No One Needed to Worry

The ship's hatch rumbled open.

Karna stepped out beneath countless scarlet gazes, then shut the hatch behind him.

Only after it had sealed completely and he had carefully checked the internal surveillance did he finally let out a quiet breath.

"So this is the pressure others face from the Black Rage?"

"Brother Karna, what is this?"

Kahurangi's voice came from beside him. He had just finished his daily harassment of Ramesses and was now supposed to go have a fight with Arthur before claiming his daily quest rewards.

But on the way, he had heard that the Deathwatch had requested a sealed compartment for their own private use, so he had come to take a look.

"Like the Grey Blindness that appears among you."

Karna pointed at his head.

"We have something similar."

He made no attempt to conceal it.

"Oh."

Kahurangi understood at once.

There really were Blood Angels among this lot.

After all, his Chapter maintained exceptionally detailed records on every Founding Chapter—detailed enough to clearly document their characteristics during the Great Crusade. In some cases, they might even know that era's history better than Chapters that had suffered major upheavals.

Of course, these "Deathwatch" members were no simple matter either.

They knew the Carcharodons' origins and genetic flaws intimately, yet as a Chapter active within Imperial territory, they knew almost nothing about the present Imperium and did not even possess a complete star chart.

The Chainaxes were one thing—an entire pile of weapons now considered exclusive to Chaos traitors—but after carefully learning about the current Imperium through the Sharks' database, their utterly shaken expressions of How the hell did humanity become like this? had left the Sharks deeply puzzled.

"Then I'll head to the Arena first."

Having understood why they had requested the storage compartment, Kahurangi did not dwell on it any longer.

For the Sharks right now, daily rewards mattered more.

"Mm. I'll go check the other warehouses."

Karna nodded. Neither of them continued the discussion.

He also knew exactly why Kahurangi had hurried away.

Ever since they had boarded the Sharks' flagship, Ramesses could no longer pull his usual Warp stunts. Arthur, now freed up and with nothing to do, had naturally gone to fight the Sharks in the hope of learning from them.

And learning naturally required paying tuition.

Karna glanced at the storage data displayed on his arm. Compared to yesterday, after restocking, the supplies had dropped by another huge margin.

It had only been a little over a month of travel, yet he felt like he needed to find time to restock every single day.

"Let's see the time."

Karna lowered his head and switched to his memo list, intending to package up today's information and hand it to Romulus later, only to discover that they had already left the Warp.

"We should be nearing the destination, then."

"The Sharks came to submit the Gray Tax. I heard there's an Adeptus Mechanicus Prospector Fleet from Mars over there. Originally, they were planning to head there and replenish their strategic supplies."

In an area assigned to the Deathwatch, Romulus pulled open the isolation door after completing a joint exercise with the Astra Militarum.

Directly in front of him, Ramesses—who had just dealt with Kahurangi and still had no idea what this Librarian was trying to do—was offering incense to an ash burner.

Recently, while aboard someone else's ship, he had not dared to make any big moves. At most, he could cast a line in the Warp and fish for money, so he could only focus on the few projects he could still work on.

Thus, after spending nearly a month on the journey, Ramesses had successfully drawn an external connection from the Warp link between Karna and the Black Rage.

Now, by sharing that connection, Karna could use it to control the physical bodies of Angel Scions, making them indiscriminately attack any Horus within sight.

The fewer people occupying the line, the stronger the Black Rage became, and the greater the explosive combat power. Expanding the limit would require further investment.

This directly meant that the small group's percentage expenditure from every gain had to increase again.

"Do you think they're still interested in that now?"

After bowing three times to the burner and muttering a few lines of classical Chinese, Ramesses finally spoke.

"Of course not. Their battle-worn equipment has all been restored to pristine condition."

Thinking of how the Sharks had pointed at the Stormbird they had been given and asked whether they could exchange it for ammunition and other military supplies of equal weight, Romulus could not help finding it amusing.

There was naturally no taking back what had already been given. In the end, Arthur stepped forward and gave them a way to earn supplies.

They could not give out too many Bolters, since trading too many would be a loss, but there were plenty of Power Weapons, Volkite Weapons, precision components, and the like.

"These people seem to have decided that fighting Arthur every day earns them equipment, and Arthur is happy to learn from them. Those are techniques passed down for ten thousand years through genuine slaughter amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood."

Even Romulus could not help wanting to complain about the Carcharodons' pragmatism. The moment they heard there was something to gain, they acted like they had been injected with stimulants.

Unfortunately, as time passed, the Sharks had less and less left to teach. At present, only the few company captains, the Librarian, and Tyberos had not been completely drained. For the Chapter's future, the captains probably had not rested properly in quite some time.

If waking the Dreadnoughts had not cost too much, he felt these people would have dragged them out to serve as instructors.

"Looks like our stretcher is evolving at high speed again. I told you that aside from Soul Materialization, we definitely each had traits unique to ourselves. After all, the initial paint schemes we arrived with weren't applied at random."

Ramesses joked, then drew out three more incense sticks and bowed toward the burner again.

He then began muttering classical Chinese prayers for mourning experimental materials.

"You actually care about that?"

Having understood the meaning of the classical Chinese, Romulus asked curiously.

After seeing the miserable state of the testing grounds so many times, he sincerely felt that Ramesses had an exceptionally strong heart. He also found it absurd that Arthur could watch for half a day with a blank expression.

"You don't work in this field. You wouldn't understand."

Ramesses raised his head, his expression turning solemn.

"I must use this method to preserve my reverence for life."

"Even though I started slacking off the moment I graduated, my teachers always taught us that no matter what lay on the operating table, even if it was only a piece of deactivated flesh, we had to handle it with reverence."

"This is a line that every medical researcher must observe. You have to understand that the only difference between these bodies and ordinary humans is consciousness. The slightest transgression is the difference between an angel and a Demon."

"...Looks like I don't need to worry about you."

Romulus fell silent for a moment, then smiled.

He had always been somewhat concerned by Ramesses's attitude of I don't care about any of that—if it can be developed, I'll develop it to the fullest.

But now that he had sensed Ramesses's mental state, Romulus knew he had been overthinking things.

"Come on, I was raised in a complete family with both a father and a mother. You don't think every rich family's young master is some self-centered spoiled brat, do you?"

Ramesses replied with a boastful air.

"Trust your good brother. Don't act like such an old mother. Of course, I don't mind communicating more either, since in this world, the only people who can truly understand one another—"

His flamboyant expression faded slightly.

"Are the four of us."