctively found it difficult to treat the entity as anything other than a high-tier asset.
He looked earnestly at the grim-faced Emperor. The thick aura of "Bureaucratic Fatigue" that usually sat upon Romulus's own brow had significantly lightened.
Ramesses, still deep in thought regarding Warp-containment, looked up to add his two credits.
"Skipping steps is a bad habit, Father. That's how people end up as quadriplegics stuck on a commode for ten thousand years."
SCREECH—!
Before Guilliman or the Lion could even register their horror at the blasphemy, Inquisitor Aglaia Hesiod—the "Silent Historian"—suffered a catastrophic slip of her stylus.
The metal tip gouged a jagged black scar across her parchment. Cold sweat drenched the Inquisitor. She instinctively tried to scrub the ink away with her sleeve, only to turn the entire page into an illegible black smudge.
The Emperor—Throne have mercy—I will never forget this day as long as my soul endures.
Aglaia dared not speak the name of the Master of Mankind. She tried to record the words in her mind, but the "Theoreticals" of what she was hearing were shattering her "Practicals."
While the Primarchs were distracted, the High Inquisitor hurriedly tore the ruined page from her ledger, took a shaky breath, and began again.
"Exactly, Emperor," Arthur said, stepping into the center of the room. His voice, which had commanded a million Astartes and a dozen Sector Fleets, resonated in the Emperor's ears.
"You are the Emperor of Mankind. You came here, and we have seen Your nature. we see an unyielding will and a resolve that cannot be moved. We recognize that You do not surrender. You overcome every obstacle. To You, the tedious is as vital as the glorious; both are challenges that must be conquered. Neither can be shirked."
Arthur set a new document on the table. The weight of his hand caused the stack of parchment to shed fine dust from the friction.
"Because we see these qualities in You... we have assigned You these burdens."
Arthur paused, his gaze locking onto the Emperor's golden lenses.
"Because we do not believe anyone else is capable of finishing them."
Guilliman and the Lion were visibly moved.
Arthur truly understands Him, they thought. This is a tribute to our Father. A tribute to the warriors who still bleed for the Imperium.
Wait... those were the words I was going to use! Guilliman realized. And why do they sound so practiced at this?
The Emperor, immune to the "psychological conditioning" of his sons, blinked in confusion.
Bad news. My 'Passive Charisma' isn't working on them.
He lowered His head, scanning the runes on the documents as He sank into a trance of calculation.
This is wrong, He thought. In the old days, I just had to keep a straight face, and Malcador or Valdor or my sons would rush to soothe My concerns. I would toss them a problem, they would scurry off to solve it, and I could 'skip' the logistics to focus on the next phase of the narrative.
"And then You wake up and realize You 'skipped' Your way onto a chair," Ramesses added, reading the room perfectly.
Stripped of the "Divine Filter," the Emperor's thought-process was surprisingly easy to map for a group of transmigrators.
The Emperor looked up and glared at the Formless Lord.
Nearby, the Custodes who had been brought in to refine the finer points of the decrees were dripping with sweat. They stood ready to execute the orders—or anyone who insulted their Lord—but the atmosphere in the room made them feel like novices.
Ramesses shrugged and went back to work.
It was simple: the transmigrators didn't buy into the hype. They had no "Father-Complex."
If they only had a century to live, they might have "skipped" things too, leaving the mess for the next generation. But they didn't know if they had an expiration date. If they did a "half-assed" job now, they'd be the ones forced to shovel the filth a thousand years later. It was better to do it right the first time so the Four Gods couldn't kick their house down.
Furthermore, based on the Dawnbreakers' analysis, the reason Chaos couldn't be contained in the past was that the Imperium had failed to differentiate itself from the Warp.
The Emperor was more reliable than the Four, sure. But in practice, all five were crushing the life out of the species. That was why you couldn't walk ten steps in a hive-city without stepping on a cultist landmine.
Karna had secured the faith of the masses simply by "paying them a wage." He had forced the Ecclesiarchy to become a professional social-service organization. In less than fifty years, he had a monopoly on faith in four out of five Special Zones. The "catastrophic" failure of previous Imperial governance was the only reason his success was so absolute.
Differentiating the Imperial administration from the Chaos paradigm was a strategic necessity. And they could achieve it now.
The Emperor—an entity whose personality couldn't be shaken even by the Golden Throne—was the ultimate Auditor.
A policy is just a brag if it isn't enforced.
"Malcador..." the Emperor whispered. He looked at the light reflecting off the pages, and for a fleeting second, He saw the wizened, gentle face of the Sigillite smiling back at Him with absolute trust.
"I miss you, old friend."
"You can miss him while you work," Ramesses said, sliding a file on [BAAL SYSTEM AI-SUPERVISION] toward the Emperor. It contained a case number, a classification, and a set of pre-audited outcomes.
