Summoning.
The word kept repeating in Ross Vance’s mind.
Once the idea popped into his head, there was no suppressing it.
Two suffocatingly vast systems of power and technology—the worlds of Warhammer and Stellaris—were waiting for him to reach out and take them.
What if his very first summon brought forth a Primarch?
Even if his luck wasn’t that high and he didn’t pull a Primarch, a random Ultramarine would do just fine.
Even an Imperial Guard veteran, a servitor, or—at the very least—a chainsword would be incredible.
The more Ross thought about it, the less he could sleep.
He sat up in one quick movement, crossing his legs under the bridge overpass, his eyes gleaming with excitement.
He was thoroughly sick of going hungry and freezing over the past few days.
Just a few days ago, he had been a PhD candidate cozying up in his apartment, drinking soda and playing video games.
Now, he was starving under an overpass in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, gnawing on an apple, his tattered coat so stiff with grime it could practically walk on its own.
He desperately needed to establish a foothold on this Marvel Universe Earth.
Get a proper place to stay, a real bed, a hot meal, and clean clothes so people wouldn’t chase him off like a bum.
Then, deal with his legal identity.
Earth in the Marvel Universe was no medieval fantasy world.
It was a modern society equipped with fingerprint databases, facial recognition, and SHIELD satellite surveillance.
He had no Social Security number, no driver’s license, no passport, and no birth certificate.
He didn’t exist in a single database.
Without an identity, he couldn’t rent an apartment, get a job, open a bank account, buy a plane ticket, or even enter an internet cafe.
In this world, a person without a legal identity could barely move an inch.
Whatever he managed to summon would directly dictate how fast he could carve out a spot in Hell’s Kitchen.
If he summoned someone with tech expertise, forging an identity would take mere minutes.
If he summoned an Astartes, forge an identity?
Heck, he could walk right up to SHIELD headquarters, turn himself in, and still be treated as an honored guest.
“Since I’m already here…”
Ross rubbed his hands together, his eyes reflecting a faint golden psionic glow.
“…how could I face the Corpse Emperor if I didn’t give it a pull?”
He took a deep breath, settling his state of mind to peak condition as he prepared for his first summon.
The summoning method the Emperor had imparted to him was crystal clear.
The absolute worst thing during a summoning was a mind cluttered with stray thoughts.
Let your focus wander while your psionic energy was unstable, and at best, the summon would fail; at worst, it would draw something from the Warp that had no business being here.
He had no desire to pull a Chaos Demon into the Marvel Universe on his very first attempt.
Closing his eyes, he sank his consciousness into the psionic fountainhead in his chest.
He mobilized that warm stream of psionic energy, guiding it along the pathways the Emperor had wired into his brain.
The flow grew smoother and smoother.
Starting from his chest, it coursed through his blood vessels, nerves, and bones, finally gathering at the space between his brows.
Just then, an image flashed into his mind.
It wasn’t something he had conjured up; it was a projection automatically cast into his consciousness by the psionic energy.
A squad of human soldiers dressed in grayish-blue military greatcoats, wearing helmets, carrying lasguns over their shoulders, with frag grenades and entrenching shovels slung at their waists, and the symbol of the Imperial Aquila stamped across their chest armor.
They stood in strict formation, ten men in a single line.
Their eyes were steady, their expressions grim, and every inch of them radiated the calm, deadly air unique to battle-hardened veterans.
Astra Militarum.
Ross’s heart thudded in his chest.
Although in Warhammer 40K lore, the Imperial Guard were often treated as background fodder dying in droves, that was only because their opponents were apocalyptic nightmares like Chaos Space Marines, Necrons, and Tyranids.
On the streets of Earth in the Marvel Universe, ten well-trained, fully equipped Imperial Guard veterans armed with lasguns and frag grenades against local Hell’s Kitchen gangbangers?
That was using a siege cannon to swat a mosquito.
Ross took a deep breath to steady his mind, focusing his attention on those ten clear figures in his mind’s eye.
