Warhammer: Empire Reboot

"They are disrupting molecular binding agents!"

The newly prepared bio-acid solution does not attempt to hard melt the outer layer of refined gold.

It seeps in along the gaps in the armor, specifically degrading the nano-welding points between different alloys, as well as the ceramic insulation layer of the force field generator.

The multi-layered composite structure upon which the Void Power Armor and Heavy Tank relied for defense began to disintegrate from the inside within minutes.

"They are learning... By the ancestral spirits above, they are deciphering our blueprints!"

On the fourth day, a heart-wrenching tearing sound came from the depths of the earth.

Leviathan's burrowing swarm abandons the frontal armor wall.

Tens of thousands of burrowing worms gnawed through thousands of meters of rock and emerged from the industrial area behind the mining fortress.

Wotan’s underground seismic monitoring network detected the signal, and automatic mines and underground seismic artillery immediately opened fire.

The shockwave collapsed three main tunnels, burying tens of thousands of leading Zerg into the rock strata.

The fourth tunnel did not produce any combat units.

Tens of thousands of exploding cysticerci have their abdomens swollen into a spherical shape.

Instead of attacking the Furnace Warriors, they screamed as they rushed into the core pipelines of the underground thermal power plant and automated refining workshop, then detonated together.

The series of explosions tore apart the underground supporting structure.

Twelve automated ammunition conveyor belts leading to the front lines were disrupted.

The Hive Will severed the Wotans' industrial lifeline.

It no longer fixated on consuming those heavily armored dwarven veterans.

Furnaces, transport lines, maintenance platforms, and cooling water sources began to be attacked one after another.

On the sixth day of the war, the Wotans' system of building and fighting, upon which they depended for survival, collapsed for the first time.

On the seventh day, all three maglev train lines were paralyzed.

On the eighth day, the outer positions fell. In the No. 3 outpost bunker, which had lost its ammunition supply, a Wotan sergeant was tackled to the ground by a three-headed Overlord-class executioner.

On the eleventh day, all the Iron Clan members went to the front lines.

By day fourteen, Karak-Zorn had become a petri dish for the Leviathan evolutionary algorithm.

With each underground fortress the swarm devours, each batch of Forgeborn warriors' genes are digested, and each weapon structure is analyzed, the next batch of creatures emerging from the hatching sacs learns even better how to kill the Wotan.

Bloch's craftsmen were also following the swarm's technological advancements. Braving acid rain, they rushed to the front lines, using robotic arms to drag the mangled swarm corpses back to their bunkers, slicing, scanning, and searching for defects.

The blueprints for the new armor-piercing warhead were completed in the trenches.

Two hours later, the remaining workshop completed the test firing, and four hours later, the first batch of ammunition was sent to the front line.

The focusing frequency of the mining laser is adjusted eight times a day.

The power armor lining was coated overnight with a newly formulated acid and alkali neutralizing coating.

The war became a race between the evolution of flesh and blood and the iteration of heavy industry.

What was a weak point that could be penetrated with a single shot yesterday now has an additional layer of bone.

The heavily armored bio-titan that is unshakeable today may have its power core blasted through by a hastily modified super-heavy railgun armor-piercing projectile tomorrow.

Day 21.

The dark red surface of Karak Zorn is no longer recognizable.

The ground was covered with several meters of Zerg wreckage, with twisted fortress armor pressing down on it. Deep purple fungal carpets crawled between the steel and flesh. Thousands of bio-ship wrecks and broken Wotan warship keels floated in low orbit.

A Wotan mining mothership with its bridge breached, at the last moment, overloaded its backup thrusters, leaving a trail of flames thousands of meters long, and crashed into the belly of a ten-kilometer-long Leviathan main nest mothership.

The two colossal objects became entangled in gravitational collapse and fell together toward the star.

Inside the command center, evacuation alarms sounded. There was no point in continuing to guard this rocky world, whose mineral and industrial capabilities had been depleted.

Inside the deepest air-raid shelter, the Ancestral Database node has completed data encapsulation and is being loaded into the last armored shuttle.

All members of the Steel Clan volunteered to stay behind to cover the retreat, aiming to create a four-hour air corridor for the evacuation fleet that carried the memories of their ancestors.

At the top of the last mining fortress, an old Commander Karl fastened his helmet.

"Tactical system simulation: How much longer can we hold out?"

The red indicator light on the mechanical warrior's eye flashed: "Based on the enemy's current attack density and evolution iteration rate... eleven minutes."

"It's so short."

Old Karl smirked, held the gravity hammer horizontally in front of his chest, and roared into the communication channel: "For the ancestors! Fire!!"

Four hours and six minutes.

The evacuation shuttle carrying the backup data of the Ancestral Spirit core finally broke out of the low-orbit gravity well and arrived at the subspace jump point.

On the bridge communications platform, the last signal from the surface of Kharak-Zorn passed through the psionic shadows of Leviathan, transmitting intermittently.

"Included in the register... to hold a grudge!!"

The signal was interrupted, and Leviathan devoured Karak Zorn.

Chapter 299: Using the Terran main force to test the main warships of the Golden Age

After the fall of Karak-Zorn Fortress.

After Leviathan's main tentacles devoured the remaining organic matter and industrial debris on the surface, they continued to advance towards the core territory of the Wotan Alliance along the gravitational currents woven by extreme celestial bodies.

The encrypted communication networks used by various alliances were filled with angry shouts and arguments.

"Where did those damned bio-engineered bastards come from? There's a whole world outside with loose defenses, why didn't they go and eat it, instead they plunged headfirst into our core mining area!"

