"Brothers, we're about to face a lot of battles…"
Eden walked with Guilliman and the Khan toward the sanctum's armory district, speaking with some emotion.
He frowned slightly, sounding worried. "Sigh, I've never taken part in a war this dangerous. I don't know if we can hold, or if our firepower is enough. Maybe we should be even more cautious."
For him, this was probably the largest-scale war he had ever personally fought in, and he would be leading a boarding strike force the whole time, jumping in and out of the enemy lines. Even for him, the psychological pressure was not small.
Even more cautious?!
The Savior's words almost left Guilliman and the Khan speechless.
This was a straight-up encirclement and annihilation campaign.
The Redemption Expeditionary Fleet had already surrounded the Vostonia sub-sector. The fleet was so large it could clog the key warp routes. All that was left was to launch the general offensive.
"This might be the… most 'wealthy' war I've ever fought in."
After a few seconds of silence, Guilliman finally squeezed out这样一句话.
Since his awakening, every war he had fought had been incredibly difficult. Imperial forces and whole warzones were constantly on the brink of annihilation.
They were so poor that even ship-mounted macro batteries had to be rationed. Fire a few shells less if you could; every shot had to count.
Boarding operations were even worse, reaching the level of outright suicide missions. Most of the time he led just a handful of honor guards onto an enemy flagship, and at any moment the whole team might be wiped out.
And now? How many troops did this so-called "boarding strike force" that Eden had assembled actually have?
Redemption First Fleet. An entire grand-scale battlefleet.
Combat forces included three Primarchs, three thousand Custodians, one hundred thousand Space Marines, a million suits of powered combat armor for individual troopers, plus massed maniples of Titans and Knight households.
On top of that were uncounted automata forged with Men of Iron technology, and swarms of servitor drones.
When the Savior had announced this "boarding strike force" concept in front of everyone, Guilliman had gone numb.
Was this really a proper boarding team, or were they planning to jump aboard and drown the enemy in bodies instead?!
A Chaos fleet probably couldn't withstand being "boarded" by those kinds of numbers. Only a planet could physically hold that many attackers.
But even so, it was more than enough to completely submerge any critical enemy node.
Guilliman simply couldn't understand why, with this level of manpower and firepower, Eden could still sound this worried.
If it were him, he'd already be charging straight at the Chaos horde at the head of the army.
"Brother, with the three of us working together, we'll definitely be able to deal with those traitors and abominable horrors."
The Khan, as rough and straightforward as ever, still picked up on the real source of Eden's concern: the fallen Primarchs and those still-unseen terrors waiting in the dark.
The Chaos Gods' methods were notoriously deadly.
Even with their current overwhelming forces, raising their guard was never wrong.
Otherwise he might end up like Roboute, regularly walking into enemy ambushes and reprisals and getting pinned down for brutal beatings on the regular.
"When the battle starts, I'll go in as the vanguard."
Guilliman added after a moment.
He wanted to clear out more of the enemy and the worst threats ahead of his brothers, especially ahead of Eden.
That, in his mind, was his duty as the "big brother" among them.
Though he was the thirteenth Primarch by number, Guilliman had always conducted himself like the responsible older brother of the Primarchs.
Which, of course, meant he frequently clashed with the First Primarch, the Lion.
Eden and the Khan exchanged a glance and nodded in agreement.
"Good. Then, Old Roboute, you'll be our vanguard. You're the most suitable for the job."
Such words were very pleasing to Guilliman's ears.
What he did not realize was that Eden's real reasoning was:
"This guy is practically a walking magnet for ambushes and kill-traps. If we send him in first, he'll trigger every buried enemy and hidden trap on the field.
Perfect vanguard material!"
Before long, the three of them passed under a ring of stone arches dozens of meters high and stepped into a vast armory district.
This tens-of-thousands-of-square-meters zone was the Savior's personal armory, and it was huge.
He had even added a lot of greenery; to the uninitiated, it might have looked like some kind of park.
That was mainly so that Eden could have a pleasant environment to get dressed in.
A good mood before gearing up.
To Guilliman and the Khan, however, it was nothing but gaudy, outrageously luxurious… and deeply envy-inducing.
Building a functioning biosphere on a voidship was no trivial matter. It required immense resource投入 and high-end biotechnical expertise.
In short: wealth.
With stream-fed water trickling and artificial birdsong echoing above,
The three walked down a lush green path between rows of weapon vaults draped in vines. Among them, one blacked-out vault looked especially out of place.
The outer shell of that black vault was studded with Blackstone, as if it had only recently been installed. It radiated a strange and solemn presence.
