Successful Retreat

The retreat went smoothly enough. After using a few fragmentation grenades and a Meltagun to block the pursuing Scarabs, Chen Xi and Ovilia successfully returned to the mine with their haul.

"Blow it up here. We can't let those aliens chase us through the tunnels," Chen Xi said to Ovilia as soon as they emerged, requesting that she seal off the breach.

Ovilia hesitated, but ultimately gritted her teeth and agreed.

The last Meltagun bomb they had was placed at the breach, and after an explosion, the collapsed rubble blocked the passage to the Necron tomb. It would be impossible to use the tunnel again until it was cleared.

Even so, Chen Xi didn't relax his vigilance. He said to Ovilia, "These aliens have phase-shifting technology. They can move through buildings or solid matter, so just blocking the tunnel probably won't stop them from infiltrating.

I'll move a regiment to garrison outside the mine to prevent these aliens from invading this planet."

"I understand. I'll deploy more automated turrets and armed Servitors here," Ovilia said, not wanting to talk about that right now. All her attention was drawn to the spoils they had brought back.

With Ovilia's persistence and effort, the mining Servitors dismantled the key equipment of the Stasis Chamber and a portion of the Stasis sarcophagi, bringing back more than a dozen Necron Warriors' bodies.

In addition, there were three Canoptek Spyders and two Tomb Spyders. Although these bodies were battered, they looked relatively intact overall and were enough to analyze various key data.

At this point, Ovilia no longer cared whether the Necrons in the tomb would crawl out and cause trouble. She just wanted to return to her workshop and laboratory to study these valuable gains.

However, Chen Xi stood in her way and said to Ovilia, "What are your plans for this harvest, Magos Ovilia? I know you're eager to study these things, but I have to ask, are you capable of studying these things independently?

As an exiled Bio-Sage, you don't even have an apprentice to work for you, or even decent Servitors and slave labor. Are you really capable of studying them?"

Chen Xi's words were somewhat of a jab at Ovilia.

Indeed, as a Magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus, she didn't even have a working apprentice under her command, which made it hard not to doubt her ability.

Even if she herself was indeed a Magos, without the corresponding treatment, the gold content of this Magos...

However, Chen Xi didn't bring this up to poke at Ovilia's sore spot, but rather to pry some spoils from her hands.

After all, with the Adeptus Mechanicus's nature, Ovilia would definitely want to keep these spoils to herself and not give Chen Xi a single bit.

If he didn't take a hard cut now, this trip would be a big loss.

Although Ovilia had promised Chen Xi a thousand sets of Sisters of Battle equipment, Chen Xi doubted whether she had the ability to pay.

Moreover, if he didn't finalize these things now, Chen Xi doubted whether Ovilia would even acknowledge it later. The Tech-priests' credibility wasn't as bad as the DA people who had no secrets, or the ethereal White Bean Sprouts, but at least in some aspects, it was difficult to trust them.

Faced with Chen Xi's questioning, Ovilia struggled for a long time, but finally tapped her Forged Great-Axe, deployed a silence field, and said to Chen Xi, "Although I have indeed been stripped of everything, that doesn't mean I have nothing left."

"So? Do you have a secret laboratory? Or a hidden Forge Ark?" Chen Xi wasn't surprised that Ovilia had a backup plan. He was just curious what Ovilia had prepared for herself.

"Since you know who my teacher is, you should know that it's not surprising that he has a forge on the Forge World in the Mariupol Sector, given his status," Ovilia said in a slightly ashamed tone, mentioning her teacher, Belisarius Cawl.

"High Sage Cawl has a forge on the Forge World in the sector?" Chen Xi looked surprised, but then felt that it was actually very reasonable.

Ten thousand years ago, Belisarius Cawl accepted the commission of Primarch Roboute Guilliman to carry out a plan to improve the Space Marines.

In ten thousand years, High Sage Cawl perfectly completed his work, and also buried nearly a million Primaris Space Marines wrapped in Stasis Fields, as well as supporting equipment, in many places throughout the galaxy.

And these, after Guilliman's return to the Imperium, became the main force for him to launch the Indomitus Crusade.

Just on Mars, Cawl hid at least hundreds of thousands of Primaris Space Marines.

When Guilliman launched the Indomitus Crusade, Cawl even took out eighty fully equipped chapters of troops at once.

It made Chen Xi couldn't help but think of a very funny but very practical question that was widely circulated in the Grimdark setting, that is, "What if the High Lords of Terra/Emperor knew that I had raised hundreds of thousands of Space Marines?"

Chen Xi didn't know how others would answer this question, but Cawl, who really raised hundreds of thousands of Space Marines, said that he didn't want to be the Forge Master of Mars.

According to Ovilia's explanation, Belisarius Cawl had stayed on the Forge World of the Mariupol Sector for a long time and presided over the construction of a forge belonging to him, and left behind a student and a team to maintain the forge.

The student was naturally the exiled Ovilia, while the forge and the team maintaining the forge were still there.

Not only that, but now that forge had fallen into the hands of Ovilia's competitor.

"The forge has fallen into the hands of your competitor, and you're telling me this, hoping I'll help you take back the forge?" Chen Xi stroked his chin. If he could really help Ovilia take back the forge, he would be very interested in searching the underground of the forge for buried Primaris Space Marines.

With Cawl's habits, there might really be tens of thousands of Primaris Space Marines wrapped in oiled paper buried here.

However, just as Chen Xi was thinking about how to help Ovilia regain the forge, she shook her head and said, "No, I want to take back my teacher's forge with my own ability! What I'm telling you is that my competitor can actually cooperate."

"The other party is your competitor and took your teacher's forge, and then you say you can cooperate?" Chen Xi looked puzzled, not quite understanding what was going on.

"Actually, it's nothing. She and I are forging apprentices from the same industrial world. We used to be the best partners, but I was lucky enough to become the teacher's apprentice, while she could only become a disciple of an ordinary Sage on the Forge World," Ovilia told Chen Xi a story that sounded somewhat melodramatic.