Half a year later.
Where Lycaeus was, the sun hung low in the west. Dim daylight gradually blanketed the entire mining planet, while the dome lights slowly began to come on, reminding everyone that night had arrived.
"The overseers' patrol routes, schedules, personnel, and equipment have all been confirmed. Switch to the new route!" Sandman put away his thick notebook and made a series of complex tactical hand signals in the pitch-black night.
Over this period, Sandman had led a small squad in rechecking the intelligence Korax had provided. It was not just Sandman; the Raven Guard squads had all begun narrowing their areas of activity, becoming active along the overseers' routine patrol routes.
It was not that Sandman and the Raven Guard did not trust Korax. These routes were simply their responsibility. Once the signal for the uprising was sent, they would need to kill the overseers and seize their weapons at the first opportunity.
On the day of the uprising, all the miners would act exactly as they did every day. Those who were supposed to mine would mine, and those who were supposed to change shifts would change shifts. The Raven Guard would be the first wave to seize weapons, after which they would ride the steam trains transporting iron ore to their respective targets.
To deceive the Tower, all the miners had been obediently mining during this period. They had even turned in a third more ore than before, and naturally, supplies between the various camps had increased as well.
Sandman and Korax had not begrudged the Corpse Starch. They put all of it to use; keeping it stored away was worse than directly improving everyone's condition.
After more than half a year of tinkering and experimentation, Sandman had gained a preliminary understanding of his abilities. First came the enhancement of his body. His physical strength was now roughly one-third that of the Raven King. Clearly, more than half of that had been contributed by Korax. Perhaps in the future, Sandman would possess a body equal to that of a Primarch—or even more outrageous.
They all had one head resting on two shoulders, yet the gap between people was greater than the gap between dogs. Setting aside products of genetic modification like the Space Marines, even the differences among ordinary mortals were absurd. The same Laser Gun could punch straight through an ordinary human auxiliary soldier, yet when it hit Ma Bo, it could only leave a faint scar.
A Primarch's physical strength was limited. Their true power lay in their Warp Essence, not their flesh. Take Korax, who had embraced his own Warp Essence—he was practically a minor Chaos God! He beat the ascended Lorgar so badly that Lorgar did not even dare step outside.
The enhancement brought by his physical condition caused Sandman's learning ability, comprehension, and every other aspect of him to evolve continuously.
Yes, Sandman called it evolution. Since he had come here anyway, whether he remained human no longer mattered. Look at the Imperium's upper ranks—strictly speaking, how many of them could still be called human?
The Emperor's essence was the Dark King. The Primarchs were minor Chaos Gods in the Warp, and the lunatics of the Adeptus Mechanicus wished they could replace every part of their bodies with machinery.
In short, the Imperium's current state was basically this: either they were outright not human, or they were sprinting full speed down the road to becoming not human...
"Whatever. The concept of humanity shouldn't be so narrow. If Yellow Skin wanted to, the Eldar could be classified as demi-humans too." Sandman thought of the Emperor, that severely hypocritical bastard, and spoke indifferently.
Another ability Sandman discovered was that his affinity with machinery was steadily growing stronger. Whenever he approached, the Machine Spirit of a Laser Gun clearly became more active, increasing both its firing power and the number of shots it could make to a certain extent.
After repeated tests, Sandman found that he could now affect the Machine Spirits of mechanical devices within a radius of roughly one hundred meters.
When Sandman consciously spread his psychic power toward a specific device, he could, to a certain extent, command or interfere with that device's Machine Spirit or intelligent system.
Just thinking about this ability thrilled Sandman. When the Raven Guard exchanged fire with their enemies, the enemy might suddenly discover that his gun had jammed. The next second, he would hear the roar of a Bolter, and then the visual nerve attached to his flying eyeball would only catch a sky full of blood mist and his own headless corpse collapsing to the ground.
Sandman vaguely felt that this ability might be related to that guy whose position had been taken by the Emperor in 40K, but he was not certain. The C'tan in the Material Universe also possessed this ability. The problem was that the C'tan had all been smashed into fragments and imprisoned within Necron Tomb Worlds as living batteries.
"Forget it. Once the Emperor arrives, many mysteries will naturally be solved." Setting aside those pointless speculations, Sandman continued familiarizing himself with the terrain and checking whether the overseers' situation matched the intelligence.
Bottom level of the Tower.
"My lord, do we need to prepare to move against the First Dome?" Budelin asked Agamemnon.
Ever since the Detective Group they had contacted half a year ago went missing, Agamemnon had concluded that the other party could not possibly be another family on Kiavahr—at least not one he could not afford to offend. That did not fit the noble style of doing things or their unwritten rules.
"A bunch of pretentious frauds. Once the Second Dome is operational, it will be the day of their destruction! Especially that camp calling itself The Saviors! I will leave neither man nor beast alive!" Agamemnon's clenched fist smashed heavily onto the desk with a loud bang.
Over the past half year, he had surrendered no small amount of profit to deal with the consequences of the great strike. He had ceded all rights and interests in the Second Dome before finally smoothing over the fallout.
Even the wealth in his bank accounts had shrunk by half. The pain of it had nearly made him faint.
Only after greasing palms above and below and calming the Lord of the High Tower's anger did Agamemnon receive permission, on the condition that the reckoning would wait until the Second Dome was operational and had stable output.
"Yes, Master. But with only the overseers under our command, it'll be hard to take them down. We need support from other firepower!" Budelin considered the few Laser Guns and Stun Guns in the hands of the overseers under their control. At most, they could equip each armed overseer with a few high-explosive grenades, and question marks filled his mind.
Could that even knock on the other side's door?
"Do you think all the benefits your master surrendered during this period got him nothing?" Agamemnon said with a sneer.
Clearly, he had reached some deeper agreement with other important figures in the Tower.
"Mobilizing the army requires an order from the Lord of the High Tower, but retired weapons do not." Agamemnon placed special emphasis on the word "retired."
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