Chapter 13: The Second Empire? The Third Empire!

Ramses was upset for a moment but soon adjusted his mindset. After all, as adults, a bit of complaining and venting was enough. Good brothers were willing to listen to each other's inner pain, but the problem now was that everyone was imprisoned—no one was better off than the others.

If he couldn’t adjust himself, he might drag the other three down into an emotional abyss.

The pressing matter was to carefully study how to survive in this world.

“Ahem, then, with the witness of the Friends and Relatives Warband, our Second Empire Representative Meeting officially begins,” Romulus said, noticing the heavy atmosphere and clearing his throat.

“Why not just call it the Third Empire? Calling it the Second makes Ramses seem like an outsider,” Arthur couldn’t help but joke.

“That’s not impossible,” Romulus replied.

“I think we should—*chew chew*—name our future warband that too!” Arthur continued, muffling his words.

“I think you’re just craving some explosives,” Romulus teased.

The four gathered had no reverence for the Empire; after all, the Empire was now a corpse with its sustainability destroyed, internally plagued by a god-defying political system, and externally threatened by the Chaos Hive Swarm.

If it weren’t for the countless heroes who fought to the death for humanity’s future, and the one who sat upon the Golden Throne, the Empire would have long been entombed.

If they had to describe the Empire and this galaxy in one sentence—

“The Empire is a fermenting mess of countless dregs, and the warp is the toilet, from which it can only survive by consuming that sludge,” Arthur said sharply.

Setting aside the Chaos factor, the Empire itself was a rotten political entity, essentially a forced creation by the Emperor as a last gamble for humanity’s future.

Now that gamble had failed, and he himself was transformed into a supreme imperial warrior by the Ecclesiarchy, leaving behind a headless corpse that naturally grew more putrid with time.

“As for the few shining points that catch one’s eye, a cup of clean water poured into a sea of filth changes nothing; this process is nothing but a thorough tragedy.”

“Then there are the aliens. For starters, we, who bear the human identity, fundamentally cannot integrate. The green-skinned race is just a joke. The Eldar are preyed upon by the Dark Eldar. Even with the Skeleton technology being advanced, it’s still slavery.”

“Next is the Titanium Empire. Well, I’ll say more when I see it. I’m human, not aetheric. This race’s existence only proves that many of the Empire’s so-called ‘necessary evils’ aren’t necessary at all, making the Empire look even worse.”

“Well said!” The three applauded.

“So none of us hold any illusions about this universe.”

Ramses breathed a genuine sigh of relief. “I’m heartened.”

“Since we’ve abandoned illusions, only struggle remains,” Romulus said, sensing the atmosphere lighten, he went on to share his plan.

“There are three points we need to confirm—our era and location, what exactly we are, and what we must do next.”

He then tossed a mechanical data module onto the table.

“This is from the ship’s log. The ship entered the warp in 740.M41, Terra calendar July, located in the northern reaches of the Outer Limits, in the Pierrede star sector. You might be unfamiliar with the name, but you surely know the adjacent Ghoul star sector.”

“A backwater,” Ramses sighed, invoking his psychic power to pull the meditative servitor closer. He input the data from Romulus’s log, and a star chart unfolded before them.

“The Pierrede sector, named after the merchant wanderer Pierrede from the Great Crusade era, contains twelve Imperial civilized worlds. Only Pierrede itself holds some value, considered half a Forge World. Let me see—”

“We’re probably still within this sector. I’m sending star-language signals now. It may take some time for the Empire to respond.”

Those who knew the Empire’s efficiency understood. Though the ship bore the Deathwatch identification code, due to strict conditions, they might drift in space for a while.

After all, the ship’s bridge had been blasted off by green-skinned iron brutes; expecting it to move on its own was unrealistic.

“This ship was dispatched in response to a distress call from the Pierrede homeworld. It’s said that a heretical cult erupted there, almost certainly Chaos. Otherwise, Deathwatch and the Cadians wouldn’t have been called in,” Romulus added.

Everyone nodded in understanding.

“Now, onto the second point.” Romulus glanced at the three.

“What exactly are we now?”

“Original-gen Primaris Space Marines?”

Knowing their era, Arthur felt out of place in his Mk10 armor.

It was nearly three hundred years before the ‘Unconquered Chaos Warmaster’ Abaddon crushed Cadia. If some Mechanicus sage saw these few PSMs wandering about, they’d probably emit a sharp binary screech.

“Maybe in body, but no—actually, not even completely in body—otherwise I would have been turned to ash by red-letter spells already,” Arthur said, picking up a chicken leg for a bite. Ramses noticed Arthur still hadn’t removed his helmet.

“Why aren’t you eating? We’re just a bunch of close friends here—no need to be so reserved.”

Arthur still harbored doubts about their abilities, having self-taught Low Gothic.

Romulus explained, making Ramses stare in surprise.

“...Impressive.”

When Ramses discovered his own powers, he hadn’t cared much and just used them. His thinking was: since they’d crossed into the Warhammer universe, already fallen to a low point, everything was an upward climb—even if some trickster tormented him, he accepted it.

But the more he used them, the stranger it felt.

No chaos god seemed capable of this.

“Good. I respect Arthur’s restraint at times like this, unlike Garna, who shoots me twice on sight.”

“I was in isolation, under Black Rage custody—okay, my bad, sorry,” Romulus said, glaring resentfully at someone feasting as if starved for eight generations while the rest analyzed.

Arthur felt awkward and unsure how to respond.

Romulus immediately sensed something amiss.

“You’re not thinking of stabbing your brothers, are you?”

“Uh...” Arthur fell silent, gathering his thoughts.

He had indeed considered stabbing his comrades twice, suspecting Romulus at first to be some trickster demon trying to deceive him—until Romulus summoned a bunch of Astartes out of thin air, slightly easing his suspicion.

If not for the Emperor’s manifestation clarifying whether he bore any chaotic taint, he might have tried to trap the ship in the warp before uncovering the truth, to prevent any sinister chaos scheme from reaching the real world.

If it was a conspiracy, then fighting would be inevitable.

Romulus looked at the silent Arthur and roughly pieced together his thoughts.

His lingering resentment only deepened.