Warhammer: In the Name of Ashes.

Chapter 173 The Unstoppable Process

With the return of Calvin, the episode in the main account also ended.

Mars let go of Marr Jr., and no longer pursued his fault.And Marr left in a hurry to mend his trauma this time in some unknown corner.

The soldiers in the camp regained the lively atmosphere of discipline and control, which in itself speaks for Calvin's existence.

The sun had just reached the middle of the sky, and taking advantage of the timing, the team began to break out of camp and set off to return to the way they came.

Compared with when they came, the whole team was no different except for two more people.

The team was well-prepared for the long-distance march. There were as many as five large horses in reserve for Calvin alone, and it was just right to split two horses for the two of them.

The strict discipline of the troops effectively suppressed the curiosity of the soldiers, and no one showed abnormal reactions to the arrival of Elvis and Allen.

Mars didn't ask about their origins either. He had been with Calvin for a long time, and he understood that there were some things he needed to know, and Calvin would naturally tell them.On the contrary, it is not the time yet.

He restrained his imagination, not guessing what was in the palace that descended from the sky, and he didn't think about the origin of these two giants who were taller than their two heads and almost twice as wide.

Anyway, from the fact that they retreated with Calvin and their absolute obedience to Calvin, it was enough for the soldiers to know that these two were also subordinates of the great chief.

As for Calvin's identity, let's not mention it. The tribe has long had its own understanding of his heaven-given martial arts and his immortal appearance, but it's just that they haven't made it clear.

The way back was still the same way, the difference was that this time even the sound of small animals was not heard, which was due to Alan Janus' psychic overflow as a gray knight recruit.

He is still getting used to the feeling that his soul is connected to the etheric ocean, but fortunately, this body is directly obtained from Calvin's genetic template, and the adaptation to spiritual energy is just like instinct, and it is rapidly strengthening with his breathing.

He rode on the large horse prepared for Calvin, and followed Calvin.

It was a strange feeling, and it was difficult for him to describe it concretely with his lack of vocabulary:
Being close to his genetic father made him feel trembling and excited at the cellular level every moment.

Apart from controlling his psychic power, he devoted all his energy to observing Calvin's actions, and every detail he observed at the psychic level made him feel that he was one step closer to perfection.

He could perceive the grandeur of Calvin's soul hidden under his body. It was a body that exceeded Allen's limit of looking up just by sitting.

Invisible faces High above and in the clouds, just breathing can bring up platinum wind and thunder.

The iron crown covered with thorns is worn on that head. The thorns symbolizing suffering and the spikes symbolizing authority are looming in the clouds, and the voices of thousands of souls sing faintly:

holy load!holy load!
Allen also wanted to see more clearly, and his soul also wanted to be close to his source.

Before I knew it, the surrounding environment changed.

He found that he had an extra set of silver power armor that he had never seen before, and he was in an unknown city-state.

In front of him was a huge square with no bounds, and in the center of the square stood a towering nameless temple.

According to his own instinct, Allen walked to the door of the temple, and then saw three people in the same armor as himself on both sides of the door, holding a slender and sharp halberd in one hand, and meditating with their eyes closed in a half-kneeling posture. .

"Who are you? Where is this?" Allen couldn't help asking.

What responded to him was the damn quietness. His voice echoed in the square for a long time before one of the gray knights opened his eyes and looked at him.

"Oh? The survivor who came in by accident? It's still a newborn baby." The hoarse voice came from under the silver-gray hood, which made Allen instinctively feel awed.

The taller figure stood up from his kneeling position, and walked in front of him holding the halberd in his hand.Allen couldn't see his face clearly, or he should have seen it clearly, but his cognition was not enough to remember.

He just remembered the man's friendly smile to him:
"It's not time yet, this is not the place you should be, go back..." After finishing speaking, the mysterious gray knight stretched out his hand and gave him a slight push, and he returned to reality in a whirl.

"Eh..." Allen shook his head in a daze, and saw his big hand still holding the rein tightly.

The rustling of leaves in the surrounding woods, the smell of decaying wood in the air and the crackling of horseshoes trampling dead branches and fallen leaves made him confirm in the confusion that this was the side of reality.