His psionic energy extended outward along his will, reaching into an indescribable dimension in the void.
It wrapped around the images of those ten guardsmen, then yanked them back with force.
In that instant, Ross felt nearly a third of his total psionic energy drain away.
It felt as if someone had pulled a plug inside him; the level in his psionic fountainhead plummeted, and a wave of acute weakness radiated from his chest.
Simultaneously, in the open space under the overpass less than three meters in front of him, the air distorted violently.
Accompanied by a low hum and a sharp smell of ozone, ten figures stepped out from the folds of space.
Ten Astra Militarum soldiers stood in perfect formation before him.
The synchronized thud of their combat boots echoed beneath the overpass, heavy and resolute.
Every single one carried standard Imperial Guard gear.
Their grayish-blue greatcoats bore obvious signs of wear and tear, complete with combat scars, and some spots still bore faint, unwashed stains of xenos blood.
Beneath their helmets were weather-beaten faces of varying skin tones, yet every pair of eyes shared the same cold, vigilant glare.
The lasguns in their hands were far from factory-new—scratches marred the stocks and scorch marks lined the barrels.
These were veterans pulled straight off a real warzone, not rookies who had just received their issue gear in boot camp.
Their leader was a burly man in his early forties with an old scar running from the corner of his mouth to his ear.
Upon stepping through, his eyes swept over the surroundings before locking onto Ross, who was sitting cross-legged on the ground.
The next second, all ten guardsmen snapped to attention, their boot heels clicking together in unison.
The squad leader pressed his hands flat against his chest, interlinking his thumbs to form the Aquila.
“Cadian 88th Regiment, Squad Leader Griffin Voss reporting for duty, sir!”
The nine soldiers bellowed as one: “For the Emperor!”
The roar echoed back and forth under the overpass, setting Ross’s ears ringing.
“…Holy shit.”
Ross slowly stood up, his eyes moving across the faces of the ten guardsmen one by one.
His mouth gradually split into a wide grin, and he burst out laughing.
Any slight lingering disappointment about failing to pull an Astartes vanished instantly.
A man had to learn to be content.
Sure, Primarchs and Ultramarines were cool, but given his current psionic reserves, summoning ten fully armed Imperial Guard veterans was already an unexpected windfall.
What did the Astra Militarum mean in Warhammer 40K?
They were the vastest, bloodiest, and most resilient military force of the Imperium of Man.
On battlefields where average life expectancies were measured in hours, anyone who survived their first engagement was considered a veteran.
The bloodstains on these ten men’s coats were ground deep into the fabric, and the scratches on their rifle stocks were as dense as tree rings.
They were clearly no greenhorns who had seen combat just once.
Though there were only ten of them, on a street-level gang warfare battlefield like Hell’s Kitchen, they were more than enough for him to carve out a territory.
Only with territory could he solve his food, shelter, and legal identity problems.
Only with an identity could he gradually figure out the timeline and power distribution of this Marvel Universe.
Ross put aside his calculations for a moment and turned his gaze to the scarred squad leader.
“Griffin Voss, if you were equipped only with melee weapons, how many ordinary humans could you take down?”
Ross kept his voice as steady as possible, but his mind was already racing.
He needed an exact sense of this squad’s combat strength so he could move forward with confidence.
The thugs in Hell’s Kitchen were trash, but there were plenty of them.
He hadn’t nailed down the exact numbers of the Three-Face Gang yet, and if they turned out to be larger than expected, he needed to know how far his hand could carry him.
Hearing the question, Griffin Voss answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“Sir, if we carry only melee weapons—entrenching shovels, bayonets, and combat knives—and the enemy also possesses only melee weapons, my squad can eliminate tens of times our number with zero casualties.”
He paused, then added a concrete figure.
“Roughly thirty to forty times our number.
Meaning, even if three to four hundred guys with knives come at us, not one of our ten will fall.”
Before Ross could even raise an eyebrow, Griffin pressed on.
