"Well, my lord Baron — ready to embrace the Omnissiah? To shed the weakness of flesh and take up sothing permanent?"
Antonius's tone carried the particular quality of a salesman who has identified genuine interest in a prospective custor.
Kian was genuinely interested — that much was true. In a universe built around violence at every scale, personal capability was the only reliable currency. He'd watched enough Warhamr lore play out around him to understand that the really decisive monts — campaigns involving hundreds of billions of soldiers, civilisations burning across star systems — still tended to co down to individuals at the critical juncture.
He also wanted to live. Not just survive the current year, but actually live — for a very long ti.
In the 41st Millennium, the options for extended lifespan were limited and each had significant attached costs.
Becoming an Astartes was theoretically the most powerful route — enhanced organs, three tres of genetically optimised combat capability, docunted cases of individual warriors persisting for ten thousand years. But the selection happened in adolescence. Kian was approaching thirty. That door was closed. And even if it weren't — the Chapter structure was a total institution. In the Astartes life, the calendar consisted of training, prayer, and the occasional campaign that represented sothing close to recreation. No autonomy, no independent operations, no private interests. That wasn't a life Kian was willing to live.
Extensive cybernetic conversion was the second path. Forge Masters, Archmagi, senior Enginseers — so of them were thousands of years old and still functioning. The longevity was real.
But Kian found himself genuinely uncomfortable with where that path led.
The mont you replace one biological component and experience its chanical equivalent's superior performance, the next replacent becos easier to justify. The one after that easier still. Progressive, incrental, each step rational in isolation — until you arrive at Belisarius Cawl, who occupied approximately two storeys of space and retained perhaps two ounces of original biological brain matter. Was that still a person? Was the continuity of self maintained through ten thousand years of gradual replacent, or had the original Cawl ceased to exist decades into the process, replaced by sothing that rely rembered being him?
There was also a practical problem specific to Kian's situation.
He had the Sanctum. Death wasn't permanent for him — the resurrection chanism restored him to a baseline state. Which ant spending billions of Agri-Scrips on augtic enhancents, dying in the field, and waking up with a body full of biological originals and a significant financial loss. He'd experinted with what the Sanctum's restoration preserved. The principle appeared to be: things that had beco genuinely part of his essential self persisted. Things that hadn't, didn't.
The Pious Crusader brand had co back. He'd tested it — it was his in a way that went beyond the physical inscription. The ring Lady Nightingale had given him, bound with her house's intention, had fused to sothing essential and persisted.
Could he genuinely believe that a titanium-reinforced femur or a chanical kidney was part of his essential self? He doubted it.
He put the question to Antonius directly.
"If I replace everything biological in my body — every organ, eventually most of the brain — am I still the sa person at the end of that process?"
Antonius scanned his face with the optical units, processed the anxiety beneath the question, and gave what was, for an Enginseer, a thoughtful response.
The chanicus had a thodology for this, developed across millennia of converting biological humans into sothing else.
They didn't do it all at once.
Year one: an external optical implant, connected to the brain via neural link. The patient lives with it, adapts, begins to think of it as part of themselves.
Year two: the biological eye is removed and the optical augtic moved to an internal installation.
Decade three: the lungs have degraded from industrial atmospheric exposure. Replace them with chanical equivalents. The patient has already accepted one augtic as self — the second follows more easily.
Decade seven: the hands are inefficient. Remove them. Install chanical arms.
Over centuries, the conversion progresses. When Belisarius Cawl began modifying his brain, he didn't hollow it out at once — he excised ten percent, installed a chanical processing unit in the gap, and spent years thinking with both simultaneously. Brain and machine, neither clearly primary. Then another incrent. Then another. Over perhaps thousands of years, the balance shifted until the machine was nearly everything and the biological remainder was a seed maintaining continuity of identity.
The self persisted not because nothing changed, but because everything changed slowly enough that the thread of identity was never severed — it simply extended through each modification, carrying the accumulated experience of all the previous versions forward.
Antonius concluded his explanation and then said sothing that caught Kian's attention:
"I have a specific procedure you may find more suitable. It doesn't involve removing your biological components and replacing them with chanical ones. It works with your existing flesh."
Kian looked at him.
"I open the skin, extract the bones, and inject a specialised tal alloy directly into the bone structure — increasing density throughout. The bones are then reinserted.
When the full skeleton has been treated, your physical strength will increase by several multiples. The bones beco substantially harder to break, and the muscles anchored to them can express significantly more force."
[End of Chapter 223]
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