Temporary camp in the Underhive ruins.
Titus walked at the very front.
He held a Bolter in his hands, faint wisps of gunsmoke still rising from the muzzle.
Behind him, two Lamenters veterans clad in Indomitus-pattern Terminator armor flanked a robed cyborg, forcibly dragging him out.
Magos Hades’s bionic legs dragged completely on the ground.
Chaotic red light flickered in his optical sensors, and low binary gibberish looped in his vox-caster.
His processor still could not accept the reality that a ten-thousand-year-old contemptor dreadnought had turned into a puff of white smoke.
“My lord, the person has been brought back.” Titus walked up to Roya and stopped.
The two Terminators let go of their hands, and Hades slumped directly onto the metal floor.
Roya glanced at Hades, paying no attention to the crashed Tech-Priest.
He turned around and looked at the row of makeshift sterile rooms behind him, which had just been built using dirt blocks.
A plan that would completely subvert the conventional wisdom of the Imperium was about to take place there.
Tens of minutes ago, Roya had Foros arrange for the Chapter’s Apothecary to move a full set of surgical equipment down from the orbital flagship.
He demanded the Apothecary isolate the specific organ larvae required for the nineteen surgeries from the existing gene-seed, preparing to implant them directly into the newly converted Astra Militarum soldiers.
This move directly threw the Lamenters’ upper echelons into panic.
Chapter Master Foros and Chief Librarian Calculis stood outside the dirt wall.
Both of their expressions were heavy.
“My lord.” Foros ultimately couldn’t help himself.
He took a step forward, his tone carrying immense worry.
“Please forgive my offense.
This method of implanting organ larvae is far too risky.” Roya stopped and turned to look at him.
“Astartes modification must begin with adolescents around the age of twelve.” Calculis chimed in, speaking at a rapid pace.
“The degree of organ development depends entirely on the degree of fusion between the recruit’s own body and the gene-seed.
The candidates you have selected for implantation are all adults whose bones have already set.
Their immune systems will produce extremely intense rejection reactions.” Foros nodded in agreement.
“Yes, my lord.
For adults, the fatality rate of these nineteen surgeries is definitely one hundred percent.
They wouldn’t even survive the first three surgeries before suffering organ failure.” In their understanding, how precious gene-seed was.
Using precious gene-seed to conduct fatal experiments on adults was an extremely extravagant and wasteful act.
Roya looked at the two of them, a faint smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
“Your concerns are based on your understanding of the laws of this universe.” Roya reached out and patted Foros’s thick ceramite shoulder guard.
“But here, my rules are the law.
As long as I am watching, no one will die from rejection.” This was not only confidence, but also absolute reliance on the MC system’s mechanics.
As long as the hunger meter was full, the health bar would never empty.
With a full health bar, the system would forcibly judge the body to be in a perfect state.
Whatever rejection reactions, whatever set bones, in front of the consumed bread, would all be forcibly assimilated and ripened by the underlying code.
Hearing these words, the two of them still felt lingering fear.
However, their “Villager” attributes played a role, and absolute obedience to Roya overwhelmed rational suspicion.
At this moment, Lamenters Chief Apothecary Samuel walked out.
He glanced at Roya and bowed slightly.
“My lord, all equipment is ready.
All nineteen types of organ larvae have been completely isolated and stored in culture dishes.” “Let’s go take a look.” Roya waved his hand.
Foros and Calculis immediately followed.
Not far away, Karn had been paying attention to the commotion here, and at this moment he also put away his Chainsword and strode over.
This Ultramarines veteran was likewise curious as to how this God-Chosen Lord intended to break the ironclad rule of genetic modification.
Everyone walked into the dirt room.
Lying on a cold metal operating table was an Astra Militarum veteran.
His name was James, the one who had killed the most enemies in the previous defensive battle of the front line.
James looked at the several tall Space Marines surrounding him, his eyes somewhat nervous.
“Relax, James.” Roya walked to the front of the operating table, flipped his wrist, and a piece of bread appeared in his palm, which he then shoved into the other’s hand.
“Later, no matter where they cut you, and no matter how much pain you feel, you only need to do one thing.” Roya pointed at the bread.
“Eat it.
Eat it bite by bite.” James nodded without hesitation.
“Understood, Lord Roya.” Samuel and the other two Apothecaries took their respective positions.
In their hands were plasma cutters and tissue separation forceps.
The three Apothecaries stared at the adult mortal lying on the table, looking at each other with a helplessness akin to treating a dead horse as a live one.
“Begin.
Step one, implant the secondary heart larva.” Roya gave the order.
Samuel took a breath, and his hand fell with the blade.
The plasma cutter sliced open James’s left chest cavity, and blood instantly gushed out, staining the operating table red.
Fortunately, James had been given anesthesia, otherwise he would have kicked the bucket at the first step.
Another Apothecary immediately grasped a tiny piece of flesh with forceps and delivered it to the designated location inside the incision.
James took a fierce bite out of the bread.
As the food went down his stomach, the MC health-regeneration mechanism instantly triggered.
“This…” Samuel’s hand holding the cutter violently trembled.
He clearly saw that the secondary heart larva just placed into the cavity instantly grew countless fine nerves and blood vessels, extremely crudely connecting to James’s arteries.
