Chapter 501 - 501: The Man Made of Ass

Surgery in progress.

Surgery complete.

Apothecary Desai pushed the doors open and stepped out of the operating theatre, still a little wobbly on his unfamiliar mechanical legs.

He found somewhere to sit and smoked a cigarette with the look of a man who had given up on life.

Chaplain Reisach happened to pass by, saw the state he was in, and asked, puzzled:

"What's wrong with you?"

Desai blew a smoke ring. Slowly, a look came into his eyes of a man contemplating the great unsolved mysteries of the universe.

"Tell me. In this life, where do we come from, and where are we going?"

Chaplain Reisach stroked his chin. A philosophical question. That was exactly what men of religion were best at.

It was rare for his old friend to show an interest in such things, so he decided to go into it properly.

"I believe what matters in this life is neither where we come from nor where we are going, but the scenery along the way."

Desai raised his head and stared at him with lost, glassy eyes.

"The scenery along the way? You mean operating on one man's butt for more than eighteen hours straight?

"The butt grows back, you cut it off. It grows back, you cut it off. And then you replace every muscle in his body with butt meat?

"What scenery... truly breathtaking..."

Chaplain Reisach was left just as lost. At that moment, Kian's excited whoops rang out from the operating theatre.

"WOO-HOO!! INVINCIBLE!!!"

Kian came flipping out of the operating theatre in an endless string of somersaults like a Contra commando. He landed, then chained a leg sweep into a straight punch into a jab into a front double biceps, a front lat spread, a side chest, a back double biceps, a back lat spread, a side triceps, and finished with a crab pose!

As he ran through the routine, he bellowed:

"In days of old, Zhao Yun was guts from head to toe! Today, I, Kian Voss, am ASS from head to toe!!!"

He was thrilled beyond words, and for one reason only. His three core stats had gone from Strength 74, Endurance 74, Focus 80...

...to Strength 134, Endurance 134, Focus 120!

His Strength and Endurance had nearly doubled, all because he'd replaced every muscle in his body with high-density muscle!

He was terrifyingly strong now. The Man Made of Ass stood there like a small tank. He could go toe-to-toe with an Astartes bare-handed, no armour needed!!

As for his Focus rising to 120, that came from enduring the cogitator arrays' data overflow, and from the training he'd gotten piloting the Titan afterward.

He felt that his psychic ability had also reached its peak. In raw psychic power, he'd probably surpassed Silentium. His spellcraft was still weak, though. He still only knew a handful of ordinary powers.

If you asked Kian to assess his overall strength now, he'd say he had evolved from eating under the table with the dog to squatting out in the yard with his own bowl.

With the Apothecary suitably traumatized, Kian got ready to leave. He planned to head for the main hive, find the Planetary Governor, and collect his reward for saving the world.

He took a shuttle and flew straight to the Planetary Governor's Spire.

When the Planetary Governor heard that the man who had saved his world had arrived, he made time to receive him personally.

The two of them talked over a banquet table. Kian was a straight shooter and asked for his reward outright.

The Governor was a reasonable man, too. Kian really had saved the world. Their Forge World was wealthy and powerful, and because they worked with the Mechanicus and their planet's main task was building warships, they enjoyed a special-grade tax exemption.

The Governor said right away:

"My lord, you saved our world. Whatever you want, just name it!"

The Ork crisis had been weighing on him for twenty years. At the very end, he had been ready to launch every nuke on the planet and take the Orks down with him.

Now, all at once, the threat was gone, and he felt ridiculously light!

When Kian heard that, his eyes lit up.

"Oh damn, big bro, you're way too generous! Well, if you're gonna put it like that, your little bro's just gonna come right out and ask.

"Tell you what, I don't wanna be a burden. Just give me ten Gloriana-class battleships and we're good!"

Cold sweat instantly poured down the Governor's face. Gloriana-class battleships ranged from twenty to thirty kilometres long. They were flying megacities, generally used as the flagships of Primarchs.

Even at the height of its power, the largest warship this planet had ever built was about ten kilometres long. They had neither the capacity nor the experience to build anything over twenty.

On top of that, every one of their shipbuilding docks had been badly damaged. Restoring the ability to build a warship from the keel up would probably take thirty years of rebuilding from scratch.

The Governor wiped the cold sweat from his brow and said awkwardly, "You must be joking, my lord. Gloriana-class ships are the flagships of demigods. How could a planet like ours possibly build one?"

Kian spread his hands.

"Then what now? You can't expect a hero like me to shed sweat, blood, and tears for nothing, can you?

"Do you know how much I sacrificed to save this planet? Is this how you repay me? Refund! Refund! I want to speak to the manager!"

The Governor said hurriedly:

"Don't worry, my lord. We may not have any Gloriana-class ships, but we have other things!

"Your home world, Agri-World 496b, has owed the Imperium its tithes for many years, hasn't it? How about this: our planet will pay your industrial tithe for the next fifty years!"

Kian's eyes lit up. Fifty years of industrial tithe! That instantly cut the Agri-World's tithe burden in half, and it was the hardest tithe to pay, too!

For the first few decades, the Agri-World's tithe had mainly been the agricultural tithe: spray more pesticide and wring every last nutrient out of the soil with crops.

That part was manageable. As long as they didn't tear the land open for mining, the ecosystem could recover.

But once they sent in machines to rip open the ground and strip-mine it, there was no coming back. When mine shafts expanded that far, there was no shrinking them again.

Now the Forge World was volunteering to take over the industrial tithe, which meant the Agri-World's lifeblood would be preserved.

Add the ten years of debt that had already been transferred over on Glory, and Agri-World 496b now had only forty years of debt left.

But Kian felt that still wasn't enough, so he asked for two more things.

The first was a laser weapon production line. He wanted the Forge World to supply the equipment to set up a lasrifle production line on Agri-World 496b.

Lasrifles were an incredibly cost-effective, galaxy-grade hard currency. You could sell them on any world.

The Imperium would never complain about having too many of them, either, and tithes paid in them were far more stable.

Agri-World 496b had almost no industry, which left the planet's tax base far too weak.

The moment anything went wrong, it couldn't make its tithe payments. The planet needed to upgrade its industry.

Making lasrifles produced very little pollution, too. Building a lasrifle supply chain would ease that crushing tithe burden without sacrificing the planet's ecosystem.

According to his earlier conversation with Inquisitor Trasolh, if lasrifles replaced all other forms of tithe, Agri-World 496b would only have to hand over one million lasrifles a year to cover its entire regular tithe.

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