After selecting the Focus, a flood of new Decisions appeared.
Huron opened the panel, and his face darkened.
[Decision: Embrace Khorne – Offer skulls for strength]
[Decision: Embrace Tzeentch – Seek forbidden knowledge]
[Decision: Embrace Nurgle – Accept grandfather’s gifts]
[Decision: Embrace Slaanesh – Pursue perfection]
[Decision: Forced Tithe Program – Breed compatible stock for recruitment]
[Decision: Accelerated Lineage – Backcross compatible bloodlines]
“Are you kidding me?
Four Gods combo meal?”
“And forced breeding?
Am I going to build a birthing hall next?”
Huron’s lips twitched.
He remembered some cloud-lore about the Carcharodons and Ashen Claws abducting compatible women as breeding stock, but those were rumors from the edges of the Imperium.
Even if true, the Inquisition would burn any Chapter that dared make it official policy.
He was trying to SURVIVE the Badab War, not speedrun Excommunication.
Fortunately, there were normal options too.
[Decision: Accelerate Neophyte Training]
[Decision: Reorganize Chapter Serfs and Armsmen]
[Decision: Strengthen the Fleet – Repair the Battle Barges]
And at the very bottom, one that made his heart beat faster.
[Decision: Seek the Emperor’s Light – 100 Political Power]
[Description: In a galaxy of warp and sorcery, one must find a patron.
Mankind’s only true shield is Him on Terra.]
[Warning: Conflicts with Chaos path.
Choose carefully.]
This was the one.
He didn’t want Chaos.
Warhammer was a warp-powered universe.
Without a warp patron, even a Chapter Master was just a bigger mortal.
And humanity’s best, and only, choice was the Emperor.
Without hesitation, Huron clicked it.
100 Political Power vanished.
In the Warp, something shifted.
A completely new force entered the eternal playground.
Not through a sorcerer’s ritual.
But through Huron’s soul, through the symbol of the Astral Claws, through the anchor of Badab itself, it surged into the Emperor’s domain.
On Terra, inside a lightless chamber, on a cold black sun.
A consciousness that had been silent for ten thousand years, that only instinctively burned daemons and guided Astronomican, twitched.
It was not an awakening.
The Emperor did not wake.
He was still a corpse-god, still shackled to the Throne, still fighting four gods in an eternal war.
What Huron felt was a sliver.
A fragment of pure, gentle, and impossibly human light, shaped by a force from outside the Warp, reflecting off the Emperor’s infinite psychic ocean.
For a single second, that light looked back.
It saw Huron.
It saw a soul that did not belong to this timeline, wrapped in a power that even the Warp could not understand.
“Huron…
Lufgt…?”
A thought, not words, echoed across light-years.
In that instant, the future flickered.
One where Huron rebelled and became the Red Corsair.
One where Huron stayed loyal and became Lord of the Maelstrom Warders after the Great Rift.
One where Huron died forgotten against an Ork Warboss.
Countless futures, overlapping.
The Warp could change even the past, let alone the future.
But this soul…
his soul was different.
It came from the same source as the power that had briefly woken this sliver of light.
“So…
you want me to watch him?”
The unknown power did not answer, as if exhausted.
The light, even in its immense weakness, did not resist.
It was curious.
Even newly formed, it inherited the Emperor’s greatest traits – his arrogance and his gambler’s spirit.
It decided to watch.
In his lounge, Huron waited for a few minutes.
No golden light.
No giant black hole.
No Emperor descending.
“Tsk, scam system.”
He shrugged and put it aside.
He looked at the new Decisions that appeared after seeking the Light.
One caught his eye instantly.
[Decision: Optimized Gene-Seed Implantation Protocol]
[Cost: 50 Political Power, lasts for one month]
[Effect: Increase gene-seed adaptability +25%, increase neophyte tolerance +25%, significantly reduce rejection risk.
Significantly increase success rate of implantation.]
In other words, within one month, his Apothecaries could implant with far less risk?
Restoring the Chapter?
Expanding beyond Codex limits?
It no longer seemed impossible.
With the production capacity of his hidden Constructor-Units, adding a batch of new Astartes every few years was not a dream.
Even if new recruits lacked experience, the system had training functions.
A few years of drills would fix that.
The thought of rebuilding the Astral Claws Legion filled Huron with excitement.
Even the Thirteenth Black Crusade didn’t seem so terrifying anymore.
Blackstone Fortress?
Watch me board it and steal it!
Without hesitation, Huron made the decision and voxed the Chapter’s Chief Apothecary.
“Galon, come to my chambers.
Now.
Bring the latest gene-seed compatibility reports.”