"By the spirits of our ancestors, could those blind insects really smell the ore of refined gold from hundreds of light-years away?"

"Smell my ass! When those beasts are starving, they can't even tell the difference between slag and chunks of meat! Yesterday, the surveillance footage from the forward mining outpost showed a whole swarm of knife worms gnawing at an abandoned tunnel boring machine for ages, their bone blades shattered all over the ground, and they were still going berserk!"

"That's because the heavy-duty chassis manufactured by our Ymir Consortium are made with solid materials. If it were the cheap ones from the Greater Turian Consortium that cut the armor plates 20% thinner to save costs, they would have been chewed up by insects long ago."

"Try saying what you just said again?"

"I'd say your riot armor in the Great Turian is as thin and fragile as the settlement documents in the accounting office!"

"Once we've crushed this swarm of insects, I'll be the first to stuff your mechanical beard into the ore crusher for sieving!"

"I'm ready anytime, as long as you can survive the next orbital drop!"

The Tyranid swarm had not been without attempts to probe the galactic core over the previous centuries.

Whether it was a fleet of stray biological ships that had gone astray or a cult of gene-stealers that had infiltrated the ranks of the miners, the Wotan had purged them from the ground up several times.

But this time, what descended upon the core of the galaxy was the main force of Leviathan's tentacles.

What puzzled and unsettled many clan leaders even more was why Leviathan would suddenly adjust the entire war axis in such a short period of time.

According to the external intelligence gathered by the Wotan Alliance over a long period of time, the main force of the Terrans should have been wreaking havoc on the outer defenses of the Human Empire.

At the giant round table of the joint defense conference, an old man named Karl from the Kronus hegemony slammed his hand heavily on the control panel.

"Don't those tall, long-legged humans on the periphery always claim across all frequency bands that their defenses are impenetrable? Tens of thousands of warships, countless legions, how exactly did they manage to let several main fleets slip into our core mining area?"

"Are those charlatans and bureaucrats who chant religious doctrines all day long building a border defense line out of cheap sponges?"

The officer in charge of intelligence analysis reported in a low voice: "We are not yet able to determine the exact cause of Leviathan's turn. Data intercepted at the front indicates that the course of these main tentacles has undergone several drastic vector corrections in the past few cycles, as if they were actively avoiding some high-risk airspace with a very high attrition rate."

Old Karl roared, "Bring out all the external star map battle reports we can buy! I want to see which side really hurt these bio-cyborg bastards, allowing them to run rampant deep into our mine!"

A master craftsman from Bloch put down his data panel and retorted, "Even if we find out the changes in the external war situation, it won't help the several defensive lines that are currently collapsing."

Old Karl's eyes widened: "If we find out the cause, at least we'll know who should be held responsible for this devastating mess, and on which page of the blood feud register it should be written!"

A moment later, the latest loss reports compiled by each war zone were displayed on the holographic projection.

On the northeast side of the star map, the vast mining area belonging to the Emberg Alliance was already bathed in a dim, yellowish light that symbolized deathly stillness.

A young clan representative said urgently, "Great Karl, although the main planet Emberg has been breached, reconnaissance probes show that the ancestral spirit core there has not been completely destroyed!"

"If the Kronus Hegemony and the Ymir Alliance can spare a heavy cruiser squadron to cooperate with all of our clan's elite Hess Guard in a forced orbital descent, we have a real chance to salvage that core from the ruins!"

Most of the generals around the conference table lowered their heads, and several heavy sighs echoed in the room.

"You think we haven't tried establishing an emergency handshake protocol remotely, young man?"

“That ancient ancestral spirit core has gone completely mad.”

The master craftsman shook his head, his eyes slightly reddening.

"Any of our deep space beacons that attempts to access its frequency band will cause this deadly data, filled with despair and madness, to burn out our receiver arrays by traveling back through the communication network."

The young clan representative was deathly pale: "Are we just going to watch it be abandoned in the sea of ​​insects? That's the memory of our ancestors, our history!"

Old Karlwald, who was presiding over the entire meeting, slowly closed the metal file in front of him.

He ultimately issued an irreversible ruling: "Block all space beacons leading to the Emberg system, officially placing it on an irreversible, permanent list of sealed-off systems. Any ship approaching the area must not attempt to receive distress signals from there."

"This blood debt, along with the hatred of the annihilation of the entire Emberg clan, is engraved in the Alliance's Book of Hatred at the highest level."

"As long as the clan's forge continues to burn, as long as the last cloning chamber is not completely exhausted, our offspring will hunt down this Leviathan tentacle to the ends of the void."

A subdued atmosphere filled the conference hall.

On the holographic star map, several massive red shadows are converging on the heartland of the Great Tulian Alliance from different dimensions.

Wald looked at the logistics director.

"How long can our ammunition reserves and industrial raw materials sustain high-intensity combat?"

The logistics officer pulled up a data sheet filled with deficits.

"If the firepower density during the Karak-Zorn blocking operation is maintained, the heavy railgun armor-piercing shells of the main fleet at the front can only last for nineteen standard days."

"The deuterium and plasma fuel rods necessary for the fusion reactor can support a maximum of 24 days of full-power salvo."

Olsen, the representative of the Kronusian hegemony, slowly stood up:

"The battle at Karak-Zorn has proven that this swarm possesses an extremely high level of tactical adaptability."

Wald looked around and said, "Since everyone knows that we have nowhere left to retreat, let's carry out the final contingency plans prepared by our respective clans."

"Send the order to all garrison troops in deep mines and heavy industrial strongholds."