Use Them Until They Drop Dead

Calgar finally pulled himself out of the shock of "usurping the throne." Hearing the order, he could not help hesitating. "Father, would the mortality rate...?"

"The mortality rate will certainly be higher than with carefully selected children, but it won't be outrageously high!"

Guilliman was brimming with confidence. "Don't forget, we now have the holy power of the Living Saint Celestine, as well as the cutting-edge technology of Archmagos Belisarius Cawl!

"With the two of them overseeing the process together, the success rate of the surgeries might even be higher than it was ten thousand years ago!"

"But... since ancient times, all Astartes had been selected and trained from childhood.

"Only augmentations performed before the age of ten are considered the most orthodox, and carry the lowest risks."

Calgar still did not fully understand. The power of tradition was formidable.

"You lot have been brainwashed by those stories!"

Guilliman raised a finger and gestured toward Calgar.

"When your father first submitted to the Emperor and formed the Legion, which of the soldiers under my command wasn't a robust man in his twenties or thirties?

"Didn't most of them undergo augmentation successfully?

"The occasional one or two failures were simply fate. There was nothing we could do about that.

"Becoming a demigod always involves some risk, does it not?"

He explained patiently, "The reason recruitment was later set at around the age of ten—

"—was partly to ensure that the children's minds were blank slates, easier to shape into the forms we needed and cultivate into absolute loyalty;

"—and partly because younger bodies were more malleable, which did indeed reduce the difficulty and risks of augmentation surgery.

"Fundamentally, this was a way to train warriors more efficiently and with fewer resources during times of peace or stable expansion."

His voice turned forceful and ringing. "But what is our situation now? The Imperium is on the brink of ruin! Do we still care about saving those scraps of manpower and resources?

"The Adeptus Mechanicus Archmagos and the Living Saint—these top-tier resources are all here with us now!

"If we do not use them now, when will we?

"While they are still here, augment as many as we can!

"Use them until they drop dead!"

As Calgar listened to Guilliman's incisive analysis and bold decision, his eyes grew brighter and brighter, until they shone like twin stars.

He gazed at his genetic father, his eyes filled with unprecedented fervor and conviction.

So that was it! The Primarch was not merely unmatched in battle—his intellect and vision far surpassed those of us mortals!

Following this line of thought, over the next month, with the Primarch's prestige and the top-tier resources already at hand, he had every confidence that he could add another ten or twenty thousand fresh recruits to the reborn Ultramarines Legion!

"Yes! Father! I understand! I'll see to it at once!" Calgar straightened his chest and replied in a booming voice, full of drive.

Ancient dogma was utterly shattered in that moment.

A new, more aggressive and practical model for Legion expansion officially began on Macragge under Guilliman's will.

After Calgar passed down Guilliman's orders to restore the Legion structure and broaden recruitment—

—it was like dropping a massive boulder into a tranquil lake, setting off enormous waves within the Ultramarines.

To be fair, many battle-brothers welcomed and celebrated the decision, especially those who had fought on the front lines for years and keenly understood the rigidity and shortcomings of the current system.

They had long grown sick of the constraints imposed by the Astartes Codex in certain situations, as well as the slow replenishment of recruits.

However, quite a number of members opposed it.

In particular, the chaplains who had devoted their lives to studying, interpreting, and enforcing the Astartes Codex.

As well as several officers with deeply traditional mindsets, who displayed fierce resistance.

The assembly square rang with endless arguments.

"This... this is blasphemy against tradition! The Astartes Codex has been the guiding principle we followed for ten thousand years! It is the code personally established by the Primarch!"

Landros, a highly senior chaplain with graying hair, was flushed red with emotion.

He clutched the Codex tightly in his hands, its cover adorned with precious metal, as though it were his only lifeline.

His voice trembled with agitation. "If we overturn it now, then what were the hundreds of years I spent upholding it worth?

"Everything I did to preserve the purity of the Codex... was all of it wrong?"

He thought of Titus, his former captain, a brilliant man who had always wanted to make "flexible adjustments" to the Codex.

It had been Landros's report that led to Titus being thrown into a black prison, where he endured centuries of solitude and punishment.

If the Primarch's will now was to break with convention, then had Titus not suffered a grievous injustice?

And would he, Landros, not become a sinner who persecuted his comrade and obstructed the Legion's development?

The thought nearly broke him.

What kind of joke is this?!

I am an angel of the God-Emperor, a scion of the holy Guilliman!

How could my entire life have been wrong?!

He roared inwardly as the foundation of his faith shook violently.

Calgar looked at the agitated Landros and the others, his feelings complicated.

As Chapter Master, he had long understood deeply how ill-suited the Astartes Codex had become in the present day, ten thousand years later.

Especially in the face of Chaos's full-scale invasion and the shattered state of the Imperium's territories, it could even be said that its drawbacks outweighed its benefits.

After hearing the Primarch's thorough analysis, he agreed from the bottom of his heart that reform was necessary.

But he also understood how Landros and the others felt.

For warriors who had grown up under the Codex's teachings and regarded it as the meaning of their lives and their only way of living—

—to suddenly be told that everything they had upheld was "wrong" and needed to be completely overturned was a shock no different from the collapse of faith itself.

Such intense cognitive dissonance might even spark the flames of rebellion.

At that thought, Calgar's heart tightened.

He would never allow division and rebellion to emerge within the Ultramarines at the very moment of the Primarch's glorious return!

He could not let such trivial matters trouble his father, who had only just awakened!

"Silence!" Calgar roared, his voice like thunder as it drowned out every argument.

His gaze flashed like lightning as he swept over his unconvinced brothers. "This is an order personally given by the Primarch—our genetic father! Do you intend to defy the will of our creator?!"

He raised his voice, and it echoed across the square.

"The Astartes Codex itself is an embodiment of the Primarch's will! And now, that same Primarch has personally declared a new will to us!

"Ten thousand years have passed! The Milky Way has changed beyond recognition. Must we still cling to doctrines from ten thousand years ago, stagnating in place until we are buried alongside the Imperium?!

"Do you wish to guard that grave called the Astartes Codex forever?"