This Must Be the Might of the Emperor!

Galien stood to the side without speaking. He had originally intended to use Odinson's importance to make the Chapter Master abandon this baffling experiment, but now it seemed not only useless, but had instead hardened the Chapter Master's resolve.

When the two finished exchanging words, Galien finally spoke. "Chapter Master, I am preparing to perform the implantation surgery. You should head outside first."

Hearing this, Huron walked out of the operating room and watched the situation inside through the observation window.

After disinfection and sterilization, Galien began injecting drugs into the already unconscious Odinson, adjusting his bodily vitality and immunity to raise the success rate of the gene-seed implantation.

Once Odinson's physical indicators reached their peak, he cut open Odinson's chest cavity, then carefully took that Tiger Claws Chapter gene-seed from the storage container and implanted it into Odinson's body.

Once the implantation was complete, Galien's focus reached its peak, for the first test was about to begin.

The gene-seed would take over the human body's hormone secretion after implantation, and would itself secrete several brand-new hormones to adjust the implantee's body, making them more suitable for the implantation of various superhuman organs.

This process was safest in young boys during or before puberty, because they had not yet fully developed.

For an implantee like Odinson who was already hundreds of years old and had even undergone a rejuvenation surgery once, even Galien had never seen the likes of it, so he was not even sure what problems he might encounter.

I hope the Chapter Master truly received a revelation from the Emperor, and may the Emperor protect Odinson. Galien prayed silently in his heart; ever since becoming the Chief Apothecary, he had rarely lacked confidence to this degree.

Yet after the gene-seed was implanted into Odinson's body, the fifty political points Huron had spent earlier also began to take effect, and the Emperor, who had been observing in secret, once again sensed that unknown power.

As expected, I knew it wouldn't be this simple!

The Emperor felt He had gambled and won once again. This power was pulling at Him, guiding Him to cast psychic energy toward Odinson to help him weather the modification surgery.

He had a precise measure of His psychic energy; even though the psychic energy He could manipulate now had dropped to an unprecedented degree, its violent nature remained unchanged.

Furthermore, this was not a high-concentration Warp environment, so He was incapable of delicate manipulation, and actually pouring in psychic energy would probably cause this recruit to die even faster.

Yet He still cast psychic energy along this power, because He was also curious about what this power would do.

If this power was an enemy of mankind, then understanding the enemy was the only way to defeat one, much like the primarchs He had once obtained through a bargain with the Four Gods.

Under the Emperor's observation, this power enveloped the psychic energy and sank into Odinson's body. The psychic energy that ought to have been violent was delicately manipulated by this power, gently influencing the psychic components within the gene-seed.

Under the action of these two forces, the gene-seed underwent a change, reaching a one hundred percent genetic match rate with Odinson, just as if it had been freshly harvested from his body.

At the same time, Odinson's body also entered a state of secondary development, and his adaptability to the various hormones secreted by the gene-seed greatly increased.

To Galien, all of this manifested as Odinson's bodily data stably changing in the direction of being able to have superhuman organs implanted. It was completely natural, without the slightest anomaly—truly the most ideal state.

"Emperor above, the genetic compatibility was practically zero, so why was the implantation process so... ideal?"

For a moment, Galien could only think of the word ideal, but immediately afterward, he thought of the Chapter Master's words and his consistently confident bearing.

"This must be the might of the Emperor!"

At this moment, Galien no longer doubted. The Chapter Master must have received the Emperor's revelation and blessing, or else there was no way to explain this unprecedented situation.

Outside the operating room, Huron also spoke through the microphone. "Galien, how is Odinson's condition? Can we proceed with organ implantation? If we can, then start."

"...We can. Completely no problem." Galien opened his mouth, yet still chose to trust the Chapter Master.

Although the conventional surgical procedure was to let the gene-seed implantee adapt for a period of time, letting the gene-seed thoroughly modify the body before performing subsequent organ implantations,

Galien felt that the Chapter Master, blessed by the Emperor, probably understood surgical procedures better than he did. After all, even Astartes and primarchs were created by the Emperor, so he chose to listen to Huron and start the implantations directly.

Nineteen superhuman organ storage containers were lined up in a row. Galien began to retrieve the second heart, the ossmodula, and the biscopea—these three first-stage superhuman organs—and placed them all together into Odinson's body.

Although theoretically all Astartes were implanted with nineteen superhuman organs, due to various reasons, most chapters actually lacked the implantation technology for some superhuman organs to varying degrees, the most famous of which was probably the Imperial Fists.

Only the black carapace—the organ necessary for controlling power armor—was possessed by all Astartes chapters, for without this thing they were basically not far from destruction.

Yet for the battle-hardened, time-honored Astral Claws Chapter, which was even capable of spinning off three successor chapters, they naturally possessed the implantation technology for all nineteen superhuman organs.

As soon as the three organs were implanted into Odinson's body, they immediately began to work, cooperating with the gene-seed to carry out an even more drastic modification of Odinson's body.

Before long, Odinson's physical indicators had reached the point where second-stage superhuman organ implantation could be performed, leaving Galien struck with wonder for a moment and even giving rise to some sacrilegious thoughts.

If the Chapter Master had obtained the Emperor's blessing sooner, perhaps the Chapter would have long since recovered or even exceeded its original scale, rather than standing at just over eight hundred people now, even counting out-of-establishment battle-brothers.

Haemastamen, Lyman's Ear, Larraman's Organ, Catalepsean Node, Preomor...

Superhuman organs were implanted one after another. If this were any other chapter, doing this would be no different from murdering a recruit.

Yet Odinson showed no signs of rejection whatsoever; each organ behaved as though it were native to him, beginning to work diligently and cooperating with the gene-seed to modify his body bit by bit.

A modification surgery that theoretically required years or even over a decade took merely a few hours with the help of the Emperor and the system. After just another year of development and training, he would be a standard Astartes recruit.

When everything was finished, Galien opened the door of the operating room, a trace of reverence on his face. "Chapter Master, the modification surgery is complete. Everything went smoothly, even exceptionally smoothly. Brother Odinson can now be considered a recruit."

Huron looked at Odinson, who was already beginning to subtly develop on the operating table, his heart overflowing with joy.

Yet on the surface, he barely managed to keep himself composed, offering only a smile and a nod toward Galien. "Well done. Even with the Emperor's blessing, your skill remains indispensable, brother."

Huron was not just exchanging pleasantries. If it were up to him, he would only have been able to cut a gash and forcefully shove things inside, and whether the Emperor would have been able to protect him then was anyone's guess.

"It is my honor." Galien puffed out his chest, his expression resolute.

Now, in his eyes, if Huron wasn't the Emperor's chosen, he simply had to be! This surgery completely subverted his understanding of recruit modification surgery; if it wasn't the Emperor's blessing, what else could it be?