Starting from the Planetary Governor - Chapter 905

Chapter 898, Space Marine Legion

the Saints Chapter, as a founding chapter, was finally taken over by Gu Hang.

After the Great Purge, they had already appeared on the list.

And as Gu Hang had expected, the benefits of a founding chapter were far greater than those of a typical chapter.

A branch page immediately opened: Legion!

The first point was reflected in the number of gene-seed quotas.

Fifty thousand!

Gu Hang was stunned by the number.

No wonder it was called a Legion.

If all fifty thousand Space Marines were recruited, wouldn’t that be a Space Marine Legion from the era of the Imperial Crusade, before the implementation of the Space Marine Codex?

However, a closer look revealed a slight restriction.

This fifty thousand was limited to all Saints bloodlines.

This meant that after acquiring the founding chapter of the Saints, the acquisition of other successor chapters was of little significance.

To date, the Alliance has one hundred chapters under its command. Of these, the Saints have the second-largest number of successor chapters, second only to the Infinite Chapter, with eighteen.

Decades ago, when the Saints Chapter decided to shoulder the responsibility of defending the Seven Star Corridor, they didn’t fight alone; they issued a call to arms. Ten Saints’ daughter chapters, heeding the call, arrived in Mersiphat. Add to that the four Saints’ daughter chapters already within the Mersiphat star system. Including the Saints themselves, there were fifteen chapters there.

Now, with all of them “submitted” to Gu Hang, and adding to the eighteen Saints’ daughter chapters already subjugated, the number of Saints’ chapters has suddenly reached thirty-three, making it the largest in the Alliance.

However, all this is meaningless. No matter how many more there are, the total number of Saint-blooded Space Marines will remain constant at fifty thousand.

Fifty thousand doesn’t actually reach the size of the Saints during the founding expedition. Back then, their total strength should have reached over 200,000.

This made Gu Hang a little dissatisfied.

Why not just give me 200,000? That’s how many Space Marines there were at the peak of the Legion!

But on second thought, that’s because they already have a large population. Some regiments have pitifully small populations.

A fixed quota of 50,000 wouldn’t be unacceptable. Later, when we try to recruit regiments like the Blood Angels or the Phoenix, whose individuals are exceptional but their numbers are relatively rare, that’s a good thing; it can make up for the shortfall.

Besides, the current quota of 50,000 is already quite strong.

The Saints alone could bring the total to 50,000, and when you add in the other 88 regiments, Gu Hang could fully staff 138,000 Space Marines!

That would be a full-fledged Space Marine Legion during the Great Crusade!

Furthermore, beyond the 50,000 quota, there’s another benefit to taking on a Start-up Regiment: after reaching full strength, every time a new warrior is bred using ‘Inherited Gene-Seed’, that warrior counts towards the total seed quota!

This means that the 50,000 quota isn’t a limit, but rather something that will grow!

Each Space Marine will ‘give birth’ to two gene-seeds in their lifetime.

The first, five years after becoming a Space Marine, is called a “New Seed.” The one they carry with them, removed upon death, is called a “Legacy Seed.”

The second gene-seed is likely the one implanted in their bodies that year, sustaining them in battle. It even carries fragments of the Space Marine’s long life—primarily focusing on learning, knowledge, training, skills, command, and so on.

Generally speaking, using this Legacy Seed, new recruits inherit much of the gene-seed, becoming more talented and more easily able to learn the techniques and content contained within, even without a teacher.

There are distinctions between the two types of seeds.

Successfully training a new recruit with a Legacy Seed will earn one additional berth?

So, in other words, once the Saints reach their full strength of 50,000, for every veteran who dies in battle with more than five years of service, if their gene-seed is successfully recovered and used to train a new warrior, one berth will be added to the 50,000 berth.

That’s a bit harsh.

Five years, plus the chance of dying in battle and successfully recovering the seeds… the cumulative ratio is probably around 30-40%. And this ratio is calculated as the ratio of those who meet the requirements to the total number of those killed in battle. While Space Marines are often jokingly called “big-headed soldiers” in some apocalyptic wars, how many such apocalyptic battles actually occur? In ordinary wars, their casualty rate is very low.

Moreover, even in an apocalyptic war, the loss of a few hundred or even a thousand Space Marines is a major event.

Furthermore, Space Marines have long lifespans and are quite resilient…

This condition is still difficult to achieve, and the growth rate will be slow.

But it doesn’t matter; it’s good news.

Under the new Legion system, Gu Hang will be able to consistently have 50,000 Saints fighting for him, a number that can be quickly replenished after casualties. Furthermore, this number is sustainable, and the longer the time goes on, the more it will grow to a significant number in the future.

Furthermore, if there truly were 50,000 Saints, Gu Hang could quickly exchange all his gene-seed to fill the gap. Their natural growth would bring the total number of Saints to around 70,000 in five years—new warriors would produce new seeds after five years.

This would push the total number of Saints over the 50,000 limit, preventing Gu Hang from replacing new seeds until the Saint warriors were depleted below the 50,000 limit.

But what did it matter? By then, 70,000 warriors would be more than enough. Furthermore, new ones could be upgraded to newer ones.

With this scale, the speed at which the Space Marines would expand would actually be quite significant.

Of course, this required proper operation.

