Warhammer 40k: Ours Journey

Chapter 22: The Idea of Summoning an E-Daemon

The Imperial Guard honor duel quickly concluded. The winners were mostly the champions of their respective companies or veterans already accustomed to their mechanical prosthetics.

Besides Arthur, the other three also received their own gifts in the highly ceremonial presentations.

"Speaking of which, isn't this blessing a bit ominous?" Karna joked. "Cadia is going to get blown up by Abaddon in 999.M41." Young people bounce back quickly; he was already in a joking mood again.

"Then we won't let it be destroyed," Arthur said, clenching his fist. No matter how you looked at it, the opening of the Great Rift was a massive tragedy. At the very least, they had to mitigate the severity of its consequences.

"That might be difficult," Romulus sighed. "We're strong now, sure, and our abilities look impressive, but there are only four of us. At our current rate of development, we're nowhere near capable of affecting the balance of power."

The destruction of Cadia and the tearing open of the Great Rift was a consensus reached by all Four Chaos Gods. Even Abaddon himself hadn't expected blowing up Cadia would have such a massive impact; his original plan had been to capture the fortress world before he threw the Blackstone Fortress at it in a fit of rage.

And the Emperor Himself probably acquiesced to it.

Trying to save Cadia right under the noses of the Four—or perhaps five—Gods would be incredibly difficult.

"We'll worry about the future when it comes. We still have over two hundred years," Ramesses said. He felt it was more practical to focus on securing a functional ship that could serve as their base for navigating the galaxy.

"Speaking of which, are we still investing in this 'safe house'?" Ramesses asked. "Its concealment function is decent, but the upkeep is massive. It's a pity there are no humans in the world who worship our safe house yet, and our relationship with the Emperor isn't exactly rosy, otherwise we might be able to leverage it."

Ramesses's mind was quite flexible. While the humans here currently worshipped the Emperor, and because the Warp is a realm of the spirit, their souls would eventually drift towards Him... but if they had souls under their own control, or if the Emperor was willing to cooperate and lend them some Legion of the Damned troopers...

Could they use something similar to a Chaos summoning ritual to pull the Legion of the Damned directly into the bodies they created through psycho-materialization? Daemons themselves could possess psykers through their connection to the Warp after a specific ritual. Theoretically, his idea should be quite feasible.

A major reason the Emperor couldn't use this method was that while Space Marines were mass-produced soldiers, their creation was still incredibly difficult without the Primarchs. Moreover, He wouldn't want the heroes who fought for humanity to possess the bodies of their descendants.

But these empty shells they were mass-producing shouldn't have that restriction, right? They had everything they needed, even the Warp-components. They just lacked souls.

"Hooo~"

Ramesses felt his idea was absolutely perfect, drawing astonished looks from his companions.

"I have an idea!" Seeing that he had everyone's attention, Ramesses immediately shared his train of thought.

"It seems highly feasible," Romulus agreed. "Daemons are summoned through the sacrifice of souls and flesh, right? We have the souls, and we can prepare perfectly formed bodies for them." He thought the plan was viable. If it worked, he wouldn't have to waste his energy remotely controlling those Space Marines. To align with Ramesses's superstitious belief in Warhammer's numerology, he was currently piloting 169 Space Marines, and it was making his brain smoke.

Programming souls themselves was both troublesome and costly. If the psychic energy lost during the process of summoning the Legion of the Damned was less than the energy required to program the souls themselves, it would be a net gain.

"We'd basically be making Stormcast Eternals," Arthur nodded, approving of the idea. "So next, we need to focus on information about Warp rituals and developing our own followers, right?"

"Followers aren't necessary in the short term," Ramesses considered for a moment. "Aside from the fact that we know nothing about religion, our identities would be a problem with the Inquisition. It's good enough that we managed to win over the Order of the Sacred Rose because of the Emperor's miracle. If we start messing with religion and get declared heretics by the Ecclesiarchy, that would be hilarious."

"I'll take care of the Warp side," he continued. "I'll try to 'astropathically call' the Emperor and communicate with Him. If He dares to ignore me, I'll just keep harassing Him. Who says we can't use Him as a tool—"

"He might be a terrible father, but He's still the biggest player humanity can rely on. He's psychically fragmented now, but He should still be able to squeak a bit. I'm not a psychic idiot like Guilliman. I just need some time to see if I can extract useful information."

"The rest of you can help me keep an eye out for information on Chaos rituals. Since it involves Warp rituals, we have to use Warp methods. We can find some daemons to experiment on first."

"Agreed," the others said.

It was just a theoretically feasible plan at the moment. The entire process needed to be tested and refined; there was no rush. They had only been in this universe for a few hours. While their knowledge of the setting was comprehensive, it lacked detail. Things like the societal customs, specific technologies, and Chaos rituals that weren't mentioned in the novels all required time to study.

"Let's leave it at that for now. We need to get the Astra Militarum situated," Romulus said, cutting off the discussion as he glanced at the Guardsmen, who had finished their surgeries and were regrouping.

They had a bunch of heavy equipment prepared for these Guardsmen to use. It was unavoidable. There were only four of them. Even if Romulus sliced his brain into a hundred pieces, he couldn't manually control the firepower of an entire armored regiment.

Of course, they were quite lucky to have encountered Cadians. Because Cadia itself was a fortress world under immense defensive pressure, not many of its regiments were deployed off-world.

If the Guardsmen on this ship had been, say, Scintillan Fusiliers or Savlar Chem-Dogs... well, they would have had to carefully reconsider whether to gift them any equipment at all.

"Lord Romulus!"

As the four approached, Colonel Kovek delegated the task of reforming the companies to his captains and came over to the Angels. His attitude, aside from the necessary reverence, held a new sense of closeness. Clearly, the gifting ceremony had significantly bridged the gap between them.

Romulus raised a hand to silence Kovek and asked bluntly, "Are you proficient in the use of Imperial armored vehicles?"

"?"

Kovek looked confused.

(End of Chapter)