I summoned the Fourth Scourge in Warhammer

Chapter 175 The Trans-Cosmic Ecosystem
In a deep archive within the Imperial Ministry of the Interior in Terra, the light was dim, and the air was thick with the musty smell of ancient parchment, the sharp odor of ozone, and an overwhelming sense of despair. Countless clerks in grey uniforms, like soulless servo skulls, were sorting through a mountain of paper documents before them in a way they themselves didn't understand.

They work twenty standard Terra hours a day. It's conservatively estimated that their great-great-great-grandfather... was already sitting somewhere in this endless sea of ​​documents, doing the same work. They couldn't see the end in the past, they can't see the end now, and they will never see the end in the future.

One of the clerks, number 734, was mechanically reciting the contents of the document in his hand before feeding it into different pneumatic pipe inlets.

"Agricultural output statistics for the Garden World during M31 to M32, when the glory of the Lord of Man returned... Hmm, archived as 'irrelevant'." He rolled up the file and stuffed it into a pipe marked 'permanently sealed'.

"A cryptic message from the Akars system, Eldar pirate attack, requesting reinforcements from the Astral Army... Let me check, is this all the tithes we pay each year? Rejected, filed as 'Pending - Indefinite'." He stamped a rejection and tossed it into another pipe.

“The next one… Oh? The insignia of the Inquisition?” He perked up slightly, picking up the parchment sealed with sealing wax. “The Starclaw Chapter Master, Lugert Huron, has failed to pay his taxes to the Empire for over 150 standard years… Good heavens, so many bad debts? Urgent, urgent, must be reported…”

His hand instinctively reached for the red stamp representing "highest priority," but froze halfway through. His brain, as if its logical engine had been frozen, finally processed the information he had just read after a few seconds of delay.

"Wait a minute...who is it?"

He quickly withdrew his hand, placed the parchment back in front of him, and carefully read it again, letter by letter, with his bloodshot eyes from long hours of reading.

It was confirmed to be the report he had been waiting for.

He felt a tremendous weight lift from his shoulders; the tension that had gripped him for countless years finally snapped. He slumped onto the table and burst into tears, his voice hoarse and distorted: "Damn it, I've finally waited for you! Brother! Do you know how long I've been working in this godforsaken place waiting for your report?! I finally... I can finally get my shift over early—"

As he wailed, he tossed a lighter he had been keeping ready. He ignited the mountain of paper documents before him, watching the flames devour the parchment that recorded countless world events, burning it all to ashes. He stared intently at the report describing Ruget Huron's tax evasion until he was certain it was completely gone in the fire, then a relieved smile spread across his face.

Then, he pulled out an old automatic pistol, pointed it at his temple, and pulled the trigger.

A single gunshot rang out, but it seemed insignificant amidst the perpetual rustling of papers in the archives.

From beginning to end, whether it was his sudden outburst of sobbing, his setting fire to the imperial archives in front of him, or even his final suicide, not a single clerk glanced at his seat. Everyone remained numbly and busily processing the documents before them, even though they didn't know what the point was. They were like cogs in this vast bureaucratic machine; the breaking of one cog wouldn't affect the operation of the entire machine in the slightest.

Soon, the designated personnel arrived. Dressed in heavy fireproof suits, they expressionlessly extinguished the flames, bagged the charred bodies and dragged them away, then skillfully placed a brand-new table and a brand-new chair on the table, and brought in more and higher stacks of pending documents from the nearby transport plane, piling them next to the new table.

A new clerk was brought here. He sat in the spot where the smell of blood and burnt food still lingered, silently picked up the top document, and began the exact same work as everyone else.

The great, never-ending imperial bureaucratic machine never paused for even a second. And there are hundreds of millions of people like that clerk on another planet in another universe.

Thanks to the explosive development of technology (the reasons are well-known), the productivity of Earth in another universe has surged dramatically. Space exploration is progressing rapidly, and human space bases are now widely present on various planets in the solar system and even in the asteroid belt. It is foreseeable that in the coming decades, the entire solar system will be transformed into the core territory of human civilization.

But problems also arose.

The sudden advancements in technology, like a relentless wave, have left large numbers of people stranded in their familiar jobs. Structural unemployment has become a major headache for every government. While the booming productive forces could easily support this surplus population, no responsible government would choose to unconditionally provide money to foster laziness—that would only fuel greater social unrest.

Space colonization certainly requires a massive population, but bottlenecks remain. Governments worldwide are not yet prepared to build spaceships capable of carrying large numbers of untrained civilians; and space bases on various planets are far from being self-sufficient and able to support a large influx of new people. Relevant technological data exists, but each aspect requires extremely careful and time-consuming verification.

This is similar to how major powers around the world have now basically mastered the detailed manufacturing methods for subspace engines, but none of them dare to actually start manufacturing them, not even daring to consider attempting to cast a single, most basic component. Even simply reviewing relevant data requires incredibly complex safety protocols and mental state verification.

Against this backdrop, engaging in clerical work within this game—collecting, expediting, or intercepting reports—has become incredibly popular with everyone, at an unprecedented pace.

The unemployed person found a job. Although the job was particularly mentally demanding and grueling, the salary was quite good, and it was considered a respectable job in society.

The government finally found a perfect reason to pay its people, and also to gather invaluable intelligence from the "players'" work videos—intelligence from that distant and dark universe. To this end, governments jointly established a special bonus system to encourage players to uncover even more valuable information.

Thus, a marvelous cross-universe ecosystem was formed.

Within the vast bureaucratic system of the human empire, there are always some lucky or unlucky individuals whose reports, good or bad, happen to be discovered by a "clerk" from Earth. These clerks, seeking real-world bonuses, will choose to expedite the reports based on their potential value, or... simply burn them. Once the bonus is in hand, they can take a break in the real world, temporarily escaping this purely torturous work.

For example, our Starclaw Chapter Commander, Mr. Lugert Huron.

His report on 150 years of tax evasion was very fortunate to be taken over by a player who was eager to "clock out," and then it was cleanly and neatly turned to ashes.

Thus, he would continue his life as a local tyrant in the vortex, free from the harassment of the imperial bureaucratic machine, until decades or even centuries later, when another related report was submitted...

Or perhaps, he was favored by the gods once again, until more than two hundred years later, when the sleeping son of vengeance, Robert Guilliman, awoke.

(End of this chapter)