Welcome to Warhammer 40k

Rowan opened his eyes.

The experience of traversing different universes was not as painful as he had imagined, or rather, he felt nothing special at all. With just a momentary daze, the scene around him shifted completely, turning his world upside down.

He looked around. He was currently in a room constructed of steel alloy, furnished simply with only a desk and a single bed.

The double-headed Aquila of the Imperium of Man was engraved on the wall, and the air was thick with the scent of incense and joss sticks. A thick book lay on the desk, with the title Lectitio Divinitatus written on the cover.

Various signs indicated that he was no longer in his previous universe.

Rowan smiled.

He was so angry he laughed.

"Damn it, Big Gold One, you played me!"

That was right; he understood everything now.

Escaping the hellhole that was the Foundation Universe was certainly a good thing.

But, damn it, why was he so unlucky to jump from one cesspit into another?

Warhammer 40,000, a space opera IP famous on the internet in his past life, created by the evil British company GW.

It was a setting defined by Gothic dark style and war, where various races and factions gathered in a tiny galaxy. Each had its own strengths, unique skills, and secret weapons that could bring endless "surprises" to anyone.

According to the contract, the faction Rowan needed to lead to a revival was called the Imperium of Man. This empire was the most absurd of the absurd, having successfully absorbed the dregs of every different political system in human history.

The buck-passing of democracy, the iron-fisted oppression of totalitarianism, the ignorant fanaticism of religious institutions, the rigid stagnation of feudalism, the total sacrifice of militarism, the cruel exploitation of slavery, the inefficiency of bureaucracy, the stifling of thought by theocracy, and so on—it was truly foul-smelling.

Ever since a minor accident during the Great Crusade ten thousand years ago, when the Emperor ascended the Golden Throne, the entire empire had been in a rapid downward spiral. Even though many heroes had tried to save it, it was ultimately to no avail.

"Forget it, no need to be so pessimistic."

Rowan calmed down quickly.

Now, his primary task was to figure out where he was in the galaxy and what year it was.

He walked toward the door of the room, intending to open it and leave.

He pushed, but the heavy alloy door remained motionless; it was firmly locked.

"...Tsk."

Rowan frowned. With a flick of his will, the sturdy door instantly turned into a pile of sand, which cascaded down with a rustle.

The cold light from outside shone in. He stepped out, and the scene before him opened up.

It was a cargo bay, seemingly used for storage and transport. At this very moment, the sounds of explosions and gunfire echoed incessantly; a massacre was unfolding.

The executioner of this slaughter was a Chaos Space Marine. Clad in pink and purple power armor covered in twisted patterns, he radiated an unsettling fragrance. With a chainsword in one hand and a bolter in the other, he danced among the crowd with indescribable elegance. Wherever he passed, blood splattered and mangled corpses fell.

"For the Four-Armed Emperor!"

An Astra Militarum soldier had just picked up a melta bomb when his head was severed by a single strike. His helmet fell off in mid-air, revealing a hideous face and a bald head covered in chitinous armor.

The bomb was nimbly flicked aside by the Chaos Space Marine, and the resulting explosion instantly swallowed several people. The slaughter continued.

"Good grief, Genestealers guarding the home front, are we?"

Seeing this scene, which could only be described as quintessentially Warhammer, Rowan couldn't help but snark.

The two sides engaged in their heated exchange noticed Rowan, who had stumbled into the battlefield. Their reactions differed: the Genestealers continued to pour fire into the Chaos Space Marine, while the Chaos Space Marine turned around and charged straight toward Rowan!

"Praise the Lord of Pleasure!"

For a Chaos Space Marine devoted to Slaanesh, achieving victory was by no means the most important thing; the pleasure and stimulation of combat were.

He had grown tired of slaughtering these Xenos, who were controlled by genes and psychic power and emitted no fragrant scent of fear. Seeing a mortal suddenly appear on the battlefield, he was overjoyed.

How should he properly toy with this poor mortal?

He had it: keep him alive, skin him completely, and then carve the False Emperor's Lectitio Divinitatus into his tendons. Just thinking about it was exciting!

The Chaos Space Marine had just marveled at the joy of the idea that had popped into his head when, suddenly, his body stiffened. He halted right in front of the mortal he had assumed was a pushover.

What was happening?

"Scared me for a second, good thing I'm more skilled!"

Rowan, who had locked down the opponent's Mk7 Power Armor with a single thought, muttered to himself.

In the former Foundation Universe, almost every anomalous organization had extensive experience in countering reality warpers. In Rowan's memory, every team sent to capture him was equipped with Scranton Reality Anchors to suppress his Reality Warping Ability.

Situations like this, where the enemy was completely unprepared for reality warping, were rare indeed.

Rowan reached out and gave a gentle squeeze.

"Bang!"

A muffled explosion rang out.

The Chaos Space Marine immediately swayed and collapsed to the ground. His power armor cracked, and a large amount of blood gushed out from the gaps.

Rowan hadn't actually done much; he had simply converted a portion of the blood inside the marine's body into nitroglycerin.

This explosive, which 2K humans used for mining, was still just as reliable in the forty-first millennium. It blew the opponent's two hearts and three lungs to shreds, killing him instantly.

Rowan exhaled slightly. With the death of the Chaos Space Marine, he felt a surge of energy flood his body, pushing something essential within him a little higher.

The soul quality of this Chaos Space Marine is quite good; one is enough to equal the souls of several hundred ordinary humans.

He sighed inwardly.

The Warp, Slaanesh's Six Rings.

A palace of perfection, one that mortals could spend their entire lives struggling to imagine and whose beauty could not be described by even a fraction of human language, stood silently amidst the tides of the Empyrean. Between its pillars were sculptures, oil paintings, and various works of art rarely seen in the mortal world, each one capable of ensnaring a soul in deep obsession.

What drew the eye most in this palace were not the artworks, but a vast number of seemingly ordinary mirrors. They surrounded the center of the chamber like stars orbiting a moon, encircling a magnificent bed.

Upon that bed, a scene of such distortion was unfolding that any mortal who laid eyes upon it would instantly collapse into a Chaos Spawn.

Every mirror reflected the blasphemous scene on the bed, each representing a different possibility. The stimulation felt by the figures within the mirrors was fed back to the original entities, amplifying the sensation thousands, even tens of thousands of times—enough to provide sufficient pleasure to a Slaaneshi Daemon whose threshold had been raised to unfathomable heights.

After an unknown amount of time, a Keeper of Secrets lay limply on the bed, clearly unable to move.

The other "person" slowly straightened up.

She wore the habit of an Imperium Nun, entirely incongruous with the blasphemous scene, though all the Purity Seals upon it had been replaced with twisted symbols associated with Slaanesh.

Her limbs and torso were hideously mutated, standing over four meters tall. Her slender limbs were reminiscent of a reptilian creature, and her face was both twisted and bewitching.

Miriael Sabathiel.

The disgrace of the Order of the Martyred Saint, a fallen nun who had abandoned her faith to kneel before Slaanesh, and a Chaos Champion blessed by the Dark Prince.

She extended a tongue a full meter long to lick her own face; the barbed organ carved bloody furrows into her skin, which vanished almost as quickly as they appeared.

This finally allowed Miriael's mind to clear a little.

"What is it, my dearest Miriael?"

The Keeper of Secrets lying on the bed spoke in a cloying, honeyed voice.

"...It is nothing of great consequence, really. It is just that the soul of a 'little fish' I had marked seems to have slipped from my grasp."

Miriael's expression was languid.