Chapter 6: The Shadow of Tzeentch

"Eh?"

Leon, who always thought meetings were boring, was yawning, but he never closed his mouth. He looked at Ademir in surprise, but found that his expression was firm and not fake at all.

"I'm repairing it?" Leon pointed at himself, "Is that true?"

No, you guys are so poor, can you afford a Dreadnought?

I just repaired a chainsaw sword. Why did you have to repair it so drastically all of a sudden?

However, this was not something that an outsider like Leon should be surprised about. As the last resort to preserve the lives of veterans who were about to reach the irreversible end, those who could enter the Dreadnought undoubtedly had an important position in the entire chapter and even the legion.

Although they have decided to cooperate with Leon, this time is not enough. The Astartes in front of him treat him with suspicion.

It was for this reason that when Ademir announced this decision, he was opposed by Lieutenant Dwayne and Sergeant Arlo. Even Adjutant Ajax, who had always supported him, was hesitant.

"No, absolutely not!"

Lieutenant Dwayne was a traditionalist: "Whether it is burying the Dreadnought in the sarcophagus or awakening the Dreadnought, it has always been the responsibility of the techmarines. The tech-priests sent from outside the Forge World are not qualified to participate in the maintenance of the Dreadnought, let alone such a guy with unknown origins?!"

Sergeant Arlo's focus is on practical effectiveness:

"Will it work? We have buried the captain in the sarcophagus for so long. When Hank was still alive, we performed the awakening ceremony every day but received no response. A foreign tech-priest, Ademir, do you trust him so much?"

"The fact is, it's not about trust or not, like I said, this is the only chance."

Ardemir lowered himself and looked around at everyone seriously.

"This is the only outsider we've seen in nearly a thousand years since we were trapped on this planet. If we want to escape this predicament, we should seize every opportunity."

"If we are now standing at the crossroads of fate and need to decide between unity, then why don't we wake up our captain? If Brother Hank has worked so hard in the awakening ceremony for so long and has not received any response, why don't we try a new possibility?"

"What kind of magic potion did that tech-priest feed you to make you think he is a new possibility? Even if he is reliable, how is his awakening ceremony different from Hank's?" Lieutenant Dwayne was a little annoyed.

"He does not sing Mechanicum hymns while he works," Ademir replied.

The air suddenly fell silent. Leon, who was watching their keywords such as "Company Commander" and "One Thousand Years", discovered that everyone's eyes were on him.

He coughed twice and felt that he had to clear his name: "I am a tech-priest who graduated from the second-level forging world Stygies VIII, and I have official certification."

Then the looks of several people became more subtle.

Leon was a little embarrassed. Although Stygies VIII did not become the headquarters of the Mechanicus's heretics until after the Great Heresy, there were already some signs before the Heresy.

The veterans present had heard of the "reputation" of Stygies VIII, which made them even more suspicious of Leon's skills, as they did not trust him in the first place.

Fortunately, at this critical moment, Adjutant Ajax stepped forward and broke the deadlock.

"Stygies VIII is famous for its unconventional technical means. If the awakening ritual fails to awaken the captain, perhaps a less conventional method can break the deadlock."

He concluded this first, then looked at Ademir: "But Ademir, have you thought it through? The opportunity you see to awaken the captain may also cause us to lose him completely. None of us can afford this loss."

"My resolve depends only on the Tech-Priest's choice to join, Brother Ajax," said Ademir. "If we dare not even consider awakening him, we have already lost him."

These words deeply moved Adjutant Ajax and Sergeant Arlo. Although Lieutenant Dwayne still opposed it, the majority finally agreed to let Leon get in touch with their most respected predecessors and the deepest secrets.

After hearing so much, Leon had no intention of quitting.

Not to mention that he was also trapped on this planet and was now in the same boat with them, the identity of these Astartes as lost people from the Great Crusade was enough to make Leon excited.

He naturally took on the task of awakening the Dreadnought, and under the guidance of several people, he went to the deepest part of the cave, where an ancient Contemptor Dreadnought was sleeping quietly.

