Chapter 40 Dante What Do You Mean Baal is a Garden World Now!

First Captain Karlaen stood absolutely frozen in place, genuinely wondering if his transhuman hearing had begun to malfunction.

The Forefather wants to transform Baal Secundus and the other apocalyptic desert moons into literal Garden Worlds?!

Paradiasical heavens that all of humanity would envy?!

Was transforming a single settlement not enough for him?

Now he wants to terraform the entire planet?!

Has he completely lost his mind?!

The sheer, unfathomable scale of the engineering required…

it’s mathematically impossible!

“Forefather…

Baal Secundus and Baal Prime were both subjected to catastrophic, apocalyptic warfare.

The entire surface of both moons was reduced to irradiated glass and desert.

The atmospheric envelopes were completely ruptured, allowing the vast majority of the planetary moisture to evaporate into the void.” “Forget transforming them into Garden Worlds…

even attempting to restore a baseline, survivable biosphere is statistically impossible.” Karlaen wasn’t intentionally trying to be contrary or disrespectful.

He had been born and raised in the Baal System.

He knew exactly how irreversibly broken these worlds were.

Baal Prime had always been a desolate, irradiated desert.

The biospheres of Baal Secundus and Baal Prime had been meticulously cultivated, only to be completely annihilated by the catastrophic civil wars of their ancestors.

The wastes outside the protective settlements were completely saturated with deadly ionizing radiation, highly virulent toxins, and mutating bio-weapons.

The entire surface was blanketed in a thick layer of radioactive fallout.

If a baseline mortal attempted to walk the wastes without a heavy-duty hazmat suit, they would literally melt.

The only flora and fauna that had managed to survive the apocalypse had violently mutated, becoming incredibly aggressive, hyper-lethal apex predators that actively hunted anything that moved.

Even the Archmagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus, armed with the most advanced terraforming technology the Imperium possessed, would take one look at Baal and immediately declare it a lost cause.

But Vane was fundamentally different.

He wielded an infinite arsenal of overpowered technological and magical mods.

What was physically impossible for the rest of the universe was a casual Tuesday afternoon project for him.

“Little Karlaen.

Let me teach you a very important lesson: when it comes to me, the word ‘impossible’ does not exist.” Vane placed his hands on his hips, radiating absolute, unwavering confidence.

“I have officially decided to terraform the worlds of the Baal System and restore them to their ancient glory as beautiful paradises.

And we are starting right here on Baal Secundus.” “I am going to breathe life back into this dead rock and rebuild the Garden of Eden.” Vane was a man of action.

Without waiting for Karlaen to formulate a response, he immediately got to work.

The absolute first step to terraforming Baal Secundus was sealing the ruptured atmospheric envelope.

Without a stable atmosphere, the star’s lethal solar radiation constantly bombarded the surface, violently sterilizing any attempt at cultivating life.

Once the atmosphere was restored, it would act as a natural, planetary shield, deflecting the majority of the lethal radiation.

Vane scrolled through his recipe book and pulled up several schematics he had unlocked from a Weather & Climate Control modpack.

He quickly synthesized a set of Atmospheric Controllers.

With the Atmospheric Controllers crafted, all he needed to do was construct a localized Atmospheric Control Spire to begin repairing the planetary envelope.

After scouting out a geographically stable location just outside the settlement, Vane opened a direct mental link and summoned Steve, his loyal, tireless Stand, directly from the mobile fortress in the Cryptus System.

Working in perfect, hyper-efficient synchronization, Vane and Steve began aggressively speed-building the Spire.

In exactly twenty-four hours, a colossal, breathtakingly majestic Atmospheric Control Spire erupted from the desert floor, towering into the sky.

Ugi and the rest of the sheltered settlement residents stared at the towering megastructure, their eyes practically bulging out of their skulls.

That construction speed is absolutely terrifying!

It completely defies the laws of physics and mortal labor!

Deep within the Spire, massive, hyper-advanced machinery roared to life.

Colossal gears turned, and glowing energy matrices flared with blinding light as they began aggressively manipulating the planetary parameters of Baal Secundus, violently pulling the ruptured atmosphere back together.

The sheer power output of the modded Atmospheric Control Spire was absurd, and the results were literally instantaneous.

The catastrophic, ragged holes in the ozone layer were rapidly sealed, forming a dense, stable planetary shield that effortlessly deflected the star’s lethal radiation.

With the atmosphere secured, Vane and Steve immediately began constructing a massive, secondary attachment to the Spire: an Industrial Rainmaker Array.

The mechanics were brutally simple but incredibly effective.

First, Vane excavated a massive basin at the base of the Spire and created another Infinite Water Source.

Next, he connected heavy-duty mechanical pumps to the lake, continuously siphoning infinite water directly into the Spire’s primary atmospheric vents.

The Spire vaporized the water, rapidly saturating the atmosphere with hyper-dense storm clouds.

Finally, the Spire manipulated the global air currents, forcefully dragging the storm clouds across the entire planet to initiate global, torrential rainfall, rapidly rehydrating the blasted, cracked crust.

But Vane wasn’t finished.

