"By Macragge, why are baby corpses flying in the sky?"
Wearing his Fate Armor, interwoven with blue and gold, Roboute Guilliman stood in the fully repaired temple, a rare ripple in his voice.
In this temple, built for him, numerous cherubs – mechanical servants with the appearance of baby corpses and implanted with various machinery – were flying in the sky, their wings beating, dragging censers that scattered cloud-like incense.
Roboute Guilliman controlled his voice; his exclamation had only been heard by Belisarius Cawl, Alexander, and Sanguinius, who stood beside him.
The war on Macragge was almost over.
Previously, the Chaos traitors had occupied most of this Ultramarines homeworld and the capital of Great Ultramar.
Their forces outnumbered the Ultramarines by several times, and they possessed a large number of daemon Engines, also holding an advantage in orbital power. Even with the Blood Angels brought by Alexander, the Imperium's side still seemed to be at a disadvantage in terms of objective strength.
But there were two Primarchs on Macragge.
Roboute Guilliman and Sanguinius were both on Macragge.
With the retaken Hera Fortress as their center, the two Primarchs led the Ultramarines and Blood Angels, respectively, in a slaughter of the Black Legion.
They were like two storms of war, beyond mortal comprehension, using a series of raids, infiltrations, and lightning offensives to divide and disintegrate the Black Legion.
And during the war, Roboute Guilliman also came to understand the power of Alexander's tools.
Amidst his shock, Roboute Guilliman unhesitatingly opened the Ultramarines' relic vault to Alexander.
These relics had been collected by the Ultramarines from across the galaxy over ten thousand years, with many successor chapters also contributing to the vault. Their quantity, variety, and quality far surpassed those of the Blood Angels.
The sheer abundance made Alexander exclaim repeatedly that, compared to the Ultramarines, the Blood Angels were practically paupers.
Captain Sinon of the Ultramarines' Ninth Company, who also served as the relic vault master, followed orders and opened the relic vault for Alexander. He proudly introduced the history of each relic to Alexander.
He explained to Alexander that the Ninth Company always maintained an honor guard led by him, and this force, in addition to Ultramarines, included an intelligence network composed of acolytes, chapter serfs, and operatives.
This intelligence network, like a spiderweb, spread across all Imperial shipping lanes, collecting any clues related to chapter relics.
This relic vault, filled with precious items, was the fruit of Sinon's diligent work.
Alexander spared no words of praise for this, and even an Ultramarines veteran like Sinon couldn't help but show a proud expression.
After all, Alexander was the one who had resurrected two Primarchs, so even the Ultramarines regarded him with respect.
Sinon generously patted the power armor on his chest and told Alexander that, following the orders of Roboute Guilliman, the Lord of Ultramarines, Alexander could take any relics from the vault.
Alexander once again praised the generosity of the Ultramarines without reservation.
It's just that he wondered what Sinon's mood would be like when he saw the almost ransacked relic vault. Except for a few relics that Guilliman hoped Alexander wouldn't sell, and some less valuable, commemorative relics, most of the other relics had been sold by Alexander.
His savings rapidly increased, and a large number of tools were exchanged and equipped to an entire company of Astartes.
This company, composed of elites from the Blood Angels and Ultramarines, was named the Doraemon Company by the two Primarchs. It was equipped with items including the Superpower Hat, the Take-copter, the Blind Spot Star, and two Denkōmaru.
With the Superpower Hat, this company gained the abilities of teleportation, Warp-independent telekinesis, and x-ray vision.
With the Take-copter, this company's movement speed and aerial assault capabilities were several grades stronger than Chaos Raptors.
With the Blind Spot Star, this company could even stealthily ambush the Night Lords.
As for Denkōmaru, in the report Alexander saw, an Ultramarine once tried to duel a Titan with it twice and didn't lose.
With this company, Macragge was completely retaken in less than a month.
Or rather, in front of two Primarchs and a company equipped with Alexander's tools, for this Black Legion to hold out for almost a month, they truly did justice to the gene-seed given by the Warmaster.
However, even with the help of the Primarchs and the tools, retaking an entire planet and defeating a Black Legion far outnumbering them in less than a month pushed even the Astartes to their limits, and the ordinary humans had already reached theirs.
Moreover, support was still arriving from all directions; war machines needed repairs, armies needed to be re-integrated, and Macragge also needed to re-establish a command structure to adapt to the rule of the two Primarchs.
Therefore, after Macragge and the planets within the entire system were liberated, Macragge temporarily entered a period of rest and reorganization.
Roboute Guilliman planned to use this time to re-establish a complete governance system, to facilitate the smoother and more seamless reconstruction of the entire Great Ultramar in subsequent operations.
The ceremony before them was part of this.
It involved Calgar, the former Lord of Macragge, returning command to Roboute Guilliman, and Guilliman would also share his power with his brother Sanguinius.
