Recruit selection was about to begin

"Hey, Xiao Lan, are you going to take part in the selection too?" a little girl of eleven or twelve asked timidly.

This was the bottom of the Underhive in Morningstar's Hive City. Bluntly put, it was where the lowest people on the entire planet lived. They were deemed unworthy of any of society's resources, and most survived by scavenging the rubbish discarded by those above.

To stay alive, most people here joined one gang or another. The few who did not became vagrants, scraping by from day to day.

Xiao Lan was a pickpocket for an underground gang-a thief, in other words. Of course, there was little of value to steal here. Mostly, he stole food.

"I refuse to keep living like this. A life where I can already see my own death is nothing but rotten wood in a filthy swamp. I'm going to decide my own future."

"You little brat, what future are you trying to change? Isn't staying alive good enough?" The owner of the Steam Bar, known to everyone as Dad, suddenly appeared behind them, startling both children.

"Being alive is the greatest stroke of luck you could ask for. Don't you see enough dead people in the streets every day? Let me tell you, the ways you can die in the Astartes selection are a thousand times worse than theirs. How many actually get chosen? What percentage? Less than 0.001%! With that scrawny little body, you want to compete with those big, well-fed noble kids? How is that any different from going off to die?"

"Nobles? Have they ever known the despair of nearly starving to death? Have they ever had to react in an instant between life and death? Have they rolled around in the mud? Have they searched rubbish heaps for food? I have. I do it every day, and I refuse to keep doing it."

The owner looked at the child struggling to survive, his gaze complicated. That tiny body held a powerful spirit.

The bar owner had once been a formidable figure himself, one of the toughest men in the Astra Militarum. But after witnessing the horrific deaths of his brothers-in-arms, he had been so deeply shaken that an army doctor declared him psychologically unfit for further service. After leaving the military, he had decided to live in a fallen comrade's hometown, eventually opening a bar here.

For a hardened veteran of the Astra Militarum, keeping a few gangs in this little Underhive in line was easy. Apart from a handful of troublesome "sorcerers," almost no one could beat him. Running his bar in peace, he had seen many people come here to drink their lives away. Others, driven to despair, spent their last savings before ending it all. But he had rarely seen such a fierce will to survive, especially in a child.

"Are you really not afraid of dying in agony? Think about your friends. Think about this little girl. Whatever your future holds, you'll never see them again."

"How is the life I have now any different from being dead? Once I leave, I'll give them the food I've saved. Maybe they'll live a little longer."

"All right. I'll speak to the Crimson Blood Gang for you. Just go. You've got one week to climb up from here and get to the edge of the desert. If you want to go, you'd better leave now."

Xiao Lan divided the few blocks of corpse starch he had saved among several children who lived in the same misery. Unlike him, they no longer even had the courage to stake their lives on one last gamble.

The owner of the Steam Bar gave him a few protein bars as a blessing for his journey.

With the little food and water he had gathered on his back, Xiao Lan set off. He had no other possessions.

The proper routes out of the Underhive were either guarded by gangs or subjected travelers to rigorous questioning and extortion. Xiao Lan chose a faster, more extreme method: crawling through pipes to the outside.

In an ordinary school in the middle hive, students studied the Emperor's holy words. If nothing unexpected happened, they would inherit their parents' professions after graduation and continue their unremarkable lives as white-collar workers. Repetitive, tedious work would grind away their youthful energy. They would earn enough not to starve but never enough to save, then go on an arranged date, and the next generation would repeat the cycle.

Now a chance to break that cycle had arrived. News of the Astartes recruitment had reached the school, and almost every boy was fired up, as though he had already become a Space Marine, delivering the Emperor's wrath to the vile enemies of the Imperium. The girls, meanwhile, complained that the Astartes had no technology to transform girls, limiting the ways they could express their loyalty to the Imperium.

Everyone longed to escape this dull, tedious life.

Everyone except Enke, nicknamed the Calculator. After a complex series of calculations, he had concluded that his chances of becoming an Astartes through the selection were approximately zero. So why go? Wasn't that just throwing his life away?

His conclusion did not come from simply dividing the number selected by the total number of applicants. He had compared the known procedures for Astartes recruit selection against the curricula and intensity of physical training at noble schools, calculating his main rivals' overall abilities and the proportion who met the requirements. Then he estimated the likelihood of exceptional candidates emerging from the other middle hives and Underhives. His final rough conclusion was that even if every student in their school entered, the chance of producing a single Astartes was less than 1%.

He was the only student in the entire school still studying seriously, acting as though he had no interest whatsoever in the event.

"Enke, come with us. The school said it could arrange free buses to take us there, and provide all our meals before the selection if we need them." Enke's friend Frosa was trying to persuade him to take part.

"That won't help either. I trust my data. I don't think anything the school is doing will affect our odds."

"When you calculated your data, did you account for this Chapter's particular traits and human psychology?"

"Those things..."