"That's a new forgefane we brought in recently.
My prototype wargear line. You'll get to see what's inside with your own eyes in a moment."
Eden answered their questioning looks.
That was the dedicated forging platform for his personal wargear. The armor stored within was the set he had made earlier using the Emperor's bones, Blackstone, and a variety of rare materials.
But the deployment of that system was complicated and extremely resource-intensive, so for now it wasn't in regular use.
Guilliman and the Khan glanced at it a few times but said no more.
In their long lives they had seen too many weapons and artifacts, up to and including true relics. Very little could genuinely stir their curiosity anymore.
At the end of the day, it was just "another new type of wargear." What was the big deal?
Rumble…
The three finally stepped into a large main armory: this was where their armor and weapons were stored, modified, and maintained.
On this long crusade, Guilliman and the Khan had basically stopped using their own chapter armories and instead "squatted" in the Savior's.
They had no choice. Their own armories were a bit… bare. Just a handful of suits and a few low-ranking Tech-priests.
Even as Primarchs, it was hard for them to recruit a full Archmagos to stand permanent guard over their gear. Getting a busy Mechanicus sage to take the time to forge one suit of armor was already a favor.
You couldn't very well ask an Archmagos of the Mechanicus to move in and be your private armorer. This wasn't the Golden Throne.
But the Savior's armory was different. He had over a dozen Magi stationed here permanently, plus one full Archmagos as overseer. That was the definition of extravagant.
With that kind of setup, you could go off and run a full-blown sector-level Forge World.
Here, however, those high-ranking Tech-priests were just maintenance staff for the armory… and they had to fight for the posting.
Why? Because of how many toys Eden's armory contained.
The Savior's armory had practically collected examples of every race's weapons, wargear, relics, and artifacts across the galaxy. Everything you could think of, and more you couldn't. And fresh specimens were constantly being added.
For a Tech-priest, this place was paradise.
"Truly astonishing…"
Guilliman took a deep breath as he looked out over weapon racks stretching to the vanishing point, each one laden with wargear.
Here, the baseline was master-crafted. Relic-grade equipment took up the lion's share.
And on top of that were special items so rare they didn't even have a standard classification.
"Wasn't easy getting here, either."
Eden couldn't help being a little sentimental. He had built this collection up piece by piece. In the early days he had been poor enough that he had to scavenge Roboute's hand-me-downs.
"By the Machine-Goddess, Your Majesty, the armor you requested has been fully re-engineered and enhanced. It is ready for donning at any time."
With a soft whirring of gears, an Archmagos descended slowly from the ceiling, speaking with great respect.
His lower body was fused into a massive mechanical armature that ran on tracks throughout the vault, allowing him to move instantly to any point in the armory.
This Archmagos had been granted a twenty-year tenure here, and the moment he arrived he had modified his own body, merging himself into the armory to save every possible second for research.
As soon as he finished speaking, two imposing suits of armor descended from above.
Primarch warplate.
One was white warplate trimmed in dark gold and trophies of beast-hide: the Wildfire Armour. The other was blue plate adorned with gold and laurel wreaths: the Armour of Fate.
Both suits had undergone another round of upgrades. Even the paintwork used the latest sacred techniques. They gleamed with a holy sheen and looked more awe-inspiring than ever.
"Your armor came out nicely."
Eden scanned the dataslate readouts and nodded in satisfaction.
"Each suit now mounts at least fifteen distinct shield systems, plus a host of special relic subsystems. Every performance metric has been tuned to the optimum. Even the machine-spirits are in top condition."
The Wildfire Armour, beyond sheer protection, was now focused heavily on speed. It carried multiple teleportation relics tuned for short-range jumps, allowing lightning strikes and rapid extraction from encirclements.
The Armour of Fate was absolute defense incarnate. On top of its shields, it carried a whole stack of lifesavers: anti-warp talismans, purgatives and antitoxins, emergency life-support and revival systems, and even trans-spatial distress beacons.
You could probably send a regular Space Marine stumbling through a Chaos daemon tide in that thing and expect him to crawl back out alive.
"Good brother!"
Guilliman and the Khan looked at their freshly upgraded armor, and smiles crinkled the corners of their eyes.
Across the Imperium and even into the Warp, no warrior could refuse armor this powerful, even if he were a legendary Primarch.
Armor was the thing that stayed with them the longest, the vessel through which they strode across the battlefield.
The two Primarchs stepped up onto the dressing platforms in turn. Under curling incense smoke and binharic hymns, the Archmagos directed mechanical arms to fit the armor pieces onto them.
