Chapter 31 The Warp Beacon

We are officially in Top 200!!

Keep the powerstones cumin!

— “Dante, are you actually questioning me?” Vane raised an eyebrow, his tone dripping with mock disappointment.

“Just you wait.

The absolute second I resurrect the Great Angel, I’m filing a formal complaint against you.

I’m going to have you permanently reassigned to guard the local reservoir on Baal.” “And if I have to put a time limit on that assignment…

I hope it’s ten thousand years.” Dante: “…” Seriously?!

I just asked one simple question out of genuine concern, and now I’m condemned to guard a water tank for ten millennia?!

How is that fair?!

“Forefather, please do not blame Lord Dante.

He merely spoke out of profound concern,” Mephiston quickly stepped forward, desperately trying to run interference for his Chapter Master.

“The Great Angel’s condition is incredibly dire.

Horus’s final strike was catastrophically thorough.” He quickly added, “Furthermore, Baal is a radioactive desert.

We don’t actually have any reservoirs to guard.” Vane slowly turned his gaze toward Mephiston.

This man was arguably the closest thing the Warhammer 40k universe had to a classical Xianxia cultivator.

He had literally conquered the Black Rage and Red Thirst through sheer, unadulterated willpower, gaining astronomically powerful psychic abilities as a result.

“Little Mephiston.

Are you questioning me too?” Vane scoffed.

“Congratulations, you’re joining Dante on reservoir duty.” “With me here, the Great Angel is one hundred percent guaranteed to be resurrected.

And I am personally going to construct a custom reservoir on Baal just for the two of you to guard.” “Since I’m such a merciful, reasonable guy, I’ll even let you two pick the architectural style of the reservoir so nobody can say I’m completely heartless.” Now Mephiston was completely stun-locked.

Wait, I just tried to defend my Chapter Master, and now I’m condemned to reservoir duty too?!

This is a complete disaster.

I should have just kept my mouth shut and let Dante take the fall!

“Forefather, we didn’t—” Dante desperately tried to explain, but Vane casually waved him off.

“Drop it.

We have bigger problems.

The Imperium Nihilus has completely lost the Astronomican’s guiding light, and we need to fix that immediately.” “I’ll handle this as well.

I’m going to construct a Beacon Tower to temporarily replace the Astronomican.

Just sit tight and wait for the good news.” Having delivered his verdict, Vane turned and walked away.

“Can the Forefather truly produce a functional replacement for the Astronomican?” General Dhrost watched Vane’s retreating back, his voice thick with profound uncertainty.

The Astronomican was the literal, physical manifestation of the God-Emperor’s supreme psychic will.

Its guiding light radiated across seventy thousand light-years, acting as the absolute foundational pillar that allowed the Imperium of Man to exist as an interstellar empire.

Without it, long-range Warp travel was mathematically impossible.

Navigators would be entirely blind.

Any Warp jump would be strictly limited to the absolute maximum distance a standard cogitator array could blindly calculate—roughly five light-years at most.

According to Imperial historical archives, during the Great Crusade, the Emperor had expended an astronomically incomprehensible amount of manpower, resources, and psychic energy to construct the original Astronomican.

Exactly how much time, effort, and impossible technology would the Forefather need to build a functional replacement?!

“We have no other viable options.

The mechanics of the Astronomican are entirely beyond our comprehension.

All we can do is place our absolute faith in the Forefather,” Canoness Amity sighed deeply, her expression a mix of awe and resignation.

Dante, Seth, and the other commanders exchanged deeply grim looks.

Their eyes reflected a maelstrom of conflicting emotions—skepticism, profound anxiety, and a terrifying uncertainty regarding the future.

The galaxy had been physically ripped in half.

The Astronomican was dead.

Where would humanity even go from here?

— Dante and the others had genuinely assumed that building a functional replacement for the Astronomican would take the Forefather a significant amount of time.

After all, it had taken the God-Emperor Himself a massive, galaxy-spanning logistical effort to complete the original structure.

Even with the Forefather’s physics-breaking, reality-warping abilities, they assumed he would still need to invest considerable time and painstaking effort to forge something of that magnitude.

However, mere days later…

A colossal, breathtakingly majestic floating city simply materialized out of thin air, suspended in high orbit above Phodia.

The architectural design of the Beacon City was profoundly beautiful.

Colossal, intricately carved orbital rings slowly, majestically rotated around a central spire, projecting an aura of supreme, unshakeable grandeur.

Every single block composing the floating city was etched with deeply complex, glowing arcane runes that pulsed with raw, contained power.

Upon receiving their formal invitations, Dante and the Imperial high command boarded a transport shuttle and ascended to the floating city.

Vane was already waiting for them on the primary landing pad.

The moment Dante and the others stepped off the ramp, they immediately offered crisp, deeply respectful salutes.

Vane waved a hand, gesturing for them to skip the formalities.

He then swept an arm out, proudly introducing his latest masterpiece, his voice practically dripping with smug satisfaction.

“Behold, my custom-built Beacon City, designed to permanently replace your Astronomican.

Well?

Is it sufficiently majestic?

Because I think it looks incredibly cool.” The absolute microsecond the Astronomican had failed, Vane knew exactly what he was going to use to replace it: a Minecraft Beacon.

In vanilla Minecraft, a Beacon fired a massive beam of light into the sky to serve as a visual waypoint, and it granted localized, powerful buff effects (like Regeneration, Haste, and Resistance) to any player within its radius.