"So I think your calculations are wrong."

"Data doesn't lie. As long as you correct for bias..."

"I'll prove it to you. Are you coming?"

"Frosa, you know you have no chance of succeeding."

"You know, Enke, some things can't be reduced to data. We're not data either. I'm going to take a chance on my future."

With a sigh, Enke eventually boarded the school bus bound for the edge of the great desert, to see the "variables" beyond his data.

In Grand Duke William's luxurious residence in the Upper Hive, a little boy was pleading with an elegantly dressed noblewoman.

"Mother, please let me take part. This isn't something that would disgrace the William family."

"No. Do you know how high the death rate is in this selection? Don't you know you're my only child? Even if you do nothing at all and simply live a good life, you'll become a grand duke. What could you possibly want that you wouldn't have? Why enter the selection?"

"Mother, the men of the William family aren't cowards who fear death, especially death fighting for the Imperium. I don't want to be a grand duke. I only wish for my soul to return to the foot of the Golden Throne. Didn't you say I could decide my own future? My decision is to become an Astartes."

"Silly child, how can you be certain you'll become an Astartes? In the last recruitment, the chance of dying in the selection was 89%. Many of those who survived were left permanently disabled."

The little boy surnamed William did not stay to listen to his mother. He simply ran off.

"Oh, that child. Chi Wei Ding, keep a close eye on him. Don't let him run around."

A figure wearing special black eyepieces emerged from the shadows, then gradually faded from sight.

William realized his trial had already begun. Now he had to evade every watcher his family had and reach the edge of the desert to enter the selection.

William casually beckoned a servant. "Take me to the toy room."

As the heir to a grand duke, William had received an intensive elite education from an early age. Although he could have any toy he wanted, he had very little time set aside to play.

Grand Duke William was currently meeting important figures from other planets and probably would not return before the Astartes departed. Strictly speaking, then, there was little that could keep Little William in check.

The servant led Little William to a building that could have passed for a small castle, filled with toys of every kind. William dismissed the servant and entered alone.

Next, he had to plan his actions carefully in three stages.

First, he had to find a plausible way to leave the residence.

Second, once he got out, he had to shake off his watchers and erase every trace of his movements.

Third, he needed to prepare a bottle of water and reach the edge of the desert before his family could react.

It was a daunting task, but if he could not even manage this, what right did he have to become an Astartes?

Little William made an enormous racket in the toy room, tearing toys apart and scattering components everywhere as he searched for things that could help him. After all, many of the toys here were decorated with real jewels and rare metals to make them look luxurious.

After thoroughly wrecking the place, he had collected five real gold coins, a miniature player that imitated the sound of a mag-vehicle engine when switched on, and highly elastic silk thread that could stretch several times its length and support his weight. He also stripped the clothes off a relatively ordinary-looking doll and put them on beneath his own.

After a long bout of destruction, Little William emerged from the toy room.

"Hey, servant, clean this place up. I'm hungry. I want something to eat. Bring me some snacks."

The servant led Little William to the splendid garden ahead, where he rested in a little pavilion and was served a plate of delicate biscuits.

These carefully crafted biscuits used milk from a creature called a Steig, native to Felicis, a planet on the outermost edge of the Calixis Sector, which lay very close to this region within the Segmentum Obscurus. They were sweet and delicious, with all their aroma sealed inside to ensure that the eater enjoyed the finest possible sensory experience with the first bite.

Translucent, jelly-like sweets in various colors were served next. These sweets used precious flavorful plants from across the Imperium, and each color represented a particular sensory delight taken to its utmost. The orange sweet, for example, was the pinnacle of sweet-and-sour flavor, making one's mouth water madly at the mere thought of it.

As Little William ate the jelly-like sweets, he secretly tucked biscuits into his pockets. They would probably be his only reliable source of food after he escaped.

He would succeed or die trying.

Meanwhile, Evan was growing thoroughly fed up with an assortment of "high-society" banquets. As a Chapter Master, certain political activities were unavoidable. He also had to meet the major nobles in person to secure more support.

Have a meal, have a chat, and military supplies came pouring in. Now that was profitable business.

Evan said, "Hello, Grand Duke Kangor. It's an honor to meet you. Oh, you oversee food supplies? A pleasure, a pleasure. May the Emperor's light shine upon you. What? You want your agricultural products in the shot when I give my speech? No, that won't do. Far too tacky. What? Twenty years of food supplies? Deal. Put a glass of your signature drink on the table."

Well, well, all those food supplies secured just like that. Being a Chapter Master was wonderful.

During the week spent publicizing the selection, Evan traveled constantly between the three Hive Cities, delivering speeches and attending meeting after meeting. Though an Astartes could fight for two weeks without sleep or rest, talking nonstop for twenty-seven hours—the length of a day on this planet—was genuinely hard to endure.

