Warhammer: Empire Reboot

The inspection process lasted two hours.

The guards were divided into two groups.

A team checked the quantity and serial numbers of the refrigerated containers in the cargo hold, comparing them one by one with the shipping manifest.

They randomly opened several freezers, shone flashlights on the frozen meat inside, counted it, and put a checkmark on the record board.

Another group took a walk around the workers' rest area.

Six guards walked past the door of the cubicle.

The suicide squad members mingled with the real workers; some were playing cards, some were sleeping on folding beds, and some were sitting in a corner gnawing on rations.

A young guard glanced at one of the assassins a few more times as he walked through the rest area.

The assassin was sitting at the table playing cards, perhaps because his posture was slightly more upright than the people around him, or perhaps it was just a random allocation of attention.

The assassin let out a loud burp.

Then he looked up at the young guard: "What are you looking at? Does your mother look like that too?"

Another assassin at the card table chuckled in agreement.

The actual cargo hold workers at the table shrank back. Under the imperial system, saying such things to armed guards usually resulted in an immediate stun gunfight, or worse, a laser beam.

The young guard's face flushed red.

He glared at the assassin, who stared back without flinching. The assassin's eyes were murky and bloodshot, like those of a gambler who had lost everything after a long night of gambling.

The young guard stared at him for two seconds.

Then he clicked his tongue and said, "Serves you right for losing money!"

Then he turned and left.

A boorish man who dares to openly berate a guard is unlikely to be a spy. A true spy would carefully adhere to every rule and avoid any behavior that might attract attention.

Only truly impoverished laborers, driven to desperation and rage, would be foolish enough to hurl insults at someone to their face.

After the inspection was completed, the guards and customs officials withdrew, and the transport convoy continued its voyage.

The timeline shifts back to the world of Lord Lawson's Nest City.

The food processing area of ​​Zhongchao.

Swarm Intelligence designated the requisitioned factory as Iron Bone-1.

The factory interior has been converted into a food production line.

The process is linear: raw materials enter, mix, press, package, and leave the warehouse.

The raw materials come from two directions.

The first direction is the green-skinned breeding farm at the bottom of the nest.

The first batch of about one hundred of the nine hundred cultivation tanks were released with orc spores fourteen days ago. Squig grew to harvestable size in the seaweed substrate and was beheaded by the assassins on the assembly line.

The system drained the life points and Waaagh energy at the moment of decapitation, and purified the active spores. The remaining meat chunks were cut, sterilized at high temperatures, dehydrated, and compressed, turning into dark brown protein blocks.

The second direction is the Zhongchao warehouse.

Every two seconds, three compressed seaweed packets are delivered from the agricultural world. The seaweed blocks are unpacked, crushed, and sieved into a fine, dark green powder. The naturally occurring salts in the powder are evenly distributed during the crushing process.

The two raw materials meet in the mixing workshop.

Chapter 114 Life Points Surge!

70% Squiger jerky, 30% seaweed powder.

After the mixture is thoroughly mixed in the mixer, it is fed into the press.

The press presses the mixture into fist-sized blocks under high temperature and pressure, each weighing about 300 grams.

When the finished product pops out of the mold, its surface temperature exceeds 100 degrees Celsius. After cooling on the conveyor belt, it turns a dark green color with a fine fibrous texture.

A thin layer of white crystals precipitated on the surface, which was the result of the natural salt in the seaweed crystallizing during the cooling process.

The swarm intelligence team officially cataloged the finished product as "Spark-1 Comprehensive Rations".

Each culture tank produces approximately two hundred tons per cycle.

Nine hundred culture pools may sound like a lot, but for a population of 118 billion, the total supply is certainly not enough.

Lawson decided to prioritize supplying the PDF troops at the front.

Frontline soldiers consume two to three times more calories per day than civilians in the rear.

They carried laser guns and exchanged fire with the orcs in the trenches, which greatly depleted their physical strength.

The civilians in the rear still have corpse starch to sustain them. Although the stockpile is decreasing, it has not yet reached the critical point of complete supply disruption.

Give the best food to those who need it most.

