The Second Talent

After safely completing an immensely rewarding expedition, Qin Xa began thinking about his past.

"Why did I become a Grey Knight?"

More than once, Qin Xa had questioned himself like this, forcing himself to contemplate that very question.

It was the second great mystery of his life, surpassed only by his own psychic gift.

Under normal circumstances, once a Psyker was discovered, they would be seized and sent aboard a vessel known as a Black Ship.

Black Ships were specifically meant to handle Psykers. Psykers underwent testing aboard them, much like the extensive tests Qin Xa had received before joining the Grey Knights. The purpose was to determine whether a Psyker was stable and safe.

Then the Black Ship would carry the Psyker away. Whether they lived or died afterward, and what Destiny awaited them, was left entirely to fate.

The Grey Knights were a secret army. Their members were Psykers, but that did not mean a Psyker could be discovered and taken away by the Grey Knights simply because his psychic talents were stable, then turned into a Grey Knight.

Joining the Grey Knights was an event with an extraordinarily low probability.

Qin Xa had never boarded a Black Ship. On a rebel planet, he had encountered warriors from the White Scars Chapter who had come to suppress the rebellion. He had then been discovered by a Librarian and taken away.

After that, one day, the Grey Knights had suddenly arrived.

Matters concerning psychic power were all mysterious and uncertain. The Grey Knights' sudden arrival was not that strange.

The problem was that Qin Xa clearly remembered learning very quickly that he had to become a Grey Knight and undergo augmentation surgery.

It had happened so fast that it was like being shoved into the role, like being forcibly conscripted.

Qin Xa felt that the Grey Knights' lack of an in-depth examination of his psychic talents before his augmentation surgery was the result of how rushed his recruitment had been.

The Grey Knights were a secret army with an extremely rigorous series of internal reviews and recruitment rules. They would never forcibly conscript people like a mortal army.

Having thought that far, Qin Xa shook his head and cleared his mind.

This question was unlike the one concerning his psychic gift. The latter could still be answered through adventure and investigation, but there was truly no way to seek an answer to the former.

Because Qin Xa was in 30K, not ten thousand years in the future. That damned Immaterium had sent him through time for a second journey across an immense span.

There were no Grey Knights in this era. Most of the ancestors of those Grey Knights ten thousand years later probably did not even know where they were pissing in the mud right now.

Yet despite traveling through time again, despite arriving in the 30th Millennium, despite coming to Nuceria, this hellish starting point even for a primarch, Qin Xa felt little sorrow or despair.

At least Angron had not yet been fitted with the Nails. At least there was still a chance to save a primarch for humanity.

Thinking of this, Qin Xa looked toward Angron.

"Everything is fated; nothing is ours to decide."

The words of the White Scars Librarian echoed in Qin Xa's ears.

Qin Xa did not disagree with those words. Nor did he have some passionate urge to refuse Destiny or fight against it, because in this universe, a person's fate was precisely what the Threads of Fate draped across The Veil revealed it to be.

But even so, one could not simply do nothing.

If The Emperor knew that his Destiny was to sit upon the Golden Throne, that his dreamlike undertaking was doomed to fail, would he simply spread his hands, sit on the ground, and say, "Fine, let's wait to die"?

If a soldier fighting in the future learned that the planet beneath his feet was destined to fall, would he throw down his weapon and wait for death?

"Shouldn't we bury Caesar?"

Angron noticed Qin Xa's gaze, but he could no longer sense those negative emotions from him. Now that Qin Xa had recovered, Angron wanted to deal with the headless corpse lying on the ground.

Oeno looked at the corpse and shook his head heavily. "If we could bury him, I would have done it long ago. But we have no tools. We can't dig through the walls. We have no straw mats, no bedding. We cannot even wrap Caesar's body so that he will not be left exposed here."

As Oeno spoke, most of the Gladiators looked at him.

When Angron looked at the others after hearing Oeno's words, they all lowered their heads.

Most of the people here were not cold-blooded. They wanted to bury the body of someone who shared their suffering—not only Caesar, but every Gladiator who had died here before.

But they lacked the means. They could not dig through the rock walls, and they had no bedding with which to wrap the bodies.

They could only wait until the slave masters remembered that Caesar's corpse had been left here, then watch as the Security Automata seized it, ground it to pieces, and carried it away.

"Perhaps from now on, no one will have to be left exposed here after they die." Qin Xa rose and walked toward Caesar's corpse.

"Are you going to use sorcery that can bury someone inside the rock?" Oeno perked up. He thought Qin Xa might truly know such sorcery.

But Qin Xa merely crouched beside Caesar's body and gently shook his head. "I'm not sure I can. I'm trying."

What Qin Xa was doing now was essentially creating a new way to use psychic power, as Oeno had said—one specifically meant to bury people within the rock.

Psychic power was not magic, and Psykers were not mages.

Nor was it a class skill from a game, restricted to being used in only one particular way.

Using psychic power to cast lightning or fire, or to make Prophecy or heal... did not mean that Psykers could only do those things. It was simply that such applications of psychic power were the most common.

In the material universe, a place where all things followed reason, psychic power from the illusory and ever-changing Immaterium worked by warping reality, allowing a living being to accomplish something it ordinarily could never do in reality.

Anything.

Qin Xa intended to follow that principle and find a way to bury Caesar with psychic power.

Fortunately, when it came to matters like this, Qin Xa's second talent would allow him to accomplish twice the result with half the effort, like a fish in water.

That talent was an absolute genius for studying skills and learning new things.

"So cold." A Gladiator curled up his body.

Because frost had begun spreading through the cave.

Then, within the hard rock wall before Qin Xa, a hollow cavity gradually formed according to his will.

After the cavity formed, the rock wall spread outward like flowing water, revealing the hollow within.

Qin Xa focused on wielding his psychic power, his gaze falling upon Angron.

Angron rose, picked up the headless corpse, walked to the cavity, and slowly placed the body inside.

As the rock wall that had spread apart like water began to close, Angron stood there in silence.

He recalled the despair, fear, and unwillingness Caesar had felt in the instant before his head exploded...

If I die too, I will feel the same in that final moment, Angron thought.

"Rest in peace," Angron murmured softly.

The other Gladiators watched the scene. They wondered whether Angron had known Caesar long before this, or else why he seemed so desolate.

The rock wall completely sealed shut.

Under everyone's watchful eyes, Qin Xa stepped up to the rock wall, to the place where Caesar slept, and pressed his palm against the stone.

He slowly moved his arm, his palm passing over the rock wall.

Finally, Qin Xa gently blew upon the wall. Dust scattered, and two lines of writing appeared upon the rock, too faint to see without careful attention.

Caesar.

Died before the destruction of the Arena.