Meanwhile, the Techmarine was aboard the Battle Barge, running cables to build a homemade enhanced analysis device. Attempting to analyze an STC Fragment was no easy task. There was a great deal to prepare.

The Apothecary was also run off his feet. They expected to moor the two warships together for a period in the coming days, then establish a temporary passage connecting their recruit augmentation areas. Running back and forth alone would probably become his daily routine.

Chief Librarian: Zzz... zzz... zzz...

Little William was now making a fuss about visiting a toy shop himself. More than half the toys in his toy room were broken, and he refused to have craftsmen make replacements. There were no surprises in custom-made toys. He insisted on going to a shop to look for himself.

Going out at a time like this was troublesome. The orderly Upper Hive had no such low-class businesses as toy shops; those existed only in the middle hive, whose streets were currently packed with people heading for the desert. Still, Grand Duke William's influence soon cleared an entire street. It was a street full of toy shops, offering everything from stuffed dolls to Astartes models.

Little William darted from shop to shop. Shaking off the troublesome head steward and bodyguards was proving extremely difficult.

Finally, after looking around everywhere, he found the perfect toy shop. Its upper level connected directly to the wall of the neighboring street, a street lined with food stalls.

And where would a toy street and a food street be located? Exactly-somewhere with lots of children.

And where were there lots of children? Exactly-outside a school.

The food street was already packed. School buses stood in a long line as students said goodbye to their parents and boarded under their teachers' guidance. Along the roadside were reluctant parents and vendors loudly hawking their wares.

There were Astartes-shaped ice creams, guaranteed-success meatballs, lucky rice-cake soup, and so on. Just replace the theme of the good-luck snacks sold before entrance exams every year with Astartes, and sales were guaranteed to be excellent.

Little William entered the shop specializing in Astartes merchandise and stopped the bodyguards from following.

"You aren't worthy to stand before a great Space Marine, even if he's a model."

The bodyguards were speechless. They were only toys.

The head steward still accompanied Little William inside, while the other bodyguards watched the shop's front and rear entrances.

Little William's plan had reached its hardest stage. How was he going to get rid of this wretched head steward?

Xiao Lan of the Underhive finally crawled out of the foul-smelling sewage pipe, filthy from head to toe. He followed the river upstream for a while until he found water that could just about be called "clean," then climbed in and enjoyed a thorough bath.

After leaving the river, wringing out his clothes, and eating a little food, he would continue his journey. Everyone else's starting point was the edge of the desert. His had begun back in the Underhive.

He could no longer follow the river. To reach the desert's edge, he had to cross the broad plain ahead. This was no harmless stretch of open countryside. Several kinds of ferocious beasts lurked there. Although they posed no danger to humans sheltered inside sturdy machines, they could certainly kill the unarmed Xiao Lan.

Xiao Lan picked up a long wooden stick and sharpened its tip with a stone, using it as both a walking staff and a spear.

Enke was waiting for the bus with his friend Frosa when he suddenly spotted a daredevil on a rooftop across the street, wrapped in silk thread, swinging into an alley on their side like someone on a swing.

"Who's that? He's got guts."

"Based on his posture in flight and the thread's elasticity, my calculations put his chance of falling at 89%, his chance of landing on his feet and spraining an ankle at 6%, and his chance of landing on his elbows and scraping them at 88%."

Sure enough, a short while later, the boy of twelve or thirteen emerged from the alley with obvious scrapes on his elbows. Once outside, he looked around as though searching for something.

"Stop watching him. We need to get on."

Enke and Frosa were the last to board the school bus. Just as the teacher was about to close the door, Little William shot inside.

"How did you..."

Before the teacher could say anything more, Little William immediately pressed two gold coins into the teacher's hand.

"Sorry, teacher. I'm late. It took me a little while to persuade my great-grandfather."

"Ah. Oh, right. Go find a seat."

He was only hitching a ride. What trouble could that cause, right?

Little William was now wearing the clothes he had stripped from the doll earlier, which more or less helped him blend into the middle hive. He walked to the very back of the bus, where tall panels made it difficult for roadside cameras to capture him. Enke and Frosa were sitting at the back.

"Hi, I'm Wil... Fur. I'm just catching a ride."

The two children looked at him with interest, and before long they were chatting on and off.

Xiao Lan was now facing the most dangerous crisis of his life!!!

I can't eat another bite. Boo-hoo.

I thought this wilderness was dangerous. The moment I stepped out, I saw a huge, strange creature with a great horn on its head. It looked terrifying, its whole body seemingly encased in blocky bone armor. Their eyes met, and Xiao Lan's hair stood on end. This was far too frightening.

Xiao Lan instinctively tightened his grip on his spear. Years of scraping by in the Underhive had taught him that he must never show fear. That would put him in extreme danger.

And then... how was I supposed to know its armor was like paper?

A little fact: although the False-Plated Rhinoceros had a very hard horn, the armor on its body was only for intimidation. It was a herbivore that relied on disguise.