"Rameses!"
This was a brightly lit operating room.
The shadowless surgical lights, enhanced by quantum coatings, cast a cold white glow that illuminated the entire chamber as brightly as day.
Several precision scanning instruments hovered above the mag-lev operating table, meticulously recording every metric in real time.
Beside the table, Arthur worked with intense concentration. Under Rameses's direction, he was performing orthopedic surgery on the femur of a Firstborn Space Marine.
At that moment, both of them looked up in unison to see Romulus kicking the door open as he barged in.
"Push harder! What are you afraid of? Just wedge it straight in."
Rameses's voice rang out from the side, as if he hadn't heard Romulus's loud entrance at all.
He shouted instructions at Arthur while keeping his eyes glued to the operating table's display screen, which showed a highly detailed structural diagram of the Space Marine's skeleton.
Arthur nodded, sliding a long pin into the Space Marine's thigh bone with gentle yet precise movements.
Once the pin was secured and filled with restorative foam adhesive, the Space Marine's wound began to mend slowly. This pin would serve as the foundation for new bone growth, ultimately replacing the damaged section and restoring its original function.
Seeing this relatively normal medical scene, Romulus decided not to interrupt any further and simply took a look around the room.
Various tools and containers lined the perimeter of the operating room, including several devices that appeared extremely advanced.
The shelves along the walls displayed a wide array of skeletal and organ specimens from mortals, Adeptus Astartes, and various Imperial abhumans. Each specimen seemed to silently tell the story behind its extraction.
At first glance, it looked exactly like a macabre museum of human anatomy.
"Hss..."
Romulus sucked in a breath of cold air.
If any other Chapter caught them doing this, they would probably be permanently lost in the Warp on the spot.
"Good. Next one."
Using psychic power, Rameses directly crushed the skull of the physical body on the table, creating a gaping open wound. As the flesh convulsed violently, he calmly continued to record the physical data.
Arthur silently picked up his surgical instruments and got back to work.
"Hss..."
Romulus felt the temperature in the entire operating room instantly drop by several degrees.
'What kind of situation is this?'
'Heal him up, smash another part of his body, and heal him again? Just where did they learn such cruel torture methods?'
"Did he confess?"
Romulus stepped forward and glanced at the data pad in front of Rameses, asking tentatively.
"Confess what?"
Rameses looked completely baffled.
Romulus silently pointed a finger at the Space Marine, who was firmly strapped to the operating table, his vocal cords gagged while his body continued to twitch slightly.
His gesture carried a profound implication, as if hinting at some unspeakable secret.
"A Word Bearer?"
Romulus searched his memory, certain that a Word Bearer had fallen into their hands at some point.
"How could that be possible?"
Rameses shook his head, a hint of exasperation in his voice.
"I've said it before: the bottom line cannot be crossed."
He reiterated his personal principles.
"How could I use a human? Even a traitorous Space Marine is still human. Don't torture them for no reason. Once you open that floodgate, it's too easy to drag your moral floor lower and lower."
"This body is stuffed with a Daemon. I just synchronized the Daemon's senses to it. Arthur's abilities conveniently nullify the supernatural traits of these Daemons, ensuring that all the neural feedback data is completely authentic."
The organisms of this world were truly bizarre. Without a projection from the Warp, they were essentially corpses; their bioelectricity and neural feedback functioned as if they were completely fake.
"I see."
Romulus nodded to show he understood, but he still struggled to hide his grimace.
He pulled up the surgical logs and discovered that before today's orthopedic procedure, thousands of other types of surgeries and dissections had already been performed.
This was exactly what was so absurd about the transmigrators. They truly lacked no experimental materials. They could pull out hundreds of Adeptus Astartes just to dissect them on the spot and collect experimental data. Rameses was absolutely brilliant too—since he considered using humans a taboo, he simply shoved Daemons in to provide the necessary feedback instead.
'So this is the secondary meaning behind having a bottom line, right? As long as you do not directly touch it, you can do whatever you want.'
Although Rameses's logic left him not knowing whether to laugh or cry, he had to admit—
A stream of resulting data flashed through Romulus's eyes.
This kind of flexible bottom line genuinely provided them with tremendous convenience.
"Why did you suddenly start researching this?"
Romulus asked as he downloaded all the data to review at his own pace later.