“If the enemy carries standard firearms—light weapons like handguns, shotguns, and submachine guns—and we still use only melee weapons, we can eliminate roughly two hundred hostiles while guaranteeing full squad survival.
Assuming the battlefield provides sufficient cover and room to maneuver.
If the terrain is unfavorable—say, an open field locked down by crossfire—that number will drop.
But in an alley environment like Hell’s Kitchen…”
Griffin glanced out toward the web-like network of dark alleys and abandoned buildings beyond the overpass.
The scar at the corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
“…Two hundred is a conservative estimate.”
Silence descended under the overpass for three full seconds.
“…Holy shit.”
Ross couldn’t help himself; the curse slipped out.
He knew these veterans would be tough.
The Astra Militarum of Warhammer 40K were soldiers who spent their entire lives fighting brutal wars against Orks, Chaos cultists, and Tyranids.
The survivors were the elite of the elite.
Still, the sheer magnitude of that number left him lightheaded.
Before transmigrating, his impression of the Imperial Guard matched that of most gamers.
Cannon fodder, background decoration, a string of text in battle reports.
When he played *Space Marine 2*, the Imperial Guard’s presence amounted to a line of friendly NPCs spawning on the map, only to be found dead on the ground ten minutes later when he backtracked.
But now, ten living Astra Militarum soldiers stood before him, telling him they could chop down two hundred armed thugs using nothing but entrenching shovels.
Ross took a deep breath to push down his shock, his brain working at top speed.
If Griffin’s estimate wasn’t inflated…
…and given Cadian veteran discipline, it was far more likely to be a conservative estimate than an exaggerated one…
…then the ten men in front of him were already a strike force capable of plowing straight through any local gang in Hell’s Kitchen.
Kingpin’s syndicate?
The Hand’s ninjas?
As long as superpowers weren’t brought into the mix, in a pure street brawl, these ten veterans could sweep Hell’s Kitchen from east to west.
His mind buzzed with possibilities.
He wasn’t sure how many men the Three-Face Gang had, but a small-time outfit that only dared to shake down fruit stands across a few streets had a few dozen members at most.
Even with Three-Face himself—who could swallow souls—there was no way they could withstand a surprise assault from ten Cadian veterans.
They were practically walking experience bags.
Ross’s lips curled upward into a smirk as he calculated experience points in his head—no, psionic energy points.
The Emperor had made it crystal clear: deeds done in purging heresy would be absorbed by the psionic seed and converted into psionic reserves.
Even that lanky thug had yielded a decent amount of power for the psionic seed.
The Three-Face Gang had dozens of members at the very least, plus Three-Face himself, who was clearly not an ordinary human.
How much would his psionic energy surge after wiping them out?
His first summon had pulled ten Astra Militarum soldiers and consumed nearly a third of his energy.
If his psionic energy doubled, what could he pull next time?
An Astartes?
Or even more elite troops?
Just thinking about it made the psionic fountainhead in his chest warm up, as if stirred by the prospect.
“Excellent.”
Suppressing his excitement, he brought his focus back to the ten veterans.
“With that assurance, I know exactly what we can do next.”
Griffin Voss snapped to attention.
“Awaiting your orders at all times, sir!”
Ross nodded, his eyes sweeping across the ten weather-beaten faces.
A subtle glint of killing intent entered his voice.
“Rest tonight.
Starting tomorrow, scout the Three-Face Gang’s turf.
Within three days, I want full intelligence on their auto repair shop.
In three days, we wipe them out in one stroke.”
All ten guardsmen slammed their fists against their chests as one, their deep, unified reply reverberating beneath the overpass: “For the Emperor!”
Ross turned and walked to the mouth of the overpass, gazing out at the mottled streetlights of Hell’s Kitchen.
In his heart, he had already drafted the death warrants for every member of the Three-Face Gang.
Demon or mutant, the verdict would be revealed once judgment was dealt.
As for those dozens of gangsters, contributing a meager amount of experience points toward his growth would be the sole useful contribution they ever made to the Imperium in their entire lives.