The first batch of rations was delivered to the front line by logistics soldiers in transport vehicles. The vehicles departed from the Iron Bone-1 factory in Zhongchao, passed through the transport channel in Xiachao, and arrived at the defense area outside Chaodu three hours later.

Anvil-7 position.

The trench was filled with the smell of mud and gunpowder.

The last battle was seventeen hours ago.

After the orcs' thousand-strong charge was repelled, about eight hundred green-skinned corpses were left in front of the position.

The corpse began to swell under the perpetually gray light of the hive world, emitting a cloying, putrid stench.

Private Corvin crouched at a bend in the trench, his back against the earthen wall.

His laser gun rested on his knees, the paint on the stock worn away. He had a cut on his finger from shrapnel two days earlier, which was wrapped with a dirty rag.

Colvin is 23 years old. He was born in the D area of ​​Nest No. 3. Before joining the army, he was a garbage sorter.

He used to work at the recycling station in Xiachao, picking out recyclable metals and plastics from the garbage heaps. He worked fourteen hours a day, and his rations were two pieces of corpse starch and half a liter of recycled water.

He joined the army three months ago because the army's rations included an extra piece of starch compared to the sorting station.

That extra piece will slow down his hunger.

He was now squatting in the trench, his last ration being a piece of corpse starch issued the night before. It was grayish-white and felt like wet and then dried cardboard.

It tasted similar to cardboard, and the hunger returned half an hour after eating it.

Footsteps could be heard from the other end of the trench.

Colvin looked up.

A logistics soldier walked along the trench.

"Rationing. Two pieces per person. One for today, and one for backup."

The logistics soldiers took out rations from their canvas bags and distributed them one by one along the trench.

Colvin took his two pieces.

He glanced down at what he was holding.

This is not corpse starch.

The starch from the corpse is grayish-white. The two pieces in my hand are dark green with fine textures. There's a layer of white crystals on the surface, like frost.

The weight was also wrong; it was at least a third heavier than a similarly sized corpse starch, and it had a solid weight to it.

Colvin brought the ration block to his nose.

His body reacted before his brain did; his saliva production tripled within two seconds, and his stomach rumbled loudly.

He smelled salt.

Colvin's fingers involuntarily tightened around the ration block, leaving a fine, granular feel on its green surface beneath his fingertips.

When he was six years old, his mother celebrated his birthday. She used the last pinch of salt in the house, less than a gram, and sprinkled it all into a bowl of starch paste.

That bowl of porridge was the best thing he had ever eaten in his life.

He remembered the taste: salty and warm.

His mother watched him drink the bowl with a smile, and he licked the salt grains at the bottom of the bowl three times before he was willing to put it down.

After that, it was never available again; salt was too expensive.

The thing in his hand now smells just like that.

Colvin took a bite.

The teeth cut into the surface of the food chunks, which were much harder than the starch from the corpse, requiring real chewing effort.

The sensation of the particles breaking between your teeth is real and resistant, completely different from the artificial, melt-in-your-mouth texture of corpse starch.

The saltiness spreads first, evenly distributed in every broken grain.

This is natural salt, sodium chloride crystals that precipitate from seaweed, completely different from the sharp, pungent taste of synthetic flavorings.

Its saltiness is mild, like soaking your tongue in warm seawater.

Then came another flavor, which Colvin chewed three times before stopping.

His taste buds received a signal that had never been activated before.

fresh!

That's the flavor from the glutamic acid and nucleotides released by the fungal components in the meat after the Waaagh energy was drained and the active spores were purified.

This substance is not found in any food in the Nest City. Corpse starch is a protein recyclable product from industrial processing, in which all flavor compounds are completely stripped away during the process.

Synthetic flavorings can simulate sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy flavors, but they cannot simulate "umami" because that requires a specific combination of amino acids.

Colvin had never known that food could taste like this.

He continued chewing, the meat fibers tearing between his teeth; it was chewy and resilient, and with each bite he could feel his jaw muscles working.

This is food, not something you can stuff into your stomach.

He took the first bite.

Food slides down the esophagus and into the stomach.

Receptors in the stomach wall begin sending signals to the brain after coming into contact with high-density proteins and fats.