Rumble—
Thousands of metal warships with their Gellar Fields raised slowly entered an enormous Warp Portal.
Rorschach's Scourge Legion fleet had set out on another long voyage.
Meanwhile, the Navigators aboard dozens of flagships clutched panaceas in their hands, ready to swallow them at any moment, while enjoying the thrilling sensation of Astartes Bolters pressed against their foreheads.
Already accustomed to this, they did their best to search the surging Warp Turbulence for more suitable routes.
In truth, ever since Cadia fell and the Great Rift opened, countless worlds on the Imperial Dark Side had completely lost the continued illumination of the Emperor's Astronomican.
Unless absolutely necessary, most ships could only travel back and forth within a single star system or sector.
Even so, the odds of becoming lost in the Warp were hundreds of times greater than before.
In other words, immense fleets like Rorschach's Scourge Legion fleet, capable of roaming throughout the Imperial Dark Side—
Aside from Regent Guilliman's Indomitus Crusade fleet operating along the edge of the Imperial Dark Side, there was likely no other force like it.
Yet even Rorschach's fleet had only maintained its current state by paying the price of countless precious lives from Navigator Families and vast quantities of panaceas.
During this time, Raditus and AI Stark had proposed replacing Navigator Families with shipborne machine spirits—that was, Artificial Intelligence.
Rorschach had not rejected the idea, but he had made his position clear.
Unless Raditus and the others could produce a genuine finished creation in one go, there was nothing to discuss.
For the next period of time, Rorschach began carrying out Prayer Support Missions with the Giant Raven Guard, who had once again become his Primarch guard, along with more than twenty Iron Hands.
His purpose was to gradually acclimate the Iron Hands