Warhammer: Empire Reboot

A golden, warm current flowed in from the top of the head, spreading along the spine to every part of the body, washing away the fatigue accumulated over three days in an instant.

Her muscles were no longer sore, her eyes were no longer dry, and even the old scar from the battle on the wrecked ship was faintly itchy, as if something was repairing it.

She sat up abruptly, nearly dropping the box from her hands.

The twins, Sera and Sena, stopped what they were doing at the same time.

Sena was breaking up rations for a little girl when her fingers were suddenly enveloped in warmth, her fingertips tingling slightly. Sera, kneeling beside the pallet to check inventory, felt a golden warmth coursing through her armor, as if she were being immersed in hot water.

Vera's reaction was the most intense.

She naturally possessed an affinity for imperial power far exceeding that of ordinary people.

After that insignificant wisp of golden energy entered her body, the sweat on her forehead evaporated, her complexion returned to a rosy hue from its paleness, and a faint golden light flashed in her eyes.

The four of them raised their eyes almost simultaneously, looking towards the direction of the Nest City dome.

A silver figure was sweeping past from above.

"It's an adult."

Katarina's voice trembled slightly, "The adults saw us."

Vera clasped her hands together: "My lord has bestowed the Emperor's grace upon us..."

Sera and Sena both knelt down on one knee and pounded their breastplates with their fists.

"The emperor takes care of his servants!"

"Angels watch over their warriors!"

The civilians queuing nearby saw the nuns' reaction.

They didn't know what was happening, but they saw a silver figure sweep across the high dome.

"An angel! It's an angel!"

"The Emperor's angels have come to see us!"

The crowd erupted in cheers.

The extermination of the Nurgle cultists at the bottom of Planet Three is nearing completion.

In the bottom hive regions of the three hive cities, all large-scale Nurgle cultist settlements have been destroyed.

There are about three to five thousand remaining scattered individuals, living in the abandoned pipes and sealed mine shafts deep within the bottom nest, barely surviving by licking the condensate on the pipe walls and gnawing on the corpses of their companions.

They dared not come out.

Since Lawson's army of assassins began their purge of the Undercity, the Nurgle cultists have learned one thing: any gathering of more than three people will, within minutes, summon a silent killing squad.

Today, these remaining molecules have degenerated into the same ecological niche as the pests in the bottom nest.

They huddled in the pipes, barely surviving like rats. Occasionally, one or two starving creatures would sneak to the sewer outlet of the nest in search of food, only to have their necks cleanly snapped by the assassins at the outlet.

"The bottom of the hive is filled with dirt and grime; the estimated time for natural decay is 40-60 days," according to the assessment provided by the swarm intelligence team.

Lawson had no intention of wasting any more combat suicides on these trash.

Just let them rot away in the dark.

He was focused on a different number.

Subspace energy: 85.2 points.

We are still about 100 points short of the 15 million points required for the fourth-order transition.

The subspace energy source of Planet Three has been almost completely exhausted.

Planet One.

Planet One, the stronghold of Governor Krauser of Khorne.

There are 500 million Bloodsteel Legions there, all of them gladiators who worship Khorne, and each one of them is imbued with the power of Khorne.

There were also Chaos Space Marines there, who appeared to be from the Iron Warriors Chapter.

If all the Khorne believers on Planet One were wiped out, 15 points of subspace energy would be more than enough.

That's for later.

Now, Lawson's focus of the battle is outside the hive city.

The surface battlefield of Planet Three.

Within a 300-kilometer radius of the capital city, there once lay Obolus's busiest industrial corridor.

Hundreds of smelters, ammunition depots, and logistics centers are distributed along the main railway line, providing the three nest cities with the lifeline of industrial life.

The Orcish Horde dropped millions of spore capsules from space and established a foothold in the industrial zone surrounding their hive capital.

They dismantled factories and used the wreckage to build crude outposts and war machines.

Led by the Ancient Giant Machine, the Greenskin army once advanced to the foot of the city walls of the hive, nearly crushing the human civilization on Planet Three.

Then Lawson arrived.

But orcs are not a species that you can eliminate by smashing a Colossus.

Orc spores were scattered throughout the entire industrial corridor.

As long as one spore survives, a new cluster of green spores can grow within a few months.

Therefore, once the outer Greenskins lost their space resupply and their core combat force, the Ancient Giant Machine, they should have disintegrated on their own within one or two months.

Indeed, most orcs have been killing each other due to infighting and starvation, and their numbers have plummeted from their peak to less than one million.

The problem is that as long as spores remain in the soil of the industrial corridor, green plants will sprout up one after another like chives.

The Empire's standard procedure for dealing with orc contamination is to burn through three meters of the ground using a flame purifier.

