"Swain, is this really worth it?" Arendi panted as he caught up to Swain. Even though the tall, thin man was strong, he'd lost a shoe while scrambling out of the mine shaft. There hadn't been enough time to fully grasp everything earlier, but now, with people from the Tower on their way, he could finally understand his boss' reasoning. This decision concerned the entire camp's future.
"Arendi , don't worry. If one mine shaft collapses, it collapses. Isn't there another one in a different direction? Concentrate our manpower on the northern mine shaft. I've surveyed it; although the Adamantium content there isn't as high, even with the Tower's penalty, it's enough to cover our food expenses." Swain first addressed Arendi's biggest concern.
In truth, Swain knew very well that Arendi's question about "worth it" was really about the food supply—the primary worry for all the other miners. Their anxious expressions confirmed this, so Swain didn't lower his voice, speaking in a perfectly clear tone. As for Corax, they naturally understood what could and couldn't be said. Swain was confident in their discretion.
Hearing Swain's booming voice, the other companions finally relaxed. Their boss liked to joke, but on matters like this...
"Which one... Number 19 should be an outsider, right?" Arendi asked in a lowered voice.
Besides the native descendants of miners on Lycaeus who had never seen the stars, many others were criminals from Lycaeus's home planet, Kiavahr. Though labeled criminals, most were exiled political and military elites and their families. Arendi was one of the latter, so he could tell at a glance that Corax's cultivation pod came from another powerful force.
It had managed to break through Lycaeus's dome without triggering the defense system above. Most importantly, despite such a strong impact, the pod's exterior showed no serious damage. From these observations, Arendi deduced that the boy's background wouldn't be small; at the very least, their smelting technology completely dwarfed Kiavahr's.
Although Kiavahr was an industrial world, both in terms of production capacity and technology, it was still far behind a Forge World, and it wasn't adept at building various military heavy armaments, such as battleships and main battle tanks.
However, this didn't mean that Kiavahr's armies were to be trifled with. While relatively lacking in heavy weaponry, a standard legion was still armed to the teeth with light weapons. Even if someone on Lycaeus started a rebellion and occupied the entire mining planet, Kiavahr's armies could easily crush it.
"Number 19... isn't there a legend of a savior on Lycaeus? Nine times out of ten, it's him."
"Just think of Number 19 as a story of a little prince from a vast empire wandering the cosmos, except this little prince is different," Swain said with a mysterious pat on Arendi's shoulder, a smile playing on his lips.
"Savior? A little prince's adventure?" Arendi incredulously pieced together these two seemingly unrelated phrases. He had seen too many scions of Kiavahr's ruling class; these noble descendants wouldn't care about the lives of ordinary people.
"Arendi , you know that a person's thoughts and behaviors are shaped by their upbringing and education." Swain spoke only to this point, daring not to reveal too much. After all, the universe held too many strange and powerful beings. Who knew if revealing too much might lead to unforeseen changes beyond his control?
Even though Swain had been in this wretched place for a long time, he could only lie low, quietly awaiting Corax's arrival. Besides that, the biggest thing he had done was to ensure that no one in his camp starved to death again, and this was also the greatest effort Swain could make. The task of saving the tragic fate of the people on Lycaeus should be left to non-human beings like the Primarchs to lead; he just needed to cheer from the sidelines.
Although Swain had transmigrated with memories of the Warhammer universe's trajectory, he dared not make a big move, in case it was that apocryphal timeline, which would be hilarious. But fortunately, everything he had encountered so far indicated that he had not arrived in timelines such as the Lion or Roboute's Great Heresy. This way, the major events of future development in his memory might come in handy.
"But even so, the future is full of variables, and the further it goes, the less valuable the reference becomes." Swain couldn't help but sigh in his heart. The main reason was that those four entities in the Warhammer universe were too abnormal, especially the Lord of Change, who controlled transformation—a supreme being whose pleasure was to create countless variations.
The greater the change, the greater the increase in power it brought to the other party, so the other party would spare no effort to push for all things to happen. The occurrence of these things was not only what was in Swain's memory but also many unknown and variable events.
"Emperor, you need to be stronger, hold on a bit longer. Injuries don't matter, as long as you don't end up paralyzed on the Golden Throne for ten thousand years." Swain couldn't help but pray to his fellow Earthling. Although the Earth they knew was not from the same timeline, it was all the same when rounded up.
"Count the losses. You all go to the northern mine shaft and dig together!" Seeing that these panting miners had rested enough, Swain directly arranged for all of them to go to the other mine shaft to dig. Resting because a mine shaft collapsed? Such a good thing simply didn't exist on Lycaeus.
As for Swain and Arendi , they remained at the open-pit mine. People from the Tower would arrive soon, which was also why Swain arranged for the others to go north. With many people, it was inevitable that flaws would be exposed, and the people from the Tower wouldn't care about the miners' whereabouts; it was like this all over Lycaeus.
Unless miners died directly in a collapse, those who escaped would still continue to dig, and even a brief stop would not be allowed. Stopping meant hunger, hunger meant weakness, and weakness meant death.
The disheveled miners had no objections to this, simply taking their equipment and heading towards the northern mine shaft. On Lycaeus, it had always been this way since ancient times. But was it truly correct just because it had always been this way? None of the miners had the leisure to ponder these things.