Plans

Plans

Six hours passed.

Qin Xa fumbled about for a long while, but he finally managed to add a usable backdoor to the Intelligent Machine processor.

However, during that stumbling process, Qin Xa made two discoveries.

First, he gained an understanding of the Security Automata technology used by the Nucerians.

Qin Xa found that the technology used by the Security Automata appeared quite advanced, but there was a reason it had not been lost in Nuceria's slave society, where technological knowledge and scientific talent were not valued in the slightest.

Its designers had stripped away many functions that could have been expanded upon, freeing up much of its structure to make it easier to use and design.

When Qin Xa dismantled the processor, he discovered that every component inside bore bilingual labels in Nucerian and another Latin language.

This allowed Qin Xa to understand that the processor was a central unit integrating an enormous number of functions.

Moreover, if one wanted to write things such as behavioral logic, programs, backdoors... or anything else that required coding, one only needed to find a way to write the required instructions in the section at the processor's core marked as the logic module.

For example, if one wanted a Security Automaton to farm or mine, one only had to write occupational terms in any human language, such as "mining machine," "mining robot," "mining laborer," or "resource extraction worker." The programs built into the processor would then create the relevant functions within it.

If programming it had merely been like making a wish, Qin Xa would not have spent six hours on it.

But he wanted the processor to allow remote control, concealment, and hacking into anything he needed to hack—not just Intelligent Machines, but equipment, sentry guns, or whatever other damned thing.

So most of his time had gone into modifying the processor.

That was his first discovery.

His second discovery was that he had become increasingly adept at using his psychic powers.

There was no laboratory-grade research environment here, no equipment. Observing and modifying things was extraordinarily difficult.

Qin Xa learned to use psychic power to accomplish things that ordinarily could only be done with instruments and equipment, and he found the results unexpectedly good.

The experience he accumulated in that process also brought him closer to the goal he had set long ago—making psychic power no longer limited to a particular method of use, but something he could wield as freely as chopsticks and cups while eating and drinking.

As freely as he pleased.

If an ordinary Psyker dared do this, he would be asking to have his head blown apart. But Qin Xa could use psychic power this way.

"There's one last thing."

Qin Xa put the processor into his backpack and looked beyond the estate.

Countless lights shone over the estate.

The Praetorian Guard advanced toward the estate in square formations.

Combat machines, intelligent vehicles, and similar things were also gathering, preparing to advance on the estate behind the Praetorian Guard formations.

Without question, the commotion at the estate had been discovered, and the troops stationed nearby had begun safeguarding the nobles' security.

Perhaps something on Elron's corpse had sent out a signal after he died.

In any case, Qin Xa was certain he was about to face a siege.

He was looking forward to it.

Half an hour later.

Nuceria's forces, equipped with advanced weapons and gear but burdened by utterly backward military organization and tactics, finally assembled roughly a thousand men near the estate. Once they had ensured all thousand could be committed to battle, the search of the estate began.

Even their military organization was extremely backward.

They looked like the Praetorian Guard, but only a small fraction of them were genuine Praetorian Guards, like Silver Vine.

The vast majority were slaves and personal bodyguards belonging to Praetorian Guard soldiers.

This makeshift Praetorian Guard attempted to find the Arena Manager's family, guards, or anyone else connected to him, then place them under protection.

They had come because they had discovered the estate had been invaded and had rushed over to protect the noble.

But after searching for a long time, they found nothing. The estate was deathly silent.

An officer among the Praetorian Guard shouted and yelled despite the possibility that the enemy hidden in the darkness could launch a decapitation strike at any moment, but no one answered him.

Qin Xa did not attack them yet. Instead, he was putting the final touches on his visit to the estate.

He picked up the explosives from several corpses on the ground and draped the camouflage cloak previously used by the Arena Manager over the backpack on his back.

The camouflage cloak could not conceal Qin Xa's body, so he chose to use it to hide what he valued more—the spoils in his backpack: Dataslates filled with digital books, along with the processor he had just modified.

Once he was ready, Qin Xa stood in the shadows atop the estate's tallest building, looking down at the enemies searching the grounds below.

They were the last target Qin Xa needed to deal with at the estate.

Ever since entering the Arena, Qin Xa had considered all kinds of plans for the future.

What would they do after escaping the Arena with Angron and the Gladiators?

Escaping the Arena was not merely an escape for the sake of escaping, because he had long understood that the Arena was not the cruelest hell on Nuceria, nor were the enemies within it the most terrifying enemies the Gladiators would face.

So Qin Xa had already figured out what to do after escaping the Arena.

Now and then, ships could be seen passing through the skies beyond Nuceria from within the Arena.

Thus, Qin Xa's first plan was to devise a detailed scheme, from escaping the Arena to forcibly boarding a ship and seizing control of it.

If the ship could not travel through the Immaterium and merely served as transport between the planets of Nuceria's star system, they would go find somewhere decent to stay on another planet in the system.

If the ship could travel through the Immaterium, that would be even better.

Qin Xa decided he would find a way to serve as the Navigator himself and take all the Gladiators on a long journey.

Their destination would be Macragge—the future heart of Ultramar's Five Hundred Worlds, a place that was already well-governed, peaceful, civilized, and respectable even now.

Then Angron could still build a nation within a nation with Guilliman... grow and cooperate with him, and if Nuceria and its surrounding regions could be conquered in the future, then when the Horus Heresy came, Ultramar's Five Hundred Worlds and Nuceria could form some kind of southeastern mutual-defense pact.

This was one of Qin Xa's plans for the future, and he called it: "Run to Macragge."

There was another plan: to fight the slave masters to the bitter end on Nuceria.

If they truly had to stay and fight to the death, the Gladiators and the Rebel Army... they could not wage guerrilla warfare. That was dictated by the objective environment and material conditions.

Any Nucerian civilian who sympathized with or aided the Gladiators would face extermination-level punishment from slave masters who had no need whatsoever for civilian support.

Thus, Qin Xa devised a plan called "Decapitation."

He, Angron, and the other Gladiators skilled in battle would form a team and carry out extermination-level strikes and reprisals against the slave masters as a group across Nuceria.

With psychic power, and with the astonishing individual combat strength of a primarch.

Just as they had done now: enter a noble's estate, kill them, then escape beneath the pursuit and interception of numerous troops.

That was the last thing Qin Xa needed to do at the estate.

To try and learn how, after completing a "decapitation," he could use his psychic gifts and every resource currently at hand to break out of an army's encirclement.

"Psykers are dangerous."

"Instability is not the sole reason they are feared... even those among them of middling ability can inflict horrifying destruction, can accomplish terrible things that many Soldiers together cannot."

The Librarian's teachings echoed in Qin Xa's ears.

Qin Xa took out a long string of explosives tied together with rope and hung it across his chest.

Frost spread across the rooftop.

Snow-white light filled Qin Xa's eyes as he looked down at the Praetorian Guard below, who had heard the Witch Detector begin to beep.

"Now I'll show you."