Lost Star [Pedetia]

Bit began wandering aimlessly through the Warp. There was no concept of time or space here, only eternal, chaotic tides of energy and emotion. Thanks to his authority over [Information and Data], he was like an infiltrator equipped with a top-tier early-warning radar, always able to sense signs of possible danger in advance—sudden surges of abnormal emotion representing some unknown thing, or energy ripples stirred up by the movements of powerful beings.

Whenever that happened, he decisively "turned around." In his current state, even encountering a Greater Daemon-level being could land him in a brutal fight.

This excessively cautious approach ensured his safety, but it also caused him to miss every possible opportunity. He did not find that particularly regrettable. As long as he was alive, there would still be possibilities, right?

No one knew how much time had passed when Bit's senses caught another faint energy fluctuation. He had seen this kind of energy signature once before: it was a Warp rift connected to the material universe. Last time, he had personally watched one of Tzeentch's Blue Horrors struggle with all its might to squeeze through a rift formed by such energy fluctuations. He had hesitated, but ultimately chose not to snatch it. If it had been an ownerless Chaos creation, he might have analyzed it, but something with backing was best left alone.

This time, Bit observed it repeatedly, using his authority to scan the rift countless times inside and out until he confirmed that there was nothing unusual. It was a naturally formed, ownerless Warp rift.

As for why he was not worried about someone lying in ambush? During his long wandering, he had once "seen" from afar Skarbrand, Khorne's greatest Greater Daemon, the "Exile." He silently recorded the other party's energy intensity as a benchmark. Afterwards, he found an Undivided Chaos Daemon Lord roughly half as powerful as Skarbrand and conducted a remote, undetected "detection experiment."

The results confirmed one thing for him: his authority was unparalleled in the three fields of escape, concealment, and detection. Unless the gap in scale was too vast, or beings on the level of the Five Great Chaos Gods personally set a trap for him, no one could catch his tail. And if those five truly took a personal interest in him, there would be no point resisting anyway. With his current power, he could not resist, so he might as well think about which position would be most comfortable to lie flat in.

After confirming that it was safe, Bit cautiously extended a thread of his perception into the Warp rift like the finest probe, attempting to investigate the material universe on the other side.

The next second, a surge of delight rose within his data-formed consciousness.

This Warp rift had opened directly onto a planet in the material universe!

What delighted him even more was that intelligent life existed on this planet—and in considerable numbers! His perception spread from the rift across the entire planet like an invisible giant net. In an instant, the planet's overall situation was laid bare before him.

This was a planet called Pedetia. Humans, Orks, Dark Eldar, Chaos Cultists, Genestealers... all kinds of factions had gathered on this rust-covered death world for a grand celebration.

Uh, looking at it this way, humanity's situation did not seem very good.

However, a troublesome fact soon emerged. Bit discovered with some helplessness that he was simply too weak right now. His sensory range could barely cover this planet, and could not even reach the star system it belonged to.

He had originally intended to use this rift to gradually spread his perception as far as it could reach, growing himself like a snowball. But the current situation left him in an awkward position. He had already swept through all the planet's "static information," and the weakness within him had eased somewhat, but this amount of information was not even enough to fill the gaps between his teeth.

Still, there was another way.

He had already scanned all the fixed information—the "stored reserves" such as technological blueprints, genetic compositions, and biological structures. But there was also constantly changing "incremental" information: communication between intelligent beings, battles, construction, betrayal... Such actions continuously produced new information. This was dynamic information.

Bit was already getting tired of his wandering life of hiding from one danger after another in the Warp. He might as well stay here and continuously absorb this dynamic information. After all, even if he found another Warp rift, there was no guarantee it would be ownerless. Even if it was ownerless, there was no guarantee there would be a planet on the other side. And even if there was a planet, there was no guarantee it would have intelligent life.

Moreover, Bit quickly discovered that on Pedetia, the activity that generated dynamic information most efficiently was war. Among them, the information produced by humans was the most "high-quality."

After considering it, he quickly reached a conclusion: the souls of the Dark Eldar were gradually withering away; everything the Genestealers did was for the Hive Mind, leaving their individual thought nearly nonexistent; Orks lived with absolute simplicity—WAAAGH! was all there was to it; and Chaos Cultists had long since become puppets of the chaos gods.

Only humans retained a considerable degree of active thought. And war was the best catalyst for unlocking this species' potential. A brutal war could propel humanity's creativity, destructive power, emotions, and strategy forward at hundreds or thousands of times their normal speed, generating massive amounts of high-quality information.

Therefore, if he wanted to absorb information as efficiently as possible, he needed to ensure the survival of humanity, this "source of information." It would not matter even if humanity eventually wiped out every other race. Once humans eliminated their external enemies, they could not possibly avoid fighting among themselves. By then, both sides of the war would be human, and the information they provided him would only increase.

However, Bit scanned the human forces on Pedetia once more and found their situation to be perilous. The only armed force they could still be said to possess was a battered Astra Militarum regiment in name only. With such a disparity in strength, even if he packaged up and sent all the Orks' technology, the Dark Eldar's tactics, the Genestealers' deployment maps... every piece of intelligence and technology to the Astra Militarum commander, humanity still could not win. The difference in pure numbers and quality was simply too great.

Looking at it this way, the only solution was to make the human forces somehow "grow people from the ground." Preferably the kind who could shoot guns, drive tanks, and fear no death the moment they appeared. Otherwise, humanity on this planet had no hope left at all.

Bit knew that with his authority, it would not be difficult to use energy with sufficient finesse to create material bodies out of thin air. The difficult part was that he had no ability to create souls from nothing. If creating human souls were that easy, the chaos gods of the Warp would not crave the souls of the material universe so desperately.

At that thought, Bit's data-based consciousness stirred slightly.

Through that mysterious connection, he shifted part of his attention back to Earth on the other side.

Although he could not obtain power in that low-magic world without a Warp, his information could pass through. Did that prove that the information on the other side could also come over?

If so, then perhaps the "souls" needed for those empty shell bodies... had found a source!