Angron sensed the Emperor's emotions with such clarity.
The Emperor could have saved his brothers and sisters,
But he didn't.
He only wanted to destroy Angron, because it was the most efficient method, and in his view, it was also the most beneficial for humanity as a whole.
Angron was bait for the Blood God, used to attract most of the Blood God's attention,
so that the other Primarchs would be relatively safe, and the possibility of their fall would decrease. Angron could protect the more precious Primarchs from corruption, such as Horus, Guilliman, Sanguinius, Rogal Dorn.
Including the entire War Hounds, they were all sacrifices. The Great Crusade just happened to need a group of mad Executioners.
Since the Ghouls had disappeared, the War Hounds could just fill in.
"Like Horus?"
Angron laughed coldly at the bitterness and irony of fate, then questioned,
"Why?"
The desiccated corpse on the throne looked down at Angron, as if questioning why Angron was asking the obvious, when he had already explained it.
This was a necessary sacrifice, this was foresight, this was a decision made for the benefit of the entire human race.
This was also the purpose for which he designed the Primarchs and the Astartes — tools to serve humanity as a whole.
From this perspective, Leman Russ was his most outstanding son, because Leman Russ clearly understood this point.
The only reason the Emperor gave the Primarchs and the Astartes power was that mortals were weak. The Astartes and the Primarchs had to lend their strength to the weak among humanity, protecting humanity as a whole until human civilization grew to no longer need them. Only then could their mission end.
It wasn't just the Primarchs and the Astartes.
The Custodes might have thought they weren't tools, but in essence, they were.
The Adeptus Mechanicus might have been smug about their unique status, but they were tools cultivated by the Emperor from beginning to end.
Even the Emperor himself was a tool.
"No." Angron could sense the Emperor's emotions, the coldness and mechanical nature within the Emperor's heart.
But he could also perceive that behind the Emperor's coldness, there wasn't a complete lack of humanity.
He had the capacity to love individual humans, and the capacity to dislike individual humans.
He had the instinct to love his children, and he had indeed loved at least some of them.
He loved his firstborn, Horus. At that time, the Emperor had not yet learned how to interact with the Primarchs, and instinctively poured too much emotion into him.
He even had a little love for Leman Russ, even though he had placed Leman Russ in the cruel position of Executioner.
He had initially felt some apprehension and suspicion towards Sanguinius, but with the passage of time, he still fell in love with his perfect son.
But none of this could override the fact that the Primarchs were essentially tools, and the Emperor himself was a tool.
Emotions were not necessary for tools; pouring too much emotion into tools would only lead to hesitation when the time came to discard them.
So gradually, the Emperor began to learn how to control his instinctive paternal love, and the emotions he invested in the Primarchs became less and less.
"No." Angron shook his head, his voice turning hoarse: "I'm not asking you about that."
"I want to ask you, why did you become like this?"
"I can see your emotions, your soul; this is the ability you gave me."
"You created me to heal the souls of my brothers, and also to heal your own soul."
Momotaro Maruko suppressed the Butcher's Nails, and the instincts hidden in Angron's genetic sequence began to function again.
He instinctively began to touch the Emperor's emotions, trying to heal the terrifyingly scarred soul before him.
"I can see the young boy by the Bronze River, that child who said he wanted to be a kind person."
"How did you become like this, become the Dark King, the destroyer of worlds?"
The myriad overlapping voices of the desiccated corpse on the throne fell silent.
Countless human souls intertwined within the desiccated corpse, stimulated by Angron's words, and ancient racial memories resurfaced in their consciousness.
They saw the first primitive human gazing at the stars, saw the starry sky reflected in the primitive human's eyes, and the unparalleled vitality and curiosity within it.
They saw the initial vibrant civilizations, saw them retrieve mud from the bottom of the water to bake into clay tablets to record epics, saw them carve bronze inscriptions on bronze artifacts to praise history, monarchs, and the high heavens.
They even saw a farmer's son fly among the stars, looking back at Earth: "I have checked the sky all over, and found no God or angels."
How could that civilization, once full of vitality, hope, and reason, become like this?
"Because there was no other choice." From the deepest part of the overlapping souls, a tired, dark-skinned middle-aged man stared at Angron and replied.
This answer silenced Angron.
His ability made him realize that the Emperor was telling the truth.
"The beings of the Imperium worship me, and have been worshipping me for ten thousand years."
"I warned them countless times that I am not a God."
"I am not even the most excellent human. In the past four millennia, there have been too many humans who were better rulers than me."
"It's just that I happened to be a powerful immortal, and I happened to accumulate some knowledge over a long period of time."
"It's just that when the Old Night came, I looked around and was horrified to find that there was no one else but me."
"Perhaps those who were once more excellent than me could have come up with better solutions, could have saved human civilization without being so heartless and cold."
"But I had no other choice."
"At that time, human civilization had no other choice but me."
Angron stared intently at the Emperor, knowing that everything the Emperor said was true.
If there had been a choice, the Emperor would also have wished to live a nearly ordinary life with his sons.
If the lie he wove, called the Imperial Truth, had been real, he would have tried to save Angron.
But he had no other choice.
He could not act solely on impulse, anger, and the desire for freedom, like Angron and his brothers and sisters.
That could only destroy a civilization, but it could not protect and build one.
If it had been the Angron from before, after sensing the Emperor's evaluation of him and his brothers, he would have been furious.
But Momotaro Maruko suppressed the anger, leaving only complexity and coldness in Angron's heart.
"Although I abandoned you back then, it was because you were damaged at the time."
"Now that Alexander has healed you, and you have been repaired, you have become useful again."
"Angron, my dear son, pledge your allegiance to me once more, serve humanity, and be my warrior."
The Emperor's myriad overlapping voices echoed in Angron's ears.
Angron froze for a moment upon hearing them.
He realized he had almost thought the Emperor still had humanity just now.