Chapter 240 Conrad Curz

Chapter 240 Conrad Coates

Conrad Curze's question caused Perturabo to fall into an unanswerable silence.

He didn't really know how a Primarch ended up in an Eldar port city deep in the Webway, but it would be an irresponsible lie to say that he knew nothing about it.

The steel puppet believed that he should tell the truth about what he knew in his memory, and that a brother who might have been unintentionally harmed by him had the right to know everything.

“In my memory,” he said, running his mechanical sound-producing structure in the universal Gothic language of mankind, “my mentor, Morse, and I were trying to capture a powerful non-human being a few days ago. Reality creation. This caused the wrong warp travel, and I vaguely remember..."

"You hit my nursery." Cozz said softly, the corners of his mouth raised slightly strangely, and that strange frustration was quickly being replaced by another, softer and subtle emotion. "I remember that day, the whirlpools and ripples shook violently outside my metal cabin, and the world receded from my unopened eyes..."

He suddenly stopped, cut off the remaining gorgeous description, and turned the topic back to a more objective narrative. This gives him a contrasting docility.

"You bumped into me and sent me down to the bottom of Gomo, into the psychedelic river of the Spiral Labyrinth, until someone fished me out of the mire."

"I think I should tell you..."

"No!" Curze shouted sharply, and then his tone dropped back to a low whisper. "I don't want to hear any apology, Perturabo. I want to thank you, my blood relative... If it weren't for the coincidence you brought me, how could I have enjoyed this delicious feast at Gomo?"

He laughed infatuatedly, the twitching of his cheekbone muscles showing a kind of pain, while the emotion brewing in his dark eyes was intoxicated and alienated.

"If you really think so, brother." Perturabo looked at him deeply, hoping that his mechanical side could fully express his feelings.

"You have a soul that weeps for blood relatives in winter," Morse said, trying out the Eldar language, paired with some deliberately chosen Eldar cultural idioms.

"Don't use that tone," Curze snorted, "the tone of those cowards who fled according to the prophecy, the fools who dare not face their fate."

He then added an explanation: "In case you are not clear. Before the Great Fall, several Eldar groups fled in advance to the Ark World they created according to their own craftsmanship in accordance with the prophecies of destruction."

"Are the Eldar left behind more worthy of praise?" Perturabo asked disapprovingly. "Stay and wallow in murder and orgy?"

"I do prefer them, they are more numerous and therefore more likely to provide a sufficient number of deaths..." mused Konrad Curze, "weep bitterly for the ruthless extermination of civilization in its prime, Then I started thinking about what kind of survivors the disaster would breed that should not have survived..."

Without any triggering conditions, he suddenly began to bow and laugh. The two shoulder blades protruding from the back of his thin back pushed up the thin, close-fitting leather jacket. Afterwards, Cozz stood up again, with a hint of fatigue in his expression.

He shook his head.

"Let's go, now that you can see that this is the front hall that is isolated from my residence. I will take you to see... my nursery pod. I found it."

Perturabo glanced at Morse, and the craftsman crossed his arms over his chest and nodded to him.

"Let's go." The steel doll said briefly.

They followed Conrad Coates, opened hidden doors one after another, and shuttled through complicated passages. They felt that this place was more like a simple shelter than a residence.

There are a large number of pipes and wires scattered along the corridor, extending to hidden compartments behind the soundproof walls. Perturabo decided to pretend for the moment that he couldn't hear the faint wail coming from behind the wall.

Konrad Curze led them carefully through the too-narrow corridors. As a Primarch who had some knowledge of architecture, Perturabo could easily tell that the stone walls of these corridors had been re-carved in recent years. Done.

He couldn't help but guess what the real wall behind the stone wall was.

"I... hope you get used to this messy place." There was an indelible sarcasm in Kurtz's words. "Better than those shadow realms where Mandela lived, isn't it?"

They entered an open courtyard deep in the darkness. From here, they could even glimpse a dark sky high in the sky. The faint twilight brought by the black sun slightly illuminated this deep darkness. The chaotic outline of a half-collapsed, unrepaired mansion appeared before them.

No matter how luxuriously decorated and respectable the building once was, it has become synonymous with being stained and damaged, with the base of the carved stone statues torn apart, used to fake pure whiteness and degenerated into ancient and horrific bloody symbols of dismemberment.

