Warhammer: Empire Reboot

【6小时战役总歼灭核算：】纳垢暴徒：约2，830，000个。低阶恶魔：67只。中高阶恶魔：3只。

The data is clear and the logic is rigorous.

The casualties among the suicide squad were kept to an extremely low level.

The swarm intelligence-driven micro-management and the White Tiger team's firefighting mechanisms played a decisive role. The four fallen assassins were all killed due to a sudden attack by a high-level demon, resulting in structural damage.

Lawson swipes the data panel to enter the resource accounting and settlement page.

[Total increase in subspace energy this round: approximately +94,738 points.]

Lawson stared at the numbers on the panel, which were swirling wildly before finally settling on a single point.

Subspace energy exceeding 90,000 points.

Lawson's lips curled up slightly.

He mentally rehearsed the scenario a second time.

Based on the current rate of advancement and terrain compression ratio.

In 12 hours, the remaining hordes of Nurgle in the Underhive will be driven to the brink of destruction.

The remaining approximately 430 million thugs, not counting the high-level demons that may be summoned later.

The final total subspace energy gain is approximately 14 points.

Including the 9.4 points gained in this round, the total expected return is approximately 24 points.

Lawson's smile faded.

"Change global command".

"Maintain the current pace. Time limit: Complete bottom nest purification within 12 hours."

"Adjust tactical kill priority. All detected high-level demons will be dealt with by the White Tiger Power Armor."

"At all costs, intercept the demon's soul. Do not allow any high-level energy entity to escape back to the warp."

The order was issued. The tracks of the war machine accelerated.

……

Oberlus III, the highest level of the Spire District.

Before Lady Vespera, the High Priestess of the Water Purification Guild, lay an instrument that should not exist in the material universe.

The instrument's base is an equilateral triangle made of dark brass.

The base surface is covered with runes of the law of blasphemy.

At the top of the base, a deep blue crystal ball, twenty centimeters in diameter, is suspended and constantly rotating.

This is the trading terminal for Soul Futures.

The inside of the crystal ball is not solid.

Countless fine rays of light, as thin as spider silk, intertwine, change, flicker, and then dissipate within it.

Each ray of light represents a microscopic psionic pulse released by a mortal soul marked by Tzeentch's psionic dust in the moment of despair and death.

This is the devil's currency.

Four hours earlier, when the Nurgle thugs, enraged by the strong acid, spewed out from the bottom nests of the three hive cities.

This crystal ball once shone with dazzling light.

Based on that speed and the spread model of the Nurgle mob.

Three days later, on the day of the soul exchange, the total amount of soul energy accumulated within her terminal will far exceed the amount required to form a contract with the Great Demon Weaver.

She was not only able to pay off the loan, but also leave behind an extremely substantial profit.

But now its brilliance is fading.

The waterfall turned into a trickle, and the trickle turned into a drop of water.

Vespera sat in the bone chair, her purple nebula right eye fixed on the crystal ball.

One by one, the light rays inside the sphere went out, and the number of newly generated light rays decreased dramatically.

For the first time, a visible crack appeared in the smile that had always graced her lips and given her complete control.

"It has stopped."

She uttered three words softly.

Vespera closed his eyes.

She lowered her consciousness, sensing the situation in the bottom nest through the faint resonance of the crystalline dust scattered throughout the nest's water network.

Feedback on perceived results.

The horde of scoundrels was stopped.

It wasn't blocked by those useless people in the PDF group who only know how to shoot.

Instead, it was cut off by a small but incredibly efficient and even horrifying elite force.

Vespera's consciousness traversed the underlying data.

She sensed the speed of that unit's advance.

Two kilometers per hour is an impossible miracle for the complex terrain of the bottom nest.

With every 100 meters advanced, Vespera could sense thousands of soul marker lines extinguishing simultaneously.

But what alarmed her most was not the speed of the massacre.

Rather, it is the way the soul is extinguished.

In a normal death, the soul leaves the body and enters the vortex of the subspace.

They will either be absorbed by the rotten garden of filth, intercepted by her crystal dust, or dissipate into pure chaos.

However, those rioters were wiped out by the Astartes forces.

Their bodies were cleanly and efficiently shredded. But their souls, in the instant of death, neither rose nor fell.

It's as if it were intercepted directly by some absolute gravitational singularity, by some unknown force, and then completely erased.

It belongs neither to the emperor, nor to the corrupt, nor to the ever-changing ruler.

They disappeared, most likely belonging to Astartes, the one who commanded the army.

Vespera's pupils suddenly contracted.

An Astartes that can capture souls.

Or, to put it another way, an entity that possesses the ability to devour subspace.

Vespera felt a chill creeping up from the deepest part of his spine.

As a seasoned politician and financier who has spent a full decade in the shadows of the warp making high-risk deals with high-ranking demons.

She had seen it all before – betrayal, deception, and killing.

This was the first time she had encountered an absolute variable that was completely beyond her cognitive framework.

As a trader who adapts to any situation, one cannot keep only one card in hand.

Vespera rose, her deep blue velvet robe sweeping across the floor, and walked to the other end of the secret room.

A huge scroll was hanging on the wall.

The diagram above shows the cross-sectional structure of the three main hive cities.

The drawings are marked with hundreds of nodes using fine colored threads.

She spent six years drawing this picture, and each node represents a carefully planted spy, technocrat, or guild informant.

She stood in front of the picture for a full thirty seconds without moving.

His grey-blue eyes scanned each thread rapidly as his brain recalculated and reconnected the dots.

Plan B was originally designed as a three-layered, nested drug network.

Vespella's public identity is the High Priestess of the Pure Water Guild.

She has supreme control over the water supply systems of the three hive cities.

Every single day of the past decade.

She used the official name of water quality conditioning and purification additives.

A very small amount of Tzeentch psychic dust was continuously injected into the main water supply pipes of the middle and lower nests.

The concentration of this crystalline dust is so low that even the Empire's most sophisticated chemical detectors and the Great Sages of the Mechanicus could not detect the anomaly.

Because it is just the most common calcium carbonate and silicate particles.

Only at the higher dimensional level of subspace does it bear the microscopic imprint of the Lord of All Changes.

Ten years, one hundred and twenty months.

The imperial civilians of the Middle and Lower Nests numbered over a billion.

Water vapor emitted from condensation towers can be obtained through drinking water, food processing, bathing, and even breathing.

Unbeknownst to them, trillions of crystal dust particles were ingested into their bodies.

These particles travel through the bloodstream and eventually settle in the synaptic clefts of the human brain cortex.

They are like miniature bombs lurking in the central nervous system, quietly waiting for the activation signal.

The activation method is extremely simple and straightforward.

The concentration of crystal dust injected into the main water supply pipe was instantly increased from 0.003 mg/L to 0.3 mg/L.

A hundredfold increase in concentration.

This batch of highly concentrated crystal dust water will reach the digestive tracts of all civilians within 30 minutes through Zhongchao's powerful high-pressure pumping station drinking water system.

The newly ingested high concentration of crystal dust will resonate with the existing crystal dust deposited in the cerebral cortex over the past ten years, creating a subspace psionic energy resonance.

It's like sending a triggering electrical pulse signal into a matrix of capacitors that are already filled with high-voltage charge.

This can lead to widespread neurotransmitter imbalances, resulting in mild to moderate hallucinations, paranoid episodes, and a geometrically amplified sense of fear.