But after Vane had aggressively strip-mined several high-tier magical modpacks and integrated their crafting recipes, his Beacons were exponentially upgraded.

They possessed a myriad of bizarre, reality-warping functionalities.

Using a fully upgraded, modded Beacon to replace the Astronomican was an absolute, guaranteed fix.

After spending a few minutes debating the aesthetics, Vane decided to house the Beacon inside a colossal floating city.

Why?

Because it looked ridiculously cool.

Once he had finalized the architectural blueprints, he and Steve had pulled an all-nighter, aggressively speed-building the entire, breathtaking floating city block by block.

Now, all he had to do was physically place the upgraded Magical Beacon Core into the central housing unit to activate it.

The core would project a colossal, warp-piercing pillar of light that would guide Imperial ships through the Immaterium.

“Forefather…

can this structure genuinely replace the Astronomican and safely guide Imperial vessels through the Warp?” Dante looked around at the impossibly beautiful, arcane architecture, his voice thick with astonishment.

A microsecond later, realizing how his question sounded, he frantically backpedaled.

“Of course, I am not questioning your capabilities, Forefather!

I simply have never witnessed such technology before and wish to comprehend its function.” “Obviously, it can,” Vane replied, radiating absolute confidence.

“The moment I activate it, it will project a hyper-dense pillar of light that will be clearly visible across the entire Imperium Nihilus.” “Your Navigators will be able to lock onto it exactly like the Astronomican, guiding your fleets through the Warp’s currents to safely execute FTL travel.” “Furthermore, any Imperial vessel operating within the immediate localized radius of this Beacon City will receive continuous, passive blessings.

It will dramatically accelerate physical healing and actively purge low-level Chaos corruption.” After finishing his presentation on the Beacon City, Vane locked eyes with Dante and added, his tone utterly flat.

“And just for the record, your frantic backpedaling does absolutely nothing to change the fact that you are still going on reservoir duty.” Dante: “…” Are we seriously never going to let the reservoir thing go?!

“Come on.

I’ll take you to the core.

You can all witness the exact moment the Beacon City comes online.” Vane waved them forward, leading the massive entourage deeper into the floating city.

In truth, he could have just activated the Beacon the moment he finished building it.

But where was the fun in that?

Activating a massive, reality-altering super-structure had to be done in front of a live audience to properly maximize the dramatic effect and stroke his own ego.

If you don’t flex your god-tier endgame gear in front of the NPCs, did you really even build it?

Mephiston subtly grabbed Dante’s arm, pulling the Chapter Master to the very back of the procession.

He leaned in and whispered frantically.

“Lord Dante, you don’t actually think the Forefather is serious about forcing us to guard a reservoir on Baal, do you?!” Dante looked at Mephiston, then stared at Vane leading the procession far ahead of them.

“The Forefather…

the Forefather shouldn’t be that petty…

right?” If Dante was being completely honest with himself, he was absolutely terrified.

Based on everything he had observed over the past few weeks, the Forefather was exactly the kind of man who would follow through on a petty threat just for the sake of the bit.

Casually snapping his fingers to physically manifest a fully functional reservoir on Baal just to punish them was well within the Forefather’s capabilities and perfectly aligned with his bizarre sense of humor.

But Dante couldn’t admit that.

He kept his voice low, desperately trying to comfort his Chief Librarian.

“He’s probably just trying to scare us.” “For now, we just need to aggressively agree with everything he says and figure out a way to put him in a good mood.

Once he’s happy, he’ll naturally forget all about it.” “You are wise, Lord Dante.

We shall proceed exactly as you suggest,” Mephiston nodded gravely.

“Come.

Let us observe how the Forefather intends to activate this floating city’s core.” Dante lengthened his stride to catch up with the procession, Mephiston following closely behind.

At the exact geometric center of the floating city stood a colossal, majestic pyramid.

The pyramid was constructed entirely out of 1x1x1 meter blocks of solid, hyper-dense gold.

It was a display of sheer, unadulterated, astronomical wealth.

The mortal officers and Administratum officials who had been invited to the ceremony stared at the literal mountain of solid gold, visibly gulping in sheer, overwhelming greed.

The Imperium of Man did not possess a unified, standardized currency.

Across the millions of planets and mercantile guilds, rare metals—primarily gold—were universally recognized as the standard unit of exchange for macro-economic trade.

Therefore, even in this hyper-advanced interstellar age, gold remained an absolute, undeniable hard currency.

Under the awestruck, heavy breathing of the Imperial officials, Vane casually strolled up the steps to the apex of the golden pyramid.

Like a street magician, he pulled the heavily upgraded Magical Beacon Core out of thin air and casually placed it directly onto the highest pedestal.

The absolute microsecond the Beacon block made contact with the gold, the entire floating city violently came alive.

Countless arcane runes violently ignited, pulsing rhythmically like a colossal, breathing heart as they channeled a terrifying ocean of raw energy.

The glowing energy streams flowed aggressively across the city’s architecture, converging directly onto the Beacon Core.

With a deafening, reality-shattering THOOM, a colossal, hyper-dense pillar of pure, blinding light erupted from the core.

The beam pierced straight through the physical boundaries of realspace, violently tearing through the veil and plunging deep into the heart of the raging Warp storms.

It violently tore through the suffocating darkness of the Immaterium, acting as a brilliant, unshakeable lighthouse for any Imperial vessel lost in the abyss.

And the absolute microsecond that beam of light manifested, it violently drew the attention of countless, horrifying entities lurking within the deep Warp.