I had a dream.

I could clearly recognize that I was dreaming, and I could tell the difference between dreams and illusions in subspace. Even though I was able to wake myself up at any time, I let the dream go on because it was so real and delicate, as if it were reality. For psykers, dreams tend to reveal the future, but I know very well that the foreseeable future is often vague, and there are many ways to interpret it, such as what happened in dreams at this time, it seems more like my imagination, and has nothing to do with the real future......

I enjoy this dream because it's so ...... Happiness......

Even happiness is the illusion of the weak. And in this dream, I seem to have become an out-and-out weakling. Only the weak will feel happy.

My name is Ilshan, forty-five years old, still in the prime of life, a lieutenant colonel of the Imperial Defence - no, no, a colonel, and my uniform has been changed to a more ornate naval uniform with more ornaments and medals. I'm still a psyker, certified by the Empire, blessed by the Emperor, if the battleship needs to do a short subspace voyage, then I can make a cameo appearance in the position of navigator, and other times when I need to use psionic energy, it is probably when I need a cup of tea or coffee, but I am too lazy to do it, and there are no orderlies around me. As for long-distance subspace voyages, there are professional true navigators to do the service - psionics are already freaks among humans, and navigators are freaks among psykers, they have three eyes, and even I, a psyker, don't want to deal with them.

I became a little fat, my lower abdomen was bulging, I was not old enough to sag, I was bald on the top of my head, and I expected to be completely bald within three to five years. My fitness has dropped a lot, and living in a gravity-free environment for a long time has left me with loose muscles and loose bones, but I'm still a seasoned warrior, and I've beaten up all the crew members in the entire fleet, and the elite crew members who have been selected as gang jumpers have suffered even more, after all, I'm still the combat instructor of this fleet. But I'm really not as good as I used to be, and the selection of the crew is not as harsh as that of the Space Marines, but it is still the best of the best among the human race, and there are still quite a few of them who can occasionally let me hang a little flower on the training ground. My nose has grown a lot bigger, and more than half of my teeth have been replaced with dentures—and I believe that in the near future I will be able to replace a whole set of pure gold teeth, as my Inquisitor brother did. As for my psionic powers, I may be able to move things that are half my body weight, but they are far less convenient than doing it myself, and for the heavier ones, I would call my crew to do it better.

I have a Master Power Sword, and like all weapons of the same type, it is hung on the wall as an ornament most of the time, or placed on a shelf as a holy relic. It's been spotlessly clean, and it's been a long time – a year or more? I don't remember - no blood. All I remember was the last time it saw blood, it was another victory for us, our well-trained jumpers captured the enemy ship in a very short time and at very little cost, and I was the last to go there as the commander of the jumper, to meet the rebel who had surrendered, to proclaim his guilt in the name of the emperor, and then to draw my sword and cut off his head.

In addition to being a combat instructor, a skipper leader, and a part-time navigator, I also have the status of Fleet Operations Staff Officer, but this is a nominee because I have no talent for fighting in the vastness of space, and our Fleet Commander is a genius in this area, and she almost never makes any tactical mistakes and does not need any staff officers to help her in her work.

And the only identity I have in this fleet that everyone recognizes is not from my rank, position, or even ability.

I am the husband of Sylvia Greymane, Rear Admiral of the Imperial Navy, Commander of the Graymane Rapid Fleet, and Captain of the fleet's flagship, the Night's Star.

Compared to my current and future life, Sylvia's life is much more exciting. From the day we met, she became the darling of both the Imperial Navy and the Space Wolves because of one victory after another. At this time, we had a fully formed and large fleet, including one battle cruiser, three cruisers, and more than a dozen destroyers and frigates, and two supply ships larger than the cruisers to provide logistical support at all times. We're in every Imperial Navy port - as well as the many Space Marine Warband space bases, as well as the Mechanicus Forge world - to receive the best repairs and supplies, and we can select the best cadets from the Imperial Naval Academy to replenish our reserves. Correspondingly, whenever there is a nearby battle that the local garrison cannot handle, the Empire will be the first to think of us, and we will respond to every call to battle, and repay the Empire's expectations of us with victory after victory. In the midst of so many glorious victories, even the occasional defeat or two is not hidden. We had been lured into a despicable trap, lost all our auxiliaries, and even our flagships were beaten to almost an empty shell, and were forced to flee the battlefield in the most humiliating form, but the trust of the navy and other allies in us far outweighed those losses, and after a short rest the broken flagship was renewed, and the ships and capable crews drawn from other fleets quickly refilled us, and then, before our enemies could calm down from the jubilation of victory, our vengeance had quietly descended.