In the eyes of the Eldar themselves, they are recorded as beautiful and light, advanced creatures with keen senses and long lifespans. From art to technology, from aesthetics to morality, and even the essential perception of the cruel nature of nature, when compared with other races, They are just like adults facing children, they are not on the same level.

When this understanding gradually deepens, it also means that a long decline has begun.

Conrad Coates’s house is the condensation and reflection of this historical character. The Eldar fell into the agony of ruin and endless squabbling, while the wheel of destiny in the universe rolled past them.

His nursery cabin was surprisingly well preserved, with the conspicuous Roman numeral "eight" engraved on the front of the cabin door. Apart from the collision during the drift, there was almost no meltdown or deformation.

The thick and unfathomable mud at the bottom of the Comor River accepted the baby's cradle and took him into the depths of a sinful city.

"Primarch Eight," murmured Perturabo, "I am pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Me too, my brother." Conrad said softly, drawing his fingernails across the numbers on the nursery cabin, cutting a mark across the center of "eight", as if he wanted to cut the number in half. "Nice to meet you, Primarch Four."

"Where do you know all this?" the steel doll asked seriously.

"Which 'everything'?" Conrad looked at Perturabo curiously.

"My name. My serial number. The Human Empire. How much do you know?"

"Oh... maybe I know nothing, maybe I know everything--except you, Morse."

Conrad changed the subject and squatted down in front of Morse, approaching him as coldly as a large carrion-eating animal, staring at the craftsman with his too-dark eyes.

"I haven't heard of you, the temporary one-man... human."

"What a pity I have heard of you. Gifted Visionary," Mors said, stepping back calmly, refusing to get too close to an unfamiliar Primarch.

"Vision? Are you also a visionary?" Conrad Coates stood up with an indifferent expression. "You don't know my fate, so you dare to provoke me?"

"Are you telling me that you were giggling at the false emperor, stabbed to death by a mortal man twice, with bones scattered all over the galaxy, and the finger bones were taken away by a genetic descendant and used to transform into a pipe for inhaling hallucinogenic products?"

"I……"

"Stop, you two!" Perturabo roared. The excessive shock and confusion rarely allowed the usually steady Lord of Steel to have an illusion about whether he was really in the real universe.

His mechanical eyes and simulated human eyes showed equal confusion: "What kind of false emperor? Why was he stabbed to death by a mortal?"

"I was not killed by a mortal—" Conrad choked back the second half of his sentence. He suddenly lost the motivation to explain why he was willing to be killed at the hands of a mortal assassin.

"Yes," he leaned against his nursery cabin depressedly, with a casual attitude, "I saw the ending of being killed by a mortal from the beginning, until I discovered that the first living creature I saw when I opened my eyes had multiple modifications. arms, half holding a short knife, the other half holding an injection..."

Blood Marquis Conrad lowered his eyes, leaving time to the heart that was beating against his chest in his torso.

After a moment, he gathered his energy, applauded himself twice, picked up the tarpaulin covering the nursery cabin, turned around, and flicked the tarpaulin lightly like the creator of magic and miracles, letting the snow-white cloth cover the huge cabin again. metal casing appliances.

"Come on, Imperials. Please drink two glasses of Comor's wine." Conrad Curze bowed exaggeratedly, as if he was about to fold his body in half.

——

"We all have a lot of questions we want to ask each other," Conrad said, shaking the bottle of wine casually in his hand.

He did not look for redundant ceremonial items such as wine glasses. He simply took out three bottles of purple-red, low-alcohol red wine from the storage cabinet, threw them to Perturabo and Morse, and watched with a low smile as the mechanical doll drank. The unfulfilled wine was placed on the ground, and there was a hidden helplessness in his movements.

"Outdated prophecies continue to bring us a blinding fog that obscures the future." Morse knocked on the bottle mouth, and the cork disappeared into thin air.

Elsewhere, Conrad Coates broke the slender neck of the glass with his knuckles and drank from the shards of his bottle of red wine.

"Sometimes prophecy can bring us salvation, or disaster, there is a time..."

Curze muttered trivial words like a whisper.

"But we will eventually face the darkness of the end. These Eldar, they have given the answer time and time again. They are torn between resisting the prophecies and obeying their fate, all of which pushes this once glorious race towards its end. The end of being immersed in the ocean.”

He chewed on the shards of glass, letting the inorganic shards crunch in his sharp teeth.

