[Khorne: What the hell, where's my altar?]
[Why is Angron the only one left standing there?]
[Ugh, how is Angron supposed to develop his hatred for the Emperor now?]
[Whatever, I'll use the Butcher's Nails to make him hallucinate — make him feel like he's rebelling alongside his brothers. That'll do!]
Khorne was, after all, a Chaos God of the Warp. At this point in time, trapping someone in a battle-hallucination was trivial for him.
In truth, the moment the Butcher's Nails were hammered into Angron, he had already become Khorne's slave.
Everything he saw was simply what Khorne wanted him to see.
To earn Angron's trust, Caleb had deliberately brought only a single ship — the Conqueror — and returned it to him. It was a Gloria-class Queen Battleship, completely uncorrupted, preserving its original 30K-era condition in every detail.
"Where are we? Where are they selling us off to this time?"
After the brutal fighting, the awakened gladiator brothers hauled themselves painfully to their feet. Many had exhausted themselves in the rebellion and uprising, too spent to throw another punch.
Angron gazed at those familiar faces and felt a quiet melancholy settle in his chest.
He had always thought of these people as his brothers — but the so-called "brothers" who came afterward never truly accepted him as one of their own.
At this moment, Angron was still deeply affected by that voice in his mind. After all — it sounded somewhat like the Emperor.
[Caleb: You've settled your regrets.]
[Are you ready to accept the truth?]
Although this was only a prologue mission, the upcoming system rewards would allow Caleb to fully win Angron over — because the chessboard narrative that followed would make Angron completely believe Caleb's words. That would make Angron his piece on the board, not Khorne's.
"Hypocrite!"
Angron furrowed his brow. Even without the influence of the Butcher's Nails, he still deeply resented that self-righteous human Emperor. He sensed it had been the Emperor's arrangement that led him to rescue his old comrades — yet that delayed salvation could never truly mend the wounds inside him.
"You had such immense power — why did you do it this way?!"
"All I wanted was to give those slaves liberation. Why did you have to bow to those damned slavemasters?!"
Little Angron, with her small cute fangs, screamed her fury at the sky. It was the question she had always wanted to ask her father — the question she could never understand: why had the Emperor kept his distance from her?
And yet now he was willing to talk, willing to be close.
To the straightforward, simple-minded Angron of this moment, that wasn't affection. That was hypocrisy.
[Caleb : Sigh!]
[Just watch and you'll understand. When the expedition fleet arrives, have your flagship slip into the Warp.]
[You don't need to meet me in person. Just watch — and the truth will reveal itself.]
Caleb cut the connection to Angron. At the same moment, the chessboard dispensed its rewards — modest ones, as expected for a prologue — and everything that followed was simply to make Angron fully convinced.
"Fine. I'll wait here."
"Let's see what this so-called 'truth' actually is."
Rather than ordering the Conqueror into the Warp, Angron simply sat where she was, waiting quietly — chatting with her children and the gladiators.
Using the skill Truth or Dare, Angron earned the gladiators' trust within moments. The moment she demonstrated the same abilities as their old brother, they were completely certain: the Angron before them was their comrade from long ago — even if that comrade was now inexplicably a girl.
...Not that it mattered, really.
Wasn't little Angron with her tiny fangs just absolutely adorable? And she could soothe their hearts too. Fighting for a Primarch like this — what an honor.
[System: Player has completed the mission. Rewards are evolving.]
[Angron's causal thread has been modified. The truth sequence is now initiating.]
Caleb was genuinely curious what story the chessboard would spin next. In theory, Angron had just cut down her own adoptive father in that battle — but there were still so many gladiator brothers to account for. How was this going to be smoothed over?
Just as Caleb wondered, Angron sensed something strange above the planet.
Crimson energy began bleeding across the sky like a spreading stain.
Then — the corpses that had been slaughtered began to rise.
"Blood for the Blood God!"
The blood of the slavemasters had fed the Blood God's ancient relics. Khorne bestowed his blessing upon them, restoring their flesh — but their souls were already bound in the Warp, enslaved as daemons. What followed was nothing more than daemonic roleplay.
The Butcher's Nails-version of Angron staggered to his feet, clutching a heap of shredded meat and sobbing — clearly hallucinating that the bloody remains were his adoptive father.
Watching from the Conqueror, the real Angron felt like an absolute clown.
Then — "Child."
The real adoptive father appeared at her side. The aged gladiator had already begun the first step toward becoming an Astartes — he had accepted the implantation of a secondary heart.
"Father, this is dangerous! You're old — the surgery could fail. Didn't you always say you never wanted to fight again? Why are you doing this?"
Angron pressed her ear close and listened to that heartbeat — strong and steady, like hammered iron.
She had given the gladiators a choice: either accept a longevity procedure and live out their days in peace, or join the Twelfth Legion as her warriors. She had expected some of the younger brothers to join her.
But never her adoptive father.
The newly-initiated Astartes shook his head and spoke his reason — and his reason rang with iron clarity, because it was Angron herself who had once said it to him.
"Child — you said you would be a liberator. You promised all of us: you would free every slave."
"When your sons and daughters gave me that choice, I knew — this was the moment. You gave each of us peace and direction. Now it is time to lead us in keeping that promise."
Dual-ponytailed Angron's pupils contracted sharply.
She remembered those words — spoken ten thousand years ago. It was that promise to her brothers and sisters that had fueled her hatred for the Emperor afterward, when he had taken everything from her.
She never imagined that "keeping the promise" would come to look like this.
Down on the surface, the Butcher's Nails version of Angron rose again. The reanimated slavemasters overwhelmed him, driving him back into the same brutal spectacle of forced combat and abuse.
