Listening to Music at the Pleasure House

Guilliman left Yvraine's luxurious guest room, steeped in the delicate fragrance of the Eldar, and stepped into an entirely different world.

Listening to music at the pleasure house was important, of course, but for a man, his career still came first!

Without a career, where would he get the money to listen to music at the pleasure house?

Belisarius Cawl's temporary workshop lay deep within Hera Fortress.

He pushed open the heavy blast door, and a murky wave of heat rushed at him, carrying the pungent smells of machine oil, scorched metal, cheap incense, and some indescribable electrolyte solution.

The sight before him could only be called an "orderly disaster":

The room was piled high with components urgently transferred from warehouses all over Macragge, or even stripped directly from damaged vehicles on site.

Old Leman Russ tank engines, Thunderhawk Gunship vector nozzles, damaged Mark III Power Armor breastplates, bundles of cables and servo components...

It was like a jungle of metal—chaotic, yet carrying a strange sense of "order" forcibly imposed by some mad will.

(Macragge's material reserves are stretched thin too... Cawl really has no choice but to conduct research with these "scraps.")

Guilliman understood, but he could not help feeling somewhat wistful.

He would make it up to Cawl later. When they inva... reclaimed Imperial planets, he would pry open a few more Planetary Governors' private vaults.

Those parasites had to be hoarding plenty of good things. When the time came, Cawl could pick whatever he wanted.

The center of the room stood in stark contrast to the surrounding chaos and filth.

That area had been deliberately cleared into a patch of purity. On the spotless floor rested the faster-than-light engine from the Viltrum Empire.

Its sleek silver-white casing gleamed with a cold, flawless luster under the dim workshop lights.

It looked utterly out of place amid the rust and oil-stained floor, like a holy relic enshrined in a rubbish heap.

And the Great Sage Belisarius Cawl himself...

Was completely engrossed beside the engine, practically "buried" beneath a pile of unfolded psychic scanning data-slates.

His massive mechanical body was nearly curled up, and his remaining biological lips moved faintly.

They produced low, rapid binary hymns of praise and mechanical prayers.

Without exception, every word was dedicated to the "perfect creation" before him.

"...Praise the smooth curves, salute the flawless seams, exalt the Machine Spirit that remains silent yet contains infinite might...

Oh, what a sacred structure. This could never have been forged by mortal hands..."

Guilliman found it somewhat amusing.

(Machine Spirit? He had only taken this thing out of the system not long ago. Where would it get a Machine Spirit?)

He understood the concept of the "Machine Spirit" in the Warhammer Universe.

Humans, especially the Adeptus Mechanicus, had poured faith into machines for a long time, maintaining and operating them through ritualized practices.

This generated corresponding faint projections in the Warp, which were known as "Machine Spirits."

The Adeptus Mechanicus explained them as "fragments of the Omnissiah, the God of All Machines."

But in Guilliman's view, they were more like creations of the collective unconscious.

Or, in the terms of his homeland, a low-end version of an "incense-and-offerings god."

They had some mysterious effects, perhaps, but expecting them to possess any serious combat power was simply wishful thinking.

The smell in the air was truly unbearable.

Guilliman held his breath—an effortless task for his current body.

Having fused with the traits of Thragg, Regent of Vitruum, his physical capabilities had reached an unimaginable level.

Ordinary Viltrumites could survive in a vacuum for months, while elites like Thragg could endure for more than half a year.

Now that those traits had fused with his Primarch body, Guilliman estimated that he could go without food, water, or air and endure in space for an entire year without any significant drop in combat power.

He walked in without making a sound. To avoid disturbing the Great Sage in his absorbed state, he even used one of his newly acquired little tricks.

An almost imperceptible golden-blue psychic glow flickered around his fingertips.

It was one of the fragments of knowledge he had acquired after devouring a Tzeentch daemon.

A low-level psychic spell used to soothe emotions and enhance affinity. Guilliman had provisionally named it the "Awakening Spell."

He gently "patted" that faint psychic ripple onto Cawl's back, which was covered in mechanical armor.

"Bzz..."

Cawl's mechanical body trembled slightly, as though he had been awakened from deep meditation.

He turned his head somewhat sluggishly, his multiple compound optical lenses focusing on Guilliman.

Then he let out a mechanical buzz filled with apologetic and excited static:

"Ah! Lord Primarch! How... how discourteous of me!

I was just... completely captivated by the beauty of this creation!

It constantly radiates waves of truth, pulling at every one of my processing units!"

"I understand, Cawl."

Guilliman smiled indulgently, walked over to the engine, and adopted an appreciative pose as well.

"After all, this is very likely one of the greatest achievements of the lost Dark Age of Technology."

"No! No, no, no! Lord Primarch!"

Unexpectedly, Cawl reacted intensely, waving one of his mechanical tentacles.

He practically hurried to the engine with the posture of someone defending truth itself, gently stroking its smooth casing.

His voice was filled with fanatical certainty.

"Although you told me this was produced during humanity's Golden Age, and its technological level does indeed match that era."

"I can say with certainty."

"This is absolutely not a product of humanity's Golden Age!"

Cawl's mechanical compound eyes flashed madly as streams of data cascaded across them. "Look at these lines—they completely violate the traditional human engineering aesthetic and philosophy of physical redundancy!

"Its internal structure... even my most advanced non-invasive scans cannot fully analyze it. The principles underlying it are fundamentally different from the physical laws we know!

"It is like... like something created by beings similar to us humans, yet whose level of life and technology vastly exceeds anything we can imagine! A... 'superhuman' creation!"

(Hiss...)

Guilliman drew a sharp breath inwardly.

*(Amazing! Just as expected of Doraemon Cawl!

Just from its appearance and a little psychic scan data, he dared to conclude that this was not human technology, and even guessed the concept of "superhuman"!

With this insight and this willingness to break beyond the limits of dogma, no wonder you became an anomaly within the Adeptus Mechanicus—and one of the hopes for the future.)*

However, Guilliman had no doubts whatsoever about Cawl's Loyalty.

This Great Sage might disdain certain rigid doctrines of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but his faith in the Imperium and the Emperor was unwavering.

After all, in this Milky Way, the Imperium might be the bloated, rotting corpse of a giant, but Chaos was absolutely the worst filth in a cesspit!

Cawl knew very well which side he should stand on.