Our Strength

"Wait, I kindly summed up some experience using cheats to share with you guys, and you mistook me for a Tzeentch Demon?"

After hearing Arthur's explanation, Romulus was a little exasperated. He had never expected his good brothers to see him that way.

One had stabbed him the moment they met, while the other was ready to stab him at any time.

So this was how they repaid kindness?

"...Hypothetically. Just hypothetically. You're not actually Demons, and I didn't really cut you, did I?"

Arthur hurriedly corrected himself.

Chaos corruption was impossible to guard against. How could he casually trust something that had not been verified?

Besides, he was not that deranged. Even with his suspicions, he had merely wanted to investigate. The fact that he had not walked up and stabbed them to check whether their blood was blue or red was already proof of remarkable calm.

As for now, honestly, he could not set his mind at ease without finding a Blank to verify things.

Even if it had nothing to do with a Chaos God, there was no harm in being careful if it was connected to the Warp.

"Then Karna, you—"

Ramesses stiffly changed the subject.

Karna could not even be bothered to raise his head.

"I didn't study it either. I just charged straight through with Black Rage active."

So that was why Romulus had been stabbed.

"I was busy shutting myself away back then."

Karna's thinking was simple. There were already three Smartboys thinking it over, so there was no need for him to burn brain cells too. He only needed to listen.

Apparently, this brother was no help either.

"Fine—"

Ramesses shrugged.

"Then I'll explain. I'll analyze the principles behind our abilities and how we obtain the raw materials. Of course, this is only my personal understanding."

He cleared an area on the table with one hand, then raised the other. Three materials of different sizes appeared on the tabletop.

The largest resembled ceramic, its surface reflecting light like metal. The middle piece looked like an extremely pure chunk of silver, glimmering with a deep, dim fluorescence beneath the lights.

The last was the smallest and thin as a cicada's wing, yet it was also the most dazzling, a brilliant golden color like gold itself.

"Auramite."

Arthur's gaze settled on the shining metal.

"Good thing I painted Custodes Armor before. Otherwise, with how complicated the Warp's information is, I'd spend a lifetime filtering it and still never find it."

Ignoring Arthur's astonished look, Ramesses continued.

"One of our abilities lets us expend so-called points to directly shape matter. For now, I'll call this ability Soul Materialization. If nothing unexpected happens, these points are quantized psychic energy. As for the cost—"

He gestured at the three materials. They had all been forged using the same amount of psychic energy.

"Based on the complexity of the atomic structure of the material created, as well as how much Warp content it contains, the cost rises from low to high. The difference is obvious at a glance."

"From what I can tell, the most economical option right now should be to exchange for Power Armor, various small and medium-sized vehicles, and different weapons production lines. Forget about directly pulling out something like a Gloriana-class Battleship. We simply cannot afford to burn enough energy for a creation of that scale."

"And STCs. Most STCs are fairly small."

Romulus added.

"Right, right. I almost forgot about those."

Ramesses smacked his forehead.

STCs, Standard Template Constructs, were high-tech computers containing blueprints for all sorts of equipment that humanity might need from the moment it entered the stars. They allowed colonists from the Dark Age of Technology to build an entire civilization from the most primitive materials, even without any relevant knowledge stored in their heads.

Put simply, they were crafting stations with built-in recipes.

"All four of us should be able to carry out this conversion process. As for the items in the Adaptive Panel, they are related to our knowledge. Anything displayed there is a creation we specifically understand and that has genuinely existed in this universe."

"So that's why our initial appearances were based on our game models?"

Arthur said he understood, but then a puzzled expression appeared on his face.

"But why not a Primarch, an Adeptus Custodes, or even the Emperor?"

They all knew the Warhammer franchise quite well. For Warhammer fans who could imagine Space Marines, originally of normal human height, into giants and force even the high-dimensional Chaos God Games Workshop to compromise and revise the setting, there was no human faction figure grander or more Waaagh! than the Emperor.

If they were going to transform, should they not have become the Emperor?

"You really want to squat on a toilet that badly?"

"Not necessarily."

"Then do you know the bodily structure of the Emperor and the Primarchs?"

"No."

"That's the reason. We have no concrete understanding of the physical makeup of Primarchs, the Emperor, or the Adeptus Custodes. Even to us, it is a mystery."

"Also, information about that seems to be secret. I can't find it even in the Warp. Oh, and souls. Those are expensive, and we have to edit them ourselves."

Ramesses shared the portion of the item panel he had organized with the others.

"Build understanding, gather information, complete the entry, and then we can directly generate those items through psychic energy. We can also modify them to a certain extent, such as replacing all the materials in Terminator Armor with Adamantium or other materials."

"Then how did you unlock so many entries in the catalog?"

Romulus scratched his head as he looked at the huge pile of additional creations in the catalog.

"Does painting miniatures really have that kind of advantage?"

"My approach was a little more unorthodox."

Ramesses could not help looking embarrassed as he said that.

"At first, because I had completely given up, I kept researching this ability. Later, in pursuit of stronger loadouts, I went directly into the Warp to dredge up information. I didn't care whether it was a Tzeentch plot or not. Things like Auramite were dredged up during that process."

"The Warp is the Sea of Souls. Any being with a Warp reflection, after death, will merge into the Warp or be devoured by the terrifying entities within it. So the Warp itself is also an enormous data repository, containing information on every living creature with a soul."

"It's just that the Warp has no search engine. Dredging through it is purely like searching for a needle in the sea. So far, I have only quickly filtered out usable things based on miniatures I remember painting. There is far more useless and chaotic junk information. You can also study the editing function yourselves. I couldn't find a 30k Thousand Sons paint scheme, so I made this one myself."

"You're even more outrageous than I am."

After hearing Ramesses's relatively coherent explanation, Romulus was speechless.

When he had first realized what this ability was, he had also suspected it was a plot by a Chaos God. But after discovering that he was aboard a ship about to fall, he had not had time to care about that.

Only after repeated careful verification had he confirmed that the ability had nothing to do with any Chaos God, allowing him to use it without restraint.

Unlike Ramesses, this...