"Did he tell you about your future?"
"If you mean my future of believing in you and then betraying you, it will never happen."
Nios sighed, "It seems he really told you everything."
Logar: "He is different from you; I trust him."
"What if he wants to kill me one day?"
"You deserve to die."
Nios smiled: "What if I want to kill him one day?"
The atmosphere between the two suddenly froze, as if even the surrounding air had turned to ice.
They stood facing each other, and where their gazes met, an invisible frost seemed to spread, solidifying the flowing time into the dead silence of this moment.
"If he believes you can save humanity, even if you want to kill him, he will willingly sacrifice himself. I will not let his sacrifice be in vain; if you fail his expectations, I will kill you!"
Nios: "What if I save humanity?"
"After you complete your mission, I will spend the rest of my life hunting you down!"
"You can't kill me."
"I know I can never kill you. You are not a god, but you are not human either. But I will still try. I am different from you; I will never fail him!"
Nios sighed softly: "He taught you very well. I now believe you have the courage to face the darkness."
Logar was not impressed, "You'd better just be hypothesizing."
"You have absolutely nothing to worry about. Even if I fall, he will surely endure. He thought I was humanity's savior, little did he know that he is the key to unlocking humanity's future."
A hint of indescribable sorrow flashed in Nios's eyes. He had his wish fulfilled, seeing Worp shape Logar into his ideal.
Although the cost was losing his son forever, everything was worth it.
He did not need his sons to be loyal to him; he only required them to be loyal to humanity.
"Although I lost a father, everything was worth it."
Logar muttered to himself.
…
"Where is he?"
Logar's voice boomed like thunder, echoing under the metal dome of the circular hall. He stared intently at Medeea, who was kneeling, bathed in the afterglow of the setting sun.
"Isn't he just…"
Medeea's voice suddenly trailed off. Her fingers unconsciously stroked her thigh. Worp said he was a bit tired and wanted to sleep for a while.
But there was no bed here, so she let the weary Worp rest his head on her bionic leg.
Then what?
In Medeea's quantum thought matrix, data streams surged like a storm, frantically replaying every frame of what had just happened.
Just before Logar stepped into the circular hall, Worp was clearly still lying there; his body heat even lingered on her thigh.
There was no psychic ripple, not the slightest Warp tremor, not even the most subtle air disturbance.
He had simply vanished into thin air.
Nios: "His mission is not over yet, and neither is yours, Logar."
"Where is he?!"
Logar glared at his father.
"I don't know."
Nios said, "I asked him who was next, but he didn't tell me the answer."
Logar was also present at the time. He clearly heard the Emperor's question and only found it a bit abrupt then. But looking back now, the Emperor's meaningful tone clearly indicated that he had already foreseen Worp's sudden disappearance.
"Did he disappear like this on Nostramo too?"
"Yes, but your brother was watching him until the moment he disappeared."
Logar lowered his head dejectedly, his voice tinged with bitterness: "I'm not as good as Koz."
"Your brother can foresee the future; you also have your own strengths."
"Where is he?"
"Nostramo. He is obsessed with transforming his world."
"I want to see him."
"I have entrusted the fleet and the legion to you. You don't need to ask for my permission."
"This isn't a request; it's an announcement."
…
"It's so cold!"
Worp shivered, and psychic energy quickly enveloped his entire body like a cocoon, resisting the biting cold.
He was woken up by the cold.
One moment he was resting on Medeea's bionic thigh, feeling the lingering warmth, and the next he was thrown onto this barren ice plain.
As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but vast white snow. The white mist he exhaled instantly froze into ice crystals. In this silent, pure white world, let alone humans, there wasn't even a shadow of a living creature.
"But it's not all bad; at least the target is clear now."
While the Primarchs' home worlds each have their own characteristics, the only ice worlds are Fenris and Inwit.
So this time it's either Rus or the Stone.
In the official history, Koz and Logar are both traitors. It's good to have a loyalist Primarch to balance things out, otherwise Worp would really have to wonder if he had crossed into a pseudo-historical timeline of the Roboute Rebellion.
The scenery of the ice world is exceptionally beautiful, but this beauty hides danger; the extreme cold is enough to kill most life.
When the initial novelty faded, this boundless snowfield revealed its monotonous and boring essence. As far as the eye could see, there was only pale snow, and even the passage of time seemed frozen in this silent wilderness.
The biting snow was knee-deep, and Worp had to condense psychic energy at his feet to trudge through the snowfield with difficulty.
Although he still didn't know which Primarch he was going to educate this time, Worp was already looking forward to it.
Rus had a good father, and Dorn also had a good grandfather, which was already better than many Primarchs.
Even without Worp, they could grow into qualified Primarchs.
If they already had a family, Worp wouldn't feel redundant. Worp was here to join them, not to break up the family.
He would find his place in the Primarch's family, not as a father, but as a mentor.
But first, he had to find the Primarch.
Although Worp had no clue, based on previous experience, fate would always guide him to meet the Primarch.
In the biting cold wind, a giant wolf, covered in frost and snow, suddenly burst out of the snow, its sharp fangs aimed directly at Worp's throat, and snow foam burst around its maw into an icy mist.
"Clang!"