"But I love prophecies, Imperial. I love stories that are not mine."

"Understandable," Morse replied, sniffing the scent in the bottle. "Although I don't like it."

Coze shook his head regretfully: "It's a pity, Stranger."

"Perhaps what you see is the illusion of error, Primarch," said Morse.

"Ah, do you know Nostramo?"

"Never went there," the craftsman said, explaining to the mechanical figure sitting next to him: "Before we crashed into Gomor, your brother was floating above the orbit of Nostramo."

"Indeed." Conrad took a sip of red wine and took out a white handkerchief from his leather coat pocket to wipe it away before the wine spilled over his thin lips.

"If you really don't want to hear the relevant discussion, I won't insist on apologizing unnecessarily." Perturabo finally found the opportunity to speak.

He had just gotten the answer, from a conversation between Morse and Konrad Curze, that the Eighth Primarch was a strange seer.

In this way, Konrad Coates has the answer to his understanding of the human empire.

Although he still wants to know who the "false emperor" refers to.

Koz shrugged indifferently, and the iron puppet continued: "My brother, in the more than ten years of my expedition, I have brought back four of our blood relatives for the human empire..."

"You want to know my opinion." Koz suddenly interrupted him almost rudely. Perturabo's invitation to return to the empire aroused his strong hostility without warning.

"You want to ask me when I will go to your empire, take over a legion, and then wait for the legion to be corrupted by criminals and gangsters, become a laughing stock in the struggle for power, and split into several claws in absurd jokes."

Perturabo looked at him and changed his words: "You are full of hatred for this world."

"No, I'm not blind." Conrad roared angrily, his dark eyes scorching coldly, the bottle was crushed in his hands, and the glass fragments and the remaining wine fell to the ground, forming a map-like pattern.

Then, he took a deep breath, pressed his forehead with his long-nailed fingers, and was silent for one or two seconds, then let go: "I'm not blind." He repeated it.

"My eyes reflect the image of the world, I see many different events," he whispered, aggressively taking the initiative in the conversation, "I can see how the fire of sin burns on the wings of the living creatures, so I can make my choice."

"I know what I am doing, Imperial. Don't persuade me to return to the human kingdom so easily. I am not blind and can't see the road under my feet..."

"Respect." Morse said, "This is what you want."

Curze closed his eyes, his silky hair fell on both sides of his haggard face, and his head swayed gently from side to side, as if secretly matching a musical rhythm that only sounded in the ears of this Primarch.

"I saw a world when I was in the incubator. A star of eternal night filled with blood and sin, a corrupt skin covered with precious metal. I accepted my fate, my pain, knowing that everything would end when I fell on Tagusa..."

He chanted hoarsely, his head resting on his right shoulder, half lying and half curled up on the seat. Life among the Eldar added extra tunes and rhythms to his language.

"When I opened my eyes, I saw a city, similarly, filled with blood and sin, corruption growing on gold and silver jewelry, and corruption breeding in past glory. I floated up from the river, and the corrosive water invaded my ears..."

"The one who found me was a Haemonchir, Hexacarys."

He twitched in pain, his head leaning on his shoulder fell down, his eyes suddenly opened, and his rapid breathing gradually returned to normal.

The Blood Lord sat up again in his chair, his expression was extremely cold and self-controlled. He no longer looked like a crazy executioner who would rush into the banquet crowd and kill people, but a sinister leader, a cruel king.

"It took me twenty years to get to where I am today. I found relief from the pain of the prophecy, gained my name, established my prestige, found my allies, and agreed to rule the Dark City with his conspiracy in the future."

"You don't want to give up your existing achievements, Conrad. You hope to unify your... place of birth, and then consider the affairs of the Empire. Is this what you want to express?"

Perturabo swallowed the word "home planet", unsure whether it was appropriate to call Gomo the home planet of Conrad Curze.

He got the first answer to the question from Curze's words, and at the same time, he also gained an uneasy possibility.

"And," he said, "are you sure it took you twenty years?"

"If I didn't learn the human calendar incorrectly, yes." The Blood Lord responded calmly, "Is my speed too slow to disappoint you, my blood?"

Perturabo took a deep breath, and ritually took the air from the bottom of Gomo, which was still accompanied by an unpleasant smell no matter how clean it was, into his mechanical chest that did not need oxygen, and barely suppressed his shock at the passage of time.