While the Spire was generating the storm clouds, Vane aggressively dumped literal tons of Bone Meal, saplings, grass seeds, and floral spores directly into the primary exhaust vents.

The Spire violently dispersed the seeds and fertilizer across the globe via the atmospheric currents.

Fed by the torrential, life-giving rain and aggressively catalyzed by the overpowered Bone Meal, the seeds and saplings hit the dirt and instantly exploded into hyper-accelerated growth.

In a matter of days, the endless, irradiated, sandy wastes of Baal Secundus were entirely replaced by rolling, emerald-green grasslands and dense, towering, vibrant forests.

“The Forefather…

he actually made grass and trees grow on Baal Secundus?!” “By the Emperor…

this is a divine miracle!

This is a literal miracle!” “…” Ugi and the rest of the residents of Angel’s Fall walked out to the edge of the settlement.

They stared out at the horizon.

Just a few days ago, it had been an endless, irradiated desert of death.

Now, it was a boundless, breathtakingly beautiful prairie leading into a lush, vibrant forest.

Every single mortal who witnessed the transformation was overwhelmed by a profound, soul-shaking awe.

They felt their entire foundational understanding of the universe violently shatter.

Honestly, the sheer number of times their minds had been completely blown over the last few days vastly exceeded the combined total of their entire previous lives.

Hearing the locals enthusiastically debating his divinity, Vane immediately stepped in to aggressively correct the record.

“I am not a god.

I am simply a perfectly ordinary, baseline human being, exactly like the rest of you.” The residents of Angel’s Fall: “…” Forefather, please.

We might be uneducated peasants, but we aren’t literally braindead.

Please stop gaslighting us.

Even the mythic gods recorded in the ancient Baalite scriptures—entities conjured by human imagination—didn’t possess a fraction of the raw, reality-warping power you casually display!

If you can literally resurrect a dead planet and build a Garden of Eden in a matter of days, and you STILL claim you aren’t a god…

then what exactly is the criteria for divinity?!

— Meanwhile, up on the Blade of Vengeance.

First Captain Karlaen meticulously drafted a comprehensive, highly detailed after-action report detailing everything that had transpired on Baal Secundus and formally submitted it to Dante.

However, Dante had been completely swamped with logistical meetings, desperately trying to finalize the ceremonial protocols and security arrangements for the Great Angel’s impending resurrection.

He hadn’t had a spare second to review the dispatch.

When he finally finished the first phase of the planning, he sat back, poured himself a glass of amasec, and opened Karlaen’s report to see exactly what kind of tourist attractions the Forefather had visited.

The moment he finished reading the first paragraph, he completely froze.

What do you mean the Forefather terraformed Baal Secundus into a Garden World?!

Dante re-read the report three times, genuinely convinced he was hallucinating due to stress and sleep deprivation.

He immediately ordered the command deck to open a direct, encrypted vox-link to Karlaen, demanding a visual confirmation.

Faced with his Chapter Master’s frantic, disbelieving interrogation, Karlaen didn’t even bother trying to explain it with words.

He simply walked over to the nearest window, pointed his helmet’s pict-caster outside, and transmitted a live, high-definition feed of the rolling, emerald-green wilderness.

“He actually did it…

The Forefather actually terraformed Baal Secundus?!” “It’s only been a few days!

If we give him another week, he’s going to accidentally terraform the main planet of Baal into a paradise too!” Dante stared at the live feed, his voice trembling with sheer, unadulterated awe.

Once Dante had finally finished processing the shock, Karlaen spoke up.

“That is exactly his intention, Lord Dante.

The Forefather explicitly stated his plan to completely terraform every single celestial body in the Baal System, restoring them to the paradise worlds our ancestors once inhabited.” Dante: “…” Wait…

Forefather, are you actually serious?!

You’re going to terraform the entire system?!

“Chapter Master, there is one more thing.

The Forefather expressed extreme displeasure with our Chapter’s foundational philosophy regarding the mortal populace.” “He stated: ‘Ordinary men will gladly lay down their lives to protect a beautiful home, but they will never truly fight for a world designed to make them suffer.'” “He firmly believes that the brutal, agonizing existence the people of Baal are forced to endure is a direct, catastrophic failure of our leadership.” If anyone else in the entire galaxy had dared to offer that critique, Dante would have instantly drawn his Axe Mortalis and cleaved them in half.

No outsider had the right to dictate the internal philosophy or recruitment doctrines of the Blood Angels.

Even if the High Lords of Terra themselves demanded a change, Dante would tell them to choke on their decrees.

But the critique came directly from the Forefather.

And that meant Dante had to take it absolutely, deadly seriously.

“Karlaen…

the Forefather is right.

His wisdom cuts to the absolute core.

Our ancient tradition of using apocalyptic environments to artificially filter out the weak must be abolished.” “I will immediately issue Chapter-wide decrees to drastically improve the standard of living for the mortal populace.

We will provide them with better infrastructure, superior medical care, and a life worthy of humanity.

We will transform Baal into a true paradise.” “I just pray that when the Great Angel awakens…

he does not fault me for abandoning our most ancient traditions.”