Warhammer 40K in a box

Chapter 589 Original Casting Transformation

The condensed steam in the original cast operating chamber hissed, carrying a biting chill and the sharp smell of industrial cleaning agents, surging down like a pale wave, swallowing the deeply etched steel runes of conviction on the deck.

This shockwave is part of a precise and ruthless metabolic process, the beginning of an irreversible tempering process imposed on the entire Legion by the Primarch's will.

Inside the cabin, Soldier Kyle—a veteran sergeant of the Steel Hands Chapter, an old soldier who had replaced pain and wear and tear with logic and steel on countless battlefields—suddenly opened his eyes.

But before that, his consciousness had been running on a track of absolute rationality for microseconds, just like every tactical assessment in the past century—cold, efficient, and calm.

Weeks ago, when Primarch Feralus Manus, with unquestionable authority, promulgated the revised Gorgon Instructions before the fiery core of the Forge Council and enforced the Primitive Upgrade, the Chapter's data network experienced a silent but violent earthquake.

Kyle's core logic ruthlessly dissected this, a process akin to assessing a high-risk boarding maneuver.

He accessed all the fragmented data streams he could find about the "original casting" technology.

The statistical variance of gene seed rejection rate, the failure probability of nerve bundle reconnection surgery, the compatibility risks between the new Belisarius Caul organ and existing implants... a series of cold percentages cascaded down his tactical monitor.

His logical circuit ultimately concluded that significant risks exist, but the potential improvement in tactical effectiveness aligns with the internal value formula of the battle group, and the expected gains outweigh the acceptable losses.

He neither felt nor was able to feel excitement or fear.

The sacred surgery he underwent a century ago when he officially received the title of "Iron Hand," designed to eliminate emotional fluctuations in pursuit of absolute efficiency, had already ensured that his mind was as stable as adamantite.

For him, this was merely a necessary hardware upgrade, equivalent to replacing the explosive gun with a more efficient thermal magazine, or installing a newer reactor regulator on the power armor.

He even assessed his remaining original tissue—his left arm, which had been replaced by an inefficient robotic arm after the Battle of Samshin, and whose neural interface was frequently subject to negligible but persistent signal interference—based on purely functional considerations, and marked it as a “weak node that needs optimization.”

His application was ultimately approved, not because of a desire to "become stronger" as an individual, but because of a cold, logical judgment: becoming one of the first to undergo modification would provide the chapter with an extremely valuable first-hand data sample, the strategic intelligence value of which would far exceed the tactical value of his individual existence.

When he entered the operating room, filled with the smell of disinfectant and ozone and covered with mechanical runes, his mindset was no different from that of someone entering an armory for routine maintenance.

However, the surgery itself is far more than a simple hardware iteration.

The great sage Belisarius Caulna, with his technology that touched the very essence of life, forcefully pried open the foundation that had been buried by centuries of surgery, dogma, and logic by the steel hand—they were essentially still flesh and blood created by the Emperor and the Primarch Feralus Manus, a combination of spirit and flesh.

When those enhanced new organs were implanted and ancient gene sequences were forcibly rewritten with optimized codes, Kyle's tightly imprisoned consciousness encountered a storm that could not be measured by any data.

This was not just a crazy influx of power, but more like a sudden tearing apart of a filter that separated him from the real universe, a filter made of cold data and absolute logic.

He felt it.

Not through the sensor array attached to his power armor, but directly through those revived, extremely enhanced native nerve endings. He could feel the subatomic level tremors caused by the scalpel cutting through him.

He could "hear" the roar, like an underground river surging, as the high-concentration nutrient solution was injected into his new metabolic system.

What nearly brought his core logic to a standstill was that he could feel a powerful, primal life force roaring and flowing through every muscle fiber and nerve cord in his body. This feeling could not be quantified or simulated; it could only be experienced savagely through the very existence itself.

His heart, which had long been transformed into a high-efficiency hydraulic pump, beats like a creation-like rebirth, pumping fiery and unrestrained vitality, rather than cold synthetic hydraulic fluid, throughout his body.

The scars left by past battles and the lingering pain from metal fatigue, which he had long categorized as "system background noise" and ignored, were completely erased, as if his body had been thrown into the Earth's core furnace for a complete reforging.

This entirely new perception was a violent enlightenment, a direct and devastating blow to his century-old belief in the fragility of flesh and blood.

Weak?

No, this flesh and blood is full of almost limitless and awe-inspiring possibilities.

logic?

Logic is as barren as scrap metal in the face of the flood of perceptual information that is surging in at this moment.

He pushed open the heavy operating room door, and the sound of the metal hinges turning was interpreted in his new auditory processing center as a grand and terrifying symphony with a complex structure and a huge amount of information, with each note containing physical details that were previously impossible to capture.

He staggered slightly as he stepped out of the hatch. The heavy MK10 Gravis power armor felt weightless to his enhanced body, but the lingering chill from its terracotta shell stung his highly sensitive new skin like countless needles, bringing a sharp and clear reminder of his presence.

Morey, a skilled laborer who had served the Steel Hands for over three centuries and whose arms had long since been replaced with crude servo robotic arms, walked forward cautiously, carrying a heavy polymer wrench.

This was a request Kyle made before the surgery, based on an almost aberrant logic of seeking a calibration benchmark—a physical tool that could represent his "efficiency standards of the past era" to test and calibrate the sensory and force feedback of the new limb.

Around them, several Iron Hand warriors, some already modified and others still waiting, stood like silent statues.

Their helmet optical sensor arrays were all focused on Kyle, and massive amounts of physiological parameter data flowed and exchanged silently in encrypted internal channels, undergoing real-time analysis.

A illogical, forcibly suppressed ripple permeated the air: scrutiny, deep doubt, and an instinctive unease about deviating from established, cold doctrines.

Kyle did not activate the magnetic attachment device built into the power boxing gloves.

He made a startling move that caused all observers' logical cores to freeze or even malfunction—he extended his left hand, which had just completed basic biological integration but had not yet been fitted with the final adamantine prosthetic shell.

(End of this chapter)