How can a retired savior be considered retired if his price drops to 40,000?

Chapter 301 Warrior of Light, Please Come to the Lion's Mane

"Is there something we have to talk about here?" Fujimaru Ritsuka complained with a hint of resentment in his tone, "I just finished a meal. Lanmalok, you have to know that if you let me come here through the subspace at this time, there is a chance that I will vomit on your ship."

Almost as soon as she returned to Storm's Edge, a communication from the Lion's Mane rang "very coincidentally". Fujimaru Ritsuka, who thought she could rest today, sighed a little, but she quickly ate a silver apple to restore her strength and then ran over.

Then, she discovered that Lanmarok's mental state was still not very good. Although he still looked like he was wearing a tightly fitted power armor, Fujimaru Ritsuka could subtly sense that he was obviously a little depressed.

After taking a glance at the two guards beside Lanmarok who were definitely not on the Lion's Mane - they were in black armor and red robes, silent, and most importantly, they were Primaris Space Marines - Fujimaru Ritsuka chose a relatively safe question to ask: "Has your 'internal meeting' come to a conclusion?"

"It seems so." Lanmarok answered vaguely, but at least he answered, which was good news. "At present, it seems that in most cases, I am still the one who has the final say on this ship."

"Isn't this good?" Fujimaru Ritsuka chose not to delve deeper. "At least for me, this is the case. I don't have to adapt to a new contact person."

Lanmarok did not comment, and changed the subject to "business" in a somewhat awkward manner: "I have obtained some information here, and the Primarch thinks you should know about it."

He gestured sideways, then led his guests down from the transport platform and toward the video strategy room. Fujimaru Ritsuka looked at Sigismund, who was obviously evaluating the two new Primaris warriors on the Lion's Mane, tapped his arm armor lightly, and then took the lead to follow Lanmarok's back. Just like usual.

"You are a little too lax about your own safety." Sigismund looked like he wanted to grab Fujimaru Ritsuka right behind him, or if Lanmarok wasn't here, he would have done so. "You don't even know the names of these people who appeared out of nowhere."

"If I need to know, they have already introduced themselves to me." Fujimaru Ritsuka said calmly, "There is no need to make things so clear about the Dark Angels. I believe they can handle their own problems. We only need to know that 'these new Primaris soldiers are support sent by the Lion King'."

"Thank you for your open-minded attitude and full trust." Lanmarok said dryly, "But sometimes I also feel that you can ask more questions."

"So, is there anything that happened in the past few days that I really need to know?" Fujimaru Ritsuka followed suit, but it was obvious that she had deliberately misinterpreted it. This was obviously not what Lanmarok meant.

The newly arrived Primaris warriors said nothing, but just watched everything that happened in front of them silently. No one present knew what they were thinking, just as no one knew their names or what kind of faces they had under their armor.

"Your tolerance and generosity sometimes make me feel uneasy." Lanmalok sighed, but still followed the other party's words and started the topic, "As you may have guessed, our Primarch appeared out of thin air again not long ago. He brought more than thirty "new brothers" as reinforcements for us."

He paused here and gestured to the Primaris warriors who followed him: "I can't say that we get along very well, but at least the Primarch has established some common goals for us."

"I won't ask what these 'common goals' are specifically." Fujimaru Ritsuka responded very self-awarely, "My only request is that if you suddenly disappear from Baal's orbit one day, please tell me first."

"You'd better ask this, because this is what I have been ordered to show you next." said Lanmalok.

As they were talking, they had already moved to the nearest imaging strategy room. Two Siluji monks were debugging the imaging equipment, and the 3D projection above was showing a star map.

"Do you know anything about the name 'Vashtor'?" Lanmalok asked.

Fujimaru Ritsuka thought for a few seconds before digging out this name from the corners of his memory: "This is recorded in the Emperor's database. He is considered to be a secondary god in the warp that corresponds to concepts such as science and technology and innovative inventions. He controls the technology of forging demon engines and can influence mechanical products in the real universe to a certain extent."

