Warhammer: Empire Reboot

Current status: Widespread logic contamination.

Source of contamination: a suspected STC of extremely high theological value, and a secular seal holder holding a high-level imperial administrative license.

Affected nodes: The High Council of Sages, including Magnus, and its two thousand Guardian Legionnaires.

In the eyes of worldly generals, this was a perfect power grab.

But in Belissa Kuhl's mechanical logic, this was a systemic collapse, a systemic failure that needed to be forcibly corrected.

He is not an elected politician.

He is the Agrippina Casting General, certified by the Martian Council.

As long as the master control key is still in his database, any off-track operations can be reset.

Even the wise can be swayed.

The Christian Guard can hesitate.

The agent can produce the most sacred relics.

However, none of these equate to the highest system privileges.

Kuhl cut off the mimicry audio from the external speaker and activated the highest-level binary broadcast channel.

"Initiate final arbitration to rewrite the agreement."

The lumen tubes on the temple walls, which had been emitting a soft blue light, instantly switched to a dazzling blood red.

At the temple gate, the four adamantite gates, each weighing six thousand tons, lost the support of the anti-gravity engine and crashed down with sheer physical mass, kicking up clouds of dust.

The ground shook violently, completely severing the temple from the outside world on the surface of Agrippina.

At the same time, the sixty-four obelisk transmitters distributed on the temple dome were simultaneously charged.

An invisible electromagnetic barrier, powerful enough to paralyze all wireless communication devices, instantly opened.

"Communication lost."

The old sage Magnus raised his head: "General! You are blocking the data stream! You are desecrating the parsing process of this source template!"

Kur ignored him.

He sent a forced overwrite code to the two thousand angels waiting in the main hall.

These mechs were originally trapped in a logical deadlock due to the orders of the supervising sage.

But now, Kur has bypassed the intermediate nodes and invoked the low-level backdoor at the creator level.

The hesitation in the mechs' vision lenses vanished, replaced by a uniform, cold crimson.

They are no longer soldiers with tactical thinking, but have become automatic firing units controlled by a single mastermind.

Two thousand arc rifles and gamma pistols were raised simultaneously, their muzzles aimed at Xerath, Lawson, and the sages kneeling before the STC.

The first layer of sealing is complete.

External fleets cannot interfere, and the interior is physically isolated.

But this is not enough.

Kur knew that the person holding the seal in front of him possessed extremely powerful worldly martial arts.

He initiated a second level of arbitration, invoking the "superior overwrite authority of the casting director".

Six servo mechanical arms behind Kur suddenly extended and simultaneously inserted into the six master data ports on the Forging Throne where he was located.

His spinal interface is physically connected to the entire data backbone of Agrippina.

"The rule of law is never tied to words."

The synthesized voice of Kur resounded through the temple's internal broadcasting system, cold and grand.

"Legal authority is not based on worship, nor on the fanaticism of this temple at any given moment. Miracles can be faked, and people's hearts can be contaminated by unknown logic viruses."

As he spoke, hundreds of sages in the temple suddenly noticed that the system permission interface on their retinas was turning gray in large areas.

Access denied.

"The seal of authority has expired."

"Computing power connection interrupted."

Sage Ding uttered a piercing protest: "Kur! You severed our local authority! You stripped the Lesser Thinker Array of access! You are murdering Agrippina's research progress!"

“I am restoring purity,” Kur replied coldly.

A massive data stream flooded into Kur's processor.

He forcibly consolidated control of the Thinker arrays, which were originally distributed across various forges and research stations. He also forcibly switched the entire global computer network of Agrippina into a single-master arbitration mode.

Now, all the fire control radars, air defense arrays, and plasma reactor control valves on this planet are concentrated in his single processor.

Kur allocated 15 percent of his computing power to send commands to the three "Dead Star" defense platforms located in planetary synchronous orbit.

