It was hard for Roy to put into words the sense of dissonance he felt.
Just a few hundred meters away, separated by a handful of streets, heretics and his kin were busy trying to crack open each other's skulls. People were dying every second. Hunger drove them to gnaw at corpses on the ground. Life had become as worthless and undignified as trash.
And here—right here—a tiny, floating sun, no bigger than a clenched fist, was casting a bright, warm glow over a patch of rice fields. Roy had never seen the real sun before, but the clan's storyteller had once told him tales of the nobles who lived in the upper spires of the Hive City. According to an elder, the lords of the top-hives drank pure water, untouched by pollution, and never had to calculate their electricity usage to the last volt. They basked in real sunlight all day long, and even their wrenches were made of rare adamantium alloy.
Of course, neither Roy nor the elder had ever actually seen the nobles' lives firsthand. But... aside from the adamantium wrenches, didn't this scene look a lot like the ones described in the stories?
Roy secretly licked a drop of liquid that had dripped from the tiny artificial cloud above him onto his lips. It was clear, tasteless, and free of chemical toxins or radiation. Maybe it was because he had grown used to drinking foul-smelling, brackish water, but this flavorless liquid gave him an indescribable sense of bliss.
This wasn't the recycled water the Purity Guild sold to civilians. This was the kind of luxury water only the nobles at the pinnacle of the hive had access to!
And yet...
Roy stared at the stream of water pouring freely from the miniature cloud, soaking the rice fields like it cost nothing. A pang of frustration twisted in his chest.
It really was being used like it cost nothing.
No... this actually didn't cost anything.
...Damn Iron Man.
Bitter emotions churned in Roy's chest as he snatched up a squirming locust from among the rice plants. When the field had finally matured, he carefully examined the small insect and then asked, curiously:
"So, Doraemon... you want to use this thing as food?"
"Of course not!" Doraemon replied, exasperated. He reached into his pouch and pulled out another gadget. "It goes with this—Mochi Maker! Like this—"
As he spoke, Doraemon stuffed a bundle of freshly harvested rice into the machine. With a loud whir, several round, white mochi popped out.
Doraemon crouched down, picked up one of the soft rice cakes, and handed it to Roy with a cheerful grin. "Here, give it a taste! Your hard work is in there too."
Hard work?
Roy was a little confused. Farming wasn't exactly a common concept in the hive world. The planet's atmosphere and soil had long since been saturated with deadly radiation and chemical poisons through millennia of warfare and industry, rendering it unsuitable for growing any normal crops—unless you counted orks, but those things were neither normal nor technically plants.
He had heard legends of other Imperial worlds bathed in the divine light of the God-Emperor—Agricultural Worlds, where people farmed for a living. But the idea of food growing straight out of the ground still felt surreal to him.
Some people Roy knew had actually signed lifelong serf contracts for the chance to live in those so-called paradises the Imperium advertised—where the orchards were heavy with fruit, flowers perfumed the air, and the sky was always blue. They were willing to trade their freedom and that of their descendants for that dream.
Whether those places were truly as advertised... Roy wasn't so sure. Knowing the nature of his own kind, he had his doubts.
But this mochi...
Roy gently pinched the soft rice cake in his hand, comparing it instinctively to the nutrient bars and paste he usually ate. Encouraged by Doraemon's eager eyes, he took a bite—and immediately, a sticky, pillowy texture bloomed in his mouth, utterly unlike anything he'd ever tasted before.
"How is it?" Doraemon asked, crossing his arms proudly. "I plan to use the Big Light to scale this field up and then create different seeds using the Seed Maker. That way, we'll soon have enough food to feed everyone."
Roy didn't respond.
He chewed slowly on the slightly sticky mochi, savoring the sweetness, reluctant to swallow.
Could something this delicious really exist in the world?
He watched Doraemon's expression—the way the robot's face lit up with pure joy simply because he could help others—and, in the end, Roy couldn't hold back his question:
"Why?"
Doraemon tilted his head, confused. "Why what?"
"I mean…" Roy paused, still savoring the lingering sweetness in his mouth. It was a taste beyond anything he'd ever known, so beautiful he couldn't even describe it. He was used to starch sticks and nutrient slop—things that barely qualified as food. And just as he couldn't understand how this mochi existed, he couldn't understand Doraemon either.
"You have all this power, all these gadgets that can easily destroy or dominate everything. You could've crushed us the moment we met. But instead, you acted like you were weak, clutching your head and running away. Why? I don't understand any of it."
Roy stared at Doraemon, suspecting there had to be some kind of limitation on the robot. Maybe the Iron Men of old had also been shackled by something. Otherwise, why would he go so far to help humans who had nothing to do with him?
Why would he help them at all!?
"Random destruction and conquest? I'd never do something like that," Doraemon replied, almost puzzled by the question. "And I help people because… well, because I can. It's really not that big of a deal to me."
"But conquering people wouldn't be hard for you either!"
"I told you, I'm not that kind of robot!" Doraemon huffed, waving his stubby arms. "Listen up—I'm a Parenting Robot, not some evil overlord bent on world domination!"
"Parenting…?"
Roy blinked. This thing is a parenting robot?
What kind of lunatics from the Dark Age of Technology thought it was appropriate to raise children with a robot that could wipe out an entire hive of Genestealers with a flick of its gadgets?
Still… maybe compared to humanity back in that ancient era, today's humans really were just oversized babies.
"…Forget it," Roy sighed. "Need any help? Honestly, I happen to have a group of idle hands with nowhere to go."
Yeah—an entire batch of first and second-generation Genestealers.