Most of the miners had a vague memory of Antor.
They had all scraped by in the same pit once.
Nobody had ever seen the siblings’ actual faces, but their old habit of covering themselves had made them distinctive enough.
Like two black sea urchins drifting through the dark corners of the mine, bristling with anything sharp they could find.
Everyone understood why they did it.
Left unprotected, the desperate ones would have gone after them.
That was just how people were.
Antor was barely recognizable now.
Still small, still thin, but dressed in clean, presentable clothes, and without the layer of black soot that had always covered his face before.
The time in the biological pod and the nourishment from the greenskin rations had brought color back into his face.
There was even the faint suggestion of flesh where there had only been bone.
Still slight.
But there was a quality to him now that hadn’t been there before.
“How did you become like this?”
Antor clasped both hands over his chest and let his gaze becoming resolute.
“Because I bask in the glory of the Commander.”
“It was the Commander who accepted me, transformed me, and let me experience what paradise is.”
“I am a Federation engineer now.”
“A Federation engineer?” The miners looked at one another.
Engineer.
What a distant word that was.
They knew what they were.
The lowest workers in the Imperium of Man, eating the lowest of food, alive only qualified to live as tools, and that was already a blessing.
The word “engineer” was like a myth to them.
“Look at what I’m wearing.
Look at my skin.
Look at my face.”
Antor’s complexion was a warm brown, but the biological pod had made it healthy.
Still thin, still not much handsome at by any conventional measure, but by the standards of the Imperium’s most forsaken corners, he was presentable.
He had standing now.
“I sleep on a soft bed and eat delicious food.”
“This is something I never dared to imagine before.”
“The Imperium told us that suffering was the God-Emperor’s test.
That it was his blessing.”
“They twisted his will.”
“Suffering is not a blessing.
Why would suffering ever be a blessing?”
“It is the glory that humanity deserves.”
“And you will also be illuminated by the Commander’s glory.”
“This food and these clothes are gifts from the Federation Commander.”
“The Commander said it himself.
Hunger is a human instinct.
The Commander would never…”
Antor moved through the crowd, distributing clothing and food, talking the whole time.
He kept repeating the Commander’s words.
Anyone listening closely would have noticed the small differences that crept in each time.
But no one was listening that carefully.
“This is food bestowed upon you by the Commander.
Try it.”
The young miner did exactly what Antor had done before him.
Just a small bite.
Just a little.
The flavor hit like a detonation.
Rich, meaty, the kind of taste that punched straight through the tongue and kept going.
*Glug glug*
Watching the miners tear into their tins the same way he once had, Antor spoke quietly.
“Do you believe in the God-Emperor?”
“Food is no longer bitter, water no longer foul!”
“Eating is no longer a punishment!”
“This world is beautiful.”
“It’s the Imperium that twisted the God-Emperor’s…”
“Our Federation’s God-Emperor…”
“The Commander welcomes all of us.
He feeds us.
We will follow where he leads.
We will open up the mine district for him…”
Antor kept talking as he moved, holding up a small stone figure and weaving between the miners.
More and more of them gathered around him.
The statue could be read from two angles.
One side showed severity and cold composure.
The other showed mercy and patience.
Neither came close to the real thing, not by a thousandth.
But somehow the statue made the real thing feel like it was standing right in front of them.
Aldric, in the middle of working on the game design, felt something off.
“Again?”
The ground was trembling again.
Much smaller than before, but he wasn’t going to take chances.
*Squeak squeak squeak!!*
The ground began to tremble again.
This time it was different.
Antor noticed it first.
“Rock-borers!” “( T/n: Also known as with the rock worms from the previous chapters, I just refer to them as ‘rock worms’ so readers can imagine them without looking it up.)
The moment those words landed, every miner flinched, then immediately moved.
Finding cover, finding dead angles, without thinking.
From beneath the rubble, a white-carapaced beetle the length of four or five meters pushed its way out.
Antor had sensed it seconds before it surfaced.
“Federation ground forces, open fire!
Eliminate all hostile organisms!”
The voice came from inside the ecological command ship.
Aldric stepped out.
His appearance hit like a shot of something strong.
The Modeling Optimization module kicked in.
At its current level, the module pushed his appearance toward something close to perfection in the eyes of everyone present.
Modeling Optimization generated Reputation for Aldric in large quantities, and Reputation fed directly into the system.
It also brought its share of complications.
Back in the Federation, a number of high-society women had made their interest very clear.
Aldric hadn’t particularly cared either way, but some of them had decided that what was meant for everyone was theirs alone, and it had eventually turned fatal.
By the end, someone had actually tried to put a knife in him.
After that, he kept his public appearances to the minimum needed for Reputation farming.
“Open fire!”
The rounds punched clean through the carapace and turned the beetle into a spray of green-white pulp.
Several more borers burst apart under the clone soldiers’ kinetic rifles.
“What are these things?”
Antor’s eyes lit up.
He ran over.
“Commander, these are rock-borers.
Many miners have lost hands and feet to them.
Some have been killed outright.”
Aldric remembered Antor and Annie mentioning the rock-borers before.
“You dealt with these things by yourselves?”
Five or six meters long, several dozen centimeters across.
Getting caught by one of those mandibles would leave very little behind.
“Not this big.
These are adults.
They live much deeper underground.
They shouldn’t be up here at all.”
“The ones we normally dealt with were maybe ten to twenty centimeters across.
A meter to two meters long at most.”
Aldric nudged one of the bodies with his foot.
Not strong.
Considerably weaker than greenskins.
Anything with a weapon could handle them without much trouble.
“The disaster must have reshuffled the geological structure.”
Every eye in the camp turned toward Aldric grew increasingly resolute.
The Federation, the Commander, brought them true safety.
Protection.
“God Emperor above, Commander, we are willing to fight for you.”
Every miner dropped to their knees.
Reverent eyes fixed on Aldric’s face, which appeared perfect to everyone.
Antor’s words were still turning over in their minds, and beneath everything they felt a faint, inexplicable peace.
Pain had been grinding at their minds for years.
Most miners, all miners if you were being honest, suffered from mental illness.
That included Antor and Annie.
Some of the older ones, the ones closest to the edge, had started hearing things recently.
Strange sounds with no source.
But standing near Aldric, there was a captivating peace.
Aldric’s brow drew together.
The God-Emperor again.
It seemed the God Emperor’s faith was very strong.
Painting a picture of something better was less useful than putting the actual thing in someone’s hands.
His approach was to let the Federation’s reality gradually overwrite whatever the God-Emperor’s faith had built.
When the Federation’s benefits actually landed on people who had never had anything, they would stop reaching back toward the old name on their own.
Faith in a divine figure was a primitive framework, and trying to tear it down by force only produced tragedies.
The only thing that reliably dismantled an outdated belief system was something stronger and more complete taking its place.
He had tested that theory more times than he could count, using his own presence and the Federation’s principles together.
He had no love for gods.
He had love for humanity.
The concept of humanity itself.
For Humanity above all.