"Once the Emperor manifests a miracle on Baal, we can swap the Custodian guard there for a permanent administration. Combined with the Blood Angels, we'll have a closed-loop system."
Guilliman reached out tentatively, wanting to help his Father, only to have a stack of "Study Materials" shoved in his face by Ramesses.
"Worry about your own chores. With Your 'Psionic-Muggle' status, You're a liability in a ritual. Finish Your tasks, then hit the books. I'm doing a pop-quiz later."
Guilliman's face fell. He took the books in silence.
He dared not oppose Ramesses now. The Emperor's "Dark History" files were stacked ten feet high. If Guilliman couldn't meet the Dawnstar's standards—combined with his own "performance" during the Heresy—his fate would be...
Social Death doesn't even begin to cover it.
The Lord of Ultramar shook his head. Realizing that his only path to "survival" was hard labor, he abandoned his attempt to save his Father and focused on the textbooks—materials deconstructed into "liquid data" that even a non-psyker could process.
He studied with a feverish intensity.
Minutes turned into hours.
The Emperor's expression grew increasingly bitter.
Verbal pacts were being transformed into binding legal documents and tactical blueprints. Under the Dawnstar's high-speed vox-network, the implementation began immediately.
"Karna, what is the status of the Maelstrom Sector?" Romulus asked, addressing his "Grassroots Manager" and combat lead.
"Status Quo. Orks to the north, Tyranids to the south, Chaos to the east and west. The Hive Fleet incursion has been cauterized. I'm currently overseeing the 'Faith-Swap'."
The Hive Mind was constantly adapting to the Imperium's genetic scanners. Genestealer cults were learning to mimic the chaotic, redundant genetic "noise" found in various human sub-strains to fool the logic-engines.
In response, the Imperium deployed Faith.
Unlike the Emperor's internal schism, Karna's brain—while perhaps not suited for macro-economics—had a visceral connection to the masses. People were dying by the millions; Karna had established an administrative cadre in the "Hallowed Sun" domain, using prayers as real-time census data.
Genestealer infection was not just biological; it was psionic. The infected were controlled by the Hive Mind, their soul-signatures merged into the brood-network. This link was permanent.
Thus, even if a Genestealer bypassed the technical screen, it could not bypass the "Faith Check."
If they pray to Karna, we can 'dox' them instantly.
It was a nightmare scenario for the Tyranids. The invasion had actually accelerated the popularization of the Angelic Creed. The "Angel" was replacing the messy, fragmented ecology of the Imperial foundation with a unified, crushing presence.
After all, the High Lords could look to the Emperor for their salvation. The starving worker in the underhive could only look to Karna.
"I will be departing for the Armageddon Sector shortly," Arthur said. "The Harlequins report an isolated, derelict Webway gate there. They hold the key. My objective is to drive the Orks into the tunnel. Then I will rendezvous with Ramesses to initiate the pacification of Commorragh."
Arthur's voice was the sound of a closing trap.
"We will begin an active hunt for the Khan's trail. We also need to focus on Russ's status in the Warp. As for the Necrons... in the industrial hearts of our five Special Zones, we require massive Blackstone arrays to ensure Chaos cannot intervene directly. Only a Necron Dynasty can achieve an engineering feat of that scale. I will be handling the 'negotiations' with Trazyn."
Arthur controlled the military board. With the roadmap clear, the execution was simple.
With the Emperor handling the finer points of local governance and securing key posts before the "Guns of the Dawn" were turned His way, their board was expanding.
Romulus, Karna, and Guilliman were the engines of growth.
The Webway Project was the absolute priority. Even if the Wormhole Project bore fruit, the Webway remained their greatest insurance policy.
And Commorragh was no small target. Since the era of the Eldar Empire, it had been the primary hub of the Labyrinthine Dimension. Its diameter rivaled a solar system; its very operation required the constant theft of stars from realspace for power.
And unlike the dwindling Craftworld populations, the Drukhari were numerous. Centuries of internal slaughter and the fear of Slaanesh had regressed their psychic potential, but the "Old Guard" remained. If pushed, they could field ancient technology that would make a Primarch blink.
It would be a grueling campaign. It required long-term planning.
But we have a Webway Shield-Borer now. We'll give the Dark City a surprise they won't forget.
"Excellent. The plan is in motion," Romulus said.
He tossed a duplicate set of files to the Emperor to keep Him "motivated," straightened his own documents, and handed the originals to Arthur.
The roadmap was complete. Now came the drive.
He looked up at the gathered group. Through the jests and the shared burdens, they had found their rhythm.
It was time to depart for their respective fronts.
☆☆☆
-> SUPPORT ME WITH POWER STONE
-> FOR EVERY 200 PS = BOUNS CHAPTER
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you