Chapter 317: Emperor's Shrine Level 3
Three relics in hand, Kian returned to the Sanctum and fed them into the Emperor's Shrine upgrade interface.
One hour later: complete.
Emperor's Shrine Level 2 → Level 3.
Upgrade effects unlocked:
Sanctification slots increased from three to five. Sanctification no longer limited to liquids — solid objects can now be sanctified.
Sanctifying solid objects requires additional time proportional to size and density.
Sanctified objects such as jewellery gain the Emperor's psychic protection — low-tier daemons cannot approach the wearer, and the effect deepens the longer the item is worn.
Sanctified weapons gain bonus damage against daemonic entities.
Sanctified psychic objects or amplifiers will emit golden-coloured psychic energy in all applications, carrying daemonic bonus damage and a ten percent overall power boost.
Kian immediately grabbed the Demon-Cleaver and placed it beside the Shrine to begin sanctification.
The estimated time to completion: three full months.
He added the psychic amplifier. Four months.
That was too slow. He couldn't block five sanctification slots with long-duration objects — the Sanctified Spirits and Sanctified Oil production had to keep running. He made a note to stagger the queue and moved on to the next feature.
Soul Sanctum.
A Level 3 Emperor's Shrine, as described, functioned as a privately-administered destination for faithful human souls at the moment of death — a safe harbour, preventing daemon-capture and warp-consumption.
It also served Kian directly: wherever he brought the Shrine, he gained a respawn point tied to it.
And then the system listed an additional detail that made Kian genuinely struggle to keep a straight face.
Souls of exceptional strength and profound faith, upon entering the Sanctum after death, could become what the system called Sanctified Champions — essentially legendary warriors preserved in spirit form. If Kian made offerings at the Shrine, and if a Champion was willing, they could briefly manifest in realspace to fight alongside him.
...So it's a summoning system. I can ring the bell, burn some incense, and call dead heroes back from beyond the veil to fight for me.
He sat with that for a moment.
The tactical implications were significant. If he ever ran into something genuinely beyond his capability, the viable strategy was: die strategically, respawn at the Sanctum, light some offerings, return to battle with a retinue of hallowed war-ghosts.
Kian spent a few minutes quietly enjoying this mental image, then turned to the last feature.
Blood Offering to the Emperor.
Offerings of enemy commanders' skulls, or rare and significant items taken from the Emperor's foes, would generate a positive reaction from the Emperor, who would then — the system specified this carefully — bestow blessings at His discretion.
Random drops. Based on vibe.
"This keeps getting more chaotic-cult adjacent," Kian muttered. "Though I suppose there's a certain symmetry to it."
He spent a while longer reading through everything, then shelved it for later and got on with life.
Four months passed.
A great deal happened in those four months.
On the military front, the PDF's position had been deteriorating steadily. Rebel forces were counter-attacking — slowly but consistently — and the PDF was giving up ground at roughly a hundred kilometres per fortnight. The line was bending back toward the hive.
Two reasons for that.
First: the PDF had extracted enough food from the surrounding territory to partially ease the hive's internal famine. People weren't starving to death at the same rate they had been at the start. The most extreme justifications for continued offensive operations had lost their edge.
Second: Nor'n had gotten involved.
He'd been listening to news from the surface the entire time he was forging. It had taken him roughly two weeks to develop a picture of the conflict, and what he saw made him sympathetic to the rebels.
The sons of Vulkan extended grace widely. Chaos taint closed the door. Almost anything else could be redeemed.
He was one man and couldn't resolve a planetary civil war singlehandedly, and it wasn't really his place to insert himself into what was fundamentally a family dispute. But he could try to address what was driving it.
He spent a few days repairing the synthetic starch manufacturing plant — the one that had been destroyed during the Nurgle incident. With it back online and resuming slow production, the PDF lost one of its primary justifications for continuing to take food from the countryside by force. The offensive began to wind down.
He then made contact with the rebel leadership, presenting himself as what he was — an Angel of the Emperor, passing through — and proposed a framework: the hive would supply non-military industrial goods and medical materiel to rebel-controlled territory; the rebels would supply natural food in return.
The rebel commanders knew what an Astartes was. They spent an entire day venting everything they'd endured under the hive's rule — the exploitation, the extraction, the contempt.
Nor'n listened without passing judgment. Privately, he found the whole situation faintly ridiculous. These people were living on an agri-world producing actual food. They had sunlight and soil. They were fighting over resource allocation on a planet that wasn't actively being invaded.
The Forge World next door operated under constant Ork pressure. People ate corpse-starch and died in the mud every day. A tin of guana-meat was enough to turn a regular soldier into a berserker. That was the baseline in a lot of the galaxy.
But Nor'n kept his thoughts on that to himself. He listened, expressed patience, and gave the rebel leadership the respect of being heard.
They gave him the face of a positive response. Trade negotiations opened. The ceasefire began taking hold.
With both sides pulling back from active combat, Kian started moving.
The Governor's land grant was a hundred thousand square kilometres. That was the size of a medium-sized province. It wasn't going to claim itself.
He thought briefly about his previous life — his highest position had been Learning Committee Member in primary school, a role he'd held through one term before failing to produce his summer homework, being formally censured, stripped of all duties, and returned to common citizenship in disgrace. He'd never made Class Representative.
Now he was effectively governing a territory the size of a province.
He appointed himself Chief Permanent Governor. Little Joel got Deputy Governor. The family name would be appropriately honoured.
Kian personally drove a Leman Russ at full throttle across the open countryside, treads churning through the soil, claiming land with every kilometre. Wherever his tank rolled, that land was his. The people on it were his people. The second hive city would be built here.
He had four months of accumulated momentum and absolutely no intention of slowing down.
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