Lanmarok sighed with a feeling that was either relief or disappointment: "Your profound knowledge has saved us a lot of trouble. Adjust your perspective."

Following Lanmarok's orders, the Siluji monks began to change the projection angles and marked the parts of the star map that needed to be focused on. During this time, Fujimaru Ritsuka speculated: "Did he appear somewhere recently and cause trouble?"

"It's not just any 'trouble'." Lanmalok said gloomily, "I learned from my new brothers that the current Dark Angels Army... the Chapter, is trying its best to track down Vashtor. Before this, there had been a series of conflicts between the two, and Vashtor was obviously not fighting alone. His team was obviously mixed with other Chaos forces and traitors of the Empire. In the end, the Chapter failed to completely stop the evil plot of the Warp, and he used his evil knowledge and skills to successfully forge a... demon world engine."

The perspective of the star map projection locked onto a local point, and the artificially added annotation showed that it was called the "Dream Galaxy". Then, the camera quickly zoomed in - and even someone like Fujimaru Ritsuka, who had only a limited knowledge of a specific place in the vast territory of the empire, could realize through basic common sense that there was something in the void that obviously shouldn't exist:

A planetary world burning majestically in bright flames, with strange fleets and wrecks, or other orbital defense facilities, winding around it gracefully like a jewel necklace along the geomagnetic line. It was inhaling and exhaling bright phosphorescent fire in the dark void, freely showing its evil light, and then soon, the space around it was distorted - just like being photographed by a fish-eye lens, its image and the surrounding space were neatly pulled and shrunk, sinking into a dimension beyond the reach of the existence in the real universe, leaving a hideous gap in its place, a glowing scar in reality. "Dragon Forest Star." Lanmalok's voice was filled with obvious hatred, anger and shame, "The Primarch is leading most of the other brothers in the chapter to hunt it down. If possible, he hopes to get help from Chaldea."

The last sentence seemed a bit redundant, because Fujimaru Ritsuka was staring at every detail in the 3D projection in front of him, and he was obviously already in working mode: "Is this a real-life video?"

"This was restored using the footage taken by the Paladin and the data recorded by the Auger array," Lanmaroc responded. "If you need the original data, we can also provide a backup."

"I think I need a copy to take back to Storm Edge for detailed calculations." Fujimaru Ritsuka crossed his hands unconsciously while thinking, "The means it used to leave the real universe seem quite unconventional. Please rewind a little and play it again at 0.25 times the speed. I want to watch the whole process again carefully."

Silujimon turned his gaze (or camera) towards Lanmarok, and after receiving a positive signal, he replayed the video recording according to Fujimaru Ritsuka's instructions. The second rough observation lasted for five minutes, during which she called for two pauses and gave a formula to ask Silujimon to calculate five parameters for her, and finally came to the conclusion:

"Judging from the way it moves, it will be difficult to catch. It's not that we can't rely on certain signs to predict its landing point, but it takes too much intelligence gathering and computing power to find these so-called "signs" in the vast universe. The observation angle of the Sheba Lens is only at the planetary level after all, and it can't be used on this scale; Trismegistus also has other things to calculate; psychic divination can only collect some information in the subspace sporadically, and it is not certain whether it is true or false; the Empire may not have so many resources to be completely concentrated on this one thing - it's too uneconomical. If this is all the information we have now, the best I can give is a guarantee of 'try your luck'."

Lanmarok's Primaris brothers looked at each other. He could sense the doubts hidden under the MK10 armor, but he himself had long been accustomed to the magical nature of Fujimaru Ritsuka, who could "respond to even things that sound impossible", so he was not too surprised: "We have also summarized some of the places where it has appeared."

The Fire Wing Grand Master waved his hand towards the Si Lu Ji Monk, and the perspective in the projection was enlarged again as he suggested. The observable range returned to the size of the entire star region with these changes, and several locations where the "Dragon Forest Star" had appeared were specially highlighted.