Twenty years. He thought. Perhaps he should be thankful that it was only a machine-based body that followed Morse into the Perditus system, not the complete Perturabo himself.

He simply could not imagine what unfortunate consequences would result if the Iron Warriors were separated from their Primarch for twenty years.

+ Indeed, twenty years. + A rare sigh was added to Morse's message, + I almost dare not ask the Emperor if he thought I ran away again. +

+ What about the other me? + Perturabo suddenly wanted to ask.

+ I don't know. + Morse answered stiffly.

"You are talking to each other," the Blood Lord tapped the armrest of his seat with his fingertips, "I can see the time gap between your minds."

"Indeed." Perturabo admitted this, and there was no need to hide it. "I am surprised at the time span you mentioned. In my subjective consciousness, Morse and I only spent a few hours drifting through space. You rejected me once, and I want to ask again, do you need me to apologize for your experience?"

"Do I need to thank you for the gift you gave me, blood relative?" The Blood Marquis changed two words, determined to expose the matter.

He said forcefully: "I have no intention of mentioning my past. This is not out of avoidance, but out of emphasis on the real moment. We still have many cooperation matters that need to be discussed urgently, and there is no time to waste time on my self-pity. I want you to see me as a rational person, not a lowly and crazy pathetic lunatic, understand?”

"Of course, Marquis." Perturabo noticed Conrad's choice of words, cooperation.

The brother's alienation from Imperial determination prevented him from taking any pleasure.

Perturabo changed his attitude silently.

He shouldn't have expected to easily bring all the new primarchs back to the empire with just a few words, but the success in the past still allowed him to subconsciously retain such expectations.

The Blood Marquis nodded calmly. When his face is neither angry nor smiling, it especially highlights the nobility of the Primarch.

"During the banquet the night before, with your wisdom, you should be able to see the trajectory of Asdubal and me. We borrowed the existence of the theater troupe to give a reasonable reason for the death of everyone in the banquet hall."

"If there is no such coincidence that day, I will only be able to assassinate a few people I particularly dislike. Maybe I will classify them according to the eye color of the Eldar in the hall."

He smiled deliberately to explain that his classification criteria were just a joke in the conversation.

"For this, I would like to express my gratitude to you in the name of Konrad Curze the Haemonculus, and on behalf of Asdubal Viktor, the leader of the Black Heart Cabal; at the same time, considering that I intend to bring Gomor into my order. , I hope to reach some possible collaborations with you.”

"What I can provide you with include some of the current Haemon's technologies, although humans may not need them, and some of the military and resources that will be gained by controlling Gemo in the future."

"So, what kind of support can you provide?"

"I will not waste the blood of the Imperial Expeditionary Force here, so it is just me, Morse himself, and our abilities." Perturabo replied, hiding the C'tan shard and the Tuchucha engine. . "As a Primarch, I believe you are aware of my potential; and my strengths lie in technology and command."

"If you have anything to ask me, I will tell you whether I can do it based on the situation." Morse said casually, "Also, if you have anything to ask the troupe, I can forward the information to you. Do you think we can cooperate with you enough? Blood Actor?"

Having said this, Morse put down a drop of the untouched wine bottle and leaned forward: "Oh, before that, I have one more request."

"You hope that I will return to the Empire, obey the Emperor's call, and lead the Legion to conquer the galaxy?"

"I'm not asking about this, Konrad Curze. What I want to ask is, as a race that relies on the Webway to travel, how much knowledge do the Eldar have about the Webway? Repair it? Build it? Know the way?"

The craftsman's question made the Xuehou's left eye blink in confusion. "A good question," he said. "An unexpected difficulty."

His eyes slid to the side, and after a brief thought, he gave an answer.

"The Gomo attaches itself to the web, creating enclaves, connecting paths, and growing naturally. We have navigation with several areas, and ships come and go through the doors. As far as I am concerned, there are indeed some in my commonly used vehicles. Some of the maze routes around the Dark City, but I don’t have many more maps.”

"In addition, after the Great Fall," the mention of this word made him smile, "many of the original ancient passages have been broken in the storm. I am afraid that most of the old maps are also outdated. Can this answer make Are you satisfied, Morse?"

"Not bad." Morse said, "What about you?"

The Blood Marquis stood up lightly, his pale clothes wrapped around his pale and thin body, like a ghost from the midnight of death.

