To Osiris, merely performing surgery to supplement missing organs was nothing more than a clumsy patch-up along an existing technical path that, in his view, was inherently flawed.
His purpose in studying these hastily conscripted Imperial Fists warriors and delving into the physiological and gene-seed issues caused by their missing organs was far beyond mere treatment.
His gaze pierced the current technical dilemma and focused on a much grander and more distant goal—the original design blueprint of the Astertes Lady.
As the original core designer of the Space Marine project, the Astertes Lady's envisioned Astartes were far different from the form seen in the Imperium today. In her perfect design, the current Space Marines were merely an incomplete, transitional semi-finished product.
However, this grand plan was abruptly cut short when her collaborator, Erda, the Primarchs' Mother, stole the still-developing gene-Primarchs and scattered them across the galaxy.
Without the pure, uncorrupted genetic material of the Primarchs as the final "key" and "stabilizer," the Astertes Lady was no longer able to complete her final refinement of the Space Marines.
This unfinished dream and immense sense of frustration ultimately drove her, in despair and rage, to participate in the failed coup against the Emperor, initiated by the Marshal of the Departmento Judicial. She ended her brilliant yet tragic life in the Emperor's gene laboratory, committing suicide in the Emperor's presence.
However, her most core research data was not completely destroyed.
This invaluable technical legacy, which held the potential for the true, perfect form of the Space Marine, was secretly preserved by the ancient biological gene cult that Osiris belonged to at the time.
When that cult was later purged, this priceless treasure—along with the last pure genetic material sample of the Twenty Primarchs, which the Astertes Lady had retained (the most original, flawless design template for all twenty Legion gene-seeds)—fell into the hands of the then low-ranking but miraculously surviving Osiris amidst the chaos.
For centuries, Osiris had cautiously guarded this secret, which was potent enough to overthrow the foundations of the Imperium.
Now, facing Rogal Dorn's request and these rapid conscription warriors plagued by defects, he believed the time might have come.
The proposal he submitted to Dorn ostensibly aimed to completely repair the physiological defects and gene-seed mutations of the rapid conscription warriors, intending to "reset" them to the best state achievable under current technology.
But deep within the technical details of this proposal, he subtly incorporated some theories and fine-tuning parameters derived from the Astertes Lady's original blueprint.
He planned to use this treatment as an opportunity for a cautious "validation practice."
He didn't just want to repair these warriors; he also sought to reactivate and test that long-sealed, truly perfect design concept.
The original gene-seed templates in his possession were the ultimate guarantee for achieving all of this.
Osiris's ambition was far from merely curing a group of warriors; he aimed to pick up the Astertes Lady's unfinished dream and attempt to complete that ultimate blueprint of the "perfect warrior," which should have led humanity toward a brighter future.
This was undoubtedly walking a tightrope; once his deeper purpose was exposed, the resulting shock would be far greater than any Warp-drive rupture.
But in Osiris's view, if humanity remained content with merely patching up the existing, fundamentally flawed system, it would never break through its current predicament. To face the darker challenges that might come, he had to take the risk of touching the initial splendor buried by the dust of history.
According to the Astertes Lady's original design, the complete transformation of a Space Marine should be divided into three phases.
In the first phase, the ideal process for gene-seed implantation and adaptation differed fundamentally from the method currently practiced in the Imperium.
In the original, perfect vision, the transformation did not rely on complex and highly risky surgical implantation of pre-fabricated artificial organs one by one.
Instead, the highly purified gene-seed corresponding to a specific Legion was implanted directly into the strictly screened recipient.
This gene-seed would act as a complete biological blueprint and power source, guiding the direct growth of all necessary artificial organs within the recipient's body through a subtle process that fused genetic engineering and mystical bio-alchemy.
The biggest advantage of this "endogenous" transformation method was its ability to perfectly solve the problem of rejection.
Since all organs were differentiated and grown from the recipient's own cells under the guidance of the gene-seed, they were inherently genetically compatible with the host's body, which drastically reduced surgical failure rates and long-term adaptive complications.
This was intended to be a safer, more efficient process that guaranteed the overall integrity and potential of the transformed warrior.
However, because the technical solution failed to be fully perfected and standardized in the early stages, and because the "templates" required for gene-seed cultivation—the Primarchs themselves—developed differences in their state and integrity after being scattered, this idealized direct implantation method could not be reliably achieved in the vast majority of Legions.
Ultimately, pressured by practical technical bottlenecks, the transformation process in most Astartes Legions, such as the Imperial Fists and Ultramarines, devolved into the current, more cumbersome, and riskier model.
This mode required pre-cultivating individual artificial organs using the gene-seed in special culture-organs, and then implanting these "foreign" organs into the recipient one by one through a series of complex surgical procedures.
This not only increased the risk of failure at every step but also laid the foundation for long-term rejection and poor organ synergy.
According to the data Osiris possessed, among the twenty founding Legions, only the Blood Angels Legion successfully inherited and maintained this initial technique of "direct gene-seed implantation, with subsequent autonomous organ generation in vivo," owing to the abnormally stable and near-perfect genetic structure of their Primarch, Sanguinius.
The advantage of this technical path was not only reflected in a higher success rate and greater coordination between the warrior and the Primarch but also in a significant, game-changing advantage that other Legions could hardly match—a substantial relaxation of the requirements for candidate quality.
Because the core of the transformation lay in the endogenous guidance and adaptation of the gene-seed within the host, rather than the forced implantation of multiple independent external organs, the Blood Angels' modification procedure demonstrated astonishing tolerance and adaptability.
Their gene-seed seemed to possess a powerful "assimilation" and "correction" ability, capable of accommodating and integrating some of the host's pre-existing, non-standard genetic sequences to a certain extent.
It is precisely for this reason that the Blood Angels Legion has far fewer requirements and restrictions for their recruits compared to other Legions.
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I had an inkling the author updated weekly, I didn't think he would update 40 chapters! Raw enjoyers, we're at chapter 398 at the moment and the raw jumped to chapter 440 so expect new chapters coming.