"In that case, I might be able to try to calculate its trajectory. But I don't know much about criminal geography, so I'll have to leave the detailed analysis to you guys." Fujimaru Ritsuka's tone was uncertain, "But what is it trying to do by running around like this? Is there any strategic point of the empire near where it appeared?"

"So far, there is no solid speculation." Lanmalok replied, "Some Inquisitors believe that the Eldar may know something, because the movement of the Dragon Forest Star is similar to those of the aliens in the eyes of the Mechanicus. The interrogators of the Chapter also got some untrue and false statements from the Chaos Worshipers. They believe that 'Vashtol is looking for something called a 'lock', but we still don't know what this 'lock' is."

"I think we can ignore the Eldar," said Fujimaru Ritsuka. "I have some other intelligence sources. They should be fighting each other for some other things. Under this premise, even if they want to exert influence on Chaos or the Empire, the energy they can mobilize is very small. Moreover, no matter how Vashtor made this world engine, its technology and output level are obviously more advanced than that of the Eldar. The latter can obviously only use the existing Webway plane to travel through space, but Vashtor's, if there is no Webway entrance at its location in the void, then it is obvious that it has carved out a path for itself to pass through in space."

"'Something else,'" Lanmaroc repeated suspiciously.

"The mess between the Eldar God and Salishi can't burn the Empire." Fujimaru Ritsuka, who felt it was too troublesome to explain the story of the Goddess of Life, chose to give a simple conclusion, "When they are done fighting, they will come back and thank us."

After saying this, Fujimaru Ritsuka thought for a moment, then spoke again, trying to infer from the result: "As for the 'lock', since there is a 'lock', there must be a 'key'. Now Vashtor is looking for the 'lock', so according to normal logic, the 'key' must be under his control - unless He intends to stare at the 'lock'. The problem is that there must be something 'locked' behind this 'lock', and perhaps that is His real purpose. But what exactly does He want to do..."

"There is already a Lord Inquisitor of the Holy Hammer Order and his team following up on this issue." Lanmalok interrupted the other party's thoughts, which might not produce any results. "If they make any progress, I will make sure you know it immediately."

"Now I get a headache whenever I hear the phrase 'Lord Inquisitor'," Fujimaru Ritsuka complained. "It would be better to just let them study this problem. I'm tied to Baal now and can't leave. Obviously, the channels for me to obtain intelligence are much fewer than those of an active Inquisitor. But thinking about it the other way around, I have a different strategy: We don't care what Vashtor wants to do, we just need to force him not to do it."

"What do you want to do?" Lanmalok suddenly asked with a bad premonition.

"You know, Chaos demons are never united. Especially those Chaos creatures who are not under the command of the Four Gods." Fujimaru Ritsuka said, "In fact, I don't know if this will work, but anyway, there will be no loss if it doesn't work: as long as I spread the news to the subspace, saying that 'the fifth god of the High Heaven will ascend the throne in Baal', the demons of Vashtor will definitely hear the news and want to join in the fun."

"Apart from all the causes and consequences," Sigismund, who had been silent for the whole journey, spoke quickly after he finished speaking, "your idea is really a terrible one."

Fujimaru Ritsuka shrugged. "Of course I know the actual effect is doubtful. It's hard to predict the effect of a rumor. But the worst result is nothing happens. We don't need to do anything. There's no harm in trying. As long as Vashtor's army loses one demon, I win."

"The premise is that the 'Fifth God of the High Heaven will ascend the throne in Baal' is indeed not true." The Black Knight replied firmly.

"You don't believe in my plan!" Fujimaru Ritsuka immediately put on a pitiful look, "When did I say I was going to promote the fifth god to the throne! Although from an overall perspective I am indeed doing something similar, is the planetary mind a god? Don't slander Sanguinius!"

(End of this chapter)