Chapter 14: Our Strength

“Wait, so I kindly summarized some experiences with using cheats to share, and instead, I’m being treated like a treacherous demon?”

After hearing Arthur’s explanation, Romulus was somewhat flustered. He hadn’t expected to be seen this way by his close brother.

One immediately stabs me, the other is always ready to stab me.

So this is how gratitude is repaid.

“...Assuming—just assuming—you’re not really demons, I didn’t actually slash at you, did I?”

Arthur quickly corrected himself.

Corruption in the Warp is hard to guard against; without verification, he wouldn’t dare trust so easily.

Besides, he wasn’t crazy. Even with suspicion, he only thought to verify, rather than immediately stabbing to check if the blood was blue or red—that was already calm enough.

As for now, honestly, not finding an untouchable individual to verify was unsettling.

Even if it had nothing to do with the Chaos God, if it involved the Warp, caution was always wise.

“Well, Karna, what about you—”

Ramses awkwardly changed the subject.

But Karna didn’t even bother to lift his head.

“I didn’t study it either; I just charged through with Black Rage.”

So that was why Romulus got stabbed.

“At that time, I was busy sulking.”

Karna’s mindset was simple. With three smart heads already pondering, there was no need for him to waste brain cells. He just needed to listen.

Looks like this brother couldn’t be relied on either.

“Alright—”

Ramses shrugged.

“Then let me explain. I’ll analyze the principle behind our abilities and how we acquire the raw materials, of course, from my personal understanding.”

He cleared a spot on the table, then raised his hand, and three pieces of material of varying sizes appeared on the surface.

The largest looked like ceramic, with a metallic sheen on its surface. The middle one was clearly a piece of highly pure silver, shimmering with a deep, dim fluorescence under the light.

And the last, the smallest and as thin as a cicada’s wing, was also the most dazzling—golden and radiant like pure gold.

“Aurum Radiance.”

Arthur’s gaze fixed on the shining metal.

“Good thing I’ve painted Imperial Guard armor before, otherwise, with Warp’s complex information, I’d never sift through it all in a lifetime.”

Ignoring Arthur’s doubtful look, Ramses continued:

“One of our abilities can consume what’s called ‘points’ to directly shape matter. I’ll call this ‘soul materialization’ for short, since these points are likely quantified psychic energy. As for consumption—”

He gestured to the sizes of the three materials, all forged from equal amounts of psychic energy.

“Depending on the complexity of the atomic structure of the created matter, and the level of Warp components, the consumption ranges from low to high, with differences visible to the naked eye.”

“From my experience, the most efficient way right now is to exchange for power armor, or various medium- and small-sized vehicles, and different weapon production lines. We can forget about producing something like the Queen of Glory—such high-quality creations are beyond our current capacity.”

“And STCs—their volumes tend to be small,” Romulus added.

“Right, I almost forgot about those.”

Ramses tapped his forehead.

STC—Standard Template Construct—contains blueprints for all sorts of devices humanity might have pondered since stepping into the stars. It’s a high-tech computer enabling colonists of the Dark Age of Technology to build civilizations with only the most basic materials.

In simpler terms, it’s a crafting station with built-in synthesis recipes.

“Each of the four of us should be able to perform this transformation. As for the items on the adaptive panel, they relate to our cognition—what we can display are those creations we specifically recognize and that have actually existed in this universe.”

“So the reason our initial forms were game avatars is because of this?”

Arthur nodded in understanding, but then his expression clouded with doubt.

“But why not the Primarchs, the Imperial Guard, or even the Emperor?”

Everyone was fairly well-versed in the Warhammer universe. For those who viewed the Space Marines as giants—so imposing that even the high-dimensional Chaos God Games Workshop had to compromise and revise them—there was nothing greater or more warlike than the Emperor among human forces.

If transformations happened, it should have been into the Emperor, right?

“Is that what you’re squatting on the toilet thinking?”

“No need.”

“Do you know the body structure of the Emperor or the Primarchs?”

“No.”

“That’s why. We lack specific knowledge of the bodies of the Primarchs, the Emperor, and the Imperial Guard. Even for us, it’s a mystery.”

“Also, this information seems to be secret; I couldn’t find anything about it in the Warp. Oh, and souls—they’re precious and have to be crafted by ourselves.”

Ramses shared his organized item panel with the others.

“Build cognition, gather information, complete the entry, and then we can generate these objects directly using psychic energy. We can even modify them to some extent—for example, swapping all materials in Terminator armor to adamantium or others.”

“How did you unlock so many codices?”

Romulus scratched his head, staring at the suddenly expanded list of creations.

“Does painting miniatures every day really have such benefits?”

“My method’s a bit wild.”

Ramses looked embarrassed.

“At first, I gave up entirely and just kept researching this ability. Later, for better configurations, I went diving into the Warp to salvage information, regardless of whether it was some Chaos conspiracy. Aurum Radiance and these other materials were found during that process.”

“The Warp is the Sea of Souls. Any being with a Warp projection merges into the Warp after death or is devoured by its terrifying denizens. Thus, the Warp itself is a massive data repository, recording information on all sentient beings.”

“However, the Warp has no search engine; salvaging is purely like fishing needles out of the sea. For now, I’ve only quickly filtered some useful data based on the memories of miniatures I painted. There’s far more useless and chaotic junk. You can also explore that re-editing yourself—I couldn’t find a 30k Thousand Sons scheme, so this outfit is my own work.”

“You’re even more ridiculous than me.”

After Ramses’ reasonably coherent explanation, Romulus was speechless.

When he first realized this ability, he too suspected it was a Chaos God’s plot, but upon discovering he was on a ship about to fall, he no longer cared.

Through repeated cautious verification, he became certain this power had nothing to do with Chaos and dared to use it without hesitation.

None of this compares to Ramses...