Warhammer: Empire Reboot

They are natural-born liars, liars, and conspirators.

Deception is as natural to them as breathing; even when faced with the threat of death, their first reaction is still to try to get away with it.

"Real name? I don't have a real name! We're insignificant characters, trash from the warp, even the Chaos God wouldn't bother giving us names..."

Lawson tightened his grip on its neck, and the single eye darted around rapidly.

"Alright, alright, since you insist on knowing, my real name is..."

"Cthulhu Carlos Erem Zandaquel".

Chapter 13: Intelligence Provided by the Little Devil

Lawson waited for three seconds.

There was no response from the subspace.

There is no subtle resonance that occurs at the interface between reality and the warp when the demon's true name is spoken.

Lawson tightened his left hand again.

This time, he increased his strength significantly, and a series of unpleasant cracking sounds came from the one-eyed little devil's neck.

"Hiss, let go! Let go! You're going to crush me!"

The one-eyed little devil's shoulders slumped.

"Fizzles Wormuelin".

Just as the last syllable of that name fell...

Lawson sensed fluctuations in the subspace.

When a demon's true name is uttered in the real world, the underlying structure of the warp will produce a faint resonant echo, like a book being pulled out from a corner of an infinitely large library.

The name is real.

Lawson confirmed it.

The one-eyed imp, Fizex Wormuellin, was slumping away.

"Are you satisfied now, you bug?"

"Now you know my real name. Enjoy your pathetic victory before you're gnawed to the bone by the green skin on this wrecked ship."

Lawson raised the one-eyed imp slightly, making its line of sight level with his own.

"Shut up."

"Next, I'll ask questions, and you'll answer."

"Swear by your real name."

“Every word you tell me must be true. If you dare to include even a single lie, a single misleading statement, or a single intentional omission.”

"You will end up like your companions."

Lawson held it in his hand, like a particularly ugly cat being held by the scruff of its neck.

“I, Fizex Wormuelin, with my true name, which I have forged in the depths of the warp, and with the eternal tides of the sea of ​​chaos as my witness, whatever I say to this mortal is true, without deception, and without omission.”

"If anyone disobeys this, may this name be destroyed and this soul be annihilated forever."

The fluctuations disappeared, and the contract was established.

Its true name oath has already created an irreversible contract mark in the underlying laws of the warp.

From this moment forward, every time it utters a lie, the mark will cause a backlash at the core of its soul. For a lesser demon like it, which even warp creatures despise, three backlashes would probably be enough to disintegrate its soul into nothingness.

Lawson was well aware of this, so he began with the first question.

How many green-skinned soldiers are on this wrecked ship?

Fizex's one eye turned.

Its lips twitched involuntarily, a subtle expression of wanting to lie but being forcibly nipped in the bud by the contract mark.

"……many."

"Specific figures."

“Do you think I’m from the Imperial Statistics Bureau?” Fizex shrieked. “I haven’t gone to count all those damn green mushroom heads…”

Lawson's fingers tightened slightly.

"Gah... Good, good, good! Probably more than three million! Maybe more! Those damn spores are sprouting new ones every day in the corners of the bulkhead! Who knows how many there are now!"

Three million.

Lawson's pupils contracted slightly.

Three million green-skinned people were crammed into a 120-kilometer-diameter spaceship. While this density wasn't astonishing—averaging only a few dozen per square kilometer based on the ship's total volume—the problem was that the green-skinned people weren't evenly distributed.

This means that in some key areas, the density of green belts may reach several thousand or even tens of thousands per square kilometer.

“What are they doing here?” Lawson pressed. “Three million greens crammed into a wrecked ship can’t just be fighting each other.”

Fizex let out a sarcastic laugh.

"Hehehe... You seem to know quite a bit about those mushroom heads. Of course, they don't just fight all the time, although fighting does take up eighty percent of their leisure time."

Its single eye blinked.

"Their tech-savvy brats, those lunatics with gears in their brains, are planning to turn this entire wrecked ship into a battle moon."

Battle Moon.

Lawson's heart skipped a beat.

In the Empire's threat assessment database, the Orcish Warmoon is classified as one of the highest-level strategic threats.

That was the pinnacle of mechanical engineering that the Greenskin civilization could achieve, transforming an asteroid or a massive space wreckage into a mobile death fortress through a crazy technology that completely defied the laws of physics but somehow worked in the hands of the Greenskins.

