After cleaning out a furnace that had stood vacant for centuries, Nimrod drove everyone away within a hundred meters of the Foundry and shut down the surveillance room as well.
Holding a rubber spoon, he began brewing the potion.
Brewing a potion required no profound technique. One only had to add the ingredients accurately in the prescribed order—auxiliary ingredients first, then the main ingredients—and stir.
Nimrod poured 1,100 milliliters of Helas Volt into the furnace and lit the fire.
He then tossed in one Spine Crystal. As the crystal cluster crackled in the furnace, he threw in the unconscious, two-meter-long Hive Giant Rat.
He stirred several times with the rubber spoon and watched the giant rat melt at a visible rate. This was not merely the effect of thousands of crystal shards slicing it apart, but also the wondrous reaction of the potion ingredients.
Nimrod knew that a little more or less of the auxiliary ingredients made no difference, but the main ingredients could not be off by even the slightest amount. He had repeatedly confirmed the length of the Wire Grass beforehand.
He tossed in the 1,100-millimeter-long Wire Grass. Corrosive acidic juice splashed out, further accelerating the reaction. A rushing sound immediately rose from within, while the surrounding light took on a faint black tint.
By the time he tossed in the Chem-Dog's tongue, the churning liquid in the furnace had dwindled to only about half a meter.
The instant the long tongue entered the furnace, black mist billowed out, shrouding the area around it in haze.
A few seconds later, the black mist dissipated, and Nimrod scooped out a viscous black liquid with the rubber spoon.
The liquid possessed a strange property. It remained connected as one and would never separate. Not a trace was left inside the furnace.
Nimrod knew this was a unique trait of potions. The Lawyer potion had been successfully brewed.
Someone who did not know a potion formula could never brew one through luck. Not only could the order of ingredients not be mistaken, but their quantities had to be exactly right.
If he had added the giant rat first and the Spine Crystal afterward, he would have gotten nothing but a pot of stewed rat.
If there had been even a little too much Wire Grass, going mad after drinking it would have been the best possible outcome.
Nimrod poured the black liquid into a bowl. He knew that the more he hesitated and feared it, the worse the absorption would be afterward. As a Primarch, he was not worried about poisoning and simply tipped back his head and drank it.
His mouth immediately filled with icy coolness, as though he had swallowed a mouthful of ice cream. It slid down his esophagus and settled in his stomach.
The chill instantly seeped into every cell. His vision rapidly blurred, and every color intensified.
The gray furnace became grayer, and the red flames became redder...
The blocks of color grew dense, like an oil painting.
At the same time, a massive torrent of information flooded into his mind.
Having experienced it once before, he quickly adapted.
Gradually, Nimrod saw his surroundings clearly. Every color was distinct and layered over the others, while black mist filled the air.
He even "saw" his body standing below, trembling in place. His consciousness abruptly sank and merged with it.
Nimrod felt his head swell, while his temples throbbed with pain.
He knew that this was the potion's power overflowing, with no means of controlling it.
He needed to imagine an ordinary, simple, easy object in his mind. He chose the Chainsword.
As he gradually shifted his attention onto the imagined Chainsword, the overlapping images in his vision slowly converged and were no longer blurred.
Nimrod picked up the prepared mirror and looked into his eyes. He discovered that his entire eyeballs, including the white sclera, had turned pitch-black.
He knew this was the outward manifestation of the potion's power. Once he learned meditation and restraint, his eyes would return to normal.
He immediately tried it. He walked behind the furnace and turned off the Lumen Lamp overhead, leaving himself in darkness.
The first step of meditation was the same as before. He closed his eyes and outlined the Chainsword in his mind.
Yet when imagining something that did not exist in this world, Nimrod found himself at a loss. There were countless worlds in the galaxy, and he could not even think of a suitable object.
A flash of inspiration suddenly struck him. He imagined the symbol of the Black Emperor pathway.
He first sketched disorderly black arcs, followed by the surrounding wings, spikes, and the abstract crown above.
As Nimrod gradually replaced the Chainsword with the Black Emperor pathway symbol, he also merged with the transcendent "self," the infinite "self," and the cosmic "self," gaining knowledge that only he himself could comprehend.
In the field of mysticism, this was called a "mystical experience." The Thousand Sons called it Aetheric Sojourn.
Nimrod emptied his thoughts. His body and mind both grew quiet, the black mist reappeared, and his spirituality slowly extended outward.