At the same time, the flesh and skin of the cut chest cavity wriggled, grew, and closed at a speed visible to the naked eye, leaving not even a trace of a scar.
“Thump!
Thump!” Heavy and powerful dual heartbeats echoed in the dirt room.
The rejection reaction didn’t appear at all, or rather, as soon as it appeared, it was judged and cleared by the system.
“What are you standing there for?
Continue!
Bone-reinforcement organ!” Roya urged.
Samuel swallowed a mouthful of saliva and immediately turned to James’s skeletal system.
The progress of the surgery was fast-forwarded.
Muscle-reinforcement organ implanted.
James took another bite of bread.
Hematopoietic organ implanted.
James ate half a piece of bread.
The entire dirt room echoed with teeth-gritting bone cracking sounds and muffled sounds of muscle tearing and reorganization.
Following the implantation of various organ larvae, James’s original height of just over 1.7 meters began to expand wildly on the operating table in an extremely unreasonable posture.
His skeleton was forcibly stretched and thickened.
Muscle fibers multiplied exponentially.
The intense growing pains accompanied by a tearing sensation were enough to cause any mortal to die directly from the pain.
But as long as James’s health bar dropped, a bite of bread would instantly max out his health bar, keeping his bodily functions forever at peak condition.
Standing nearby, Foros, Calculis, and Karn were the three people frozen in place as if rooted to the spot.
They watched with their own eyes as an adult mortal, in less than ten minutes, without any rejection and without any near-death struggle, directly passed through the genetic developmental stage.
When the final black carapace organ was implanted into James’s subcutaneous tissue and matured within three seconds to grow neural connection ports, James completely changed in appearance.
He sat up.
At this moment, James’s height had shot up to 2.2 meters.
Broad shoulders, explosive muscle contours, a perfectly balanced body proportion, and the unique sense of oppression belonging to an Astartes battle-brother emanating from beneath his skin.
Samuel retreated two steps.
He held an auspex and scanned James’s various vital signs.
“All functions are perfect…
Organ operation rate is one hundred percent…” Samuel’s voice was extremely dry.
Samuel said: “All organs and gene-seed…
have completely matured!” The room instantly fell into a dead silence.
Just finishing the surgery, and all organs and seeds were already ripe?!
“Since they’re mature, don’t just leave them there.
Harvest them directly.” Roya said in a calm tone, naturally pointing at James’s neck.
“Use the harvested mature gene-seed to continue cultivating new recruits.” As if waking from a dream, Samuel immediately picked up the scalpel.
Slice, extract, heal.
The actions were completed in one go.
The plump, pure-vitality-emitting gene-seed from the neck gland fell onto the sterile tray.
Roya looked at the tray and nodded with satisfaction.
Foros and Calculis dropped to both knees, their knees slamming heavily onto the metal floor.
“My lord.” Foros lowered his head, his voice imbued with extreme self-blame and fanaticism.
“With our shortsighted mortal intellect, we doubted your unfathomable might.
Please bestow punishment!” “Get up, there’s no such rule.” Roya replied casually.
“Understood, my lord!” Foros stood up, his eyes filled with irrepressible excitement.
With this, the Lamenters would not only cease to be a cursed, understrength Chapter, but could even expand within a few days into a super-Chapter rivaling the establishment numbers of the Great Crusade era!
Afterward, Roya looked at Samuel.
“Apothecary, going forward I need to mass-produce gene-seed!” “Later, we will adopt the Adeptus Mechanicus method of cultivating gene-seed.” “We will mass-cultivate gene-seed.” Roya said.
Currently, the only direction in which his unit-spawning was restricted was gene-seed.
Although he had bread now, which could make the gene-seed inside a recruit’s body mature rapidly, however, of the two gene-seed within a recruit’s body, only the one in the neck gland position could be taken out, and the other could only be retrieved after they died in battle.
“My lord, do you plan to use experimental slave biological amplification?” As a Chapter Master, Foros still knew about this method of rapid gene-seed production used by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Imprisoning slaves in biological vats, keeping them conscious yet paralyzed, and once gene-seed was cultivated, implanting it into a new slave.
Exponential multiplication!
“That’s right.” Roya nodded.
With the blessing of bread, there was no need to wait five years for maturity; by directly having the subject eat it, eating would allow production, and it wouldn’t threaten the body of the implanted person, allowing them to produce continuously.
One must know that under this method, a single gene-seed could produce a thousand gene-seeds and their corresponding organs.
As long as suitable people were selected, gene-seed could be rapidly cultivated.
“But my lord, ordinary people don’t understand the technology of the Adeptus Mechanicus for cultivating gene-seed?” At this moment Karn spoke up.
As an Ultramarines veteran, he knew a bit about this technology, but he felt that the Lamenters, as a fellow Space Marine Chapter, certainly wouldn’t know the full set of technology.
At this moment Roya smiled.
The Lamenters’ luck meant they were either fighting or on their way to fight, and even with that they hadn’t been wiped out.
You tell Roya they don’t know this technology, guess whether Roya believes it or not?
Foros, Calculis, and Samuel looked at each other, and finally all revealed a hint of a smile.