Warhammer: Start with a dog

Wandering Port's shuttle dock area

Another busy day has begun

Customs officers with tired faces, patrol officers from the Ministry of Law, merchants of all sizes, and captains are crowded together. More pilgrims with pious and dusty looks are mixed here into a pot of colorful and noisy "porridge", and the shuttles of various colors and models flying in, circling or flying out around the edge are like birds on the edge of the crowd.

A Stormbird, which is strikingly painted in the rust red and ice cap blue colors of the Bellacan Forge World and has huge gears, skulls and tower logos, cannot break into this dock in a low-key manner. In front of it and beside it, a large group of panicked small antique shuttles or new commercial shuttles are dispersed from the dock like a group of frightened seagulls.

As this expensive and proud vehicle docked under perfect mechanical driving, a group of visitors came out. Their strange and huge horror and aura of keeping strangers away forced the bustling crowd here to make way for them, fearing that if they walked a step slower, their heads would be chopped off on the spot and made into servo skulls.

"ERRRRRR——"

[What are you doing? ! Why are you making such a strange sound in this occasion? ! ]

[Ah, what's wrong, Pepe, I just feel a lot of pressure, my brain is itchy, and I can't stretch comfortably. I stretched my waist in the cockpit and made this sound unconsciously. ]

[... Don't do this next time, after all, we didn't come here alone, and this is not a deserted place - you don't have shame, but I have it! My face is much more valuable than yours! Please be aware of this, okay? ! ]

[Oh, okay, then can I make this sound here? ]

[...]

[...No? ]

[…No, just post it here. If you have any strange ideas, you can tell me here. ——Especially! Don’t! Tell! Magna strange stories without permission!!]

[ERRRRRR——Okay, now both sides feel much better. Hey! Those are just some stories I read in ancient Terra anyway, what’s the big deal? Or——]

The speaker suddenly put his external mechanical face with a red hood of the Ohm Messiah robe, a long curved neck and multiple emerald-like electronic eyes in front of Perturabo, who was disguised as a Fortress-class mecha of the Mechanicum, beside him, [——Will there be any serious consequences if I tell him a story?]

[…No, it won’t.] The dog answered calmly behind his smooth armor mask sensor, [But inappropriate language content and story content are also extremely detrimental to the spiritual growth and cognitive habits of children, even if the child has the height of an adult. Let me remind you that Magna has only been socialized for less than a year. 】

【Okay. 】Mr. Ramizane Kalosini, who was disguised as a technical sage sent by the forge world of Bella Karn, also shrugged in his cockpit. 【It's really strange to hear such words coming from your mouth. I think if your offspring or other crew members heard it, the devastating effect would be much greater than the happy and relaxing sound I just made. Perturabo! Care about children's spiritual growth and cognitive education! 】

【Magna is the personality code that I wrote with great effort for eight... eight months to carefully select. Do you know that for an existence like me who can calculate trillions of numbers in a millisecond, it took eight months to complete a personality code task, and then I personally taught and gave him the first pronunciation, the first word and the first name in this universe. This is different from my...】

The border collie seemed to choke suddenly because he found out what terrible conclusions would be derived from his inference.

【It's normal to treat Magna as your own child, and it's normal to treat precious works or items that you have put your heart and soul into as your own children. Don't be embarrassed. Pepe, you have raised hundreds of thousands of children and you still mind this. You are so cute! But in this case, at least we only need to enjoy the pleasant process of knowledge inculcation and education with a child who can take care of himself and has strong learning ability, without having to bear the terrible one or two years of getting up at night, making milk powder, changing diapers, or the high blood pressure and anger that lasted for three hours and still couldn't explain a question clearly... Hey, it seems that Magna is a perfect child! Great, for this, when we find Lucius and return to the ship, I will reward him with something I just made--】

【Before you reward him anything, you'd better show it to me first. 】The Shepherd said sarcastically,【The "Super Power! Super Power!" mini gyro engine you rewarded him last time was finally proved to be able to be modified by him to play hoverboard above the corridor of the entire Iron Blood, causing the black fanatics and yellow stones who witnessed this incident to have a collective crisis of faith again-the Lord of the Armory has complained to me about the surge in applications submitted in the past few days, wanting to modify his power armor and even Terminator and Centurion into a rear-mounted flying engine form. 】

【Uh-you don't want to tell me that the Armory can even modify this powerful brick-flying modification-】

【The Armory can be so crazy, but the Armory refuses to be so crazy. 】

[Well, if that's the case, why not just have the armory send a tech priest or a tech sage disguised as Carrick? It's more appropriate than us wandering around here, right? Although the reason for entering with this identity is indeed impeccable. ]

[...Of course, that's because there is only one tech sage in the armory, and he needs to maintain the normal operation of the entire armory, so he has no time to come with a clone. ]

[What? Wait? You said there has always been only one tech priest in our armory? But that's not...]

[At least there has always been only one since you saw it. The Grand Sage of Domination, the Master of Alchemy, the Sage of Biology, the Logic Mystic Meditator, the Forge Master and the Data Craftsman are all him. ]

[So those we see are...? ]

[They are all subordinate mechas who serve him alone or his self-sustaining flesh and blood clones - he inserted biological cores into some cloned and modified flesh... Well, no, in your understanding, he inserted his own clone wetware and some backup logic data to deal with and handle some unimportant daily tedious affairs. 】

【…For some reason, this statement sounds a little familiar. 】

【Perhaps the Om Messiah believers like to do this. 】

The Astartes-shaped mecha sent by Magna to "protect them" and claimed to have been made by him and the armory followed them silently without saying a word.

Only in the eyes of many of the most devout pilgrims of the state religion.

This silent warrior was faintly emitting a sacred light.