Like a stone falling into a lake, ancient Terra texts such as the Napoleonic Code and the Imperial Code established by The Emperor flashed through his mind, along with human physiological structures, the composition of mechanical Constructs, and even the physiological structures and weaknesses of xenos such as Orks.
Nimrod understood. The former clearly came from his identity as a Lawyer Beyonder, while the latter was likely something The Emperor had implanted within the Primarchs through a combination of genetic science and Psionic Energy. During his own mystical experience, he had absorbed part of it.
After his superhuman brain absorbed all the knowledge a moment later, he decided to take the opportunity to practice Spirit Sight, one of the most common abilities in mysticism and one that most Beyonders could master.
Nimrod raised both hands before his eyes, placing his index fingers opposite each other without letting them touch.
He opened his eyes and instantly adapted to the darkness. He focused his gaze behind his hands and slowly moved his fingers.
Once, twice...
Nimrod saw a spot of fiery red appear between his fingers. He knew this was rudimentary Spirit Sight, and the color he saw was his own aura.
Mysticism divided every person's non-physical components into four layers. At the core was the Spirit Body, also known as the soul. When it overflowed, it was called spirituality.
The resilience of the Spirit Body determined one's resistance when facing the Warp and all manner of horrors.
The Lawyer potion strengthened spirituality, granting Beyonders the ability to discover and exploit loopholes in rules and weaknesses in opponents, using order to strike at their enemies.
Both involved striking weaknesses, but what The Emperor had granted him was the ability to kill enemies, while the Lawyer potion allowed him to use rules against them.
Beyond the Spirit Body lay the Astral Body. It was the means of communicating with the Spirit World and the stars, the outward manifestation of the former, and was directly related to one's will and current emotions.
The scene he had witnessed after consuming the potion was what the Astral Body saw while wandering the Spirit World. The rules of the material world did not apply there, and the past, present, and future could overlap.
Through his experience, combined with the knowledge he had acquired in the incubation chamber, he learned that the so-called Spirit World was simply another name for the Warp.
The Astral Body was the focus of Thousand Sons cultivation—what they called the mind. Magnus had created methods of cultivating the Mindset and passed them down to his sons.
He also knew that Thousand Sons such as Ahriman could separate their Astral Bodies—what they called the Body of Light—from their physical bodies and travel through the Warp.
The Lawyer potion had not strengthened the Astral Body, but he knew that Warp essence had been incorporated into the creation of every Primarch. During his first attempt just now, he had already gained knowledge from the Warp.
Beyond the Astral Body was the Mental Body, which concerned the mind.
Lawyer had strengthened and enhanced his analytical logic.
The outermost layer was the Aether Body, the manifestation of life energy and physical condition.
Different parts of the body had different colors. The hands he had just seen were red, while the head was purple...
If the colors were wrong, it meant there was a problem with the body.
Nimrod inspected each part in turn. Everything was healthy, and his body as a whole radiated a dazzling glow. Ordinary people, meanwhile, were white.
He then practiced how to exit Spirit Sight. He gathered his attention, switched his meditation state, closed his eyes, controlled his spirituality, and repeatedly told it to stop.
When he opened his eyes again, he found that Spirit Sight had ended.
After several rounds of practice, repeated suggestion, and repeated influence over his spirituality, Nimrod established a simple activation gesture.
He lightly tapped his brow twice and activated Spirit Sight. The furnace, machine tools, and everything around him looked no different and possessed no glow at all.
Most lifeless objects had no spirituality.
When his gaze swept over the Chainsword, he discovered a bloody radiance within it.
Hm? There was lingering spirituality on Vulture's Chainsword. It might even be potion material.
Nimrod had already felt that this weapon was somewhat unusual, so he was not surprised to discover that it contained spirituality after activating Spirit Sight.
He tapped his brow twice again, deactivated Spirit Sight, and prepared to practice observing other people's auras later.
Nimrod then recalled the Beyonder abilities he had gained from drinking the Lawyer potion.
This combined the non-physical aspects of Warhammer and the mystical system for explanation. In truth, both originated from mysticism and shared many similarities, differing only slightly in terminology. For example, like the Warp, the Spirit World was not bound by physical laws, and the past, present, and future intersected there. Furthermore, the official novel Horus Rising had used the term Spirit World to refer to the Warp.
For the readers' sake, later descriptions would mostly use Warhammer terminology, with spirituality as the exception.
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