"When I rebuilt the mansion, I never took visitors into consideration, Imperials." He said, glancing at Perturabo's steel body, and his solemn face turned into a cold smile, "If you don't mind, , just use one of the unlocked rooms. I don’t think you need a bed or quilt.”

——

"Morse, you can contact—"

"Don't be impatient, big robot. I'm searching all over the galaxy to find where you are now. Do you think this is an easy task?" Morse lay half in the seat, his will touching the sea of ​​souls. shadow.

When he played the role of the hungry Him for the troupe, of course he didn't mind blowing up Gemo completely, so he boldly directly imitated the inherent impression given to him by an extremely small amount of Paradise in order to achieve a better performance effect.

But now, in order to avoid contacting Perturabo and accidentally summoning a bunch of various demons next to the person he was looking for, Morse could only slowly explore the depths of the warp bit by bit.

"There should be an occult connection between me and my other self..."

"Yes, so this one of you should not exist." Morse opened his eyes and turned to look at the steel doll wandering indoors. "Without the fragments of the Star God, a body that is disconnected from the main body should not move. I think you should thank Zahurash for his contribution."

"I might as well praise the Emperor, Morse." Perturabo stopped, and the hum of mechanical movement finally stopped temporarily.

"Looking at you like this, you might as well praise Om Messiah."

"Stop joking!"

"Okay." Morse actually stopped joking, which made Perturabo a little surprised.

The craftsman stood up, and the chair disappeared behind him, leaving only the ceiling chandelier and an extended sofa. This was the empty room with the most furniture they found, while the other rooms were almost literally empty.

It is not difficult to imagine how Conrad Curze was driven by his obsession with high cleanliness when he took over this Haemonculus lair, throwing all the original furniture into the river or broken space outside one by one.

Morse walked to the window and watched the other spires outside twist on both sides of the road, the broken railings falling from a balcony of the tower into the sparkling black water, and a creature with a demonic coal-black skin and covered with sickly emerald forbidden runes flashed by.

"I know you're worried about the state of the Imperium, Perturabo. You don't know how the Imperial Crusade is going, what's going on with the Iron Warriors, you worry about the relationship between the brothers, and the progress of our Emperor's secret plan. But I think you're not really absent from all this."

"Give yourself more credit, Perturabo, even without the additional multiple bodies, you can do everything a gene primarch needs to do." Morse said. "Whether it's that you, or this one."

"At least Alpharius went back to report our whereabouts." Perturabo took a breath, and the wind flowed out between his metal ribs.

"So don't worry, robot." Morse happily used the new nickname he had just chosen for Perturabo. "We are just working for the Emperor, escorting the Tuchucha engine back to Terra. It's just that this job is taking a little too long, and it has also sprouted some strange side branches in the middle."

"Emperor," the word evoked Perturabo's previous unfinished questions. Conrad Curze mentioned too many things that were difficult to interpret, but one term in particular attracted his attention. "I remember Conrad mentioned... 'False Emperor'? Who did he mean?"

Morse held the window frame and laughed. "Who else, Perturabo?"

"Why did he call the Emperor like that?" Perturabo frowned unhappily, and then he found that only half of his machine body had eyebrows, so he changed to cross-fingered fingers of both hands.

"I didn't realize when you started to respect the Emperor of Mankind so much." Morse turned back. "Remember, Conrad Curze is a prophet with poor eyesight. Apparently, in the world he foresaw, someone called the Emperor like that, and then our Eighth Primarch thought it was too easy to pronounce, or for some other miscellaneous reason, he followed suit."

"Conrad Curze." Perturabo read his name. "He is a..."

He searched for the right description from his vocabulary, and finally he gave a simple shake of his head, using the action to cover more emotions.

Morse continued Perturabo's words: "A unique Primarch who is difficult to describe, a madman with a high self-esteem and a drama with strange habits, a ghost haunted by pain, and a midnight monarch who clearly understands all his actions and goals. Take these words with you, because..."

"...This is exactly what I said." Conrad Curze murmured as he watched the mandrake that delivered the message for him and its emerald runes disappear into the depths of darkness, and threw away the dagger in his hand.

The tip of the knife was embedded in the middle of a portrait hanging on the wall that was torn to half a piece of canvas. The metal blade trembled slightly, and after a few seconds, it gradually stopped with Conrad's laughter.