After they donned their warplate and moved their limbs experimentally, their satisfaction only grew. The armor felt perfectly comfortable and perfectly fitted.
This was the benefit of "squatting" in the Savior's armory:
Full Archmagos-level custom modification and maintenance service.
Every change was based on hard data, not guesswork. Thousands of body metrics and combat logs were collected and analyzed, then vast resources poured into iterative optimization.
These suits were more tailored to them than the wargear they had worn for ten thousand years.
Before this, they had never had the conditions for that kind of continual tuning. A single set of armor might be worn for who-knew-how-many years; just having someone patch it up once in a while was a luxury.
After all, not just anyone could safely tamper with Primarch-grade warplate.
They still remembered how Guilliman had once begged Belisarius Cawl for a new suit of armor, only to receive it ten thousand years later.
An Archmagos ran tens of thousands of major projects at once. How could he devote his entire schedule to you? Even the Emperor himself hadn't necessarily enjoyed that kind of pampering.
But now, their armor was overseen by the Machine-Goddess, an Archmagos, and more than a dozen Magi. After every battle, the warplate was repaired and upgraded based on the latest field data and technological advances.
How could that not be wonderful?
When the two Primarchs brought their armor fully online, more runic light bled across the plate, making them look even more holy and imposing.
The changes weren't only to performance; a great deal of work had gone into their visual presence.
"Brother, you're not planning to go into battle in that suit, are you?"
Guilliman suddenly thought of something and frowned at Eden's current gear.
He had noticed that his brother was very fond of wearing this high-grade knockoff ceremonial suit.
It looked impressive enough, but it wasn't true Primarch warplate. In the kind of battle they were about to fight, that was a serious liability.
"Exactly. That armor of yours isn't enough for what's coming."
The Khan had spotted the same issue and quickly added his voice.
Both Primarchs felt a twinge of guilt. Eden had gone to such lengths to rebuild their armor, yet his own gear looked so plain by comparison.
"Of course I'm not wearing this toy into battle."
Eden shook his head, chuckling.
He usually wore this set simply because it was comfortable, lightweight, and packed full of environmental controls and quality-of-life systems. It was perfect for ceremonies and public appearances.
Even when he did fight in it, his opponents were rarely anything special, so there had been no need to switch armor.
But now, he would be facing a high-intensity warzone. It was time to change into his true battleplate.
As soon as he finished speaking, a new suit of golden armor descended. It radiated raw presence; the breastplate bore a mighty Imperial Aquila, and a crimson cloak draped down its back.
The aura it exuded was overwhelming.
It captured both Primarchs' attention instantly.
They stared up at it, stunned.
"The One True Armour?!"
"Didn't the One True Armour get melted down and reforged? How is it here, with you…?"
Guilliman's face was filled with disbelief, his voice trembling.
"I remember Father personally ordering it melted down and its metal cast into badges, to be granted to the loyal Legions as a mark of purity."
The One True Armour was the golden relic-plate the Emperor had worn throughout the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy.
Forged from the inherited technology of the Dark Age of Technology, it was a suit of armor even the Emperor himself could not easily replicate.
After the Siege of Terra, when the Emperor was mortally wounded by Horus and interred upon the Golden Throne, he no longer had any use for the armor.
The Master of Mankind personally ordered Dorn to melt the One True Armour down and reforge it into countless badges, to bestow upon the warriors who had accompanied him in the boarding assault on the Vengeful Spirit.
Over time, this tradition spread to all Chapters. Every Crux Terminatus set into Terminator armor's left shoulder was said to hold a fragment of the Emperor's warplate.
Later novels even mentioned that the Dark Angels retained an entire arm of the One True Armour and used it to produce endless Terminator crosses.
By now, practically every "pure" veteran marine's wargear contained some infinitesimal trace of that sacred metal.
Though, given the sheer number of Space Marines and the long span of history, the bit of the original armor left in any given badge was probably no more than a single metal grain… or even a metal molecule.
But it still counted as a sign of loyalty.
So how could a One True Armour that had been melted down long ago now be hanging here… intact?
"This is a re-forged One True Armour. It shouldn't be too different from the original."
Eden stepped up onto the dressing platform as he spoke.
His special metals research institute had quietly collected large numbers of badges, melted them down, and extracted a significant amount of the original One True Armour alloy. Using that sample and recovered Dark Age technology, they'd successfully reproduced the special metal.
The Magi discovered that this alloy had extraordinary resistance to corruption, particularly against warp energies. It was likely a custom meta-material humanity had designed specifically to fight the warp during the Dark Age.
Once they had that, the institute used what they now called "One True Alloy," combined with recovered Dark Age power systems and technologies, to reconstruct the One True Armour.
