A few days later, Deathstroke sat upon the Golden Throne, silently communicating with the Former Emperor within the Webway.
The situation on the Warhammer Universe side was now very unusual. All matters of reality and the material realm had been handed over to Deathstroke, and he had become the new Emperor. Of course, the official story was that the Emperor on the throne had begun walking among mortals once more. Only Guilliman and Ephrael Stern knew the truth.
As for the Former Emperor, he had devoted all his energy to the Warp, focusing on playing the game of the Four Gods and defending the Webway node beneath Terra.
If this were a Primordial Era novel, it felt like the Three Sovereigns of humanity had abdicated and entered Fire Cloud Cave to focus on suppressing humanity's fortune.
The more Su Ming thought about it, the more similar it seemed. But that was unimportant. This had been a transaction from the start. Su Ming provided pure-blooded humans from another world to secure a future for humanity in the Warhammer Universe, while the Former Emperor paid only the nominal title, since he had not managed affairs in reality for a very long time anyway.
Although the Imperium of Holy Terra had endured forty thousand years of hardship, and its original territory had shrunk considerably through countless wars, it still possessed a total population on the order of 10^24 and several billion Hive Worlds.
Not even the Former Emperor knew those figures. Even the Adjutant was unable to compile them for various reasons. Su Ming had derived them from records in the Deathwatch Core Rulebook and The End of the Battle, which he had read in his previous life.
Hive Worlds were urbanized planets. According to Imperial planning, 8% of them should have been