What systems did the Space Marines of the Legion era have to rely on? Didn’t they slowly manage and develop, eventually reaching 200,000, even reaching the Infinite Legion’s peak of 350,000?

Some Legions, after fighting for a while, saw their numbers shrink, and Gu Hang believed it was primarily due to problems within those Legions themselves.

Either their commander, the Son of God, did not value his life too much and was focused on the great expedition and making meritorious deeds. He rushed forward and fought fiercely, resulting in heavy casualties and difficulty in replenishing the wounded;

or the legion’s gene seed adaptability was not high enough, which was directly reflected in the greatly reduced success rate of the gene seed implantation surgery;

or the legion only knew how to fight and was not very good at development.

Oh, or maybe even two or all three.

The Bat Legion possesses all three; the Blood Angels possess the latter two; the Angels of Death possess the former two… Either way, they all have some issues.

The Infinite Legion and the Saints Legion, with their vast populations, possess none of these. Their gene-seeds are highly compatible, and the Son of God isn’t obsessed with leading his legions into bloody battles daily. They also manage operations and development. The Infinite Legion has managed its Five Hundred Worlds with great success, and it remains one of the wealthiest places in the empire. While the Saints aren’t as adept at politics and economics, they do have their own unique expertise in religious development and management, which was enough to support their massive legionary presence back in the day.

They can all manage it. With Gu Hang’s solid foundation and the backing of an entire alliance, what’s so impossible?

With this in mind, the gene-seed redemption quota provided by the system acts more like a guaranteed minimum.

If, by any chance, the legion were to suffer a devastating blow, Gu Hang could spend grace points to quickly build up his forces, even with a low number of troops, and finally reach a minimum level.

A comeback would be a snap.

But as long as you don’t overdo it and continue operations normally, the guaranteed minimum will rise; at the same time, the upper limit of normal operations will also be very high.

…

After reaching an agreement with Gu Hang, Raymond Weiss even accepted the new blood of the future Saints from the Alliance’s Space Marine Training Center.

Of course, they also made a request: the Alliance must still respect the traditions of the Chapter.

This, Gu Hang agreed without hesitation.

According to the regulations of the Space Marine Management Association, the Chapter itself has the right to set the requirements for new recruits at the New Blood Training Center according to its needs.

These requirements generally have little to do with strength. After all, the new blood produced by the training center is of excellent quality,

mainly in terms of culture and background. They might make demands, such as requiring new recruits to originate from their home planet, being familiar with the Chapter’s culture and history, being from farming/hunting families, descendants of nobility, military ancestors, or orphans…

Even more extreme, not only must the new recruits originate from their home planet, but the training center must also open a branch on their home planet, and the entire training process for the new recruits must take place on their home planet.

Of course, the Administration isn’t unconditional in its concessions; it all depends on the negotiation process.

But generally speaking, allowing Chapters to “customize” their recruits would be a significant aid to the Alliance in recovering Chapters encountered during the Dark Side Crusade.

Once recovered, Gu Hang would immediately have two thousand gene-seed quotas. Putting aside the fact that the recovered Chapters already occupy one thousand quotas, Gu Hang’s additional one thousand gene-seed quotas would be equivalent to an additional Chapter.

This newly created Chapter wouldn’t have any special features or requirements.

Furthermore, even if the recovered Chapters had more special features, so what?

While it’s true that a Chapter can make demands on the New Blood Training Center, there’s one uncompromising condition: the training center must have a companion Loyalty Academy, and all new Space Marines must undergo training there.

Essentially, this is Gu Hang spending grace points to train these Space Marines into Commissars, ensuring their loyalty.

Over time, once the proportion of new Bloods trained at the Loyalty Academy in the recovered Chapters reaches a certain level, it’s clear what the Chapter’s overall situation will be like, and whether they’ll betray. The same is true

for the Saints.

As expected, Raymond Weiss put forward numerous conditions for the Alliance to train new Bloods for them, and

Gu Hang fully agreed to them. A new Space Marine training center was established on the planet of True Word.

All training would be conducted entirely on True Word, openly and transparently, and the Alliance would be happy to hire veterans of the Saints Chapter as instructors.

Most of the new Bloods born from this training center were selected from the families of believers on True Word, and most of them would be incorporated into the Saints Chapter.

Another portion, also recruited from other parts of the Mersiphat Sector, were added to the Saints’ successor chapters.

Of course, none of them were fully staffed. They

were already understaffed when they arrived, not to mention the decades of brutal warfare they had endured.

Despite the constant recruitment and replenishment of the various chapters over the decades of fighting, the replenishment rate couldn’t keep up with the attrition rate.

This was why, in the later stages of the Seven Star Corridor Defense War, Raymond Weiss couldn’t hold out.

If they didn’t hold back, everyone would be decimated.

But it didn’t matter.

Once the Space Marine Training Center on the True Word Star was established, all of these chapters would be rapidly staffed.

Gu Hang would show these Saints the speed of the Alliance.

They would undoubtedly be shocked and skeptical.

This defied their centuries-old common sense.

But it didn’t matter.

Over time, the rapid replenishment rate and high-quality recruits became like an addictive drug. Even if they suspected it might have hidden dangers, they couldn’t resist the allure of its immense potential.

Moreover, as time goes by, they will find that there are really no hidden dangers or disadvantages in this matter – as long as they have no second thoughts and do not betray each other.

(End of this chapter)