This was the power of a complete research ecosystem.
From the start, Eden's realm had poured obscene resources into establishing specialized research institutes of every kind, investigating all sorts of "impractical" and apparently unprofitable projects.
Now, all those fields of knowledge were feeding into each other. The time had come for everything to explode into成果, generating astonishing returns.
From the viewpoint of the old Imperium's fragmented Mechanicus and shackled scholars, this looked like outright miracles.
"So it's a reconstructed One True Armour. That means it's not actually Father's original armor, right?"
The Khan finally understood, then scratched his head in regret. "Replicas are never as good as the real thing. I never understood why Father insisted on destroying that relic suit in the first place."
"No. From a certain point of view, this is still the Emperor's own One True Armour."
Eden smiled.
"After we finished the reconstruction, I specifically sent it to His Majesty and had him wear it for a while, pouring in a huge amount of holy psychic blessing.
According to his feedback, this armor might actually be stronger than the old one. The original reactor core was ancient and a bit worn-out."
He had used that little trick to create a suit of warplate that was practically indistinguishable from the original One True Armour, maybe even superior.
And it was, indisputably, the Emperor's own relic armor.
Eden stepped down from the platform, the One True Armour enclosing him in a glow of distinctive gold. That color came from the metal itself, not from any paint. It was inherently sacred.
The sounds from the armor's joints were not the harsh grating of Imperial industrial servos, but a beautiful melody from the dawn of mankind's golden age.
Like the original, the suit housed an ancient Dark Age power-frame dug out of the warp. In both raw strength and motive power, this relic warplate far surpassed the Wildfire Armour and the Armour of Fate.
When Eden walked up to stand in front of Guilliman and the Khan, he was the very image of the Emperor come again. For a heartbeat, both Primarchs felt their old psychological shadows stirring.
The Emperor of that era had been… a touch too strict.
Now, dressed in the One True Armour, Eden stood among them and instantly established a clear hierarchy.
Anyone could tell at a glance who was the golden big boss and who were the two slightly less shiny lieutenants.
"It's a pity the production of One True Alloy is so hard and time-consuming."
Eden flexed the lightning claws in his gauntlets somewhat apologetically.
"We've only made this one suit so far. I can't share any with you yet. Once the next batch of One True Alloy comes out, I'll have new suits forged for you."
In reality, the initial run had yielded over a hundred tons of alloy.
But most of that had already disappeared into a different wargear project, and saying that out loud now would just be awkward.
"It's fine. Just don't forget us next time."
Guilliman and the Khan stared enviously at the Savior clad in the One True Armour, the Emperor's Sword at his side.
He was practically wearing the full Emperor loadout. The Emperor reborn indeed.
"Don't worry. I've still got something good for each of you."
Eden clapped both Primarchs on the shoulder. In that getup, the gesture made them feel uncomfortably like they were being patted on the head by Father.
He produced a few more relics for them, two of which were especially notable.
One was a great mechanical eagle-wing harness forged from the remains of Vashtorr the Arkifane and the daemonic wing-bones of Be'lakor.
That piece was for the Khan. The Hawk of Chogoris couldn't be without wings. With them he could strike and withdraw with even greater speed and freedom.
Then Eden drew another relic blade and offered it to Guilliman.
"Roboute, you're still short one truly formidable sword. This blade is called Asu-var, the Sword of Silent Screams. It drains the lifeforce of its foes. Or, if you prefer, you can call it the Crone-sword."
"...?"
Guilliman was completely lost. "Isn't that one of the Aeldari's highest relics? How in the Throne did you get it?"
Looking very innocent, Eden pushed the Crone-sword into Guilliman's hands.
"I happened to pick it up off the Visarch during the Commorragh Webway campaign.
You're the best person to hold onto it. It'll help deepen your relationship with Yvraine."
Given Guilliman's existing relationship with the Aeldari, him wielding the Crone-sword was less likely to provoke some kind of genocidal blood feud.
And a relic like this, sitting in Guilliman's hands, was also leverage on the Aeldari – a check and balance that could help cement cooperation.
Guilliman had the same thought, and so he accepted the blade.
Before long, the three of them were fully armed and armored and strode out of the armory.
It was time to fight.
Hum…
The Dreamweaver led Redemption First Fleet out of the warp and into the Kalisde System.
Eden and his brothers marched, resplendent, into the teleportarium, ready to jump straight down to Kalisde and personally join in the dog-pile on the heretical scum threatening the galaxy.
But just as they were about to initiate teleport, bad news arrived.
Their brother…
Was already being dog-piled.
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