Sisters

A pair of young sisters from an ordinary industrial world, harboring the dream of improving their family's life, became apprentices of the Adeptus Mechanicus through their hard work, thus changing their own and their family's fate.

This sounds like a very inspiring story.

If you only look at the first half of the story, it certainly is.

When young Ovilia and her good sister left their hometown with dreams, they would never have imagined that one day they would stand on opposite sides.

At that time, they were just two new apprentices who had just passed the examination of the Mechanicus Temple in their hometown, and were selected to study at the Forge World in the sector.

Through diligent study, they successfully crossed the class barrier from children of ordinary working families and became apprentices of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Although they were only the lowest-level apprentices, their identities underwent earth-shattering changes once they passed the examination.

Their parents suddenly jumped from ordinary workers to petty nobles of the industrial world, and their lives, income... everything became unimaginable.

Ovilia's parents not only became small supervisors in the factory, but also got a chance to undergo life-extension surgery.

Although it was only the most basic life-extension surgery, and Ovilia exchanged it with the reward she received for passing the apprentice examination, it was still a life-extension surgery that could allow ordinary people to live for ten more years.

Originally, Ovilia only hoped to allow her parents to live a few more years so that they could enjoy the good life brought about by her efforts.

However, it was this seemingly inconspicuous choice that won her the favor of Belisarius Cawl, and she became an apprentice of this famous High Sage.

At first glance, it seems a bit unbelievable, why would High Sage Cawl value such a little girl? Just because she is filial to her parents?

In a way, that's true.

High Sage Belisarius Cawl is very different from ordinary Adeptus Mechanicus clergy.

The most significant point is that he is already ten thousand years old.

This is a very outrageous number, because so far, no other Mechanicus Sage other than Cawl himself has lived past a thousand years old.

They either died or went mad.

So Cawl's existence itself is a miracle that people find incredible.

This High Sage from the Great Crusade era, who even personally experienced the Horus Heresy, although he has made many modifications to himself in order to prolong his life, and even become inhuman, the former High Sage Cawl was a proponent of the sanctity of the human form who rejected most of the more outwardly altered mechadendrite enhancements preferred by Tech-Priests.

Although Cawl had already tampered with his brain at that time to make himself smarter.

Belisarius Cawl, from ten thousand years ago, was a Tech-Heretic who never followed the rules.

His maverick behavior can even be said that if anything he has done is exposed, whether it is Chaos or the Imperium, they would hunt him down like crazy.

Because of this, he actually despises his Adeptus Mechanicus colleagues very much, believing that they are just slaves of the Omnissiah, who only kowtow and burn incense according to established procedures, and have no technical innovation ability.

He prefers those who can break the routine.

As a result, a new little apprentice who seemed not to follow the rules became the High Sage's apprentice by accident.

Although Ovilia may not be studying with Cawl himself, but with his clone, even just a clone of Cawl, his knowledge is still enough to teach a new Sage.

But Ovilia's sister was not so lucky.

When Ovilia had completed her Sage thesis and was just waiting to pass the Forge World's assessment to become a true Sage, her sister was still struggling in the position of Enginseer.

She even fell to the point where she might be assigned to the Astra Militarum as a military priest.

In the end, Ovilia secretly extended a helping hand and transferred one of her academic projects to the other party with the tacit consent of her mentor, which allowed the other party to also obtain the opportunity to be promoted to Sage.

Although Ovilia helped her friend, and the other party was grateful for this help, from another perspective, Ovilia's help can also be regarded as a kind of... humiliation.

A humiliation of the other party's ability.

Because of this, the relationship between the two broke down, and they eventually became rivals.

After Cawl left the Mariupol Sector, Ovilia was politically persecuted by certain factions in the Forge World, who wanted to seize the forge left by Cawl in order to steal the High Sage's knowledge.

Ovilia lost everything because of this, and almost had all her implants removed and stuffed into a Stasis Field to be made into a living statue.

And the one who presided over all this was Ovilia's former sister, her rival.

However, although on the surface it seems that Ovilia's sister was persecuting her and taking everything from her, Ovilia clearly knew that this was a kind of protection for her.

Because if Ovilia's sister hadn't acted first and completed the purge of Ovilia in advance after joining the Forge Master of this Forge World, Ovilia would definitely not have survived.

Ovilia knew this very well, and she also knew that she must not go back to confront her sister about these things.

But now, she has obtained an opportunity to take back everything that belongs to her, which makes Ovilia decide to take a gamble.

"As long as you take my token to find her, she will provide you with help, of course you can't reveal that I asked you to find her." After Ovilia explained the situation to Chen Xi, she also revealed her plan: "As long as you can get in touch with her, and then 'sell' these alien creations to her, you will be able to exchange them for enough resources for me to make a comeback."

"Are you willing to 'sell' all these alien creations to her?" Chen Xi looked at Ovilia, seemingly surprised by her generosity.

"Of course not all of them, just a part of them, to make her interested in you, and then invest in you." Ovilia certainly couldn't give up all the alien creations, she only planned to take a part of them to 'sell' to her sister.

"Okay, sounds feasible. But how much stuff are you planning to take out? What do you want to exchange these things for? And how much benefit can I get from it?" Chen Xi looked at Ovilia and asked the most critical question.

"A Canoptek Spider, a Tomb Spyder, plus a few Scarabs and the remains of several Necron Warriors... um, at most two more Gauss Flayers." Ovilia listed the list with a look of pain: "These should be enough for you to exchange for a small forging furnace and a standard biological research laboratory, plus some Astra Militarum equipment.

What you can get depends on your ability, and whether you can attract the attention of that Forge Master and get him to invest in you."