When her father and mother didn't return that day, Ephrenia didn't cry; she simply accepted everything naturally. On Lycaeus, such things were commonplace; death was even considered a release. She too would die, dying as worthless as the other miners. But it didn't matter; everyone was like that.
Ephrenia silently watched the direction from which her parents should have returned, then turned her head and stared intently at the impossibly tall Spire. Her father had told her that the masters of this world resided there, and the lives and deaths of the miners depended on their whim. With a single command, their heavily armed lackeys would seize the ore that the miners had extracted at immense, painful cost. And in return, they would receive only a meager amount of pitiful food and supplies.
At that moment, Ephrenia developed an intense hatred for the place called the Spire, yet the Spire stood silently there, like an incredibly arrogant deity, looking down upon everything on the mining world. But the miners had all experienced this process; soon, their hatred and fury were crushed by the cruel pressure of survival, and hungry stomachs could devour all other emotions. On Lycaeus, miners didn't even have the right to hate or be angry.
Until one day, an older brother took over the burden of the camp, beginning to lead the entire camp to operate in a different way. The previously scarce food began to slowly increase, even having a slight surplus, and the camp's scale continuously developed and grew, with everything moving in a good direction. Later, she met that pale-skinned boy and recognized him as her younger brother; from then on, the entire camp's development seemed to enter an unprecedented golden age. Until it became the strongest camp in the entire East District.
Ephrenia slowly closed the book on logistics management in her hands and once again began to meticulously inventory the camp's supplies. No matter how many times she did it, she never felt the slightest impatience. The whereabouts of every single grain of food here should be recorded clearly. Only those who have experienced the hunger of having their stomach almost corroded by acid can truly appreciate the preciousness of food. Ephrenia absolutely would not allow any mistakes due to her carelessness, even if Swain would not scold her.
"Ephrenia, are you inventorying supplies again?" Swain picked up the notebook specifically for recording camp supplies with some confusion, then frowned. "Actually, you don't need to inventory so frequently; once a month I even think is too much," Swain said, looking at the records in the notebook which showed an inventory almost every two or three days.
"Swain, this job is already much easier compared to our brothers and sisters in the mines; I must ensure that there are no mistakes with the supplies, and this also concerns your and Corax's plans," Ephrenia said very seriously. Although Corax only returned once in a long while, most of the time he would chat with his sister, telling her about the situations of different camps, what he had learned, and so on.
Certain Primarchs shed tears of envy...
"Alright, I also need to understand the current situation of the camp's material reserves; you can give me an overview," Swain said directly. He vaguely remembered that Ephrenia would later be the captain of the Shadow, Corax's flagship, a Gloriana-class battleship, and seemed to also manage the Dark Raven Guard Legion's logistics. Corax's ability to expand the Dark Raven Guard from scratch to 80,000 people in just 60 years had Ephrenia's contribution. Do more, it's fine; just consider it early practice.
"Okay, Swain, let me introduce you to the current material situation of the camp."
"In the most extreme circumstances, our food reserves are enough to sustain us for one month; medicine stock is relatively scarce, not enough to support us in a protracted war. The weapons forged by the armory can only arm 800 people, and these are all only melee weapons, not chain-saw weapons or power weapons. We only have 100 lasguns and 150 shock whips; these were all brought back by Corax from the criminals in the west or from the Spire; some models in the west are already very old, all supervisor weapons that were plundered from some unknown era there, and then there are enough chain-saw weapons or power weapons to equip about 50 people, nothing else," Ephrenia reported these details as if reciting from memory.
"Eight hundred, eight hundred it is, eight hundred people will strike first!!!" This profound adage inexplicably echoed in Swain's mind.
"You've done very well, thank you for your hard work, Ephrenia." Swain, having understood the detailed situation and gained a general idea, praised Ephrenia well before leaving.
"At this moment, I truly miss Trazyn; how great it would be to borrow a few hypercube mazes from him. With these things, would I still need to painstakingly count on my fingers how long we can last?" Swain at this moment envied the Necrons' abnormally advanced technology.
The hypercube maze is a magical item created by the Necrons, comparable to a storage bag in the Warhammer universe.
The predecessors of the Necrons were a race called Necrontyr; because the star above their homeworld constantly emitted strong radiation, the lifespan of this race was very short, and this radiation formed a strong curse, inscribed in the genes of the necrontyr race. Even though necrontyr had developed technology capable of traversing the galaxy and had moved far away from their homeworld, they still could not escape the misfortune of a lifespan of only a few decades, until they encountered the immortal race known as the Old Ones.
Under intense jealousy, war broke out! Thus, a scene of a world boxing champion beating up kindergarten children occurred. The Old Ones, along with their various subordinates, swept through necrontyr territories with overwhelming force, driving them back to their homeland.
However, the Old Ones were kind-hearted and spared necrontyr's lives. But in the Warhammer universe, being kind-hearted is not a good thing.
After their defeat, necrontyr began to research how to utilize stellar energy and inadvertently discovered the C'tan, who were sucking energy from the star in their home system. The necrontyr used living metal to create a giant body, attracting this energy cloud to attach to this metal shell, from which the first C'tan with a physical body was born—the Nightbringer.
The C'tan originated from plasma within stars or energy fields in the cosmos; initially without consciousness, they were the embodiment of physical rules in the material universe, gods in the real universe, capable of manipulating various energies, and possessing technological levels far beyond those of necrontyr. Thus, the two major factions, led by the C'tan and the Old Ones, began an evenly matched struggle across the galaxy with their respective subordinates. The galactic cataclysm known as the War in Heaven began.
The specific process has long been lost countless eons ago; the final result ended in the complete defeat of the Old Ones, who were annihilated, and the C'tan were backstabbed by the Necrons and imprisoned as power banks. The Necron race ended up sleeping in tombs across the galaxy.
As various major powers exited the stage, the Old Ones' direct descendants, the Aeldari, simply reaped the fruits of victory, becoming the dominant power in the galaxy and ruling it for 60 million years. However, the severe damage caused to the galaxy by the War in Heaven was only just beginning to manifest; in the countless eons to come, the galaxy's power capacity continuously decreased, and intelligent races began to be constantly entangled by the Warp.
The degradation of the galaxy had begun.