Swan Goose

After resting for an entire day and steadying his mindset, Fu Qinghai draped a simple linen robe over his shoulders and followed Ogedei's wheelchair toward the dim, eerie corridor deep within the warship.

Inside Master Kunto's laboratory.

A completely naked Fu Qinghai was secured within a semi-open incubation pod, right next to Master Kunto's operating table.

Not only had his clothes been stripped away, but every hair on his body, even those in the smallest crevices, had been shaved clean.

Master Kunto's servitor assistant actually had quite a knack for shaving; its eight mechanical arms were incredibly agile, maneuvering the razors with lightning speed.

Ogedei and Talal had both left, leaving only Master Kunto and his servitors in the room.

Master Kunto remained silent, head bowed as he calibrated the sharp drill bit at the end of a metal tube in his hand.

Fu Qinghai glanced to the side; these metal tubes, ranging from thick to thin and large to small, would eventually pierce through his skin and muscle to be inserted into his body.

At this moment, Fu Qinghai's thoughts began to wander.

Becoming a Space Marine.

Fu Qinghai had never even considered it before.

But when Ogedei placed this option before him, he hadn't hesitated in the slightest.

Legend had it that Space Marines lacked worldly desires, living a puritanical, ascetic life.

Legend had it that Space Marines could not reproduce, relying solely on Gene-seed for their legacy.

But Fu Qinghai didn't care about any of that.

Becoming a Space Marine meant becoming stronger!

That was enough; in the Warhammer 40K universe, was there any way to become stronger that was more stable or direct than becoming a Space Marine?

In this man-eating universe, how could one survive without becoming stronger?

"It begins." Master Kunto's raspy voice sounded from beside him.

Fu Qinghai steadied his mind, cleared away all distracting thoughts, and slowly emptied his consciousness.

A sharp pain in his back, and he felt a cold, tubular foreign object pierce into his chest cavity.

Then, everything went black, and he lost consciousness.

Outside the steel bulkhead, in the dim corridor.

Ogedei and Talal walked side by side.

As they walked, Ogedei suddenly said in a low voice:

"The swan goose flies high, covering a thousand miles in a single leap. May this little eagle survive this trial and soar freely over the steppes."

The Chogorian was feeling poetic.

"...Locke isn't even a Chogorian." Talal was speechless at his companion's sudden, awkward poetry and metaphors.

The eagle was a noble symbol in Chogorian culture; for instance, one of the titles of the White Scars Primarch, Jaghatai Khan, was the "Warhawk."

"Even if Locke isn't a Chogorian, he is indeed a little eagle, and he possesses the ambitions of a swan goose."

The survival rate for Space Marine transformation surgery was very low. Not everyone could withstand so many complex procedures, and even with carefully selected candidates, the Imperium of Man still had to rely on sheer numbers to fill the ranks.

It had only been a casual, unintended idea to begin with, and both Ogedei and Talal had already prepared themselves mentally.

Prepared to receive the news that Fu Qinghai had died during the surgery.

PS: Warhammer is a British pop culture IP, but Chogoris and the White Scars are designed based on stereotypes of Eastern culture. In the lore, Chogorians love reciting poetry, calligraphy, and burning incense, so I used some archaic phrasing here instead of a standard translation style, feeling it would be more immersive~