Those agonizing memories unlocked something in the real Angron. She suddenly understood: what she was witnessing now was what she had once lived through. The brothers she thought she'd left behind had already been rescued by her present self. The figures still fighting down there were hollow shells — their souls long lost to endless slaughter. And she had stood there like a fool, believing she was leading a slave revolt.
Then — the system star on the Mandeville point blazed to life.
The vast expeditionary fleet emerged. At its head: the Bucephelus, the Emperor's own flagship.
The Emperor had arrived with the entire First Expedition Fleet.
Sensing two Primarchs simultaneously, the Emperor paused — and then, it seemed, perceived the shape of a distorted truth. He too stepped into the roleplay unfolding below.
Only Angron remained in the middle — the clown, the only one genuinely deceived.
"Father — you knew all along, didn't you?"
Angron was no longer shouting. She simply sat where she was, looking up at the sky.
Caleb thought the chessboard had arranged this beautifully — all the plot holes filled in one elegant move.
[Caleb : What did you expect?]
[The Angron left in this era was nothing but an enslaved shell.]
[Under those circumstances, was there any point in telling you? Telling you meant telling Khorne.]
[What — did you want to go be Khorne's World Eater after all?]
[Angron: ...Mm.]
On the Conqueror, Angron was utterly speechless.
So in the end, everyone had been performing for her — and she and her brothers had known nothing.
She'd been the fool at center stage, conned from every direction, played from every angle.
Honestly? Talking to these ancient schemers was exhausting.
This was so much better. Everyone speaking from the heart, nothing hidden.
"Forget it, forget it!"
"30K Dad is about to come grab 40K me!"
"I just got my freedom back — there's no way I'm going back to being a pawn!"
Angron maneuvered the Conqueror around to the far side of the planet — but she could still watch as the golden giant aboard the Bucephelus reached down and retrieved the empty shell.
She now knew the truth. But she had no intention of meeting the man who had supposedly sired her.
The years of coldness and distance had long since worn her down. Even if the voice in her head had genuinely been helping her — the Angron who had finally, truly reclaimed her freedom wanted to go do something else with it.
"Let's move."
But a few of the old veterans on board had other ideas.
"Primarch — now that the Emperor's here, shouldn't we pay our respects? You're his child, after all. Surely he'd want to meet you now."
Angron went quiet. Her internal monologue, however, was extremely loud.
[Angron: No no no, I am NOT going to make a fool of myself.]
[Showing up looking like THIS in front of Dad and my brothers? Mortifying.]
[They'd be laughing at me behind my back for ten thousand years.]
[Better to let them remember me as a brute. I'm not going.]
The crew fell silent — especially the Eaters of Worlds who could hear thoughts.
...Right. Their Primarch was apparently a bit of a dork. Mature in counseling sessions, but in terms of personality? Kind of a child.
The Conqueror accelerated toward the nearby Warp membrane.
The Emperor, from his flagship, let his gaze sweep past — and in that single glance, he sensed a presence aboard that ship, carrying the exact same aura as one of his sons.
[30K Emperor: Strange. I don't recall having a daughter.]
[Did Malcador do something behind my back? ...No, that doesn't seem right.]
He made no move to intercept. He simply watched, puzzled, as Angron departed.
The Emperor — not yet the God of Mankind — had no way of knowing what had just transpired. Confronting a Chaos God one-on-one was beyond even him at this stage, let alone comprehending the full truth of what had unfolded here.
"The loop is closed."
Caleb watched as the Conqueror slipped into the Warp, whereupon the chessboard seamlessly re-routed the ship back to the 40K timeline.
The chessboard really was something else — far beyond any Warp God when it came to tangled causality. For it, this kind of knot was just another mission parameter. And the mission had completed without failure.
Even if Angron wouldn't pledge loyalty to the Imperium, she would at least stop causing trouble for the loyalist factions.
Back in 40K, Angron turned to her brothers and sisters with a declaration burning in her chest.
[Angron: Brothers, I need your help. I want to rescue the rest of my children.]
[That wretched Khorne is still enslaving my other sons and daughters.]
[I want you to help me truly liberate them!]
How could any of them refuse? Especially the gladiator brothers who had fought beside Angron through everything — it was never even a question.
[Gladiator 1: Angron, no problem! Leave it to us!]
[Gladiator 2: We've lived and died together. If your children are in chains, of course we help free them!]
[...Though "World Eaters" is a pretty weird name. What about "Liberators"?]
"Done."
Some things were solemn enough to say out loud — not just silently in one's mind.
Angron's voice still carried a trace of youth. But it was warm and steady, the kind of voice that put people at ease.
"We'll call ourselves the Liberators Warband for now."
"And I'd rather not run into any of my other siblings just yet — so let's keep a low profile."
Adoptive father rescued. Old gladiator brothers reunited. Angron's heart was lighter than it had been in an age.
The old resentment toward her father had simplified — what remained was really just the sting of having been kept in the dark.
Caleb exhaled.
The mission was done. Brief, clean, and it had patched up an enormous tangle of Angron's backstory and character inconsistencies.
Out in the vast silver sea of the galaxy, the Conqueror was a single leaf adrift. Angron would not be joining the loyalists — but at the very least, she would never again be any Chaos God's puppet.
"6… WAAAGH!"
And then, of course, a mob of Orks with absolutely no sense of self-preservation set their sights on the enormous warship.
At their head was none other than the great green giant that Caleb had once set loose — the Hulk.
The Hulk, for reasons he couldn't quite articulate, sensed something extremely powerful inside that vessel.
He decided he needed to fight it and find out who the strongest human really was.