And he looked up again, just in time to see Calvin turning his head and showing him a mysterious smile...

Elvis looked at the surrounding woodland, hiding his confusion with a calm expression.

After being separated from the mothership he lived in for a long time and the pharmacist's power armor that he lived with day and night, he had the illusion of being extremely fragile.

Elvis knew it was his mind.Looking at the slender and fragile native cervical vertebrae of the mortals in front of the team, he clearly knew:
As long as he thought about it, even with bare hands, none of the more than 100 soldiers here could survive 10 minutes except for Calvin and another gray knight.

This is the basic self-confidence of Elvis, and also the essential difference between Astartes and mortals.

Their strength is not derived from external substances. No matter how powerful their indestructible armor and destructive weapons and equipment are, they are just a way to release their combat power.

What really makes them powerful is only themselves, and it is their understanding of war itself caused by the transformation of life forms, which is different from ordinary people.

Hundreds of years of battle can break down any mortal, but in the eyes of an Astartes, the battle of hundreds of years is only one fierce battle, not all.

The will and life span beyond mortals allow them to concentrate on the road of war skills for a hundred years, and polish their combat skills and spiritual defects with inhuman patience.

The time of this kind of growth and transformation varies, because the gene seed already has the function of recording the combat memory of the gene source.

The Astartes will strengthen their inherited combat memory from the No. 1 perspective in their daily sleep and sleep, so that when they encounter a specific target, they will immediately understand how to deal with the opponent.

Training under the acceleration of this memory can take as long as a hundred years or as short as decades.

You can see the transformation of an Astartes from recruit to veteran in action visibly.

In the end, it grows to the limit of force enough to represent the human race, and goes to various battlefields against aliens and chaos in the vast star sea of ​​the empire, thereby defending the interests of the human race.

Astarte, the literal translation in High Gothic - the person who walks the starry sky, the original name is derived from this, as for the name of the monk added later, it is just a unilaterally imposed arrogance under the ignorant belief of mortals That's all.

The team is still moving quietly, but at a much faster speed than when they came.Without the threat of unexpected events while exploring the unknown, unscrupulous warriors became more motivated by the hope of returning home.

It took only one day to return from the three-day journey, and the total fifteen-day journey was only the fourth day under the footsteps of the team going south, and the border checkpoint belonging to the tribe had already appeared at the end of the field of vision.

Amidst the cheers, Elvis moved forward quietly, and said to Calvin behind him:
"Dear Ki... Your Excellency."

Elvis was halfway through speaking, and decided to use the simple "adult" to call the Primarch in front of him under the gesture of Calvin's eyes.

With strength in his legs, he urged the mount under his crotch to take two quick steps to a position behind Calvin's side, and asked Calvin in a low voice the questions he had wanted to know all along.

"Master Calvin. I would like to know your next plan for me and my regiment"

It's not that he's too anxious or not enough, but it's about the future of his battle group.Being able to bear the question for so long has already given Calvin a high opinion of this young man.

Calvin didn't answer his question directly, but under Elvis' nervous gaze, he mentally calculated the return date agreed with Constantine.

"Ten years, up to 15 years."

He raised his hand to stop Elvis' urging, and explained seriously to this young man who shouldered a heavy mission.

"Within five years, the ally I've been waiting for will arrive. With his help, I expect to complete the initial industrialization of the planet's northern continent within ten years. This is also the basic condition for us to return your mothership to space."

"So long?" Elvis still couldn't accept it.

"I'm afraid the High Lords Council will not allow us to disappear from their sight for such a long time." He said worriedly.

It is not his remit to deal with the Chapter's diplomatic business.

But as the chief and only pharmacist, he is also half of the top management of the war group. Although he does not have the right to make decisions on major internal affairs of the war group, he is obliged to attend as a non-voting observer.

Under the influence of his ears and eyes, Elvis has never seen a pig run in the management of the battle group, but he still knows that the pork there is not edible.

"You don't have a choice, do you?"