However, "our" fleet, "our" victory and glory, was getting farther and farther away from myself, as far away as the stars I saw out of the porthole. The qiē we have now actually belong to Sylvia, to these navies, but not to me. My role in this fleet is almost negligible. Sometimes, while we are anchored in the orbit of the planet, while others are busy with their work, and I have nothing to do but coffee, I look at the planet in the porthole, and imagine the Imperial Guard on the ground, my former brothers, lying in muddy trenches, fighting with bayonets and sapper shovels against the most ferocious enemy in the galaxy, I can't help but wonder if I had made another choice......

But looking back, I didn't realize that I had made any wrong choices. A qiē is a natural development.

At first, it wasn't like that......

Ten years ago, Sylvia and I met on a transport ship and were drawn into an inexplicable battle, which grew in size and showed up with more enemies and allies. In the end, the battle did not end in complete victory, and the participating Space Marines withdrew, and the most precious trophy of all, a half-crippled Luna-class cruiser, was called...... It didn't matter what it was, it didn't matter what the name was anyway - it was left to us, and Sylvia renamed her the Long Night Star, in memory of all the warriors who fought and died in the vast space and turned into stars. This cruiser has accompanied us through ten years of battle, and she does not look old or tired in the slightest, she is the eternal flagship of our fleet, and even a battle cruiser several times her size cannot take her place.

At that time, we only had this cruiser, which was riddled with holes, most of its armor had been stripped away, and it had lost more than half of its guns, and we didn't have enough crews to fire the remaining half of its guns. All of our crew members are less than a third of the full crew, some of them are from transport ships and are not very familiar with the operation of warships - especially the operation of naval guns almost needs to be learned from scratch, and the other part is the mortal troops of Fenris left to us by the Space Wolves, and the Katachan warriors left behind by the Inquisitor Akvetia, these people are of little use in space combat except for gang fighting, and the constant friction and conflict of these people in daily life is also a headache for all officers. We lack provisions, we lack the spare parts we need to repair, and in the vastness of space, we have no navigators, no astral whisperers, facing this cruel and unforgiving universe in complete solitude. And behind us, there is a group of red pirates in the shadows.

It was a time of almost utter despair, and it was also my most glorious day, my last years of war.

During that year-long career of fleeing and hunting, everyone's intelligence and body were brought to the extreme. With a fairly complete powertrain and subspace engine, we use aimless, short-distance subspace jumps to shake off our enemies, and use ourselves as bait to hunt down lone enemies in turn. Our tattered exterior and the arrogance of our enemies make this simple tactic always successful, and when the enemy approaches us and tries to pick up the strings, the Fenris's axes and Katachan's broadswords will always make them regret it. We didn't have enough men to capture the enemy ships, so we had to dismantle the equipment we needed, take all the supplies we could use, and blow up the ships on the spot. We left behind the wreckage of more than ten ships on our way to escape, and the equipment we captured transformed the Long Night Star beyond recognition, so that when we finally returned to an Imperial Harbor, we were almost attacked by the fortress cannon as a green-skinned ancient garbage.

At that time, I faced the vast majority of Chaos Space Marines alone, and the sword that Sylvia gave me was stained with the blood of rebels for a long time, except for the smooth blade, all other parts turned black that was difficult to clean, and my psionic energy also grew in battle after battle, and by the end of the final battle of escape, I could even tear through the armor of the battleship with the power of psionic energy, and break into the enemy ship to kill the enemy and seize the ship. At that time, I exerted a tremendous power that dozens of light spears did not have, and nearly half of the fleet was destroyed in my hands. At that time, I was regarded by everyone as a soldier who had received the blessing of the emperor, a hero born in the face of war, and a symbol of victory. When I appeared on the battlefield, all the soldiers cheered at me, and the morale was high and there was no fear of any pain or death.

Heroes will grow old one day, but I didn't expect my aging to come so quickly.

Soon after returning to the port, I married Sylvia, and our marriage was blessed by the Imperial Navy, the Imperial Guard, the Space Wolves, and many other interstellar warbands, including the Grey Knights. In those days when the galaxy was full of smoke and ominous information was pouring in, we were quickly molded into heroes. During the maintenance of the Long Night Star, we had a sturdy son, who also received much attention and high hopes, and was sent to Fenris to be raised by Sylvia's people after negotiations, persecution, and compromise by various forces, and our husband and wife had little say in the matter. As for whether he will retrace Sylvia's life journey or become a space wolf like the best of the Fenris, that is also something we can't interfere with. We're just glad that this kid wasn't found to have psionic talents, so he didn't have to follow my old path.

