Warhammer: Empire Reboot

The Dark Sage's voice transmitter emitted a cold, mechanical, and metallic synthesized tone.

“You killed Calgos. That stupid pig whose brain is full of muscles and shit, I’ve had enough of his manic behavior of smashing three of my terminals every month.”

Lawson planted the power sword in the ground, crossed his arms, and stared coldly at the mechanical monster.

The Dark Sage raised a servo arm and pointed to the corpses of World Eaters scattered all around him.

"We believe in the dark side of the banished God of Machines. But the underlying logic remains survival and knowledge. We don't care whether the bridge bears Khorne's brass skull or your chapter's insignia. As long as the warship needs to function, you need us."

The wise man went straight to the point, with the arrogance of someone who had long held a high position.

"If you want to take over this ship and continue to employ us, the price needs to be renegotiated. The governor of Planet One, Krauser, gives us 300,000 tons of high-purity refined oil, 2,000 military-grade electronic components, and 20,000 healthy, live slaves every month."

“If you take over, I’ll add a 20% risk premium to Krause’s offer. If you agree, we’ll continue repairing the ship. If you don’t, you’ll just be staring at a pile of scrap metal.”

A short, cold laugh came from beneath Lawson's mask.

"Let's discuss cooperation later."

Lawson drew his power sword, its tip pointing directly at the sage's mechanical compound eye.

"Now, hand over all low-level access permissions to the warship's plasma reactor, Geller force field, fire control center, and subspace engine. Hand over the highest-level code."

The Dark Sage's three red eyes flashed violently. The multi-barrel rotary cannon on his back emitted a low, preheating hum.

The sage's voice carried a hint of mockery.

"Astartes. Your sword is sharp. Your men are also very cooperative. But do you understand this five-kilometer plasma reactor? Do you know how to calm its rampaging machine spirit?"

"This ship is a life form far more complex than you can imagine. If you unplug us, the backlash from the machine spirit will cause the reactor to melt down in less than three hours. You bunch of trigger-pulling maniacs can't even get it out of the orbital dock. Without my team, this ship is your steel graveyard."

"Too much nonsense."

The forty-five White Tiger power armors behind Lawson simultaneously raised their heavy weapons.

"Either hand over the code, or I'll disassemble you into parts, and you can go to the main console and choose one yourself."

The Dark Sage fell silent.

His drastically modified brain was rapidly calculating the probability of risk.

The enemy was able to slaughter over a hundred veteran Devourers in just over ten minutes, demonstrating overwhelming combat power. The survival rate at the start of the battle was virtually zero.

The Mechanic's underlying command: Survival first.

He was surprised at what gave this warlord the confidence to take on this complex behemoth, but he was an absolute pragmatist.

"A logical threat. You have the authority."

The armor on the sage's chest cracked open, and a thick data probe popped out.

A suicide soldier stepped forward, took the probe, and, under the sage's gaze that looked at him as a madman, swallowed it.

The binary code flooded into the assassin's brain like a torrent, and was instantly intercepted and analyzed by the swarm intelligence directly connected to the right hemisphere.

A supercomputing network of millions of brains connected in parallel cracked the Dark Mechanicus' firewall in 0.001 seconds, gaining control over the frequency of every cable on the heavy cruiser.

Take full control!

Just as the Dark Sage was waiting to see how these novices would frantically blow up the reactor, a terrifying scene unfolded.

The warship's technical assassins, who had already been teleported and were positioned in front of the thousands of control terminals on the warship, began operating simultaneously.

The engine room lights flickered, and the previously dim, manic red lighting instantly transformed into a stable, cold pale blue light.

The roar of the plasma reactor deep inside the warship, which had sounded like the howl of a wild beast, became calm and gentle.

The readings of the Geller force field generator reached a perfect equilibrium value within two seconds.

In a matter of seconds, this five-kilometer-long steel behemoth transformed from a frenzied, out-of-control wild boar into a precisely meshed super mechanical clock.

The machine spirit was suppressed.

No, the machine soul was forcibly overwritten and altered by a million resonating biological brains.

The Dark Sage's three compound eyes expanded wildly, and the tracks emitted an uneasy grinding sound.

He looked around at the assassin operators whose movements were so fast they left afterimages, and whose uniformity was like that of a single mold.

"This...this is impossible. Your bodies have no implanted neural synaptic networks. This violates the Ohm Messiah theorem of the Mechanicus. What is this? Alien technology? Warp magic?"

Lawson sheathed his power sword and drew his data probe.

“That’s called discipline, wise man.”

Lawson turned and walked toward the bridge, leaving behind an order: "Stay on the ship and rest. After you've dealt with things on the ground, I have something to discuss with you."

The warships were completely under control.

