This Is Our Warhammer Journey

A duel of glory between the Astra Militarum quickly came to an end.

The winners were mostly company champions or seasoned veterans already familiar with mechanical augmetics.

Other than Arthur, the remaining three also received their own gifts in the rather ceremonial gifting process.

"Speaking of which, isn’t this blessing kind of ominous? Cadia gets blown up by Brother Abaddon in 999.M41, right?"

Garna joked with a laugh.

Young people bounce back fast—already joking again.

"Then we won’t let it be destroyed."

Arthur clenched his fist.

No matter what, the opening of the Rift was a huge tragedy in itself. At the very least, they couldn’t let its appearance lead to such devastating consequences.

Romulus let out a light sigh.

Destroying Cadia and tearing open the Great Rift was something all four of the Chaos Gods agreed on.

Even Abaddon himself didn’t expect blowing up Cadia to have such massive consequences—he had originally planned to capture the fortress world until he flew into a rage and hurled the Blackstone Fortress.

And the Emperor probably tacitly approved of the whole thing.

Trying to protect Cadia under the watchful eyes of the Four—heck, even Five—Gods wasn’t going to be easy.

"We’ll deal with that in the future. Still got over two hundred years to go."

Rameses, on the other hand, figured the more practical move was to get a working ship so they’d have something to roam the galaxy with.

"By the way, should we keep investing in this safe house? Its concealment functions are still solid—it just uses up too much. Too bad no one in the human worlds believes in this safe house. And our relationship with the Emperor is... well, not great. Otherwise, we could’ve tried putting it to good use."

Rameses was thinking fast, as usual.

Right now, humanity still believed in the Emperor, and because the Warp was tied to the psychic realm, that belief would eventually flow his way.

But if they could get souls under their control—or if the Emperor was willing to cooperate and hand them a few Grey Knights...

Then maybe they could mimic the Chaos-style daemon summoning rituals, and directly pull the Grey Knights into physical bodies they’d soul-materialized?

Even daemons could possess psykers through Warp rituals. Theoretically, this should work for them too.

The main reason the Emperor couldn’t use that method was because, while Space Marines were mass-produced, cultivating them post-Primarch was still extremely difficult. Plus, it’d be pretty messed up to have ancient heroes take over the bodies of future generations.

But the empty shells they mass-produced shouldn’t have that problem, right?

They had everything—even Warp components patched in—just no soul.

"Hss~"

Rameses felt his idea was brilliant and couldn’t help drawing surprised looks from the others.

"I’ve got a plan!"

Seeing everyone’s attention on him, Rameses immediately shared his thoughts.

"Sounds really doable. I mean, don’t daemons also get summoned through sacrificing souls and flesh? We’ve got the souls, and the bodies are prepped to spec."

Romulus found the idea feasible. If they could pull it off, he wouldn’t have to keep micro-managing all those Space Marines.

To appease Rameses’ obsession with Warhammer’s top-tier science—numerology—he currently had 169 Space Marines under remote control. It was frying his brain.

But editing souls themselves was both a hassle and a loss. If summoning the Grey Knights consumed less psychic energy than making souls from scratch, then they’d be profiting.

"Now that’s what I call lightning-forged divine weapons."

Arthur nodded, approving the idea too.

"So next we need to focus on gathering intel on Warp rituals, and developing our own followers, right?"

"No rush on the followers. First off, we don’t know squat about religion. And our identities won’t pass the Inquisition's scrutiny. It was already a stretch to get the Order of the Sacred Rose with the help of the Emperor’s miracle. If we mess around with religion and get branded heretics by the Ecclesiarchy, it’d be hilarious."

Rameses thought for a bit, then added:

"I’ll handle the Warp stuff—I'll psychically call the Emperor. If he ignores me, I’ll just keep bothering him. Let’s see who tools who!"

"This guy might be nuts, but he’s still humanity’s best bet. Now that he’s gone schizoid, he should still be able to make some noise. I’m no psyker scrub like Big 13, so if I spend enough time on it, I should be able to extract some useful info."

"You guys keep an eye out for info on Chaos cult rituals. Since this involves the Warp, we gotta use Warp methods. Then we’ll find a chance to run a test using a daemon."

"Got it."

Everyone nodded.

Right now, it was just a theoretically sound proposal. All the steps still needed verification and refinement—no rushing it.

They’d only transmigrated a few hours ago. Their understanding of this world, though broad, wasn’t deep yet. A lot of human culture, tech, and Chaos rituals couldn’t be learned just from literature. It’d take time to study.

"Alright, that’s it for now. Let’s get the Astra Militarum sorted first."

Catching a glimpse of the now fully healed and retrained Astra Militarum, Romulus ended the discussion.

They’d prepared a whole pile of heavy-hitting units for the Astra Militarum to use, after all.

Not like they had a choice. There were only four of them. Even if Romulus split his brain into a hundred parts, there was no way he could micro-manage the firepower of a full armored regiment by hand.

Still, meeting Cadians was a stroke of luck for the transmigrators. Being a fortress world, Cadia had a heavy defense presence, and not many troops were stationed outside.

If the soldiers on this ship had been from the Scintillan Fusiliers or the Savlar Chem-Dogs or something...

Well, they’d have had to think long and hard about whether to hand over any equipment.

"Lord Romulus!"

As the four approached, Kovek finished delegating retraining orders to each company commander and came over to the Angels’ side.

Besides the necessary respect, there was a hint of warmth in his attitude. Clearly, the gift-giving ceremony had brought them closer.

Raising his right hand to stop Kovek from speaking, Romulus asked bluntly:

"Can your troops operate Imperial armored vehicles proficiently?"

"?"

Kovek looked confused.