Three days later, Ahriman led the First Fellowship and departed from the main fleet on time, disappearing into the Warp routes of the northern front.
Levi’s days saw no changes.
He still squatted every day in the quarantine pod of the library, organizing ancient tomes, scanning runes, and exchanging points, turning a deaf ear to matters outside his window.
With Amon and the other captains keeping an eye on the legion’s daily military affairs and Magnus overseeing psychic research, he was happy to be a hands-off manager.
This afternoon, he had just finished reading through a moldy ancient manuscript and exchanged it for points when the entire ship’s emergency broadcast suddenly rang out.
The cold mechanical voice echoed in every corner of the Photep:
“All senior legion command, proceed immediately to the main council chamber for an emergency military council.
No absences are permitted.”
Levi dug at his ear, pretending not to hear, and lowered his head to continue preparing to clean another moldy ancient tome.
Nine times out of ten, this kind of emergency meeting meant some planet had rebelled again or some xenos outpost needed clearing out.
It had absolutely nothing to do with him, a Chief Librarian who managed books.
But just as he picked up a brush and prepared to clean off the stains on the pages, the door of the quarantine pod was violently pushed open.
The messenger, sweating profusely from running, looked at Levi as if seeing a savior.
“Lord Chief Librarian!
Why are you still here?
The Lord Magister is angry.
He specifically named you to attend the meeting, saying that since Lord Ahriman is away, you must be present!”
The soft-bristled brush in Levi’s hand abruptly halted.
Only then did he realize that Ahriman, who had always shielded him from all military affairs, was gone.
Now, in the entire Thousand Sons Legion, aside from Magnus, he, this Chief Librarian, was the highest-ranking.
“Got it.” He reluctantly placed the soft-bristled brush on the table, closed the ancient tome in his hand, patted the dust off his hands, and followed the messenger toward the council chamber.
The atmosphere in the main council chamber was solemn.
The captains of all Fellowships were present, every one of them wearing a serious expression.
Magnus sat in the main seat, his gold and red robes trailing on the ground, his brows tightly furrowed, holding an encrypted communication file in his hand.
“Everyone is here.” Magnus threw the file in his hand onto the table, his voice low.
“Ten minutes ago, we received a highest-level emergency request for aid from the planet Morningstar.”
“The Imperium originally predicted that Morningstar still had six months before disintegrating, but now the decay of the planetary core has suddenly accelerated fivefold.
Global electromagnetic storms have destroyed all ground communications, tectonic movements are swallowing cities every day, and at least three million civilians are trapped on the planet with absolutely no time to evacuate.”
People began discussing in low voices.
Morningstar was an important iron ore producing area for the Imperium, supplying one-fifth of the steel demand for the Great Crusade in the Ultima Segmentum.
Once it completely collapses, it would cause a massive impact on the war effort across the entire eastern front.
“What is more troublesome,” Magnus tapped the tabletop, his voice sinking, “the local garrison, the 17th Mining Defense Regiment, reported that three days ago, strange low-frequency vibrations appeared deep within the planet, and someone also saw glowing human figures in the ruins.
Ordinary psychic monks fundamentally cannot approach the epicenter; their minds will collapse the moment they enter.”
Levi’s heart stirred.
Glowing human figures?
Mental collapse?
These were fundamentally not phenomena that should occur during ordinary planetary core decay.
“Perturabo of the Iron Warriors is already rushing over there with the main force of the Fourth Legion,” Magnus continued.
“He is responsible for engineering reinforcements, constructing temporary evacuation routes, and transferring mineral resources.
Our mission is to deal with the psychic anomalies on the planet, protect the evacuating civilians from psychic pollution, and simultaneously survey all ancient ruins—there are massive numbers of ruins from a lost human civilization beneath Morningstar, and we cannot let them be destroyed along with the planet.”
He turned to look at Levi, his gaze unquestionable.
“Levi, you are the Chief Librarian.
With Ahriman away, all work related to psychic surveying, analysis, and response is entirely your responsibility.
You will lead the Thousand Sons warriors of the Third and Fifth Fellowships to land first and establish a frontline psychic barrier.
I will follow shortly with the main force.”
Levi opened his mouth, wanting to excuse himself by saying he only knew how to manage books, not lead troops.
But looking at Magnus’s serious eyes, and then looking at the gazes of all the surrounding captains staring at him, he swallowed the words that had reached his lips back down.
Ahriman was gone.
Now there was no one left to shield him from these messes.
“Understood.” He could only bite the bullet and agree.
Levi dawdled at the back, cursing Ahriman eight hundred times in his heart.
Instead of doing the perfectly good mission of recovering lost territory, he just had to choose this time to divide the forces, resulting in pushing this lazy librarian to the front lines.
He returned to the library quarantine area, looked at the crates full of unprocessed ancient tome fragments, and sighed helplessly.
He casually threw a few of the most severely damaged ancient tomes into the system exchange column and then checked over all the single-use destructive wizard tools in his system space.
For some reason, he felt a faint sense of unease in his heart.
Accelerated planetary core decay, strange psychic anomalies, and the Primarch of Iron, Perturabo, whom they were about to meet.
This trip to Morningstar would probably not be as simple as Magnus had said.
An hour later, Levi returned to his own battle barge, the Crimson Tome, sat in the main command seat on the bridge, and directed the landing assault formations of the other two Fellowships.
This was his first time commanding a fleet to execute an actual combat mission.
He was a bit nervous but also gathered his full attention, not daring to slack off in the slightest.
Under Levi’s orderly command, in the starry sky, a formation slowly separated from the massive crimson fleet.
Eight assault landing craft started their Warp engines in unison, tearing open the veil of the real universe.
Subsequently, they sailed into the deep purple Warp vortex ahead, speeding toward that grayish-brown planet marching toward destruction.
Levi stood before the command console, methodically dispatching all combat units on the Crimson Tome.
This was the first time the Thousand Sons Legion had officially executed a joint mission with another legion.
They had to display the unique scholarly demeanor and psychic elite confidence of the Thousand Sons; they couldn’t tarnish the Thousand Sons’ reputation.
Moreover, the Primarch of the legion they were cooperating with this time was Perturabo, a notorious paranoid, a vindictive and caustic genius engineer.
In the memories of Levi’s previous life, this Primarch fought countless campaigns throughout his life, gnawing down the hardest and most numerous bones of the Great Crusade, but ultimately fell to Chaos.
Compared to Magnus’s arrogant conceit, Perturabo’s problems were more severe.
His personality could be summed up in one word: twisted.
Levi truly could not understand the twistedness of this Lord of Iron, someone who clearly pushed with all his might to gain recognition, yet insisted on pushing everyone away in the coldest and most caustic manner.
Thaniel_a_goodchild.