Lawson walked along the passageway leading to the bridge.

In his field of vision, the symbols representing the five warship holograms all turned into a safe green.

Air superiority is in hand.

The fate of Planet One is already sealed.

Next, all that's needed is to use the macro cannon to launch a few rounds of orbital bombardment at those unruly nests on the ground, and the planet will be completely wiped out.

Just as Lawson was about to issue the order for the fleet to change formation.

A battle report suddenly came from the swarm intelligence network in the right brain.

From the surface of Planet One.

The Governor's Palace at the top of the hill.

The company commander-level assassin responsible for carrying out the decapitation mission sent back a top-secret battle report.

"The battle at the top of the tower is over. All six veterans of the Iron Warriors Legion have been killed. Armor removed and weapons confiscated."

"Klaus failed to kill him. As the battle drew to a close, he activated a hidden mechanism behind the command throne. It was a heavy, blast-resistant steel door that connected to a gravity-assisted descent tunnel."

"We blew up the blast door, and the passage leads directly to the deepest abyss of Nest City One. At the bottom of the passage, we discovered a vast underground space."

The assassin shared the viewpoint with Lawson in real time.

Lawson stopped in his tracks. A nauseating image appeared on the retinal projection in front of him.

It was a huge underground cavity with an area larger than ten football fields.

On the ground, a complex and blasphemous eight-pointed star magic circle, carved with human blood and broken bones, was formed.

Within the magic circle stood a 50-meter-high altar of white bones.

The altar was piled high with freshly severed heads.

"That's that bastard's trump card."

Lawson narrowed his eyes slightly.

Krauser has always touted himself as smarter than the World Eaters, and his establishment of the global arena clearly has a deeper purpose.

He secretly built a warp teleportation node in the bottom hive to perform the ultimate blood sacrifice.

"What's the situation on the ground?" Lawson asked.

"Target Krauser has activated the altar. A high concentration of subspace energy peaks has been detected at the site, and the spatial curvature has been severely distorted. Conventional physical munitions cannot penetrate the crimson force field surrounding the altar."

The assassin zoomed in, focusing the view on the top of the altar.

The first main star, the bottom nest abyss.

This is a giant man-made cavity that is over 20 kilometers long and wide.

The former geothermal extraction station was completely hollowed out and transformed into the ultimate shrine of the Blood God Khorne.

On the ground, trenches up to three meters deep intertwine to form a Khorne eight-pointed star rune that occupies the entire underground space.

Krauser stood atop the fifty-meter-high altar of bones in the very center of the hollow.

He had just fallen from the top of the tower through the escape tunnel. The dictator of the First Main Star was now shirtless, his muscles convulsing violently in extreme excitement, and the dark red runes on his skin seemed to writhe and burn like living things.

Below the altar, surrounded by the eight-pointed star rune, stood tens of thousands of steel gallows and heavy crushers.

A full million slaves. Their collarbones were pierced by iron hooks, and they were hung densely in the air above the magic circle like livestock in a slaughterhouse.

Blood dripped from their toes, and their piercing screams coalesced into a sonic boom that shook the hollow dome of the underground cavern.

"Kargos knows nothing about faith!"

Klaus stood atop the pile of bones, looking down at the million desperate souls below, and let out a maniacal laugh that bordered on madness.

"The Devourers think they can please the gods by killing a few people on the front lines? How ridiculous! What the gods need is efficiency! Scale! Industrialized blood sacrifice!"

He whirled around and slammed his fist into the control panel in the center of the altar, which was made of brass and obsidian.

"Start it up! Full power, you idiot!"

Rumble!!!

The entire underground cavity erupted with deafening mechanical roars.

Tens of thousands of heavy-duty crushers and automatic guillotines are operating simultaneously, suspended in mid-air.

The butcher's knife falls, the gears mesh.

One million slaves were physically cut in half, strangled, or beheaded in the same second.

This goes far beyond the scope of massacre.

This is a blood extraction project that is so precise it's almost obsessive.

A massive amount of blood cascaded down from mid-air like a waterfall, precisely pouring into the three-meter-deep eight-pointed star-shaped ravine below.

Crimson blood, propelled by gravity and the pump, surged and converged wildly along the patterns of the magic array.

The resentment, despair, and fear of millions, along with this thick blood plasma, instantly reached a critical point that was enough to tear apart the bottom line of reality.

Blood sacrifice to the blood god, skull offering to the skull seat.

"Hahahaha! Come! Descend!"

Krauser spread his arms wide, bathing in the swirling blood foam, looking like a mad king insane.

"The mess that the World Eater can't handle, I'll clean up! That bastard warlord who killed my Bloodsteel Guard, I'll make his soul howl beneath the Brass Throne for ten thousand years!"

stab...