A Strange Ordinary Man

The forge rang with incessant clanging, but all was quiet where Curze was.

If Han Mingxuan had been there, he would have noticed the problem at once.

He had raised Curze for years and knew his habits well.

For one thing, whenever Curze intended to do something, he always let him know.

If Curze was quiet, something was probably wrong.

But he was now engrossed in learning to forge and had no time to pay attention.

Three hours earlier.

"Lord Inquisitor."

"Archmagos Angrak, is there something you need from me?"

"Not a need, but an objective report. There are things you must be informed of, and a decision you must make."

A decision?

Could there be some other secret on this planet?

"Lord Inquisitor, please take a look."

Archmagos Angrak stepped aside, revealing a waist-high box behind him.

"This is..."

"Furniture we packed when we left the Adeptus Mechanicus."

Furniture?

"An STC?"

"Yes. It can produce ninety percent of the equipment needed to colonize a planet. Combined with the resources Nostramo and the Adeptus Mechanicus already possess..."

"We can accomplish a great deal. We could even transform the world."

Curze looked at Archmagos Angrak, and the Night Haunter was watching him too.

"No psychic or Warp activity. This man isn't insane."

Hearing the Night Haunter's answer, Curze breathed a sigh of relief.

After all, Angrak's current approach seemed a little too far ahead of its time, however he looked at it.

"As I recall, the Adeptus Mechanicus places great importance on STCs. They wouldn't bring one out lightly."

"Lord Inquisitor, the so-called orthodox members of the Adeptus Mechanicus are nothing but freaks with oil for brains. We are different from them."

"The people here accept our principles and share our way of thinking. Among us Evolutionists, that makes them brothers."

"Our long-held understanding of technology is that only useful technology is technology. Useless technology is just wastepaper."

"All technology should serve humanity's survival and evolution."

"Rather than leave an STC Template on display in a shrine soaked through with sacred oil, we might as well use it to wipe our backsides."

"Of course, toilet paper smeared with sacred oil would be a very poor choice."

Listening to the archmagos's theory on toilet paper, Curze felt a little dazed and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

The archmagos treated useless STCs as toilet paper, while he and his father treated useless Imperial laws the same way.

If the people of the Adeptus Arbites and the Adeptus Mechanicus had been there, they would have been furious enough to make their heads explode and their logic units self-destruct.

"Really, Archmagos, it's a miracle your faction has managed to stay in the Adeptus Mechanicus for so long."

"You're nothing like the Adeptus Mechanicus. Or perhaps you're not part of it at all."

"Even among those the Adeptus Mechanicus considers heretics, you're the strangest and most heretical of the lot."

Archmagos Angrak was silent for a long time before saying something that surprised Curze.

"The Adeptus Mechanicus is a stinking hovel full of religious fanatics and mad scientists, but we Evolutionists are all scientists."

Yes, scientists.

"I think I should discuss this with my father. An STC is no small matter, after all."

"No. Compared with what comes next, the STC is a minor issue."

There was something more important?

"The problem is Nostramo, Lord Inquisitor."

"You should know that the cosmic environment around Nostramo is unsuitable for long-term human survival."

"Even if you unify this place and build it up, all you'll be building is an enormous graveyard."

"If humanity did not need to develop and extract its resources, this planet would be buried by the universe along with its dying star."

"Then what do you suggest?" Curze looked at the archmagos.

He was eager to hear what the archmagos would say.

"We must move Nostramo away. Its resources, population, culture-everything here must be taken with us."

"With this colonization STC, we can find a habitable planet and give Nostramo a true new beginning."

"So... why didn't you tell my father? Why come to me alone?"

Angrak fell silent for a moment, then looked at Curze.

"Forgive my presumption, my lord."

"Go on."

"Your father is wise and rational, but he is only an ordinary man."

"Aren't you an ordinary man too? You've just lived a little longer."

It seemed the Evolutionists' limit on the number of consciousness transfers was quite necessary.

"No, my lord. Your father is a special kind of ordinary man."

A special kind of ordinary man?

Curze sensed something different in those words.

"Explain."

"The moment I met the Father of Night, I used biotechnology to scan him."

"How dare you!"

Alarm bells went off in Curze's mind, but he soon calmed down.

He gestured for the archmagos to continue.

"As expected, the scan showed that he is an ordinary man."

"His speed, strength, hormone levels, and neural response time are all those of a normal adult male."

"But there is one more thing you must not forget. Nostramo is a living hell. In this living hell, an adult man who survives into his twenties cannot possibly be without abnormalities."

"Never mind living for over twenty years without anything happening to him. Even a few months would be enough for him to develop an industrial disease."

Curze froze.

He had never given much thought to what Angrak had just said.

"Night Haunter, is that true?"

"Yes. Father's body is that of an ordinary man, and the same is true in the Warp."

"His reflection in the Warp is almost negligible, like a hair fallen into the sea that you wouldn't even look at."

The two accounts corroborated each other, leaving Curze fearful.

"Your technology can extend lifespans, can't it?"

Seeing the hope in Curze's eyes, Angrak knew this was an emotion a person ought to have.

Sure enough, the Father of Night had raised this superhuman being well.

What a great father.

"Unfortunately, Lord Inquisitor, the Father of Night's body is very fragile. An ordinary weapon could kill him."

"His body is also very tough. No deliberate genetic modification can alter it in the slightest."

"If genetic evolution is a rushing river, then the Father of Night's genes are a mountain anchored to the planet's core, impossible to move in the slightest."

"Then you mean..."

Curze could not imagine such an outcome.

"Yes. The length of the Father of Night's life is foreseeable."

"Even with the help of the Imperium's foremost rejuvenation masters, his aging cannot be reversed."

"How long will he live?"

"At the very, very most, under the most ideal conditions and without genetic modification, he could live for five hundred years at most with the Imperium's rejuvenation procedures, and die of old age."

Curze fell silent. Beneath that long silence surged an endless torrent of emotion.

"Night Haunter, did you know all along?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me? Why?"

"Father said you were still young, my young brother."

"Excuses! I'm Father's son. I have a right to know!"

"But you and I are different. You have Father's guidance. News like this comes too soon for you, and it is too cruel."