Warhammer: Empire Reboot

Just then, a combat officer came from the rear, tasked with setting up swarm communication beacons at the edge of the defensive line.

With his gaze fixed on the holographic tactical screen in front of him, the enormous adamantine boots of the combat unit landed squarely on the toe of the old dwarf's already tattered boot.

The already cracked outer shell of the dwarven war boots shattered into a pile of iron fragments.

The old dwarf looked down at his bare toes, and then his face instantly turned a deep liver color.

He flew into a rage: "You blind, long-legged toilet seat! Get your hooves off me! You crushed my family's high-gravity, wear-resistant pedal, which has been passed down for three generations! This is a savage trampling on the forging standards of the entire Tulian Heavy Industry!"

The roar sounded particularly jarring in the silent battlefield.

The combat officer stopped in his tracks, paused in confusion, and then, prompted by the swarm of bees, slowly tilted his gaze downwards at a 45-degree angle.

Finally, the focus shifted to the old dwarf who had just reached his thigh.

The battle formation took a half step back: "Please retreat to the safety line. The defense zone has been taken over by the Imperial Sealholder's Office."

"Does taking over mean you can step on other people's shoes at will?"

The old dwarf, spitting as he spoke, said, "Give me your combat sequence number, legion code, and even the size of these damned boots! I'm going to record this kick right now as a crime of maliciously damaging an ally's fixed assets and committing personal insult in the Great Turian's eternal blood feud book! This debt will never be settled until I've been compensated with two new pairs within three hundred years!"

Several veterans of the Furnace race who were bandaging their wounds were terrified when they saw this.

A slightly younger Hess guard rushed forward and grabbed the old dwarf's shoulder tightly.

Another mechanic struggled to snatch the data panel from his hand, shouting urgently, "Shut up, Grom! Are you fucking crazy?"

"Are you blind? These behemoths tore apart the executioner's formation that had been holding us down for three days in just forty minutes! Those dozens of fifteen-kilometer-long iron behemoths in the sky are still hanging in orbit! If you bring annihilation upon the entire alliance because of a pair of shoes, the Ancestral Spirits will be the first to pluck out your beard and fill it into the furnace!"

"So what?"

The old dwarf was being held firmly by his two companions, his legs kicking wildly in the air, while he stubbornly gestured with the data tablet in his hand.

"One thing at a time! Killing bugs is killing bugs, and stepping on my foot is stepping on my foot! Wotan's ledger has never had a clause exempting you from liability just because someone saved your life!"

Inside the large holographic command center of the orbital fortress, the high-ranking Karls of the Great Turian and Kronus were watching the overall battle situation that had just been transmitted back.

It seems they can survive?

…………

By this time, Lawson had already brought UR-025 to the main planet Emberg.

From orbit, the entire planet looks like a piece of iron ore that has been gnawed apart.

Leviathan has left, leaving behind only industrial ruins and an Ancestral Core that no one dares to approach.

The deepest part of Emberg.

Lawson walked in front, with UR-025 beside him.

The further down you go, the more noticeable the static in the communication equipment becomes.

Cries, roars, and countless overlapping Wotan languages ​​whose contents were completely incomprehensible.

Finally, a vast underground space appeared before us.

The core of the ancestral spirit is right there.

It's more like a city buried inside a mountain.

Countless data pillars, quantum computing nodes, and ancient storage structures are stacked on top of each other, stretching to the horizon.

The main body was still lit, but the light was extremely unstable, flickering on and off, like a burnt-out brain still twitching.

UR-025 walked to the external interface and brought out several sets of isolated scanning devices.

"Its hardware is not physically damaged."

Lawson stood to the side with his arms crossed, looking at the giant central hub that was constantly emitting red light, and raised an eyebrow: "It wouldn't go crazy like this if it wasn't broken, would it?"

UR-025 Correction: "The hardware is not broken, and the main database is basically intact. The real problem lies in the information processing structure."

"If we must explain it in a way that you organic life can understand... it has become mentally ill."

Lawson chuckled: "Computers can get mental illness?"

"The Ancestral Spirit Core is not an ordinary quantum computer."

UR-025 explained.

"It has long received the memories, experiences, personality models and thinking data of its people, and has essentially developed a highly complex cognitive structure."

The smile in Lawson's eyes slowly faded: "So, in other words, its current state is equivalent to endlessly reliving the moment when its entire civilization was devoured alive?"

"A precise description."

Lawson nodded thoughtfully.

"What about those archived databases? How valuable are they?"

When discussing technology, UR-025 quickly accessed the first-level directory deep within the Ancestral Spirit Core.

STC Design → Theoretical Basis → Usage Conditions → Material System → Fault Records → Thousands of Years of Improvement Records

That is a complete technological lineage that has continued from the Golden Age to the present day and has been improved through thousands of years of actual mining in Wotan.

If it can be repaired and transported back to the Empire, it will be of great significance to the Empire!

UR-025 couldn't help but sigh: "Although my database is vast, it focuses on the war star defense, logic warfare, and deep space travel of the Golden Age. The knowledge stored in this Ancestral Spirit Core is several orders of magnitude greater than mine."

