The First Step to Changing One's Fate

The Emperor betrayed the oath He had sworn in blood and promised with His soul.

The long-plotted reckoning of The Four Ruinous Powers descended, and a seven-colored storm engulfed the laboratory.

Every gestation pod was dragged by the vortex into the Warp, hurtling toward their fated planets.

Nimrod snapped his eyes open, thinking to himself.

[The first step to changing fate—now it depends on whether my golden finger is up to the task.]

The Warp, also known as the Sea of Souls, the Empyrean, the immaterial universe, or the Realm of Chaos, is called by different names depending on one's cultural habits.

The Sea of Souls is composed of pure energy; it acts like a mirror to the material universe, formed by the projections of the emotions and souls of all sentient beings in the physical realm.

As Nimrod opened his eyes, a powerful conviction erupted within his heart.

[My fate is controlled by me alone; neither The Four Ruinous Powers nor The Old Man in Yellow shall dictate my destiny.

I am going to the Segmentum Obscurus, to Vostonia, the capital of the Vostonia system!]

Black mist rose to envelop him, and his intense belief propelled the mist to spin faster, influencing the seven-colored vortex and causing it to gradually deviate from its preset trajectory.

"Fateweaver" Tzeentch was the first to notice the change in the threads of fate; the Eleventh Primarch had broken free from the vortex and was not falling toward his destined location.

"Change... everything is according to the plan..."

The other three gods soon discovered the anomaly of the gestation pod as well, and they watched the scene with great interest until the black mist vanished.

Nimrod waited nervously; although he had been chosen by the Kingdom of Disorder, he knew that the authority of the Primordial Essence increased as his sequence ascended.

If he were in the real world, the Kingdom of Disorder would not provide him with any assistance.

But this was the Warp, where emotion and belief are the most potent forces.

Nimrod used his conviction as a catalyst to leverage the Kingdom of Disorder.

Even if the status of the Primordial Essence was lower than that of the Four Gods, it was nearly on the same level.

The combination of the two might be enough to change the planet of his descent—this was the first step he had taken to alter his fate!

While the gestation pods of the other Primarchs were still sliding through the Sea of Souls, the Eleventh Primarch's pod shot out of the Empyrean like an arrow.

As the pod plummeted at high speed, Nimrod looked through the blinding smoke ignited by the friction against industrial exhaust and saw the hive city piercing the toxic atmosphere, which eased his mind slightly.

Immediately after, the pod smashed into a viscous, sludge-like riverbed.

The silver-gray iron shell shook violently, and the glass partition shattered.

Nimrod stood firmly inside the pod; he suddenly reached out his right hand and precisely grabbed a silver-gray shard, the length of an adult's palm and two fingers wide.

The sludge splashed up by the rapid rotation and sliding did not affect his perception in the slightest; he noticed that there were no animals or plants in the river or along its banks, and he smelled the pervasive, toxic acidic odor.

Nimrod felt a moment of dizziness, but he recovered almost instantly.

The rotation of the pod slowed, and Nimrod's brain completed its calculations rapidly; just before it hit the bank and bounced in another direction, he leaped out.

He bent his knees slightly to steady his body.

Nimrod stood up, looked toward the hive city through the swirling industrial dust, and began to walk in that direction.

In the shantytowns on the outskirts of the hive, those who had lived in unprotected environments for a long time all possessed some degree of physical mutation.

Many Underhive residents also came to the shantytowns to survive, as the foul-smelling sewage ensured a relatively fertile agricultural environment and a fairly rich harvest of fungi.

A man with a stone-like tumor on his neck was the first to notice the outsider.

It was an outsider who had no business appearing in the shantytown; his skin was a healthy, natural yellow, glowing with a luster like a statue crafted by a master artist.

His long black hair fluttered in the wind, his eyes were as dark as ink, like deep pools, and his nose bridge was high and straight.

Although he looked like a boy of only four or five, the Primarch's face had sharp, well-defined features, and his handsome countenance carried an inherent majesty that made people afraid to look directly at him.

The mutant lowered his head in inferiority and cowardice, but then a flash of greed crossed his eyes.

Such a boy could be sold for a lot of money; many big shots in the upper hive loved to toy with such delicate, fair-skinned children.

Once such a thought took root, it became uncontrollable.

He immediately dropped the fungi he had gathered and lunged at the boy, and several other mutants moved with the same intent.

The boy did not turn to run; he dodged the swinging club, and the silver-gray shard in his hand slashed the mutant's thigh.

With the scream, the attention of all the mutants in the shantytown was drawn, and they lunged at the boy with greed.

Nimrod wove through the crowd of mutants, and not a single attack landed on him.

The mutants initially thought it was because the boy was small, so they crouched down; accustomed to planting fungi, rummaging through trash heaps, and ambushing wanderers, they were familiar with this posture, and they often fought in this stance when snatching loot.

Their attacks still missed; the boy seemed to be able to foresee their every move—the side-thrust, the iron rod thrown at the back of his head—all their motives came to nothing.

The boy did not look back, as if he had eyes in the back of his head.

An hour later, a group of people lay on the ground in the shantytown, each of their legs severed, unable to move.

Nimrod's gaze searched among them, then he stripped off the cleanest, most intact garment, cut it to size, and put it on.

He walked up to the mutant with the tumor on his neck, kicked him, opened his mouth, and pointed at the iron rod on the ground.

The mutant stared at the monster before him in terror, taking several seconds to realize the creature was asking how to say something, before he hurriedly opened his mouth.

Nimrod's superhuman brain mastered the local Low Gothic—a language derived from Old Terra-Slavic—at an astonishing speed.

Five hours later, he had learned the basics of the language from these people.

Nimrod fixed his gaze upon the remaining mutants who were still alive and asked fluently in the local Low Gothic.

"Is this world Vostroyan?"

All the mutants nodded in unison, afraid that any delay would lead them to the same fate as the corpses beside them.

He pointed a finger toward the hive city in the distance. "Is that hive city Tezwork?"

The mutants nodded rapidly and simultaneously once more.

Nimrod stepped forward and casually ended the mutants' suffering; these witnesses who had seen him arrive at the hive city from the ash wastes might cause him trouble if left alive.

He knew that ever since Vostroyan pledged its loyalty to Mars during the Age of Strife, technology and knowledge had poured in, allowing it to rapidly develop into a highly industrialized world.

The locally manufactured weapons were excellent, especially their lasguns, and the future Vostroyan Firstborn would rank among the top ten combat forces in the Astra Militarum.

Vostroyan was governed by a dual rule of nobility and the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the weapons in the hands of those oil-worshippers could still cause trouble for his growing self.

Nimrod found a relatively clean black backpack, though by the standards of the underhive, it was still filthy.

He filled the bag with fungi and tucked in a tattered piece of clothing to use as a change.

He then began walking toward the hive city; he had checked earlier, and the potion ingredients for the "Lawyer" on the Blasphemy Slate were all glowing, meaning the hive city would contain every material he needed.