There wasn’t any exaggerated phenonon like in the Warp, but following the exclamation, a wave of golden fla appeared around them.
These flas only had the appearance of burning, yet didn’t harm anyone, had no heat, and rely spread out silently, climbing onto everyone except the transmigrators.
Soon, these illusionary images that looked like burning flas faded away, leaving only faint traces in the eyes of those warriors—scattered golden specks of light.
Naturally, such a vision sent the faithful into a frenzy of prayer.
Especially the Sisters. Visions they might have only witnessed on their deathbeds occurred twice in just a few hours. They all devoutly chanted hymns and began docunting the experience.
“Well done, Rases.”
Arthur let out a sigh of relief and didn’t hold back his praise.
Back in the era before the Great Rift, getting the Emperor to show a sign wasn’t easy.
“……”
But despite having done sothing good, Rases didn’t look the least bit happy—instead, he seed as if sothing had thoroughly disgusted him.
“Sorry.”
Rases made a gesture of apology toward the three of them.
“I acted on my own.”
“……”
Romulus blinked.
Didn’t he just hear this exact line a mont ago?
“What exactly happened?”
Arthur was just as confused.
Since they’d already done the glorious task of digging gold from Warp sh*t earlier, the job of studying the Warp had naturally fallen on Rases.
So no one understood why Rases, who clearly just accomplished sothing major, had such a guilty expression.
“I’m guilty. I was a dumb*ss.”
Rases, having succeeded in his attempt and saved a large group of people’s futures, was in an utterly foul mood.
Looking at the shared soul pool that everyone had contributed to for him to use, and seeing how much it had dropped, he felt like he’d just been freeloaded!
“Rember when we first landed and had that safe house in the Warp?”
He asked out of nowhere.
“Yeah.”
Arthur nodded. He still rembered there was even a roll of toilet paper in there.
“That thing was created when we first landed due to our instinctive rejection of the Warp. Essentially, it’s just a ntal barrier in the Warp with so degree of concealnt. Of course, Warp creatures can’t see us to begin with, so it’s basically useless.”
Rases began explaining the principle behind the safe house.
“Then the Emperor probably identified us as so kind of Warp-born entities influenced by humanity, and that place beca our physical domain in the Warp…”
“Forget it, let’s not get into that for now—you guys know being noticed by the Emperor isn’t necessarily a good thing, right?”
“Understood.”
Arthur nodded.
He’d read quite a few novels published by GW—not just the ones translated by the Lexicanum, but even chewed through English originals himself. Naturally, he knew about Chaos’s favorite pasti:
Corrupting devout followers of the Emperor with twisted delight, like forcing the righteous into depravity.
Pri targets included devout Sisters of Battle and Astartes under the Emperor’s gaze.
Many heretic daemons took pride in having a fallen Sister under their command or delighted in capturing loyalist Space Marines for sacrifice to the Four Gods, hoping to win favor and receive more powerful blessings.
So in the Warhamr world, praying to the God-Emperor and getting no response was actually the best outco. If you got a real answer, either you were going to die or it wasn’t really the Emperor who answered.
In a way, if the Emperor noticed you while you were alive, your chances of getting noticed by the Four Gods shot way up too.
While alive, you might get tornted by various Chaos champions;
once dead, you might even get dismbered in the Warp.
And often, the Emperor couldn’t protect these people either.
Because there were just too many of them—even the Emperor couldn’t cover everyone.
“And our safe house can isolate people like that. If they die, the Four Gods can’t sense them imdiately, so the Emperor can calmly extract them from the safe house?”
Arthur roughly understood what Rases ant.
“Yeah.”
Rases nodded.
“So the Emperor used psychic image projection to tell to expand the safe house’s range—big enough to cover a hundred people.”
“He actually wanted sothing larger, but like I said before, anything connected to the Warp and complex matter is super costly to generate. So I expanded it a bit, started feeling off, and stopped.”
“Then—”
Romulus, who was in charge of managing resources, turned green in the face.
Rases pointed at the Astra Militarum and Sisters who had been marked.
“Then he marked everyone, and bailed. Didn’t say a thing. Even the daemons near my Warp projection ran off scared.”
The four of them instantly fell into dead silence.
“The Emperor’s move…”
“So we basically paid to expand a Warp warehouse for the Emperor to store his assets. Then he didn’t even pay rent, stuffed his stuff in, left, and even snatched our jobs and the glory for himself?!”
Romulus looked back at the group that had descended into religious ecstasy.
“Oh, right, he also marked all those people—so now we’re basically forced to either keep expanding the safe house or control how many of them die. Otherwise, we’ll just have to watch them drop dead?”
Everyone nodded.
Though the explanation had a bit of subjective flavor, it was essentially accurate.
And Rases, who had directly communicated with the Emperor via psychic ans, knew this was exactly what the Emperor ant.
Because for him, losing a few thousand lives was no big deal. Compared to the future of all mankind, it was a price he could afford.
“How many souls did it cost?”
Rases marked the shared data he’d kept updated with a red flag.
“No—”
Romulus let out a shrill pop.
“No, seriously, how can the Emperor do this?!”
The guy didn’t even show a shred of goodwill. He could’ve at least put on a friendly front, right?
Just used them like tools and walked off?
“Give us sothing at least—a ‘thanks’ would’ve been sothing. Back in the Warp, he observed us through the Sisters, didn’t he? Shouldn’t he have understood our attitude?”
Everyone was getting a little mad.
Not because they felt short-changed for saving people, but because of the Emperor’s attitude.
It had that vibe of: “Protect if you want, don’t if you don’t. I’ve marked them and issued the mission, I’m off now, figure it out yourselves.” Like he had them completely in his pocket.
“Maybe it’s because he understands us too well.”
Rases, the oldest among them, had more life experience due to personal reasons. He also understood what his freshly-graduated friends were like.
Setting aside the awe-inspiring aura their current image gave them among the Imperial citizens, these three radiated a kind of vibe that clashed hard with their surroundings.
Yeah—a kind of pure stupidity?
No, that wouldn’t be fair.
It should be called kindness.
The kind of kindness that ca from growing up surrounded by a loving and healthy family, just stepping into society, and still holding beautiful expectations toward others and the world.
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