The underground space of the Cawl Forge was a vast, suffocating, warehouse-like facility.
The gloomy alloy walls were covered with thick pipelines and servitor tracks, and giant mechanical arms hanging from the ceiling resembled slumbering steel tentacles, ready to provide maintenance for the stasis fields below.
The entire space was enveloped in a cold blue light, emanating from thousands of neatly arranged stasis field hibernation pods, which were densely embedded within metal frames like a beehive, extending as far as the eye could see.
This was indeed a warehouse, but it did not store ordinary supplies or machinery; instead, it held a slumbering army.
Each stasis field hibernation pod emitted a faint blue glow, and within the translucent energy barrier, tall, motionless figures were faintly visible—these were precisely the Primaris Space Marines secretly manufactured by Archmagos Cawl at the request of Regent Roboute Guilliman.
They were frozen outside of time, their gene-enhanced bodies appearing so robust and powerful, even surpassing the current Space Marines.
servitor skulls silently patrolled between the chambers, monitoring the vital signs of each warrior, while automated production lines still operated in the depths, as if silently declaring: this army is still growing, awaiting the day it will be awakened.
Ten thousand years ago, Roboute Guilliman, even as the embers of the Great Rebellion had not yet cooled, keenly perceived the future crisis.
He gazed at the scarred Imperium, realizing that the existing Space Marines might one day be unable to withstand a full-scale counterattack from Chaos.
Thus, he secretly summoned Belisarius Cawl, the most farsighted Archmagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and tasked him with a mission spanning ten millennia: to upgrade the old Space Marines and create a stronger army to cope with the potential catastrophe the galaxy might face in the future.
In fact, Guilliman was not the only one who foresaw this threat.
Rogal Dorn, the iron-willed Primarch of the Imperial Fists, similarly worried that the forces of Chaos would eventually return.
He opposed Guilliman's decision to split the legions, not out of stubbornness, but based on cold strategic considerations—he believed that scattered chapters would be like isolated boats facing a raging storm in the face of a large-scale Chaos invasion, unable to muster enough strength to resist a true threat.
History proved that their worries were not groundless.
In the ten millennia that followed, the Imperial chapters were repeatedly exhausted in the Black Crusades launched by Abaddon.
Although the Imperial authorities officially declared that each time they had "thwarted" the Chaos offensive, the success of the Thirteenth Black Crusade and the subsequent tearing of the Great Rift mercilessly revealed a fact: Abaddon was never truly defeated.
Each of his crusades weakened the Imperium's defenses until he finally tore open the veil of realspace, allowing fear and destruction to sweep across the galaxy.
Ironically, when Guilliman awoke in the 42nd Millennium, he was shocked to discover that his codex astartes—a temporary manual that was supposed to be a tactical reference—had been rigidly adhered to as an inviolable supreme scripture by his descendants for ten thousand years.
He never imagined that this "1.0 trial version" of toilet paper would be so blindly worshipped, even becoming a shackles on the Imperium's military development.
However, amidst this desperate gloom, the existence of Belisarius Cawl became the only ray of hope.
This lonely Archmagos silently carried out Guilliman's instructions for ten millennia, single-handedly advancing two almost impossible tasks: improving the Space Marines and paving the way for the Primarch's resurrection.
It was his perseverance that made Guilliman's return possible and gave the Imperium a glimmer of hope in the tumultuous 42nd Millennium.
When the Primarch returned to Holy Terra, facing this shattered galaxy and Imperium, Dora Khaur provided him with hundreds of thousands of Primaris Space Marines, allowing the Primarch, just like in the Great Crusade Era ten thousand years ago, to launch a new crusade with this massive Space Marine legion to save the Imperium.
This crusade, which lasted for over two hundred years, was called the Indomitus Crusade, and the new era opened by the Indomitus Crusade was also called the Indomitus Era.
However, for now, there is still some time before the awakening and return of the Gene-Seed Primarch Roboute Guilliman, and these Primaris Astartes slumbering in stasis fields must still await the call of destiny.
They are like sealed swords, not yet time to be unsheathed.
Although Alex has secretly deployed small Primaris Space Marine units under his command, allowing them to show their prowess in key battles, this secret, which could change the Imperium's military landscape, remains strictly guarded.
In fact, the only Primaris Space Marines currently known to the outside world are those unfortunate few from the Weepers.
Although they had previously been deployed in combat and were known to the Black Watch and Blood Angels, for various reasons, this matter has not yet spread within the Imperium and will not spread.
This secret is currently under wraps and will not be leaked.
Therefore, Alex's purpose in visiting the Cawl Forge's underground armory this time was not to awaken these ten thousand slumbering Primaris warriors and deploy them on the battlefield.
Although this terrifying force, comparable to an entire legion from the Great Crusade Era, could sweep through the Rostov Sub-Sector and utterly crush the resurgent Necron Dynasty if deployed in battle.
This is a massive Astartes force that the Imperium has not assembled since the Great Rebellion; even the Badab War, which was called the largest-scale Space Marine civil war after the Great Rebellion, did not deploy so many Astartes.
Ten thousand gene-enhanced, well-equipped Primaris Astartes Warriors; such a military force would be considered an undeniable legion even in the Great Crusade Era.
If used judiciously, they could not only help Alex quickly quell the current threat in the Sub-Sector but also earn him unparalleled political capital and military advantage.
But reason ultimately triumphed over temptation.
Whether considering the political storm that premature exposure of Primaris warriors might cause, or fearing the Inquisition's investigation that such a large-scale Space Marine assembly might provoke, or worrying about disrupting Archmagos Cawl's overall plan—Alex had to curb this impulse.
This force must appear at the most opportune moment, in the most perfect way, and now, it is clearly not the time.
He did not come for these slumbering warriors this time, but to retrieve something Cawl promised to lend him.
A prototype Warlord-Class Titan with an autonomous machine spirit, capable of being deployed in combat without a pilot.
It was discovered by Cawl during an archaeological excavation; although this Titan was not considered an antique by Cawl himself, for the current 40k era, this autonomous Titan, born in the M33 era, is a thorough antique.
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