Ten years are precious to anyone.
It is enough for a child running wild to grow into a man who can carry a gun, and for a once beautiful girl to have the marks of time around her eyes.
However, for Maria Linguang, these ten years on the planet Rostov II were the most fulfilling and happiest time of her life.
This was not an indulgence in comfort, but a journey of rebuilding a home from ruins and tempering oneself in steel and vows.
Ten years ago, the purple tide of the Tyranids swallowed the Lin Guang Family's hereditary territory with devastating force.
It was a complete disaster.
Most of the knights, the pride of the family, along with their generational armor and the "Iron Throne" that embodied the will of their ancestors, perished in the insect tide while covering the retreat of their people.
At that time, Maria had just completed her sixteenth year coming-of-age ceremony, and at the ceremony, she received the initial recognition of the Iron Throne, becoming a young knight.
But no one, including herself, would have considered her a qualified knight at that time.
She was just a half-grown child, lacking experience, and her strength was far from mature.
The family suffered a great calamity, with most of the elders dead; only her uncle Manner and her aunt Zofia from a collateral branch remained to support the entire family.
Although her sister Margaret was mature and reliable, she was only a few years older than Maria, and many heavy burdens made Maria feel helpless.
She could only fumble through many things on her own, and that heavy sense of loneliness and responsibility became the initial imprint on her path to growth.
In her midnight dreams, she was often pulled back to that desperate scene: the Acastus-class Orion knight titans that should have belonged to her—the guardian symbol of the family's Adeptus Mechanicus lineage—fighting alone in the boundless purple insect tide.
She clearly "saw" it wielding its massive cannon, each strike erupting in dazzling flashes of fire, tearing through the surging aliens, its joints emitting an ear-piercing wail under extreme load.
However, the swarm was endless, and acidic corrosive fluid poured down like rain on the adamantium armor, raising deadly fumes.
Ultimately, that towering figure was completely submerged and corroded in a desperate resistance, along with her familiar relatives inside the cockpit.
This pain of losing her home, and the deep regret of not being able to fight alongside her relatives and protect her territory, became the deepest motivation and an unhealing scar in her heart.
She knew that her uncle and sister had never forgotten the desire to reclaim their homeland, and neither had she.
The faces of those sacrificed elders, those familiar relatives and playmates, all became the fuel for her desperate learning, training, and self-improvement over these ten years.
"Miss, your tea." A deep, steady mechanical synthetic voice sounded.
Maria withdrew her gaze from her reverie and took the silver teacup handed to her by the family attendant.
She habitually looked out the window at the enormous ecological dome.
Outside the dome were the harsh stellar light and raging sandstorms of Rostov II; beneath the dome, however, was the fruit of her and her family's ten years of struggle: a vibrant scene met her eyes—towering hydroponic farm towers, vast golden crops swaying in simulated breezes, and anti-gravity pipeline networks supported by adamantium frameworks transporting clear water.
Ten years ago, when the family arrived with only four surviving knights and their displaced people, there was only this desolate and silent Gobi desert.
Today, with the continuous strong support of Star District Governor Alex and the unremitting efforts of all family members, it has become the new foundation for the revival of the Lin Guang Family.
The air was mixed with the freshness of damp earth, the fragrance of new leaves, and the faint scent of oil and hot metal drifting from the distant foundry area—the latter scent belonged to her bloodline as the heir to the family's Adeptus Mechanicus lineage.
As the future leader of this branch of the family, Maria's every day followed the strict rhythm of her dual identity.
In the morning, she, dressed in simple yet well-tailored knight training attire, engaged in fierce swordplay and combat sparring with her sister Margaret on the training grounds beside the family castle.
The crisp clang of metal training weapons, the solid footfalls, and the rapid breathing from exertion formed her fixed morning symphony.
In the afternoon, she would change into the robe symbolizing an Adeptus Mechanicus technician and enter the dimly lit, oil-scented family Mechanical Sanctuary.
Amidst the strong scent of sacred oil, ozone, and metal dust, she would bury herself at a complex workbench or climb onto the tall framework of a knight titans, guided by an elderly family relic maintainer, whose body was largely mechanized.
Disassembling and maintaining hydraulic pipelines, precisely calibrating sensor arrays, debugging neural interface synchronization rates…
The feel of these cold tools, the low hum of coils, and the binary data streams flowing before her eyes formed the core of her afternoon world.
She absorbed knowledge ravenously and spent long hours communicating with her Iron Throne, accumulating the practical combat intuition of a knight under the infusion of ancestral experience.
She had followed her aunt or sister onto the battlefield and earned some honors, evidenced by the several Imperial Aquila medals and family bravery badges pinned to her chest.
But in Maria's own view, these were far from enough.
Her growth was not fast enough, not extensive enough.
Her sister Margaret was already a steady, wise, and highly respected knight leader, capable of inheriting the family's senior knight position, but what about herself?
Her uncle, aunt, and sister still seemed to treat her as a child who needed looking after, rather than an adult capable of standing on her own.
She was the youngest in the family, true, but she was already a knight recognized by the Iron Throne!
She yearned to prove herself, to share the family's burden, and this anxiety and yearning, like tiny gears, turned day and night in her heart.
Maria was immersed in the servo system optimization plan displayed on the data pad, with cold logical diagrams intertwined with the warm scent of oil in the Mechanical Sanctuary.
The attendant armor's steady, unmodulated synthetic voice sounded: "Miss Maria, your armor 'Líng Guāng Sentry' self-check procedure is complete, status: excellent. It has been deployed to Training Platform Three as scheduled and is on standby."
She put down the data pad, her fingertips still feeling the slight coolness of the screen.
Leaving the sanctuary, which was permeated with the scent of incense and metal, Maria entered the long corridor connecting to the outdoor training ground.
Sunlight streamed through the tall arched windows, casting bright patches on the polished alloy floor.
At the end of the corridor, the expansive view of the training ground suddenly opened up.
In the center of the field, her mount stood majestically like a silent guardian.
The newly replaced ceramite armor plates reflected a cold, solid sheen in the sunlight.
Maria walked quickly towards the armor's foot, reaching out to lightly brush her fingertips over the cold adamantium surface.
She could feel the subtle raised and recessed textures of the etched prayer runes, and the steady, powerful pulse of the dormant machine spirit transmitted through the armor beneath her palm.
Every touch made her feel at ease and made her yearn even more to pilot it and prove herself.
"Is today's schedule a coordinated tactical drill with Sister Margaret?" She turned her head to ask the attendant armor, her fingertips instinctively resting on an armor seam—where a trace of fresh, clear sacred oil had seeped out, a minor flaw after routine maintenance that needed to be recorded.
"No, Miss." The attendant armor's visual sensors blinked with a steady green light, "But Miss Margaret is waiting for you in your private study. She carries a command scroll from His Excellency the Governor."
Maria's heart skipped a beat instantly.
The Governor's command? Directly for her?
She nodded, trying to maintain her composure, and turned to walk deeper into the castle, her steps a little faster than usual, the sound of her boot heels striking the ground echoing subtly in the corridor.
Passing through the corridor, which was guarded by statues of past family senior knights and hung with ancient battle flags, she pushed open the heavy oak door of her study.
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