Of course, this ceremony was also to announce to the long-suffering people of Macragge that the Primarchs had returned, and the Great Ultramar of old was about to be rebuilt.
But Roboute Guilliman looked at the cherubs flying in the sky, and his mood was far from good.
He had known about the existence of these things for a long time and had seen a few on the battlefield, but...
But to see them so densely packed, filling the entire sky, truly gave Roboute Guilliman a mental shock.
"No, Lord," Belisarius Cawl slowly began, "These are not baby corpses."
"According to internal records of the Adeptus Mechanicus, initial attempts did involve using baby corpses with mechanical augmentations to create servitors."
"But evidently, infant bodies could not withstand the creations of the Omnissiah, so the Mechanicus chose to use cultivation tanks for artificial breeding, creating artificial organisms with a baby-like appearance.
Their internal neural structure is far more complex than that of a typical infant, their intelligence is roughly similar to sub-sentient primates, and their physical strength far surpasses that of infants, making them more efficient and practical."
Belisarius Cawl's calm, fact-narrating tone made Roboute Guilliman's body tremble slightly.
However, most of the people participating in the ceremony in the temple seemed quite normal.
Only Sanguinius' expression was a bit somber, and Alexander's face held a twisted look.
This scene was truly too abstract, too distorted.
If he hadn't been mentally prepared, Alexander would have doubted whether he had transmigrated to Warhammer 40k or to Cthulhu next door.
"This scene was among the illusions the Four Gods showed Horus back then."
Alexander spoke slowly:
"It's not entirely his fault for going mad. The Four Gods told him that the future of the Imperium of Man would be like this: baby corpses flying in the sky, everyone ignorant and foolish, nine Primarchs including him erased from history, and the nine loyal Primarchs and the Emperor worshipped as gods."
"He proclaimed as much," Roboute Guilliman said, his expression somewhat out of control, "I never thought it would actually turn out this way."
"The Four Gods just love to deceive people with the truth. This kind of unfortunate future is what he brought about by instigating the Great Heresy."
Alexander cast a deeply disgusted glance at the cherubs in mid-air.
These things were truly an inescapable part of the 40th Millennium of Humanity; let alone him, a person from the 3k era, even people from 30k ten thousand years ago couldn't accept them.
Especially so many of them, densely packed, holding incense in the sky, chanting hymns, enveloping the entire temple in a twisted sense of holiness.
The cherubs themselves were creations of Pope Vandire during the Age of Apostasy, to proclaim himself the Emperor's chosen and to induce awe in the populace.
As time passed, although Vandire's history had long been erased, the symbolic meaning of the cherubs remained and was inexplicably accepted by the Imperial populace.
The people, seeing cherubs flying across the sky, would naturally be stirred to piety and reverence, so claimed the chapter serfs and priests preparing the ceremony.
Moreover, these cherubs were all custom-made, unique items, quite valuable, and still needed for many functions.
Roboute Guilliman could only demand, with a dark face, to minimize the appearance of these things, unless absolutely necessary.
As for the superfluous ones, they were all collected by Alexander into his four-dimensional pocket.
But the priests, with humble attitudes, expressed strong opposition to Guilliman.
Especially when Guilliman said, "Cherubs aren't the only things that can fly. I believe Celestine would be very happy to fulfill the task of flying and inspiring the people's piety."
The Adeptus Ministorum was greatly alarmed by Guilliman's attitude of using a Living Saint as a cherub. Even though Celestine herself stated she was very willing to undertake this task, and even Sanguinius said he could fly.
Finally, to prevent the Living Saint and the Primarchs from flying through the sky like cherubs, to be gawked at by the populace as a spectacle, the priests had no choice but to similarly reduce most of the cherubs.
Alexander could only lament that it was a good thing Guilliman was resurrected. If it had been the younger Leman Russ here, the heads of these priests would already be flying in the sky like the cherubs.
In any case, Alexander stood not far away, watching this group of people engage in another round of tedious, boring bickering, feeling quite uninterested, and believing he wasn't really needed there.
So he quietly slipped out of the temple and into the streets outside the temple, within Hera Fortress.
Due to the war, Guilliman had ordered a vast area outside Hera Fortress to be opened for the populace to seek refuge.
Now, many ordinary people who had come to witness the ceremony also crowded in here, and Hera Fortress suddenly became much livelier from its previous empty silence.
Some of the bolder ones had even started setting up stalls nearby.
The Ultramarines tacitly approved of this; the war had brought too much pain, and the people needed such occasions to relieve stress.
Alexander, bored, wandered over to this street.
Just then, Alexander heard a voice proclaiming from the side of the street:
"You must be curious how Lord Sanguinius and Lord Guilliman returned from death and came back to the Imperium, right?"
"This is all because a new Saint has descended into the Imperium, oh devout believers, you must remember that name and praise his greatness twenty-two times in your hearts."
"He is the divine Doraemon!"