This is Our Warhammer Journey

Chapter 14: Our Power



"Wait a second—so I take the time to generously summarize my experience using cheats to share with everyone, and I get mistaken for a Tzeentch daemon?"

After hearing Arthur's explanation, Romulus was practically fuming. He couldn't believe this was how his best bro saw him.

One came at him with a stab, and the other was always ready to.

Talk about repaying kindness with betrayal.

"...It was just a hypothetical. Just a hypothesis, you're not actually daemons, and I didn't actually stab you, right?"

Arthur quickly tried to clarify.

Corruption from Chaos wasn't something you could be too careful about. Without proper verification, there was no way he was going to trust it blindly.

Besides, he hadn't lost his mind—at least not yet. Even if he had his doubts, he'd still want evidence. Not stabbing someone just to see whether their blood is red or blue already showed remarkable restraint.

As for now, honestly, unless he could test things out on an untouchable, he wasn't going to feel at ease.

Even if this had nothing to do with the Ruinous Powers, the moment it touched the Warp, caution was always warranted.

"So, Karna, what about you—?"

Ramses stiffly changed the subject.

Karna didn't even bother to lift his head.

"I didn't analyze anything. Just flipped on Black Rage and charged through everything."

So that's why Romulus got stabbed.

"I was in the middle of a shutdown at the time."

Karna's thought process was simple: they already had three smart people overthinking things, so there was no need for him to burn his brain cells. He just needed to listen.

Yeah, this brother clearly wasn't going to be much help.

"Well then—"

Ramses shrugged.

"I'll explain it, then. Let's break down how our abilities work and how we acquire raw materials. Of course, this is just my personal understanding."

He swept clear a section of the table, raised his hand, and three different materials of varying size appeared on the surface.

The largest one looked like ceramic with a metallic sheen. The middle one looked like a piece of extremely pure silver, glowing with a dim phosphorescence under the light.

The last one, the smallest and thinnest—so thin it resembled a cicada's wing—was also the most radiant: a brilliant, golden metal.

"Aurumite," Arthur's gaze landed on the shimmering metal.

"Good thing I used to paint Custodes models. Otherwise, with how convoluted Warp information is, I could spend a lifetime sifting through it and never find a thing."

Ignoring Arthur's suspicious look, Ramses continued:

"One of our abilities allows us to consume something called 'points' to directly create matter. I'll tentatively call it soul materialization. These 'points' are probably quantized psychic energy. As for how it's used—"

He gestured to the three materials, showing they were all made from the same amount of psychic energy.

"The complexity of the atomic structure and how much Warp influence it has determine the cost. The difference is visible to the naked eye."

"From what I can tell, the most economical option right now is to materialize power armor, small and medium-sized vehicles, or weapon production lines. Don't even dream about pulling a Gloriana-class battleship out of thin air. Our current capacity can't support something like that."

"And STCs," Romulus added. "They tend to be small in size."

"Oh right, can't believe I forgot those." Ramses slapped his forehead.

STCs—Standard Template Constructs—were high-tech computing devices that housed blueprints for all kinds of essential equipment needed for human civilization to survive in space. They were made so that even a colonist from the Dark Age of Technology, with zero technical knowledge, could use primitive materials to bootstrap a civilization.

Put simply: a crafting bench with built-in recipes.

"All four of us should be able to perform this materialization. As for the objects listed on the adaptive panel, they're tied to our knowledge. Anything that appears is something we understand in detail and that has existed in this universe."

"So that's why our initial forms were based on our in-game characters?"

Arthur nodded in understanding, but then furrowed his brows.

"But why weren't we the Primarchs, Custodes, or even the Emperor?"

They all had a deep understanding of the Warhammer series. For fans who had once imagined regular Space Marines as towering giants—so much so that even GW had to tweak the lore to match—it was strange. In all of human power in 40k, no one was more waaaagh-worthy than the Emperor.

If you were going to transform into someone, it should've been the Emperor, right?

"You really wanna squat on the toilet like him?"

"...Fair point."

"Do you even know how the Emperor or the Primarchs are constructed?"

"No."

"Exactly. We don't have any concrete understanding of their physiology. Even to us, they're still a mystery."

"And that kind of information seems to be a secret. I couldn't even find it in the Warp. Oh, and souls—those are expensive. We even have to custom-create our own."

Ramses shared his organized item panel with the group.

"Establish a clear concept, gather the information, and input it. Then we can generate these items directly with psychic energy. There's even some room for customization—like swapping all the Terminator armor materials with aurumite or other resources."

"How'd you unlock so many entries?" Romulus scratched his head, staring at the massive list of constructs.

"All this from painting miniatures every day?"

"My method's... a little more out there."

At this, Ramses looked a bit embarrassed.

"At first, I gave up completely and started studying the ability full-time. Then I went diving into the Warp for stronger configurations—didn't care if it was part of a Tzeentch plot or not. Aurumite and the rest came from that."

"The Warp is an ocean of souls. Anything with a Warp projection, once it dies, either merges with it or gets devoured by its horrors. So the Warp is also an enormous data repository, storing the information of all soul-bearing beings."

"But the Warp has no search engine. Diving for data is like finding a needle in a haystack. I've just been scanning for miniatures I remember painting and filtering the usable stuff. The majority of it is still unusable, chaotic junk. As for editing, you can explore that yourselves—I couldn't even find the 30K Thousand Sons color scheme. Had to design this look myself."

"You're even more ridiculous than I am."

Romulus looked speechless after hearing Ramses' (surprisingly coherent) explanation.

When he first realized this ability, he also thought it might be some Chaos plot. But once he found himself on a ship about to fall apart, he didn't have the luxury of second thoughts.

Only after careful, repeated testing did he conclude it had nothing to do with the Ruinous Powers. That's when he started using it freely.

But Ramses? This guy...

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