Chapter 55 The Resigned Archmagos (Bonus)

“Does Apotheosis actually demand a catastrophic price?” Vane rubbed his chin, answering Voldus with absolute, casual sincerity. “I never had to pay any apocalyptic prices when I executed these Apotheosis rituals.”

“As for whether the previous owners of these rituals had to pay a price… I honestly couldn’t tell you. When I brutally murdered them to loot their rituals, I didn’t exactly pause to conduct an interview.”

Hearing Vane’s hyper-casual explanation, every single human and Aeldari in the room completely froze.

What do you mean ‘when I brutally murdered them’?!

Are you casually implying that every single one of your Apotheosis rituals was literally looted off the corpse of a dead God?!

Eldrad, Yvraine, and the Aeldari Farseers instinctively gulped, aggressively taking several steps backward in sheer, unadulterated terror.

By Isha… this human isn’t going to assassinate Ynnead and Cegorach just to add their Apotheosis drops to his inventory, is he?!

“Forefather, the ‘Divine Spark of the End’ that I currently possess… did you also acquire it by assassinating a God?” Sanguinius asked, genuinely curious.

Vane nodded. “Yeah. I had to permanently kill an entity named Abaddon to acquire the drop for your Apotheosis Ritual.”

“Just how many literal Gods have you executed?” Dante asked, his eyes wide with awe.

Everyone else in the room instantly perked their ears up, desperately wanting to know Vane’s absolute combat record.

“Honestly? I lost count. It’s mathematically quite high,” Vane shrugged. “Recently, I permanently killed an Evil God designated ‘X’. That guy was absolutely unhinged; he had completely enslaved a higher-dimensional spacetime and was aggressively launching inter-dimensional invasions.”

“The absolute microsecond I spawned into his dimension, I tracked him down and completely atomized him.”

Vane spoke with the casual, dismissive tone of someone describing taking out the trash. The audience, however, was stun-locked.

An Evil God capable of completely enslaving a higher-dimensional spacetime and launching infinite inter-dimensional invasions?! That entity sounds apocalyptically terrifying! And the Forefather just casually killed him?!

Voldus stood perfectly still, utterly speechless.

He had genuinely believed that as a Grand Master of the Grey Knights, he had witnessed the absolute peak of cosmic horror and martial supremacy.

But this human was completely, fundamentally beyond his comprehension. Who casually speed-runs literal deicide?!

“Let us prioritize checking on Roboute,” Sanguinius smoothly redirected, proving that his Primarch-tier psychological resilience was entirely intact.

“Agreed, Lord Sanguinius. We must proceed to the Shrine of the Primarch immediately,” Tigurius rapidly interjected, desperate to change the subject.

Voldus didn’t dare raise any further objections. After all, neither the Emperor nor Malcador the Sigillite had ever left a contingency protocol outlining what to do if a Human who killed literal gods showed up.

He absolutely could not be stubborn enough to draw his Nemesis Force Sword.

The Great Angel was standing right there. If Voldus even twitched toward his hilt, Sanguinius would absolutely violently launch him into the stratosphere and then pile-drive him into the bedrock until he looked like a planted root vegetable.

Forget one Grand Master—even if the entire Grey Knight Brotherhood was deployed in the room, Voldus wouldn’t dare initiate combat.

Who in their right mind would aggressively pick a fight with the Emperor’s absolute, undisputed ‘Number One Enforcer’—the being who single-handedly defended the Eternity Gate and permanently traumatized the daemonic hordes of Chaos?

Even Calgar didn’t vehemently oppose the plan as he did in the original lore timeline.

After all, a fully resurrected, literal God-tier Sanguinius was standing right in front of him. That was absolute, undeniable proof of Vane’s competence.

Escorted by Calgar and the Ultramarines High Command, the delegation proceeded deeper into the Fortress of Hera, heading straight for the Shrine of the Primarch.

The Shrine was the absolute, holiest site for the Ultramarines and a destination of pilgrimage for countless billions across the Imperium.

To guarantee the absolute security of the Primarch’s stasis-tomb, the localized defenses were impenetrable.

Everywhere you looked, elite Ultramarine Company Champions, Veterans of the Tyrannic Wars, and towering Castraferrum Dreadnoughts stood eternal, silent vigil.

If any unauthorized entity dared to breach the perimeter, they would instantly be ventilated into a fine, bloody mist.

The Shrine itself was a breathtaking, hyper-massive architectural marvel.

The colossal, solemn structures reached so high that a Warlord-class Titan could comfortably march through the main transit corridors without ever needing to duck.

The dying light of the setting sun, the pulsing violet hue of the localized Void Shields, and the distant, violent flashes of orbital anti-air batteries illuminated the grand architecture.

Servo-skulls endlessly patrolled the vaulted ceilings, projecting hyper-advanced biometric scanners and leaving thick trails of holy incense in their wake.

After clearing several dozen redundant, hyper-paranoid security checkpoints, Vane and the delegation finally stepped into the absolute inner sanctum of the Shrine.

At the very end of the massive hall, a colossal stasis-generator—a machine that had continuously, flawlessly operated for ten thousand years—hummed with deep, resonant power. It completely enveloped a massive throne forged from pure, solid gold and flawless Macraggian marble.

Sitting upon that throne was a majestic, towering son of the Emperor. The legendary Sword of the Emperor rested heavily across his lap. He sat perfectly motionless, silent as a statue.

This was the Lord of the XIII Legion. Roboute Guilliman.

The colossal, blue-armored demigod of logistics who was about to unknowingly incur an absolute, mathematically devastating cosmic debt of one hundred and fifty billion star systems.