Lawson asked directly, "Can we move the whole thing back to Terra?"

UR-025 was surprised: "Boss, you want to directly connect a quantum civilization core that can spread mental illness through a data interface into the Imperial Network?"

"Then fix it on the spot."

The indicator light on the UR-025's eye flashed for two seconds.

"It is extremely difficult. Its logic locks contain tens of thousands of layers of self-contradictory emotional deadlocks. Cleaning up this data is tantamount to performing minimally invasive neurosurgery on a persistent, severe form of schizophrenia."

Lawson said calmly, "I'll give you six months of paid leave. You can choose any of the undeveloped ocean resort planets in the Dark Side of the Empire."

"Deal made, it can be repaired."

Lawson chuckled and shook his head: "Didn't you just say it was extremely difficult?"

"Difficulty means that it requires a huge amount of computing power and energy, and it cannot be repaired because the laws of physics do not allow it."

UR-025 said without a hint of shame: "A six-month ocean fishing vacation is enough to make my core algorithm increase work enthusiasm by 450%."

Lawson's smile faded.

How many resources do you need to mobilize to support you?

"Three thousand T-series high-level engineers, and in addition, thirty great sages who truly understand the ancient STC coding structure and high-dimensional logic compilation were transferred from the Cult of Mechanics."

"Approved."

Static teleportation activated.

Three thousand T-sequences entered the underground space.

Following them were thirty top sages temporarily drawn from Mars by the Mechanicus.

As soon as they stepped out of the portal, almost all of their mechanical eyes lit up.

"By the flawless true form of Om Messiah..."

"A quantum storage matrix of this scale is a pure, ancient STC technology library that has not been altered by any religion!"

Another great sage even took two steps forward, unable to contain himself, attempting to insert the data probe directly into the outer open crystal connector.

"As long as we can establish the first stage of the binary holy handshake with it..."

"Stop everything!"

UR-025 abruptly and sternly stopped them: "If you don't want to die, put away your stupid data probes, shut down all radio broadcast bands, and cut off all neural data link connections."

Chapter 300 I can fix your ancestors

Under the cold light, UR-025 unfolded a multi-layered logic topology diagram that was tens of meters wide in mid-air.

"Whether it's crazy or not, the memory of this machine with zero main cores is already filled with garbage."

"Let's clean up this pile of non-recyclable waste that's 20,000 years old first."

UR-025 casually grabs at nothing in the void.

The next second, hundreds and thousands of dazzling holographic projections suddenly exploded in front of everyone's eyes.

Accompanied by chaotic and jarring stereo sound waves and neural telemetry signals, this place resembled a noisy and chaotic miniature dwarf market:

In a holographic image, two bearded miners are seen shoving each other head-to-head.

[Holographic Sensory Log - M32 Standard Year]

"Barin, the foreman of the seventh mining team of the Iron Anvil Clan, inexplicably drank half a barrel of synthetic malt liquor during his third shift break, causing serious internal strife within the cooling team of the third reactor. Attached: Recording of the victim's oral accusation and remote sensing data on the volatile components of the substandard malt liquor..."

Immediately afterwards, another holographic image appeared in front of Lawson, showing a Wotan woman wielding a two-meter-long gravity wrench, her voice so loud that it made the Mechanical Sage's audio receiver buzz:

[Comprehensive Record of Long-Distance Disputes - M38 Standard Year]

"A 742-hour chronicle of the dispute between Helga, a miner from the Greater Turian Empire, and his neighbor over the ownership of three titanium armor plates (including holographic retinal video, heart rate variograms, and mechanical damage analysis of seventeen private brawls)..."

There's also a clip that directly shows a first-person perspective neural slice from the dying moments of a certain late Commander Karl:

[Ancestral Memories on Their Deathbed - M35 Standard Year]

Lying on his deathbed, the old commander used his last breath to curse into the neurorecorder: "The No. 13 synthetic compressed rations issued by the Military Affairs Department tasted as hard as unrefined heavy metal slag! I'll remember you for the rest of my life! I'll remember you in my ancestral spirits!!"

In addition to these, the sky was also filled with:

Audio recordings of inter-family feuds that have lasted for two centuries over a dispute over mining drill bit numbers.

A technician complained about the EEG waveform of his neighbor who was snoring.

Hundreds of thousands of live holographic simulations about "who stole the last piece of high-energy meat pie," and as many as 6.4 million detailed "eternal vendetta ledgers" specifying the responsibility for the loss of every single alloy screw...

This raw, unprocessed data, brimming with extreme emotions and containing nothing but everyday neural memories, has accumulated to at least 80 trillion records in the quantum lattice of this mainframe, occupying high-speed throughput channels...

Looking at the flashing logs, Lawson couldn't help but press his temples; these space dwarves were truly bizarre.

Even UR-025, with its unique personality, couldn't help but complain:

"Top scientists of the golden age spent astronomical amounts of rare resources, using eleven-dimensional quantum entangled states and room-temperature superconducting lattices to create the ultimate computational miracle capable of deducing hyperspace dimensions."