Decker found himself getting used to life aboard the Storm Frontier. Even he didn't know if this was a good thing.

So far, he has not smelled any "bad" tendencies in this matter. While it is true that this small ship, which looks subspace in its living environment, is unsettling, and the Praetorian Army, the black-clad Dark Angel, and the Midnight Lord are also confusing, it is not enough to talk about the quality of life. If you are willing to put everything behind and believe that there are forbidden troops behind you when the sky falls, then this quiet enough boat is indeed a very suitable place to recuperate.

He could have taken what had happened during this time as some kind of "reward" for the hardships of the remaining survivors after seven years of fighting on Skalus, and seemed a little more comfortable accepting it. At least, most of the few remaining Blood Angel brothers in the company who boarded the ship with him seemed to behave like that.

But in a sense, Decker himself, who "knows better", as a priest of the Holy Blood, will always have a sense of crisis in his spare time, "Is this too good".

The bad news is that, by the standards of the Empire and even the Blood Angels, the current progress is indeed "too good". The development of a blood substitute to relieve red thirst is progressing rapidly—Asclepius has already made the finished product on the day he received the Holy Grail from the warehouse. For the time since, they've just reverse-engineered it to be able to replicate the same thing in a series of processes that don't involve too much magic and psionic power. This part of the work takes up most of Decker's time except for the necessary rest, but here's the good news: he doesn't have much to spare.

Decker wouldn't say that Asclepius and he (mostly the former) had achieved more in less than a week in the small medical chamber of the Storm Frontier than the tireless efforts of successive Blood Priests over the past 10,000 years—at least not until the product they had made successfully passed a series of tests. He hoped it would succeed, but in reality, for him, or for any of the Blood Priests, it was the "norm" that they were more accustomed to eventually getting a failed outcome on the matter. What's more, the suspicious gaze of Inquisitor Hastings, who often roamed the corridors, reminded him that this time the development was going well.

The good news is that Decker has at least five countermeasures or contingency plans in his mind, ranging from the best (the finished product is found to fail the test after being returned to the Warband Monastery) to the worst (a Tzeentch Archdemon emerges from the flask). He thought he could convince himself not to care about the ensuing failures. The other piece of bad news that had nothing to do with the above was that he had to be in the Storm Frontier's infirmary on a regular basis due to research and development, which seemed to have led some of the people on the ship to default to him as the "Liaison of the Blood Angels".

Who called him the best of all the brothers on board at the moment?

When Kylia reappeared at the door with a data tablet, Decker let out a slight sigh of emotion that bordered on frustration. He was sure that, with the senses of mortals, the girl poking her head by the door would not be able to catch his small movements, but Kellia was inexplicably in place, and then there was a clear expression of "should I find someone else", which made Decker not so sure.

"She's a psyker. The specialty is in the heart. Asclepius's tone was reluctant, "Also, at this distance, you can 'open your mouth' to speak, so that you don't have to be distracted by me, who is focusing on the separation of products, to give you an answer." ”

Decker had to react before he realized that Asclepius's second words were addressed to the little girl at the door. And before that, they may have been communicating through psychic teleportation - something that Decker, as a priest of the Holy Blood, did not understand and could not control.

He took a few seconds to hand over the reactor in front of him to Asclepius, pulled away from the front of the test table, and turned to the door. After a brief period of panic and hesitation, Kellya decided to hand over the data board in her arms to the Holy Blood Angel who was close in front of her: "According to the navigator's prediction, in three days we will be able to jump out of the Mandeville point in the Baal system to the physical universe. Sister and Throne Envoy Rika Fujimaru believes that you may need some time to prepare for the return to the warband's home planet, and in addition, the ongoing missions may also need to be rescheduled according to the new schedule. ”

Decker thanked him, took the datapad, and almost unconsciously threw a wistful glance at the bench behind him.

——

"So," Rika Fujimaru, who was in a private room that was heavily protected in the occult and poked in front of her with an incarnation of the Almighty God, gradually became more open-mouthed during the conversation, "Now the situation in the subspace is that Saneane and Nurgle are fighting, Tzeentch is not helping each other, or is both sides helping to have fun, and the sadomasochism has no interest in the farce of the three of them, and is still paying attention to the real universe?" ”

"In addition, there are the Aeldari who have started a large-scale civil war because of the matter of the Goddess of Life, and they are not free to interfere with you." Texcatlipoca added, and never said what kind of role he played in it.

