The declaration hung in the air of the secret chamber, a statement of such profound, casual impossibility that it stunned even the Primarch. Rimuru had not just agreed to the task; he had declared the very tools of the Imperium insufficient for the job.
"Materials we don't have?" Guilliman repeated, his mind racing through the endless catalogues of alloys and isotopes known to the Imperium. "We have access to the rarest of metals from a million worlds. What could you possibly require that we cannot provide?"
"It's not about rarity," Rimuru explained, tapping the glowing schematic of the Golden Throne. "It's about perfection. The original components were made with a level of precision that you no longer possess. Forged adamantium, no matter how pure, is a chaotic mess on a molecular level. It's full of micro-fractures and stress points. We need a perfect, single-crystal lattice. Not forged, but grown."
He pointed to another system. "And here. The psychic conduits. They 'bleed' energy into the Warp, requiring immense shielding and risking daemonic corruption. We need a perfectly stable, psycho-conductive medium with zero empyrean resonance."
Before Guilliman could process this, the great adamantium doors to the workshop hissed open. A new delegation had arrived, so swift was the Primarch's summons. At its head was Archmagos Valerius of Ryza, his red robes seeming to blaze with a new, zealous light. But the being beside him commanded the room's attention.
It was the Fabricator-General of Mars, Kelbor-Hal's successor, a colossal being of brass, electrum, and ancient machinery. He was less a man and more a walking, sentient archive of technological dogma, his face a small, withered patch of flesh amidst a halo of whirring lenses and data-probes. He was the Pope of the Machine Cult, and his presence radiated an aura of immense, skeptical authority.
"Lord Guilliman," the Fabricator-General's synthesized voice was a chorus of perfectly modulated static and binary cant. [Greetings.] "You have summoned us from the Holy Red Planet on a matter of unprecedented urgency. You speak of... new science." The way he said it was both a sacred prayer and a dire accusation.
Varrus and Celestine, who had been granted clearance to observe, stood silently in the corner, a testament to the gravity of the meeting.
Guilliman did not waste time. "Fabricator-General. We have a task of the highest, most inviolate priority. A repair. The entity before you, Rimuru Tempest, is the appointed architect."
The Fabricator-General's lenses all swiveled to focus on Rimuru. [Analysis: Biological anomaly. Xenos. Unsanctioned.] His logic engines were processing a thousand reasons why this was heresy.
"It is also a being," Rimuru interjected calmly, "that can do this."
He decided a demonstration was more efficient than a debate. "Archmagos Valerius," he said, turning to his Ryzan admirer. "Please provide me with a standard adamantium ingot and a supply of raw, unrefined silicate dust."
Valerius, acting with the speed of a true believer, had a servitor present the materials on a floating servo-platter. In front of the assembled might of the Imperium, Rimuru simply held out his hands.
The dull grey ingot and the pile of dust lifted into the air. They did not heat up. They did not spark. They simply began to glow with a soft, internal light. The ingot lost its shape, melting into a liquid ribbon of silver that hung in the air. The dust dissolved into a shimmering cloud of individual atoms.
Guided by Ciel's perfect, silent calculations, Rimuru began to weave. He used his Creator skill, not as a king, but as a master artisan. He took the chaotic, raw matter and began to reassemble it at a subatomic level, building a new structure, atom by atom. The Fabricator-General's lenses whirred, his sensor arrays trying and failing to comprehend the process. It was not a ritual. It was not an appeal to a Machine Spirit. It was a pure, direct, and absolute act of creation. It was the very act fabled of the Omnissiah itself.
The ribbon of liquid metal and the cloud of atoms flowed together, weaving into an impossibly complex shape. It was a conduit, about a meter long, that seemed to be made of both metal and crystal at the same time. It shimmered with a faint, inner light, and it hummed with a clean, stable energy that had no hint of the Warp's foul taint.
The finished object floated gently into Rimuru's hands.
He held it out. "A perfect, crystalline adamantium-silicate conduit. Stable. Efficient. And with zero empyrean resonance."
The Fabricator-General was silent. His logic engines, which contained the sum of ten thousand years of technological dogma, had crashed. He had just witnessed the creation of a 'holy component' from base materials through will alone. It was the ultimate tech-heresy. And it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Archmagos Valerius, on the other hand, fell to his knees, his metallic limbs clanging on the deck. [THE OMNISSIAH IS MADE MANIFEST! THE SACRED TEXTS ARE TRUTH! THE QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE IS FULFILLED!] he broadcasted in a wave of ecstatic binary.
The Fabricator-General slowly raised a mechadendrite, its tip a microscopic scanner, and analyzed the conduit in Rimuru's hand. The data that flowed back into his mind was a revelation. It was perfect. Structurally flawless. An object of impossible, divine craftsmanship.
The great being of Mars, the master of all Imperial technology, slowly turned his optical lenses from the conduit to Rimuru. The skepticism was gone, replaced by the same terrifying, avaricious awe that had once consumed Valerius. He had found his god, and it was a xenos slime.
"Lord Guilliman," the Fabricator-General stated, his voice now stripped of all dogma, leaving only the pure, burning desire for knowledge. "The resources of Mars. Our forges. Our data-vaults. The forbidden archives of Moravec themselves. They are all at your... at his... disposal."
The final piece of the alliance had fallen into place. The greatest powers of the Imperium—the Regent, the Guardian, the Machine, the Faith, and the Hand—were now all, for their own conflicting reasons, united behind this single, impossible project.
Guilliman looked at the assembled leaders, then at the perfect, shimmering component in Rimuru's hand. He felt a flicker of hope so fierce it was painful.
"Can it be done?" the Primarch asked, his voice barely a whisper. "Can you truly save him?"
Rimuru looked at the impossibly complex schematic of the Golden Throne, then at the small, perfect piece of a new future he held in his hand.
"The principles are sound," he said with a calm, reassuring confidence. "It will be difficult. It will be dangerous. But yes. It can be done."