Battle Moons are typically equipped with a terrifying number of giant cannons, countless warplane launch sites, and residential areas large enough to house millions of orcs.

Their destructive potential in space is no less than that of a wandering insect hive world.

The most famous battle in the history of the Empire, the Battle of Uranus, was fought when an orcish war moon breached the defenses, turning the orbital defense networks of three civilizations, along with tens of millions of inhabitants, into cosmic dust.

"But those mushroom-headed guys didn't do it nearly as well."

Fizex tilted his head, adding with amusement, "Because there are more green-skinned people in this wrecked ship than just green-skinned ones."

Lawson's eyes narrowed: "What else?"

"chaos."

"This wrecked ship has been submerged in the warp for hundreds of years. Do you think only green mushrooms grew during those years? The seeds of chaos also took root and sprouted in every crack."

"In the deep decks of the wrecked ship, I mean the areas below number 150, there are a large number of demonic entities. Not trash like me that doesn't even qualify as warp sediment, but real demons. Blood cultists, plague carriers, changeable fire spirits, and even a few bloodthirsty berserkers that crawled out of some hellish rift have built their nests on the deeper decks."

"And the Chaos Warriors."

Fizex gloated, “You human traitors, those Space Marines who betrayed your Corpse King. There were probably twenty or thirty of them, belonging to a small chapter called something like the Dark Speakers or the Sons of Despair, I don’t remember, all your human names are so long and stinky. They built an altar near Deck 160 and every now and then capture a few Greenskins to sacrifice.”

Lawson calmly processed this information.

Even if there are only twenty or thirty Chaos Warriors, they are still super warriors clad in power armor, wielding explosive guns and chainsaw swords, and honed through hundreds or even thousands of years of combat.

With his current strength, six Katachon jungle warriors plus a few knives would have no chance of surviving a direct confrontation with a Chaos Space Marine.

“And there’s more,” Fizex chuckled, “deep within the core of the wrecked ships, in the remains of the oldest warships, there are infected nests of gene-stealers.”

Gene stealers.

These alien infiltrators, planted by the advance party of the Tyranids, possess terrifying camouflage and assimilation abilities.

Throughout the Empire's history, the infiltration of Genestealers has led to the fall of countless planets.

Sometimes they take decades or even centuries to infiltrate a planet's social structure, from the miners at the bottom to the administrators at the middle level and the governor's staff at the top, until one day the Tyranid pioneer fleet arrives in orbit, and the entire planet's defense system collapses from within.

Lawson seemed to be deep in thought.

Three million green-skinned soldiers are planning to transform derelict ships into combat moons.

The deep deck contains organized demonic entities and a small squad of Chaos Rebel Space Marines.

The core area contains infected nests of gene-stealers.

The three forces continued to fight inside the wrecked ship, with none willing to back down.

He was caught in the middle of these three forces.

In his heart, Lawson silently sent his greetings to the old man sitting on the golden throne.

Then he asked another crucial question.

"Are any of the human astral army soldiers from the 88th Assault Unit still alive?"

Chapter 14 The Little Devil Takes Me on a Treasure Hunt

Fizex tilted its head, rolled its single eye upward, and made an expression similar to that of a human recalling something, although on its extremely ugly face, the effect was more like a rotting fish making a face.

"You mean those hard-shelled shrimp that rushed in from outside a few days ago?"

"They're all dead, not one is left."

"Those shrimps were quite imposing when they charged in, firing their guns like crazy, turning thousands of green-skinned soldiers into mincemeat. But..."

"There are three million green-skinned people, and only a few thousand of your friends in hard-shell suits. A few thousand versus three million, even someone who's bad at math can figure that out."

"And they weren't just killed by the greenskins. The blood cultists who emerged from the deep decks also got involved, ambushing several small teams of shrimp from behind in the passageways. The hybrid offspring of the gene-stealers even infiltrated a shrimp patrol and tore them to pieces from the inside."

It tilted its head and continued with an expression reminiscing about a delicious meal: "It sounded so good, the screams of those shrimp before they died, so sweet."

Lawson's expression remained unchanged.

He hadn't held out much hope to begin with. But hearing it with his own ears—that all seven thousand people had become nameless corpses in this wrecked ship—still left him feeling very uneasy.

Lawson suppressed these emotions.

"What happened to the weapons and equipment left behind by the Star Guardians?"

Lawson asked his third question: "Guns, ammunition, heavy weapons? The supplies carried by a 7,000-strong assault force are not a small amount."