"Dora-Cawl managed to get his hands on some new things on this planet. You've seen it, right?"
Rameses opened another set of records, bringing up the latest Primaris Space Marine surgical procedures.
"Yeah, I saw."
While using the Pierde Sector for his calculations, Archmagos Cawl hadn't just completed the Armour of Fate technology—allowing the transmigrators to score an easy bargain.
He had also taken the opportunity to optimize the Primaris Space Marine augmentation surgery. While amplifying the effects of the three additional implants, he had also reduced the upgrade mortality rate to an abnormally low level.
According to the data compiled by those Daemons, as long as the individual didn't have any inherent genetic defects, the risk of a Firstborn Space Marine undergoing the upgrade was essentially zero.
"This Magnificat—"
Rameses pulled up a structural diagram and pointed at the image on the screen.
It was a thumb-sized, bi-lobed implant. One lobe was larger than the other, and they connected to the right and left hemispheres of the brain respectively.
During the surgery, it would be implanted deep within the brain. Its primary function was to amplify the existing organs of a Primaris Space Marine, drastically enhancing their muscular and skeletal strength.
But after the upgrade, it also vastly improved the Primaris Space Marines' psychic resistance. It could isolate the connection between them and their own Warp projections, making them far less susceptible to the Warp's influence.
"Take a look at this."
Rameses zoomed in on the structural diagram and brought up his own summarized annotations, gesturing for Romulus to observe closely.
Romulus leaned closer to the screen. His eyes lingered on the image for a moment as he recalled information from before his transmigration. After a moment of thought, he spoke.
"If I remember correctly, isn't this an organ from a Primarch's brain?"
"Exactly."
A brilliant light of intellect began to gleam in Rameses's eyes.
"What have you thought of now?"
"This organ only retains half of its original function in the Primaris Space Marines. In reality, it can drastically heighten the implanted individual's connection to their Warp projection. I strongly suspect that Curze activated this function and simply forgot to turn it off."
"And?"
Romulus shot Rameses a sidelong glance.
Did strengthening the connection to a Warp projection have any necessary correlation with whatever stunt he was about to pull next?
"In other words, this thing can act as a temporary anchor for the soul. Do you know what that means?"
Before his companion could answer, Rameses continued.
"It means that if the individual is killed, a simple ritual spell can store their soul inside it, preventing it from returning to the Warp. As long as the soul doesn't enter the Warp, transplanting it into a new body becomes vastly simpler."
"Alternatively, once a soul from the Warp is bound to this organ, it can breach the barrier of reality with far greater ease."
'Good heavens. Cawl painstakingly replicated this thing specifically to eliminate the Warp's influence, and Rameses is just going to completely reverse its intended use?'
"Just give me the bottom line. What can we use this for?"
Romulus genuinely knew next to nothing about this so-called Warp knowledge. After all, esoteric mysticism like rituals was always difficult to grasp through a purely scientific worldview.
"Theoretically, if a non-Stormcast Space Marine who has completed the aforementioned ritual dies in battle, as long as we recover this organ from his brain and promptly implant it into a cloned body, he can continue fighting for humanity entirely intact."
"As for our Stormcast Eternals, as long as this organ isn't destroyed, they can repeat the process as well, completely bypassing the need for another summoning ritual."
"And there's one more thing. Because it strengthens their Warp connection, you can basically treat these individuals as artificial psykers. As for the results, just look at what happened to Pierde under the Warp's influence. We can then unilaterally open these warriors' projections to the Emperor."
Rameses's eyes sparkled as he forwarded a PowerPoint presentation he had drafted to Romulus.
"If I can complete this research, every Space Marine in our Legion will have three lives."
One of their own.
One provided by the Belisarian Furnace—one of the twenty-two implants that had now been optimized enough to bring a Space Marine back from the brink with full vitality.
And the third life would trigger upon impending death. By using the warrior's sheer willpower to forcibly amplify their Warp connection, the Emperor could project His power into them, instantly transforming them into a member of the Legion of the Damned right on the battlefield. Once the fighting was over, they would have no choice but to head straight to the Warp to work for the Emperor, queuing up until Rameses initiated the ritual to pull them back into a new body.
"...How many souls do you need?"
To be completely honest, even though this entire series of concepts was currently nothing more than a PowerPoint presentation, Romulus was genuinely tempted.