The Unlucky Ultramarines

After the reinforcement fleet departed with the Black Templars, life aboard the Resolute grew rather dull for Iax.

The two Dark Angels maintained their silence, coming by once every day to check on Iax's whereabouts.

As for the two Adeptus Mechanicus Sages, they had not appeared again since trading a great pile of historical records for an energy compression technology from Iax.

Iax clearly remembered what the two Sages had said as they read through the technical material.

"Omnissiah above! This is a sacred discovery. We must unravel its mysteries with devout hearts, and put it to use for the glory of the great Machine God and the welfare of humanity."

After that, the pair had vanished in a frenzy.

For Iax, however, the exchange had provided only a shallow understanding of the Imperium, along with even more unanswered questions.

Still, to keep his body functioning properly, Iax had visited the ship's Maintenance Center after finishing the documents to have his mechanical arm inspected and serviced.

The Adeptus Mechanicus's data interfaces and information formats were completely different from those of the past. Iax had no way to provide the material to them through direct data transfer.

He could only write it out by hand as a technical manual, using seven hundred sheets of parchment and forty-five bottles of supposedly blessed ink.

He then bound it and handed it over to the Sages.

To ensure that its contents suffered no unauthorized alterations or other unknown interference, an Ecclesiarchy Priest and several attendants had even stood beside him throughout the process, constantly chanting prayers and hymns.

The moment Iax finished the book, they performed a blessing ritual on it and applied various embossed seals.

To avoid these problems in the future, Iax had no choice but to try reverse-engineering the data interfaces