"That said, if I'm not unlucky enough to get muddled in the face by the Greenskins Orcs or Tyranids, and if the ruler of the Necronomic Dynasty decides to embark on an orienteering expedition against Baal on a whim, then the only thing I have to worry about is Sadism and the Black Legion?"

Tezcatlipoca nodded: "That's pretty much the case, but I can't completely guarantee that there won't be a small probability event." You know, Tzeentch is still there, not to mention that there are actually a lot of 'creatures' in subspace that have the strength to have an impact on reality, and there are still many variables. ”

This sounds reasonable, after all, even if it is, it is impossible to guarantee that everything that happens next will be in your own predictions. Fujimaru Rika accepted this kind of possible error in the development of events in the future, but she still couldn't help but ask: "Among these 'variables', there won't be some of them because you are messing around with 'trial' qualifications, right?" ”

"I don't know what the future holds, but I did have a few trials scheduled during this solo trip." Tezcatlipoca, at least as it sounds, is emotionally stable, "but who knows if these people will make it through the trial?" Even if you succeed, will you be able to survive after that? Or could someone give away the token in the middle of the trial? ”

Fujimaru Rika, who once "exchanged the token for other goods and gave it away" during the trial, hugged her arms: "If you don't make your words clear when you send out the token, this kind of thing is very likely to happen!" ”

"You're still getting up, aren't you?" Texcatlipoca was angry and laughed, "Forget it, anyway, the one who won the final duel is Ling, and I will count you as passing, and there is no need to mention the past." ”

"Obviously, you brought it up openly and secretly."

"You don't have to worry about such small things." Texcatlipoca waved his hand, looking like, "I'm actually very generous, I don't care about this little problem." This attitude made Fujimaru Rika can't help but slander: You obviously mean to die.

But her basic desire to survive allowed her to successfully rot this sentence in her stomach. She spoke, but said something else entirely: "I haven't asked yet, why did you and Debit come to this completely unrelated world?" ”

"Huh? Didn't I mention it? Texcatlipoca was indifferent to this, "In the beginning, because Debit wanted to try to get rid of the five-minute memory limit a day, we began to try to move to a world line that 'life beyond the visible universe' could not interfere with. As a result, the experiment failed, and by mistake we got here. Then Debit felt that he couldn't let go of what he saw, and we stayed as he came and went. ”

"Even if you stay, you don't really need to bother with all this stuff, do you?"

"What do you say, Debit started to meddle as soon as he landed, and I can't leave him alone." Tezcatlipoca took a cigarette case out of his bosom, paused, as if noticing the occasion, and slipped it back into his pocket, "I'm staying in this crazy world that doesn't fit my aesthetics at all, and I have to find something that interests me to 'pass the time', right?" ”

Rika Fujimaru, who felt that her conversation strategy was seen through by the other party, was embarrassed for a moment, but then made the decision of "just say it directly": "So, the ultimate purpose of a series of actions you made in order to 'pass the time'?" ”

The present Texcatlipoca is not a Chaldean servant, but a god who has returned to the wild and free. Although Fujimaru Rika can be sure that he is also a "warrior" that the other party has personally admitted to "like", for the sake of this, Tezcatlipoca will not deliberately do anything that directly damages Chaldea. But this range is actually very narrow, and the range that can be operated by the "wind of impermanence" is still very large.

"What? Don't trust me? ”

"The Chaldea is now in a different position than it used to be, and I have to look at things from the perspective of the whole empire as much as possible. And you don't seem to be very trustworthy, do you? ”

"So straightforward? Where is the virtue of gentleness and tactfulness in your Japanese speech? ”

"Even Japanese people, when stating the objective fact that 'one plus one equals two', they feel that it is unnecessary to be 'gentle and tactful' in the choice of words and sentences."

Tezcatlipoca raised his hand in surrender. After all, his external physiognomy is basically switched randomly, causing him to often feel that he is unreliable.

"Okay, okay, I'll admit it." "So far, more than 80 percent of the purpose of all my actions can be summed up as 'helping you clear the way'. You can trust this and make your next plans based on that - by the way, I haven't spoken to the one on the throne yet, but he should be aware of my existence. ”

Now it was Fujimaru Rika's turn to fall into confusion: "Why are you so energetic in this matter?" ”

"The reason is simple, the same as in the past." Tezcatlipoca smiled, "Because, 'The range you can destroy is very large'. ”

(End of chapter)