The Long Night Star was quickly refurbished, and the Imperial Navy cobbled together a small rapid response fleet with the ship as its flagship and several auxiliary ships. From this point on, Sylvia could be regarded as a good naval commander and captain. When the fleet was first formed, we carried out only a few small missions - escorting, clearing pirates, patrolling routes, and orbital bombardment without space combat. As newly created and inspiring heroes, the Empire clearly won't allow us to fall so quickly. But Sylvia's cousin far exceeded the Empire's expectations, proving that she was more than just an idol with perfect victories and a large number of captured ships. She further expanded the size of her fleet, and with more and more support from the Empire and allies, and soon we were able to handle larger battles, real battles between fleets, in which the protagonists belonged to the mighty spears, cannons, and torpedoes, to the naval officers who were strategizing on the bridges, and not to me, a psyker and a layman from the Wehrmacht. In such battles, individual prowess becomes useless.

At this time, even the Fenris and Katachans, who had not spoken Gothic well, had grown into qualified naval soldiers in their long war career, and were able to skillfully perform the combat duties assigned to them, and I, although still regarded as a symbol of victory, was increasingly unable to find the opportunity to set foot on the battlefield again. Then, naturally, unstoppable, people gradually forgot about the chain of victories I had brought to me, and I was completely marginalized. The newly recruited soldiers saluted the legendary hero Sylvia with the utmost respect, and even the veterans ignored my name.

People say that gold shines everywhere, but unfortunately I'm probably not gold, I only shine when I'm in a certain position, and if I change places, I'll be in the dust.

When others are busy and I have nothing to do, I occasionally complain about my current life, but where did I go wrong? I don't know......

The only thing that satisfies me in my current life seems to be my marriage to Sylvia. Even when the child is not around, the relationship between us is still strong - or rather, the relationship between us is so intimate that the child is not in the position of the child. It was this unwavering affection that allowed me to tolerate the changes that had happened to Sylvia. Yes, she has changed a lot more than I do. When I looked in the mirror, I would see that though I had changed a lot with age, her body shape had remained largely the same, and Sylvia, like all post-fertilization Fenris women—and perhaps all women in the cold world—had become fat, almost twice as heavy as before. Even if I could restore the strength that strangled the saber-toothed tiger in my youth, I would have to add psionic energy to help me pick her up. However, she is the captain and commander of the fleet, and as long as she can stand tall in the helmsman's position, then she will still be the unshakable soul of the fleet, regardless of her size.

The only thing that has something to do with her size is probably my quality of life......

But my life is still happy, isn't it? Whether it's a vertical comparison with my youth, or a horizontal comparison with others, what I can have now is almost the happiest life in this empire. I now live in a spacious captain's quarters, and I have the best temperature for my body at all times - of course, when Sylvia comes back from her work in the fleet, the temperature will be lowered a bit, but it's also within my range of adaptation, after all, I'm also from the cold world. I no longer have to work on the ground with my former Defence Force brothers, brave the cold or heat, walk deserts, swamps, rainforests, rugged mountain roads, or any other torturous terrain. For three meals a day, the orderly would bring me sumptuous food, and I didn't have to gnaw on the hard No. 4 ration or the soapy No. 3 ration on the snow or muddy water on the ground. As for the intrusion from the subspace that had tormented me for a long time, it had not appeared for a long time, so long ago that I often forgot that I was once a psyker, and that he was one of the strongest psionic beings in the empire. When I was bored, there were often young women sailors on the battleship...... Well, the Fenris have always been polygamous, and Sylvia won't care too much about that......

I know that this qiē in front of me is a dream, and the real world is so dark and cruel that no one is destined to have such a life. But for the sake of my former courage and fearlessness, let this dream continue forever!

Because the dream is so clear and real, so real that there is no contradiction in the sense of smell. The faint aroma of barbecue mammoth meat made my mind drift into the distance, and in the depths of that universe in a certain direction, there was my hometown......

…… Hey, wait, how can there be mammoth meat in the Imperial Navy's food supply?

"Lieutenant Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel Ilshan! Wake up, the feast is about to begin......"

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5,000 words chapter, even

This is a transitional plot.,I can't write a word when I'm Kavin.,Suddenly inspiration came.,Once you start, you can't stop at all.。

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