The few power backpacks that were still functioning were piled here. They pumped the energy in the backpacks into the Dreadnought, barely maintaining the operation of the basic life support system in the Dreadnought.

Seeing this scene, Leon understood why these Astartes did not have power backpacks on their power armor.

However, relying on a power backpack to maintain the Dreadnought is not a long-term solution. When the last power is exhausted, this Dreadnought that cannot be awakened will also come to the end of its life.

Considering that there were only a few functioning power backpacks left, it was no wonder that he was pulled in to awaken it right after repairing a chainsword.

However, it was not Ademirl's fantasy that he decided to let Leon awaken the Dreadnought after seeing that Leon could repair the Chainsword. In theory, to awaken the Dreadnought, one only needs to activate the awakening program while chanting the Mechanicus's hymn to soothe the machine spirit.

　　——The biggest difficulty of this job is actually how to prevent the awakened dreadnought from hammering him who forced him to work overtime into a meat paste.

If the Dreadnought cannot be awakened, there is likely some mechanical failure in the awakening device inside the Dreadnought. Generally speaking, it is really similar to repairing a chainsaw sword.

Although it sounds simple, Leon did not underestimate it, considering that a techmarine had not been able to awaken the Dreadnought for such a long time.

He first walked around the Contemptor Dreadnought and found that there were many portraits carved on it. They seemed to be narrating the legendary experience of the old soldier buried in the sarcophagus:

He was recruited on Terra and became one of the first Space Marines led by the Emperor himself.

He participated in the Great Crusade and made immortal contributions in a war against terrifying aliens that were good at imitation and loved to eat brains, becoming an expert in hunting alien monsters.

Because of a disagreement with the Primarch, he chose to lead his company to self-exile and made an oath of eternal expedition to defeat the aliens. Finally, he met a huge alien that was almost made up of psychic energy and had blue bird feathers on its body on a space hulk.

After trying his best to kill the alien, he was buried in the sarcophagus...

Why does it feel more and more wrong the more I look at it?

Leon smacked his lips, turned around, and asked, "Who drew these things?"

"Sergeant Hank." Ademir mentioned the techmarine's name again: "When he was studying on Mars, he lived in the same dormitory with the other techmarines of the Emperor's Children and learned a lot of relevant skills.

"I'm not asking that. I mean, why did he paint these things, just for commemoration?"

Ademir shook his head, but Adjutant Ajax took over the conversation: "He said at the time that the Dreadnought's machine spirit had become cunning and talkative. He thought that was why the Dreadnought could not be awakened, so he wanted to use this method to increase the Dreadnought's sacredness and transform the Dreadnought's machine spirit."

"But even he thought the idea was too far-fetched. He only mentioned it to me during a casual chat and never reported it to the government."

A huge alien that is almost made of psychic energy and has blue bird feathers on its body, and a machine spirit that has become cunning and talkative...?

"No matter what happens later, don't be surprised, and don't take any action." Leon, who felt he had grasped the key to the problem, gave special instructions. He pulled out a data cable from his body and connected it directly.

He injected his code into it and tried to investigate the situation.

As expected, the wake-up program had become quite a mess, with a mountain of junk code that was growing.

Leon did some rough calculations and found that if the program ran through all the junk code and finally started up, it would take about nine thousand years.

Well, just in time for the Battle of Cadia.

Leon was too lazy to bother with so much junk code, so he decided to go directly to find the person who created the junk code.

He symbolically deleted some of the junk code. Sure enough, the blue data stream, noticing that the junk code he created had been deleted, rushed over directly. Even before the other party arrived, Leon had already received the provocation sent by the other party in binary code:

"Hank, you can't save your captain! Just like your captain can't save your primarch! Your fate has already been determined... Hey? Who are you?"

"It doesn't matter to you who I am. After all, you don't need to remember so many things when you are about to die."

Looking at the big demon with blue bird feathers in front of him, Leon showed a friendly smile: "But you, did you see your fate of being destroyed today?"