William of the Wood Caste

As the Shadow of the Throne sailed toward Mandeville Point, Nimrod met with Navigator Prime Eden Visher in his private office.

Eden wears ornate jewels on her forehead to conceal her third eye.

The Primarch keenly noticed that his body had already shown some obvious signs of mutation.

His skin was slightly pale, and there were scale-like plates on his wrists, hidden in his sleeves.

"Eden, what do you want?"

"Lord Nimrod, the alliance between the House Visscher and the Legion is the envy of many other Navigator, who wish to establish cooperative relationships with the Legion to varying degrees."

"I am conveying their request to you and inviting you to visit Uranus."

Within the Sol System, there are two large stargates: Uranus's Gate of Bliss and Pluto's Gate of Hades.

After the "Great Crusade" began and Uranus's settlements and satellites were incorporated into the emerging Imperium, Voidship frequently entered and exited the Warp via the Gate of Bliss.

The Navigator families established their new territories on the twenty-seven moons of Uranus. Compared to the incredibly valuable Terra, the new territories offered more space and made it easier to conceal the secrets hidden beneath their glory.

Nimrod originally intended to travel to the Sol System to recruit some members of his Treasure Hunting Squad into the legion, so they could play a role in the future Battle of Gardinal.

After a moment's thought, he agreed to Eden's request.

"I would love to be a guest of the Navigator Houses."

"I will immediately plan the route and guide the Shadow of the Throne to the Sol System." Eden bowed slightly, then quickly left.

The Shadow of the Throne is en route to the Sol System, in the Gardinal system, Gardinal's main star.

William Wood strode across the wilderness. He was nine years old, dressed in tattered clothes, and carried only a rusty dagger.

Every person in Gardinal has their destiny determined from the moment they are born.

Their caste determines their fate, their social class, their occupation, their food, everything about them...

Wood has been a working caste for thousands of years.

Thousands upon thousands of Wood were workers, without exception.

But William was unwilling to accept this fate, and the images that kept flashing before his eyes drove him to become a defector.

He knew that from the moment he left the dilapidated shack, he had only himself.

His caste, and High Caste lords, couldn't tolerate him.

Once caught, his parents, his relatives, no one will tolerate his deviant behavior; death is the best outcome for him.

The tortures he was taught about, such as being soaked in medicinal liquid and being bitten by ants, and being skinned alive, were all punishments he was told about as soon as he learned to speak. These were all punishments for daring to challenge the hereditary system.

William bit his lip, giving himself a warning.

The area between chemical plants B-12 and B-13 is filled with waste, and I must find a hiding place.

No, one hiding place isn't safe enough; you need at least three, like a cunning rabbit with three burrows.

Wait, how did I even know the phrase "a cunning rabbit has three burrows"...?

The Wood caste is a working caste; they are not qualified for education. Each Wood only needs to master numbers and the bolded text in the operating manual.

The phrase "a cunning rabbit has three burrows" is clearly not something Wood would use.

William ran while breathing heavily.

He was breathing heavily, but he dared not stop, so he could only try to distract himself by thinking about other things.

A picture suddenly flashed through William's mind.

A gray figure, dripping with mud, rushed over at top speed.

William then felt a strong wind whistling behind him, and a strange chemical smell wafted over him.

William, who grew up in a chemical plant, was already used to the smell of chemicals, but he was certain that the smell that suddenly invaded his nose was not the smell of any single chemical agent.

It was the smell of a mixture of chemicals and residues, a similar smell to that of child laborers like him, whose bodies were not yet fully developed, who were responsible for cleaning the sewage channels.

William's clothes clung to his back, and his body was soaked with cold sweat.

He didn't have time to think it through; his body instinctively rolled over.

There was a tearing sound of clothes, followed by something sticky being slapped onto his back.

William felt a piece of skin being ripped off his back as he tumbled and crashed awkwardly onto a mountain of piled-up chemical dyes.

The roar was no longer suppressed; the gray figure pounced again and again, stirring up waves of garbage.

William rolled over repeatedly, his body slamming against the messy, irregular mountain of garbage, his whole body aching.

But William ignored the pain; as he rolled around, his mind raced, trying to think of a way to save himself.

Suddenly, everything around us slowed down.

As William landed on his back, he finally saw the gray figure clearly.

Overall, he resembled a hyena of the wilderness, but covered in mud as if he had just been pulled out of a chemical pit.

A strange, nauseating stench emanated from his gaping, foul-smelling mouth.

A cold glint flashed in William's eyes. He pushed off with both arms, sprang up, and charged toward the hyena.

He guessed that the rusty dagger he had picked up along the way during his escape was unable to pierce the hyena's "chemical mud armor," and could only risk trying to attack its vulnerable eyes.

William plunged the dagger deep into the hyena's left eye; the shattered yellow eye, its disgusting fluid mixed with blood, splattered all over his right hand.

But William was shocked to find that the hyena continued its movements, its claws reaching for him.

[That bastard is really tough; he's still alive.]

William tried to dodge, but the hyena was faster.

I don't want to die! I'm not reconciled!

Is it possible that the working class caste is forever unable to escape its fate?

Just as the hyena's claws were about to touch William's body, an invisible force surged within him.

With a bang, the claw struck the Psychic Field and was immediately bounced away.

Although William didn't know what had happened, he reacted quickly, having survived the ordeal, and forcefully pulled out his dagger, stabbing it into the hyena's other eye.

One, two...

He collapsed, completely exhausted, onto the garbage heap alongside the hyenas, mud splattering all over him.

William lay helplessly on the mountain of garbage, panting heavily.

After a long while, his stomach growled, and he staggered to his feet, finding the dagger in the hyena's carcass.

William used both his hands and his dagger to scrape away the mud, searching for the hyena's flesh.

In October 852, in the Sol System, the Shadow of the Throne leaped out of the Gate of Bliss.

Dust clouds filled the space of the Gate of Bliss, and in the open space of about three thousand kilometers, rows of tiny particles were shimmering.

Nimrod stood at the viewing window with the protective shield open, gazing at the gray matter drifting in the void. Unlike their appearance, it shimmered with a Spirituality light, and a term involuntarily came to mind.

[Siren Dust.]

Nimrod knew that for hundreds and thousands of years, starships that entered the Warp from this place would produce and leave behind a drifting, soft gray substance when they left the present world.

The Navigator Houses and the Jupiter Clan have a special name for it: Siren Dust.

There is a story circulating among them that gold prospectors once tried to collect this dust, but after actually touching it, they lost interest in all other materials.

Whether true or false, this dust always lingers here, slowly circling within the cosmic realm of the Gate of Bliss, like wisps of smoke encased in a glass sphere.

However, there is no similar substance in the space surrounding the Gate of Hades the Underworld; Siren Dust is a substance unique to the Gate of Bliss.