“Um, Grand Marshal? Are you alright?”
A sweet, soft, youthful voice roused Russell from his haze.
He opened his eyes, the grey depths of his irises seeming to hold the weight of tens of thousands of years.
“I’m fine. Just a bit nauseous.”
Russell rubbed his temples, pushing himself up with both hands.
“Take me to another room. I need to use two more Relics to prepare for the crisis five years from now.”
“Very well, if that is what you wish, Grand Marshal…” Grey Wind’s voice still held a note of caution.
“But are you really the Grand Marshal?”
Ah, so she suspected that he had been silently corrupted or possessed by Jabaxsti—or perhaps a Chaos God.
Russell smiled.
He didn’t mind Grey Wind’s caution.
But what could he say to regain her trust?
For the current Russell, answering this was the work of a single instant.
Under the gaze of countless sensors, he spoke slowly:
“Whether they be Tyranids or Orks, Necrons or Chaos—they shall all kneel at our feet.”
As his words fell, the fully charged weapon systems of the Grey Tempest mothership returned to standby mode.
Grey Wind let out a sigh of relief.
“Which Relic do you wish to activate?”
“The Galatron,” Russell said.
“The first fleet of green-skinned Orks will arrive here in five years. We must make haste.”
“The Galatron?” Grey Wind was somewhat puzzled, but she said nothing.
As they spoke, Russell had already crossed the bulkhead, jogging toward another room.
Relics were precious, unique, and irreplaceable items in the Stellaris system.
Each Relic had a singular acquisition path and special effects.
And the Galatron was the most unique of them all.
Obtainable only through the Caravaneer lottery, the Galatron was essentially a mystery box itself.
It could be opened once every ten years, yielding a random resource each time.
In the barren Faya system, resources were what they lacked most.
Grey Wind had previously calculated that even if they completely hollowed out the mineral reserves of the First Moon, they would not be able to produce a single fully formed Cybrex Warform unit.
Yet opening the Galatron once could yield enough alloys to supply twenty.
Provided, of course, that they actually rolled alloys.
*The Grand Marshal probably plans to open the Galatron.
If he gets alloys or minerals, he will use them to forge Cybrex Warforms.
If he gets food, he will feed it to the Prethoryn Queen to breed a swarm?*
*Hmm…
in his prophecy, the Tyranids of this universe will also be drawn to Faya, leading to a three-way free-for-all with the humans and Orks.
Our Prethoryn Scourge fleet could easily disguise itself as Tyranids.*
After a brief analysis, Grey Wind felt she understood Russell’s plan.
With war looming, not just alloys and food, but even volatile motes or exotic gases would have their uses.
By now, Russell had retrieved the ancient, simple box covered in bizarre, intricate patterns from the deepest, most secure compartment of the ship—this was the Galatron.
Box in hand, Russell didn’t waste a second.
He ran directly toward the spacious hall where the Cybrex Warforge was housed.
*Is it my imagination?
The Grand Marshal is running so fast…
A normal human’s physical conditioning shouldn’t allow this kind of speed.
It’s almost like he’s gliding across the ground…* Grey Wind’s optical sensors silently tracked Russell’s figure as he flew through the corridors and entered the chamber.
“Grey Wind, reinforce the hall’s structural integrity and prepare for a sudden load. It would be best to suspend gravity simulation here,” Russell said in a low voice, standing at the chamber entrance.
“In one minute, I will pull a massive quantity of alloys from the Galatron.”
“Eh?”
A metaphorical question mark practically hovered over the bow of the Grey Tempest mothership.
“Grand Marshal, are you certain of what you will roll next?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Russell smiled at the bulkhead beside him.
“Psionics. Quite magical, isn’t it?” This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
One minute later, Russell opened the Galatron.
Accompanied by an inexplicable spatial distortion, metric tons of perfectly cubic metal ingots instantly filled the hall before him.
They piled from the floor straight to the ceiling, even spilling out to clog the corridor outside.
Even the massive containment void in the center of the Grey Tempest mothership, where the Prethoryn Queen was imprisoned, was submerged in an endless sea of cubic alloys.
Had Grey Wind not disabled the ship’s gravity simulation in time, this sudden, colossal mass would have been enough to snap the mothership’s keel.
Even with gravity disabled, the sheer volume and mass of the metal caused varying degrees of violent deformation to the vessel’s internal structure.
“I’m stuffed so full, I feel like I’m going to break…” Grey Wind grumbled with deep resentment.
“Grand Marshal, could you please be a little gentler with my body?”
“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t expect it to be this much either…” Russell climbed out, clutching the newly closed Galatron box and pushing aside the alloy blocks pressing down on him with one hand.
“You could foresee what would come out of the Galatron, yet you had no concept of its volume?”
“Yeah… pretty much.”
“Psionics, so magical,” Grey Wind’s airy voice drifted around Russell’s ears.
Despite her griping, Grey Wind remained fiercely loyal in her duties.
She secretly transported the vast majority of the alloys into the interior of the First Moon.
The Cybrex Warforge, now fully supplied with raw materials, began operating at maximum capacity.
By bypassing the mining and refining stages, its production efficiency soared.
Russell did some rough math.
The Cybrex Warforge alone wouldn’t be able to consume all these alloys within five years.
The excess could be transported down to the surface for the cogboys to build various industrial and agricultural machinery, or even to repair and construct starships.
However, if they wanted to find a logically sound explanation for these high-quality materials of unknown origin, they would have to pin the blame on humanity’s Dark Age of Technology.
Having concluded his confrontation with—and ended the life of—Jabaxsti, Russell returned to the surface of planet Faya.
Thanks to his previous promise of sharing technology, the Adeptus Mechanicus, who had never treated commoners as human beings, were now willing to condescend to feed the populace using their advanced production techniques.
They only needed Russell to coordinate the production planning.
Managing a planet without the aid of advanced information technology was undoubtedly a staggering burden, both mentally and physically.
To make matters worse, after awakening his psionic powers, Russell lost even the right to sleep.
A 24-hour state of lucid consciousness turned what was already a grueling “996” grind into a relentless 24/7 marathon for the man who was fully prepared to work himself to the bone for the rise of humanity.