Traveling through time, I'm making pancakes in Warhammer

Chapter 496 Follow-up

"As for why there's only one Terra," the Hierophant hesitated for a moment before speaking to Howard. "Opening other timelines requires a tremendous expenditure of resources. Just opening a minimal channel twice for a short period of time consumed the energy equivalent to ten stars. Timelines can branch infinitely, but the number of branches at the same time is limited."

"When we were about to carry out this plan, only the universe of this timeline was completely destroyed. In other timelines, there are still humans or other things watching Terra. If we want to obtain Terra from these timelines, we must first go to war with those watching Terra. This is not wise."

At this time, the recorded images began to change again. The images zoomed in and out rapidly, and the perspective continued to rise. The Second Terra quickly shrank until it disappeared. Then came the images of the duel between the Emperor and the Chaos Warmaster, no matter whether it had happened or not. When the perspective was raised high enough, the image branches that Howard had seen before, which contained massive amounts of information, all shrank into thin lines. As the perspective continued to rise, all the events and possibilities eventually lost their specific meaning and became a macro "trend".

Finally, Howard saw a dense network, like an overgrown tree or a detailed map of the flow of a river system.

At the end of this "water system map", there is a special point marked. Howard also noticed that only the tributary at this point is the clearest, while the other tributaries become more blurred the farther they are from this point, and the tributaries on the edge are so blurred that they are almost disappearing.

"This is where we are." The Pope said, looking at the point, and then the second point was marked a little further upstream. The location marked by the second point was the fork in the river, and among the many tributaries, one extended a short distance forward and then broke off.

In the entire flow map, this is not the only broken tributary, but they are all too far away from the first mark.

"This is the space-time location of humanity during the civil war," the Hierophant said. "This event completely destroyed the universe in one timeline. Afterwards, there will be no change in that timeline, and nothing will happen. This timeline is meaningless, so it's 'broken,' allowing us to pluck the planets we need from it without getting into trouble."

"I think you've probably noticed that there's more than one interrupted timeline, but this one is the closest to us in absolute spacetime. Even if we exhaust the energy of the entire galaxy, we still wouldn't be able to open a channel to those distant timelines. Therefore, timelines that are too far away are meaningless to us. Therefore, we only picked Terra from one timeline. Perhaps in the future we'll pick a third Terra, but no one knows how long that future will take."

"I understand." Howard nodded slowly, then asked, "But you didn't come to me this time to answer my questions. Let's get down to business. What do you need me to do?"

"The food you cook can temporarily free us from our chains," the Hierophant said bluntly. "We analyzed the samples we brought back and found nothing special. We even manipulated the elementary particles to create a replica, but the replica didn't have the same effect. So, I believe the problem isn't the food, but you."

"But judging by your various behaviors, you yourself are unaware of your own secrets. We hope to deepen our cooperation after this incident. While your food is effective, we must not rely on something with unknown principles. Furthermore, your production volume will definitely not keep up with consumption. However, while this item isn't the final solution, it may be the key to unlocking the room containing it. Entering this room is crucial for us."

Howard: "It seems that I am very important to you, but since you let me know this so bluntly, aren't you worried that I will use this as a threat to make some excessive requests?"

The Pope: "You should know that I am still willing to communicate with you because you are worthy of communication, and more importantly, because I disdain to use tricks. I will agree to reasonable requests, but if you cannot grasp the right measure, we also have the ability to achieve our goals regardless of your wishes."

Howard: "I agree."

"There's another matter," the Emperor continued, "regarding Lady Lia Weide. I can't see through her thoughts. You must ascertain her willingness to cooperate with us. If she lacks sincerity, I grant you the power to remove her from the Helvensin family and will provide the necessary support. However, her successor must be a descendant of her bloodline."

Howard: "Why does it have to be a descendant of Ms. Lia Weide?"

The Emperor: "Because the main fleet of the Helivensen family only recognizes the bloodline of Hildras, it is not appropriate for us to forcibly intervene."

The Mechanicus of the Empire believes that everything from a small screw to a Titan mecha or a spaceship has consciousness inside, and this existence is called a machine soul.

However, the machine soul cannot be simply understood as the soul of a machine, nor can it be understood as the artificial intelligence that controls the machine, because the vast majority of machine souls do not have the ability and intelligence to control the machine itself, and can only provide assistance... or cause trouble.

A Machine Soul is not an artifact spirit with independent consciousness. If we must make an analogy, the existence of a Machine Soul is actually closer to the Lord of the Rings in "The Hobbit".

In The Hobbit, the Ring never spoke a word and never moved on its own, but it changed his fate several times. According to the Warhammer world, when someone other than Morgoth possessed the Ring, the Ring's "machine spirit became unhappy."

Although Machine Souls are closely related to machines, and the Necrons are a completely mechanical race, the Necrons are actually opposed to the concept of Machine Souls.

Because the Necrons are completely materialistic, while the Machine Spirits tend to be idealistic, the Necrons can also forcibly control human machinery, but they use a completely different technical path from the Machine Spirits.

……

Ok……

"I accept." Howard responded.

"Very good." The Pope was very satisfied with Howard's advice, but before she could continue speaking, Howard interrupted her.

Howard: "But before that, I have one last question."

"I thought I had answered all the questions just now." The Pope frowned, clearly unhappy. But after a few seconds, she said, "But this one isn't too bad. Go ahead."

"If your plan succeeds in the end, what will you do?" Howard asked. "Especially, how will you treat humans?"