However, the industrial corridor on Planet Three stretches for 300 kilometers, and the amount of fuel and time required to burn it all is astronomical.

Lawson chose a more economical approach.

They kept beheading people.

Orcs are a species that is extremely dependent on leaders.

A group of orc lads without a leader is like a pile of loose sand; they wander aimlessly, fight amongst themselves, and devour each other, with a fighting strength of less than one-tenth that of an organized group.

An ironclad rule is etched in the genes of orcs: the largest and most powerful member of the group will automatically become the leader.

Once a leader is established, the surrounding orcs will quickly gather to form a new tribe. This tribe will then begin to expand, seize territory, and wage war, giving rise to an even bigger and stronger leader in the process...

This is the positive feedback loop of the orcs' war, Waaagh.

Lawson's strategy was simple: never let this cycle start.

Orcs are the noisiest species in the universe.

An ordinary orc boy can't stay quiet for more than ten minutes; they'll yell, smash things, and fight each other.

The noise level of a group of orcs gathered together was high enough to be located three kilometers away.

When an individual orc begins to emit a deep, rhythmic roar, and the orcs around him begin to respond to the roar, it means that a new leader is being born.

Swarm intelligence named this characteristic audio pattern "Waaagh resonance precursor".

Over the past three weeks, Swarm Intelligence has detected a total of 217 Waaagh resonance precursors.

Each time, a decapitation squad consisting of 3 to 5 platoon-level combat suicide soldiers arrives at the scene within five minutes and precisely kills the orc individual who is advancing in rank.

Sometimes the decapitation squad arrives too quickly; the soon-to-be leader hasn't even had time to stand up straight. He's enjoying the thrill of his expanding size and surging strength while the orc lads around him excitedly bang on their weapons and breastplates before being precisely beheaded.

Without a leader, the orcish horde will descend into chaos within seconds.

The orc boys who had initially gathered were stunned at first, and then began arguing, pushing, and biting each other.

Eventually, they will scatter like a school of startled fish, returning to a state of disarray.

Lawson stood on the outer city wall of the hive, looking down at the direction of the industrial corridor.

On the desolate gray earth, the rusty factory ruins lay scattered like the skeleton of a giant beast.

There were fires in the distance; a group of orcs were setting fire to the remains of an ammunition depot and roasting something to eat.

The swarm intelligence had already marked the coordinates of the fire, but there were only a dozen or so orcs, and there were no signs of resonance, so it wasn't worth wasting ammunition.

"Number of surviving orcs in the outer perimeter: approximately 670,000."

Swarm Intelligence updated the assessment data: "Current decay rate: approximately 0.8% per day. It is estimated that without the replenishment of external spores, the surface orcs on Planet Three will drop below the critical density within 180-240 days."

Critical density is the level at which the average distance between individual orcs becomes too great to form an effective cluster.

Once this density is reached, the orc population will enter an irreversible spiral of decline.

Lawson turned and left the city wall, his silver wings fluttering slightly in the night wind.

Nest City No. 3, abandoned ammunition depot numbered D-7-09.

This ammunition depot was gutted during the Greenskin invasion two years ago.

The orcs took away everything that could be blown up, leaving behind a huge cavity that was 5,200 meters long, 400 meters wide, and 60 meters high.

Rust marks remain on the ground from the welded base of the ammunition rack and the transport rails.

Now, this cavity has been requisitioned as a training ground for Lawson's ship-seizure tactics.

Thirty-two White Tiger powered armored vehicles were arranged in four rows and eight columns, standing at the north end of the ammunition depot.

On both sides and behind the White Tiger Armor Formation, eight thousand platoon-level combat soldiers were divided into sixty-four combat squads, each with one hundred and twenty-five men.

They wore Imperial Stormtrooper plate armor, mass-produced by Lawson from the Obolos armory, far superior to PDF's shoddy body armor. Each carried a heavy steel shield in their left hand, a bomb gun in their right, and a chainsaw sword at their waist.

At the south end of the ammunition depot, a 1:1 partial replica of a Tyrant-class cruiser was welded from steel plates and scrap iron: the main deck passage, the engine room connecting corridor, the ammunition depot entrance, the bridge forecourt, and three main intersections.

Of course, this is just the framework structure.

The real Tyrant-class cruiser is 5.5 kilometers long, and this training ground can only replicate a few of the most critical parts.

But for suicide bombers, the framework is enough. Swarm intelligence will overlay virtual spatial data into the consciousness of each suicide bomber, stretching this ammunition depot into the complete internal structure of a warship.

This hybrid training model, which combines real and virtual elements, was a proposal put forward by Lawson seven days ago.

"The seventeenth full-process exercise is about to begin."