True Purpose

"You two probably had quite a few good things on you."

Qin Xa crouched down and searched Eron's and the supervisor's corpses, looking for anything he could use now or keep for later.

When his hand touched Eron's body, Qin Xa found it blocked by a thin layer of Energy Coating.

He gently stroked the coating, his eyes veiled in psychic power as he used Psychic Sight to observe the flow of energy. At its source, he found a device strapped around Eron's waist.

The device looked like nothing more than a belt, emitting a faint hum that only Qin Xa could hear.

As he reached out to remove it, a sudden idea struck Qin Xa. He stopped, rose to his feet, picked up the heavy machine gun he had previously slung across his back, chambered a round, and fired at Eron's corpse.

With a loud bang, countless fragments ricocheted into the Psychic Barrier Qin Xa had raised, while Eron's body remained completely unscathed.

Qin Xa observed the Energy Coating and found that although it had perfectly blocked the damage, its energy density was lower than before. That meant it could be depleted.

But even a large-caliber heavy machine gun could only drain a tiny amount of energy.

After doing the math, Qin Xa realized that if he had not used psychic power earlier, killing this noble instantly would have been nothing but wishful thinking.

But looking at it another way...

No matter how good the Tarko Family noble named Eron's equipment was, no matter how impressive the black technology on him might have been, psychic power blowing his head apart had made him no different from the supervisor, who had not worn equipment capable of generating an Energy Coating. Neither of them had lasted even half a second.

"Nice stuff. It's mine now." Qin Xa placed his hand on the belt, not knowing how to stop its energy emission. He closed his eyes and used psychic power to probe its internal structure.

Once Qin Xa roughly understood some of the belt's internal functions, he willed his psychic power through the casing, which had been made with some unknown technology, and stopped the belt from emitting energy.

He then picked up the black-tech artifact and tossed it into the backpack behind him.

Qin Xa searched Eron's body again and found that the man had apparently arrived in a hurry and had not brought much. Aside from some jewelry, he had nothing else on him.

As a member of Nuceria's most noble family, any one of Eron's pieces of jewelry was worth a fortune. But none of it was useful to Qin Xa for the time being, and the remaining space in his backpack had to be reserved for more important things.

"Your turn." Qin Xa walked over to the supervisor's corpse and crouched down to search it.

The supervisor did not have equipment like the belt that could generate an Energy Coating. Or perhaps he did, but had not taken it out.

Qin Xa did not have enough time to conduct a thorough search of the entire manor, so he simply gathered up whatever he found.

Two bottles of medicine and a self-defense pistol that used energy as ammunition.

After putting the items away, Qin Xa stared at the supervisor's corpse and realized that the man was practically a cybernetically enhanced human.

Looking through the opening in his neck, both his organs and bones appeared to be made of metal.

"Fuck, how is Biotechnology in this godforsaken place called Nuceria so absurd?" Qin Xa kicked the corpse aside and walked toward the bookshelves.

The library in this manor held so many books that Qin Xa was amazed and reluctant to leave.

Judging by the manor owner's appearance, the supervisor did not seem like someone who enjoyed reading. He had probably kept the books here just to show off to visitors.

Yet even the books the supervisor had used merely for show numbered several hundred times more than every book Qin Xa had seen throughout his life before crossing over into this universe, as well as during the life he had lived after crossing over into it.

It was impossible to stay here and absorb all this knowledge. He could only pick out a few useful books.

So Qin Xa began sweeping through the shelves.

Books on science and technology took top priority.

Qin Xa's backpack was not large, and he could not carry much.

He did not consider whether he would be able to understand the technology books he had set his sights on.

True, his experience as a scientist had come from humanity's twenty-first century, when technological standards had still been quite primitive and naturally far behind the technology found anywhere in human territory now.

But after his first crossing, when he arrived in the 40K era, Qin Xa had not spent his time in the White Scars Chapter and on the first planet he had arrived at doing nothing. He had studied as well.

Qin Xa believed that with his intelligence and talent for research, there was nothing he could not learn or understand.

After looting more than a dozen books, Qin Xa began considering whether to throw away the heavy machine gun he was carrying to make room for more books.

But just then, he noticed a desk in front of him with something resembling a tablet computer sitting on it.

It was like the Dataslates commonly used throughout human society.

An uncontrollable Psychic Premonition appeared again.

In the premonition, Qin Xa saw himself studying the Dataslate for quite some time before discovering that it had a function allowing him to browse digital versions of every book in this library.

"Damn..."

Qin Xa threw away all the books he was carrying, stepped forward to pick up the Dataslate, put it into his backpack, and then left the library for somewhere else.

Killing the supervisor and Eron had not been the primary objective of this trip.

Searching for books and obtaining information on Nucerian science and technology had been one objective, but it still was not the primary one.

After leaving the library, Qin Xa entered the manor's warehouse.

In this place filled with all manner of miscellaneous junk, Qin Xa cleared off a metal table and placed something he had brought with him on it.

It was a tiny object resembling a cube-shaped box, not even as large as a finger.

But this thing was the processor taken from the head of an Arena Security Automaton.

It was also what Angron had dug out of a Security Automaton's head when he became furious and destroyed it after personally killing two Gladiators, then brought back to the cave as a gift for Qin Xa.

Qin Xa picked up the gift and examined it.

The Security Automata apparently could still be mass-produced by the Nucerians, so this thing was definitely not a technological black box.

That meant it could be deciphered, used, and modified.

At that moment, Qin Xa suddenly recalled an old memory.

Back then, in the White Scars Chapter, he had done odd jobs repairing various small pieces of equipment for the Chapter so that he could learn about technological Artifacts from humanity's interstellar age.

Originally, a child had not been qualified to touch the sacred belongings of the Emperor's Angels. But there had been a tech-priest sent by the Mechanicus, and the tech-priest had constantly urged Qin Xa to become an "exchange student" of the Mechanicus after becoming a Space Marine, then return as a Techmarine to serve the Machine God.

The Librarian had also played a part in that scheme—he taught Qin Xa a little trick he could perform with psychic power, letting him deceive the tech-priest into believing that Qin Xa possessed a natural affinity with the Machine God.

Through his chance to work as the tech-priest's assistant, Qin Xa had also been able to get involved in repair work.

"Your bike's broken, buddy. It won't be fixed until the strike Cruiser returns to Quanzhou Fortress and can obtain replacement parts from the Fortress."

Qin Xa also remembered saying this to a White Scars warrior whose bike had been wrecked on the battlefield.

After the White Scars warrior fell into panic and anxiety, Qin Xa added, "But I remember the priest has some spare parts in storage. Still, he is a Mechanicus man. You know how it is—the other head of the aquila. It won't be easy to get him to help."

"But since I work as his assistant, I could go help you steal... no, help coordinate the parts out of the priest's warehouse."

The White Scars warrior was immediately overjoyed and asked Qin Xa what he wanted in return.

"Aren't you Farseer Balutai's guard? Let me enter his room and read a few books, and I'll help you... help you coordinate."

"..."

Remembering those happy old days, Qin Xa laughed aloud, then quickly got back to business.

He began modifying the Intelligent Machine processor in his hand, connecting it to the Dataslate and using Psychic Sight to observe its internal structure, understand it, and analyze the functions of its various components.

Using the tools currently in the warehouse, he manufactured some simple parts, then welded or implanted them into the processor's internal structure.

The work was indeed difficult, but not impossible.