Warhammer: Starting with Industrial Revolution

The heavy explosion-proof door slid open slowly under hydraulic drive, and a smell mixed with metal corrosion, low-dose radiation, and a faint smell of gunpowder wafted out.

This is the smell of war, sealed away for twelve thousand years.

At this moment, Luo Ning and his group had already arrived at the core area of ​​the colony on the second underground level through the passage.

Unlike the well-maintained corridor on the first basement level, the main passageway in front of us was covered with the scars of a fierce battle.

The alloy walls were riddled with bullet holes and scorch marks from molten metal burning. Scattered on the ground were rusted weapon remnants, broken pieces of mechanical prosthetics, and several carbonized human remains, still in the shooting posture before their deaths, their arms still tightly clutching the remains of their weapons.

The emergency lights on the corridor ceiling turned on the moment the main door opened, and the dim yellow light spread along the straight passage, illuminating the energy core area at the end of the passage.

That place was the heart of the entire colony, the source of all energy.

Victor's prosthetic eye flashed a crimson scanning light frantically as his mechanical fingers traced the bullet holes in the wall, his voice tinged with barely concealed gravity:

"These are traces left by the electromagnetic and thermoelectric weapons of the Golden Age, Lord Ronin. A fierce battle took place here back then."

The accompanying defense soldiers gripped their laser guns tightly, and the beams of their tactical flashlights swept across every shadow in the passage. Everyone could clearly feel that in this underground space, which had been silent for thousands of years, the despair and determination of the decisive battle of that year still lingered.

Luo Ning took a step forward, his boots making a crisp sound as they stepped over rusted metal fragments, echoing repeatedly in the empty passage.

He knew perfectly well that this place was the site of a brutal scorched-earth war fought by a group of humans 12,000 years ago to protect the flame of civilization.

The only hope he was looking for, the only hope that could keep this barren planet alive, lay in the reactor that had been dormant for thousands of years at the end of the passage.

The defense force's elite squads immediately advanced in tactical formation, aiming their guns at every possible hidden shadow.

Victor had already deployed servo skulls throughout the passageway, and the crimson scanning light covered the entire underground space, so that no living thing could escape his detection.

Standing before the gates of the energy core area, Victor displayed an unprecedentedly devout posture.

He bowed deeply to the heavy alloy door, chanting Omnisaiah's prayers continuously. Even the act of inserting the server servant's data interface into the door lock was as gentle as if soothing a weary soul.

The security and encryption level here far exceeds that of any system on the underground level.

Even when Viktor himself took action, it took him a full half hour to finally crack the ancient encryption lock.

The gates to the energy core slowly opened to both sides with a grating metallic scraping sound.

A dozen or so servo skulls surged in instantly, their red scanning lights sweeping across every corner of the core area, projecting real-time images onto the accompanying Thinker terminals.

Victor and the other priests knelt before the core.

Viktor, accompanied by his mechanical priest, knelt at the entrance to the core area and began reciting a lengthy prayer to appease the machine spirits towards the massive fusion reactor deep within, which was still operating at low power.

"The machine spirit is exhausted."

After the ceremony, Viktor stood up, his voice extremely solemn.

"It has been operating in a minimal dormant state for twelve thousand years without any maintenance or reassurance, and its condition is extremely unstable. Your people must not touch any component in the core area; the energy overload here is enough to instantly obliterate the entire hive."

Viktor spoke with utmost seriousness, and Ronin nodded in agreement.

This is a huge reactor. Although it was designed to last for more than 500,000 years, he knows better than anyone what this seemingly stable reactor means, given that it has been unmaintained for so long.

But once this place is restored, even after ten thousand years of silence, it will still be able to provide far more clean energy than the total amount of power plants currently in Chaodu.

With it, the production line on the underground floor can be fully restarted, and STC templates can be mass-produced. All his previous reform plans will be completely transformed from paper into reality.

Viktor left behind his most senior priests and mech servants to be responsible for calming the mech spirits and monitoring their status in the core area, while he himself accompanied Ronin to continue exploring the circular area on the second underground level.

The second underground level is a complete ring structure, with the fusion reactor at the very center and the core functional compartments of the colony surrounding it.

As soon as they stepped out of the energy core area, they were met with the completely collapsed planetary defense and control center.

Even without a Victor scan, it's clear that this place underwent precise directional blasting.

Even the underground compartments, built with special alloys with maximum earthquake resistance, were completely destroyed. Countless twisted steel bars and molten concrete collapsed down, burying everything inside without leaving even a crack.

The STC master database and technical archives on the other side of the corridor are in the same state.

The heavy explosion-proof door was welded shut from the inside, and the entire compartment underwent high-temperature thermal melting and destruction. All data carriers were completely vaporized in the high temperature ten thousand years ago.

Clearly, when the human defenders fought to the last moment and were at their wits' end, in order to prevent these core technologies from falling into the hands of the rebellious AI and to leave a spark for other humans in the galaxy, they chose to destroy everything they owned with their own hands.

Viktor looked at the scorched earth before him, but his face showed no surprise, only a heavy sigh.

The Iron Man rebellion that swept across the entire galaxy was a price humanity paid for survival—everything they once possessed.

After that war, human technology stagnated completely, even regressing by tens of thousands of years.

Countless mechanical priests of the Empire spent their entire lives searching for only scattered fragments of STC among these ruins.

He was overjoyed to have obtained a complete edge colony basic operation and maintenance STC.

Just then, Father Moraes, who had been silent all along, suddenly spoke up.

The subspace detection device in his hand never made a sound, but he still gripped the imperial emblem on his chest and whispered the requiem of the state religion to the carbonized remains in the passage.

"They are the guardians of human civilization, the heroes who fought for the survival of humankind before the glory of emperors descended."

After the prayer was finished, Father Moraes raised his head and looked at Ronning with solemn eyes. "Their sacrifice should not be forgotten."

Looking at the collapsed cabin, the silent reactor, and the remains in the tunnel still in combat positions, Luo Ning felt a surge of emotions.

He traveled to this dark universe and always thought he was just struggling to survive and to make life better for the people around him.

But at that moment, he couldn't help but give a standard military salute to the collapsed cabin and the remains in the passageway.

May the glory of mankind endure forever.

He softly recited the colonizer's last words left in the terminal, his voice not loud, but it echoed for a long time in the empty corridor.