"...Wait, you know?" One-Eye looked at Alexander with some surprise.
His expression seemed to say: I waited half an hour for my chance to show off, and you stole it?
He shook his head and said, "The Emperor teaches us humility. It seems I haven't learned enough."
The corner of Alexander's mouth twitched slightly.
He was curious where One-Eye had learned about this person.
Ignis Calcas, a poet from the Great Crusade era ten thousand years ago, was one of the chroniclers dispatched by a high-ranking official to record the history of humanity's expansion, and he followed the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet.
To follow an Expeditionary Fleet and record the great conquests of the fleet and the Astartes was an almost unattainable honour for a poet.
An even greater honour was that the fleet's main force consisted of the Luna Wolves Legion—later renamed the Sons of Horus.
The greatest honour of all was that the commander was the answer to the Imperium's prayers, the pinnacle of the Primarchs, the universally beloved Horus Lupercal.
And he had just recently been appointed Warmaster by the Emperor, making him the leader of the entire Great Crusade...
What more could a poet ask for?
If not for Erebus, it might have been exactly like that.
Before initiating the grand siege of Terra, Horus massacred almost all the chroniclers of the 63rd Fleet, and Ignis Calcas was among the earliest to die.
If Alexander had to evaluate Ignis Calcas, he would call him the "30K Robespierre".
Ignis Calcas's insight was remarkably keen, but the problem was that it was too keen.
He had three famous quotes in his lifetime:
"The Imperium we are building will be instantly overturned! Mark my words! It is inevitable!"
"Even an actor of Hegig's extraordinary talent would struggle to match the exquisite performance of Erebus today."
"First Captain Abaddon, what was the silver coin you gave to Erebus when you met him?"
Based on these alone, Alexander could feel the poet's sharp insight and... his almost suicidal ability to seek death.
It's one thing to notice something, but you have to shout it out loud.
These three sentences could almost simultaneously offend both the Loyalists and the Traitors.
The last sentence was even spoken directly to Abaddon, the First Captain of the Sons of Horus, who nearly snapped his neck right then and there.
He later wrote a pamphlet titled We Have Only Truth, primarily condemning the hypocrisy of the Sons of Horus and their contempt for mortals. This successfully drew the Warmaster's attention, and he was promptly assassinated by the Warmaster's agents.
"At that time, words of loyalty and truth still existed in our ears, but alas, we were deafened by our own pride..." the winged figure in the white light sighed.
"If he had followed the Blood Angels' fleet, he might have written We Have Only the Red Thirst and Ghouls instead," Alexander muttered with a shrug.
Ignis Calcas wasn't a loyal man; the only reason he wrote and spoke those things was because he felt it was the truth and he wanted to say it. Throw him into any legion, and he wouldn't have a good end.
A deathly silence hung in the air.
"...If you became a chronicler, you might not live as long as he did," the winged figure in the white light twitched and said.
Alexander glanced at the white figure in the light, who was trying hard to portray Sanguinius.
He remembered that on the day of the Siege of Terra, when Sanguinius fell, the Blood Angels witnessed his soul being consumed by the Four Gods.
In other words, unless the Four Gods spat out what they ate, and the Emperor painstakingly pieced his soul fragments back together, it was impossible for a whole, sane Sanguinius to exist and converse with him in the 41st Millennium. A whole Sanguinius might exist in 40K, but a wholly intact Sanguinius in 40K seemed quite impossible.
As for whether this figure was Tzeentchian trickery, some Chaos illusion, or a Warp Entity conjured by human belief... Alexander felt it was hard to say.
"Anyway, you don't seem like the original Great Angel..." Alexander shook his head and mumbled softly.
"What?" One-Eye, hearing Alexander's words, blinked and asked.
"Nothing—what about Ignis Calcas?" Alexander waved his hand and asked.
"One of Ignis Calcas's notebooks might be in Old Sector Eight, and someone is willing to pay a high price for it," One-Eye said in a low voice.
Alexander almost laughed aloud: "Great, Rag wants me to find PDF equipment, and now you want me to find a tiny notebook in an entire collapsed sector? That book could have been reduced to dust over a hundred years."
"It's not entirely without clues. As you might know, this job came from the Upper Hive."
"The masters up there love researching this kind of stuff, so the intelligence is very complete."
One-Eye pointed upwards:
"It's a fifty-page quarto notebook, bound in black lambskin... It is said to have been produced on Terra ten thousand years ago, and the last time it appeared, it was well-preserved."
"It was placed in a dedicated ancient book preservation instrument, with independent power, internal stasis, and a Ceramite shell. Theoretically, it could run stably for several hundred years."
"The higher-ups say the book's last owner was from the Corpse Guild, and it might be in the Corpse Guild branch in Old Sector Eight."
Alexander raised an eyebrow at that, sizing up One-Eye.
The Upper Hive? The middle-class people up there couldn't possibly be this well-informed, nor would they have the money to purchase a ten-thousand-year-old relic produced on Terra.
Alexander guessed that this job almost certainly originated from the nobles in the Spire, and probably not just average nobles. Could One-Eye actually connect with the Spire?
Alexander couldn't help but scrutinize the bar owner.
There were many rumors about this bar owner in the nearby district. Some said he was a legendary gang leader who once led his gang to invade the Upper Hive, others that he was an escaped dissident secretly hiding in the bar, and some even claimed he was once part of the PDF... In short, the more bizarre, the better.
"The reward for the job is substantial. I know you need the money, and I also believe you're the only one who can pull it off."
One-Eye lowered his voice and said:
"I won't take too much—just a ten percent cut... After all, even ten percent is enough to make a fortune if the job succeeds."
Alexander pondered for a moment. Since he had to go anyway, he might as well investigate this as well.
He nodded slightly to One-Eye and said, "Alright, I'll go look for it at the Corpse Guild."
"Thank you. I'll arrange the transport for you tomorrow." With that, One-Eye took out another bottle of liquor from the cabinet and poured it into Alexander's cup.
"This one's on me. Cheers to you bringing back that notebook so we can both get rich."
The scarlet liquor fizzed in the cup. Alexander smiled, raised the glass, and downed it in one gulp.