Thirty thousand kilometers away in space, a massive cannon with a caliber of 100 meters began to slowly turn, its muzzle locking onto the geographical coordinates of the Forging Temple.

"Legal authority rests on the master key. It rests on the underlying imprint. It rests on the final arbitration power."

Kuer's tracks rolled over the metal grooves on the ground, propelling him forward.

The Secret Service tightened its encirclement as he moved.

"That authority is still in my hands."

Kur looked at Lawson, and at Kexos, who was holding up the STC box.

"Put down that box, Sealholder. Order your heretical agents to cut off the power. Otherwise, the Orbital Macrocannon will pierce this dome in a minute. Under the kinetic energy of the Macrocannon, the Terminator armor and your worldly privileges are meaningless."

This is not a bluff. In Kur's logic, it is better to destroy the temple, destroy himself, and destroy this relic that may be contaminated by politicians and heretics than to let the Cult of Mechanics lose control.

This is very mechanical teaching.

This is their obsession that has lasted for ten thousand years.

If order collapses, the highest authority will restore purity through absolute destruction.

Despite being locked onto by two thousand charged weapons and orbital macro cannons, Lawson's expression remained unchanged.

He just looked at Kur with the same look he would give a pile of scrap metal.

Do you think you hold all the keys?

Kur didn't waste any words.

He decided to execute the third level of arbitration and initiate the "Sacred Machine Taboo Purification".

This is a suicidal order.

To complete this final overwrite, Kur must forcibly open all the underlying arbitration ports and invoke the highest authority imprint originally imprinted deep within his core processor by the headquarters of the Martian Mechanicus.

He must perform a simultaneous overwrite of the entire array.

Kur lowered his consciousness.

He bypassed the surface-level interface, bypassed the middle-level tactical firewall, and entered the deepest, darkest part of the Agrippina Thinker array.

This is the foundation of logic.

This place contains the underlying code left over from the era of the Great Expedition.

In order to transmit commands globally with zero latency, Kuhl, in that instant, essentially lit up the entire core circuitry of the array.

He exposed his physical location, encryption key, decision-making path, and neural interface to the entire network all at once and without reservation.

Then, Kur stopped.

In his electronic vision, Agrippina's underlying network should have been a pure, binary deep sea constructed from the sacred words of Mechanicus.

But now, a huge shadow lurks in this deep sea.

This is not a chaotic logic virus.

This has no characteristics of subspace corruption.

This is a vast and terrifying computing power composed of countless tiny computing nodes connected in parallel.

It has been lurking in those ancient data gray areas that the Mechanics have regarded as sacred remnants and dare not touch at will.

Like a colossal creature lurking in the deep sea.

This shadow represents swarm intelligence!

The seed was planted long ago in the trenches of Position One, when Er Gou poked his liquid metal finger into the mechanical eye of the Mechanicus technical priest, Viktor.

Vikley possesses a legitimate High Priest access token.

Using this token, the swarm mind silently slipped into Agrippina's planetary network.

The Mechanics Cult's firewall protects against hackers and viruses.

But swarm intelligence is not a virus; it is a quantum parallel network with self-learning capabilities.

After entering the network, it did not tamper with any data or seize any permissions.

It simply reads, learns, and occupies that redundant physical storage space.

The highest authority of the Mechanicus is, in essence, still artificial authority.

It is a logic lock based on cryptography and digital authentication.

However, swarm intelligence does not require breaking logic locks.

The moment Kuhl activated all core lines and opened all ports to execute the "final arbitration," swarm intelligence surged in.

It doesn't take over permissions. It takes over the computing entity that carries those permissions—the hardware.

"Instruction rejected."

This message suddenly popped up on Kur's retina.

He attempted to send a fire command to the orbital macro cannon.

The data packet was swallowed up the moment it was transmitted, without any confirmation.

He attempted to send a firing order to the frigate crew.

The red light in the eyes of the two thousand mechs instantly went out, and their weapons automatically entered physical lock-on mode, with the barrels lowered.