A psychic ripple erupted an inch from Worp's throat. The giant wolf's pale fangs bit down hard, as if gnawing on an unyielding layer of ancient ice rock. A sharp pain shot through its roots to its brain, causing it to whimper in agony.
"It's a wolf."
Although Worp was not sure if Inwit also harbored such beasts, this giant wolf was highly likely a predator unique to Fenris.
The giant wolf's attack failed, and the pain in its fangs made its whole body tremble.
A hint of fear flashed in its beastly eyes, and its ancient hunting instincts were wildly warning it. It immediately used the cover of the snow mist to leap back gracefully, fleeing like a white lightning bolt into the vast ice plain.
The giant wolf's body suddenly froze, its form held captive in mid-air by an invisible psychic force, unable to move like an insect trapped in ancient amber.
A pale blue psychic aura flowed around its body, illuminating every raised silver-gray wolf hair in exquisite detail. Its once fierce beastly eyes now reflected the fear of a predator.
"Don't get excited, I won't kill you."
Worp gently lifted the giant wolf with his psychic power, noticing the four pairs of regularly spaced mammary glands under its light-colored belly fur.
He put the wolf back on the snow, his palm stroking its fluffy fur. While petting it, he asked kindly: "It really is a female wolf. Have you ever picked up a human child?"
This female wolf should be underage, as she was only two meters tall when on all fours, still a considerable difference from the average armored-car-sized adult Fenris Wolf.
The female wolf didn't understand what Worp was saying at all; only instinctive fear boiled in its blood.
The language barrier made Worp quite troubled, but the neural chip Medeea used to control the sand worms gave him inspiration, and the psychic light dancing on his fingertips made him suddenly enlightened.
A faint blue psychic thread emanated from Worp's brow, coiling like a living thing into the female wolf's skull.
"Have you ever picked up a human child?"
The female wolf let out a trembling whimper from its throat.
"He is… your… child."
Fenris Wolves are semi-intelligent beings with very high intelligence. However, their verbal expression is very poor, intermittent, but Worp could understand.
"It seems you've seen him. Where is he?"
"Den."
"Take me to him."
"No food…"
"I know you have no food."
"No food, going to starve."
Worp was speechless. So the female wolf hunted him to find food for Rus?
"I will let you go. You cannot eat me. Go find other prey."
The female wolf's muscles tensed the moment the psychic shackles dissipated. It leaped back gracefully to a safe distance, its claws digging several messy furrows in the snow.
Worp's image was reflected in its beastly eyes. Its instinct told it to flee immediately, but its intelligence told it it definitely couldn't escape.
The female wolf let out a low growl from its throat, slowly crawling a few steps forward, and finally rested its frost-covered forehead on the snow at Worp's feet.
"Go hunt."
Worp stroked the female wolf's head firmly.
The female wolf slowly raised its head, its beastly eyes narrowing to slits in the blizzard, its sharp gaze sweeping over every suspicious trace on the snowfield.
It quickly confirmed there was no other prey around, and its agile limbs dashed into the vast snowfield, constantly looking back to make sure the human was following.
The process of finding prey was tedious, as the blizzard would cover the tracks of other creatures. They spent several Terra hours before finally finding a set of messy footprints.
Following these footprints, they found a herd of Fenris Elk.
The female wolf's silver-gray fur, draped with frost and snow, blended perfectly with the snowdrifts. It lowered its body and crawled forward on the snow, ensuring it remained in the prey's blind spot, while also having to look back to make sure the human could keep up with it.
The female wolf suddenly looked back, its silver-gray mane bristling in the cold wind. The human who had just been standing on the snowfield had vanished like a ghost.
Before it could react, the herd of elk suddenly let out terrified shrieks.
It turned its head sharply, and saw Worp's figure had silently appeared in the center of the herd, pale blue psychic energy spreading like a spiderweb in the air.
The leaping elk, just as they raised their forelegs, were frozen by an invisible force, like ancient insects in amber.
The female wolf ran towards Worp, its fangs precisely piercing the carotid artery of the nearest elk. The hot blood had not even splattered onto the snow before it cooled in the wind and snow.
Worp's psychic threads outlined clear instructions in the female wolf's consciousness, "This is enough to eat. Take us back to your den."
The female wolf nodded, but there was a hint of confusion in its beastly eyes. Where did "us" come from?
The female wolf's fangs were deeply embedded in the elk's neck bone, dragging a winding trail of blood on the snow.
Its silver-gray mane surged in the blizzard, and it constantly looked back to check on the herd of elk being driven by psychic energy. They were frozen in a pale blue amber, their pupils reflecting the terror and despair of dying creatures.
For the first time, the female wolf felt sympathy for its prey.
It never did this when hunting. Even if there was a herd of elk in front of the wolf pack, they would only target a very small number of them.
The female wolf's hunting instinct contained hidden survival wisdom. It deliberately preserved the healthy individuals in the elk population, only severing the throats of the old, weak, and sick with its fangs.
This restraint was not kindness, but the survival rule of Fenris predators: if it hunted the elk to extinction, next time it would have to face the tusks of mammoths or the claws of giant bears.
Its intelligence allowed it to understand what Worp wanted to do; he was treating the entire elk herd as reserve food.