A horrific, jagged wound was clearly visible across Guilliman’s neck. A single, frozen drop of impossibly bright, crimson blood was permanently suspended in the stasis field.

“Exalted Ancestor, I humbly beseech you. Please unleash your absolute, unparalleled power and return Lord Roboute Guilliman to us, so that he may once again wage war in the Emperor’s glorious name.”

Living Saint Celestine stepped in front of Vane, her voice echoing with profound, absolute reverence.

“You really know how to talk, Saint,” Vane grinned, turning to Celestine. “Whenever I finally get around to dragging the Golden Old Man off His throne, I’ll definitely demand He gives you a massive promotion and a salary bump.”

Vane strolled right up to Guilliman’s stasis-throne. He carefully analyzed the comatose Primarch, gently stroking his chin as his brain rapidly processed which specific divine authority he should permanently install into Guilliman.

If he was going to collect a pantheon of subordinate Gods, they absolutely needed to specialize in different conceptual authorities. If every single one of them shared the exact same skill tree, it would be boring, and assigning specialized administrative tasks would become a logistical nightmare.

He had already permanently locked the ‘Divine Spark of the End’ onto Sanguinius, so that was off the table.

Should I assign Guilliman the ‘Starlight Reaper’ authority?

The Starlight Reaper was the literal conceptual manifestation of a galaxy’s will, burdened with the absolute authority of maintaining the cosmic balance of life and death. It was formally designated as the ‘Watcher of the Cosmos’.

Vane had acquired this specific Apotheosis Ritual after clearing a hyper-advanced, sci-fi/fantasy fusion dimension.

By executing the ritual, he could synthesize the ‘Core of the Starlight Reaper’. Physically merging that core into a target would forcefully ascend them into the Reaper.

Nah, the thematic lore doesn’t really sync with Guilliman’s base stats.

Vane remembered the deep lore. While Guilliman was universally recognized as the absolute grandmaster of localized logistics and administration, his original, foundational genetic template was fundamentally designed for War.

The only reason Guilliman became such a well-adjusted, logistical nerd was because his adoptive parents, Konor and Tarasha Euten, were undeniably, absolutely top-tier parents. They aggressively nurtured a hyper-lethal warlord into a well-mannered, highly educated statesman.

Honestly, the Emperor should have learned something about parenting from Konor and Tarasha.

Look at how they raised their son. Now look at how You raised Yours.

You nurtured Horus into a pathological daddy’s boy whose entire personality revolved around validation.

Alpharius was a literal, unhinged schizophrenic. His entire personality was ‘I know that you know that I know that you don’t know that I know.’ It was a cognitive hazard! Honestly, all Riddler-archetypes should be permanently banned from the Warhammer universe.

Wait… what about the ‘Witherzilla’ Apotheosis?

Vane pulled up another option. Witherzilla was a catastrophically overpowered entity, possessing the absolute authorities of Lightning and Cross-Dimensional Target Locking.

He had looted this specific ritual after aggressively conquering the ‘Titan’ dimension.

All he had to do was synthesize a ‘Titan Core of the Wither’ and forcefully merge it into the target.

Still doesn’t feel right. It clashes with Guilliman’s personality profile.

Vane shook his head, completely dissatisfied, and continued rapidly scrolling through his inventory of God-tier drops.

The All-Seeing Seraphim? Not bad, but the authority overlaps too heavily with Sanguinius.

The Omnissiah? Absolutely not. That’s the Emperor’s conceptual domain. Too much overlap.

The… War Titan?

The War Titan Apotheosis was a localized drop from the ‘Bedwars’ dimension.

In that specific, hyper-aggressive parallel timeline, biological entities were locked in an eternal, infinite cycle of hyper-violent combat and slaughter.

The absolute mastermind controlling that entire dimension was the War Titan—the God of that specific Minecraft server.

It fed exclusively on blood, death, and absolute warfare. The entity who achieved the highest kill-count on the server received its absolute blessing.

When Vane had invaded the Bedwars dimension, he violently speed-ran the entire server, permanently secured the Number One spot on the leaderboards, directly challenged the War Titan to a 1v1 duel, and absolutely dominated it.

Perfect. The authority of the War Titan is a flawless fit for the Lord of Ultramar.

Having finalized his decision, Vane casually turned to Archmagos Cawl.

“Doraemon Cawl, go ahead and equip your Armor of Fate onto Guilliman.”

Cawl’s mechanical optics whirred for a full three seconds before he processed the bizarre nickname and realized Vane was speaking to him.

“I… I logically calculated that my device would be entirely redundant, given your absolute power.”

“It absolutely is redundant,” Vane shrugged casually. “But you literally traveled across the entire galaxy to get here. I have to let you participate a little bit, or else you might get depressed. After all, you did spend ten thousand years working on it.”

Cawl’s mechadendrites twitched violently, his vocal synthesizer emitting a highly irritated burst of static.

Why is he patronizing me like a literal toddler?!

I am a hyper-logical, flawlessly calculating, emotionally detached Archmagos of Mars! I am mathematically incapable of depression!

Seeing Vane hand out participation trophies, the faces of Eldrad, Yvraine, and the Aeldari delegation instantly lit up with desperate hope.

They had also traveled across the galaxy! They desperately wanted to participate!

“As for you guys… absolutely not.” Vane didn’t even bother looking at the Aeldari, aggressively shooting them down before they could speak.

Guilliman is going to be the CEO of my Inter-Dimensional Megamall. I am absolutely not allowing any xenos death-magic to introduce potential security bugs into his operating system.