Calvin stared at Elvis calmly, reminding the other party with his eyes and words - even if they hadn't lost contact with the High Lords Council, they still wouldn't pass the next gene seed sampling test by the Tribunal.

"Fine. At your will."

Under the puzzled eyes of the native warriors beside him, Elvis saluted Calvin from the saddle.This is a kind of test for him to Calvin, to test whether the other party is hostile to the Orthodox newspaper of the empire.

Naturally, this kind of careful thinking could not be hidden from Calvin's eyes. He smiled and said to Elvis: "The emperor is blessed! You can trust any gray knight! We are different from you. We have been fighting against chaos for nearly ten thousand years In battle, we have never fallen!"

"you!"

The flushed Elvis just wanted to argue, but Calvin didn't give him the chance, and he charged forward, joining the soldiers who cheered to see their homeland.

There was a sound of hoofbeats behind him, and it was Alan Janus who strolled to Elvis' side. Under the gaze of the young man, he said to Elvis seriously:
"Restrain your useless emotions and think about my father's words seriously. You will know how ridiculous your doubts are. As he said, the genes of the gray knights come from the holy emperor himself, and my father is only responsible for inheriting them , our purity is by no means something you can blaspheme! Be careful what you say!"

After the words fell, Allen also urged the mount under his crotch to rush towards the fireworks-filled city ahead.At the end of Elvis' field of vision, through the main gate of the city that was wide open, he could already see the huge welcome team of those mortals...

In 020.M36 of the Imperial Calendar, it was the second year since Terra and Mars jointly initiated the collective establishment of the Eleventh Astartes Battle Group, and 30 years have passed in the blink of an eye.

Calvin, who returned to the center of the tribe, began to devote all his energy to the management of the tribe.

The long-term and stable economic policies of the past ten years have begun to bear fruit. No matter how the southern countries intervene and infiltrate, the supplies and population of the entire Northland have increased to an extremely terrifying number.

And this number is hidden in the complicated government decrees set by Calvin and the complicated economic data in various places, and the spies in the southern countries did not fail to investigate.

But there is no overall data collection, and only Calvin knows this kind of core secret.

Under his complicated but clear-cut policy adjustments, within half a year, the work center of the entire Northland Great Han Ancestral Court began to slowly withdraw from production and construction, and turned to a covert transfer in the direction of military preparations.

Weapon smelting workshops and warehouses in various places are calling out all the stocks and transporting them to the key route warehouses where the main force is assembled.

The training subjects of full-time professional soldiers in various places are quietly turning to actual combat, and the content of acting is no longer a single subject, but a complete set of systematic strike procedures supported by the complete staff department.

The second-line militia mobilization plan has not been made public, but the number of training sessions is slowly increasing on a monthly basis.

Reserve officers from various places also began to withdraw from various departments under the order of the staff department, and in a centralized and closed environment, they consulted the maps of southern cities that were handed out, as well as information on villages and water sources connected between them.

The wheels of war had started slowly, and Calvin did not have much confidence in absolute secrecy.

Once the national-level armed sequence is launched, it will bring about a huge impact that cannot be concealed.This is his unique sobriety as a ruler.

But it is a pity that the enemy this time is too ignorant and too arrogant.

Their ignorance and contempt for the modern military mobilization system made them lose the most precious time for assembly and preparation on the eve of the war.

The southern countries that have been paralyzed by the long-term peace are still immersed in the illusion that the economic environment is good, there are no worries inside and no strong enemies outside.

The corruption and empty pay of the army are all over their army, and even the frontline troops cannot avoid it.

The irony is that under the arrogance of their envoys, they are strong on the outside but dry on the inside.In the mouths of the envoys of the southern countries stationed in the tribe's ancestral home, Calvin even heard the presumptuous remarks of "northern nomads are naturally inferior".

Obviously, this group of people who have been peaceful for too long and have lost their sense of crisis are still stuck in the illusion of "successful domestication" of the northern peoples...

When these documents symbolizing the completion of the preparatory work were gathered into Calvin's hands like snowflakes, all the preparatory conditions under the map of the south in the big tent where he was working had been fulfilled.

Calvin knew that the day of unifying the continents was not far away.

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(End of this chapter)