Warhammer: Empire Reboot

"As ordered."

Duan Yu looked out of the starport.

The night sky over Albit-3 remained gray, the nest was still enormous, and gunshots and cries could still be heard from the bottom.

A trial cannot heal a planet immediately.

But the first cut had been made, and the rotten flesh began to be exposed.

Next, cleaning, hemostasis, and suturing were all taken care of.

Duan Yu boarded the warship.

The remaining companies of the Bi'an battle group have completed their preparations.

Behind Albiter-3, the lights are gradually being restored.

"The rest of the troops, follow me to the next planet."

Two months later.

Planet Obolos III, Spire.

Outside the window, it's nighttime in Shangchao.

The spire of the Nest City hangs above the sea of ​​clouds. In the distance, several towers have been fitted with new lighting matrices, and rows of golden window panes light up in the darkness, like nerves that have been reconnected.

Lawson sat by the floor-to-ceiling window.

He was wearing a dark casual suit with the collar open and the cuffs rolled up to his forearms.

A cigar is held between the fingers, and the smoke slowly rises.

Andrei stood on the other side of the long table, holding a data tablet in his hand, and raised his hand to open the star map.

The entire Agrippina sector unfolded in the sky.

Two months later, the star chart is no longer the same as it was at the beginning.

In the beginning, the Agrippina Sector was a bleak landscape. The communication gaps, chaotic contamination zones, disconnected worlds, out-of-control routes, and abandoned relay stations that followed the Great Rift resembled a torn-up old map.

Now, a large number of blue and white markings have appeared in the gray area.

Blue indicates that contact has been made.

White indicates that the imperial administration has been restored.

The dark iron color signifies that the Bi'an battle group has completed its purge.

The color red remains glaring, representing chaos and pollution, active rebels, pirate strongholds, out-of-control cities, and disease-risk areas.

Lawson walked up to the star map.

Swarm intelligence is automatically integrated.

Countless pieces of information emerged from the star chart and rearranged before him.

In the past, if this information flooded in at the same time, he would have to personally suppress his main consciousness and delegate all low-level scheduling to the foundational sequence for processing.

Now, the theater-level swarm brain is fully operational, and most details are processed within the partition, with only the nodes that truly require its judgment being sent up.

This is the most valuable aspect of the sixth leap.

Improving individual combat strength is very important.

The growth of black hole projections is very important.

Increasing the combat sequence limit is important.

But when a sector begins to reconnect with the Imperial order, what truly determines victory or defeat is often not how many enemies Lawson can kill with a single axe blow, but whether he can simultaneously manage food, clean water, armies, guilds, nobles, orbital turrets, corpse disposal, plague quarantine, and grassroots administration across hundreds of worlds.

The swarm brain allowed him to go from personally controlling each finger to having each arm operate instinctively.

That's more like a sector-level ruler.

Andrei stood to his side and slightly behind.

"There have been no major enemy invasions in the Agrippina Sector in the past two months. The Red Pirates have retreated completely, and the remnants of the Iron Warriors have also withdrawn from the outer abandoned mining areas. The Death Guards made a few attempts to probe with plague probes, which the Suanni Chapter burned down. The World Eaters have appeared twice on the edge of the sector, but they did not cross the patrol line."

Lawson stared at the red dot at the edge of the star map.

"Even the World Devourers have learned to take detours?"

"They're still crazy, but this time the Blood God didn't open the door for them."

Andrei laughed and said, "After the battle of Agrippina, all parties in Chaos realized one thing. We can enter our territory, but before we enter, we must be prepared to stay here forever."

Lawson chuckled: "He bullies the weak and fears the strong."

"That's understandable; even chaos fears true death."

Andrei said, “Khorne’s madmen are willing to throw their lives into the river of blood, but the War Gang leader, the Red Pirate captain, the Dark Mechanicus priest, and the rebellious governor all have to settle scores. Boss, you fought Khorne head-on in Agrippina and even renamed Angron’s axe Angron. That reputation is more valuable than ten diplomatic statements.”

"The Devourer Legion hates you the most, yet none of them are coming. Of course, the others will have to think twice."

Andrei pulled up a battle report index.

"The Avengers Legion has been operating independently well for the past two months. The White Tiger Legion handled three boarding operations, the Crimson Dragon burned down two Chaos Fuel Depots, the Bi'an completed the initial purge on twenty-seven planets, the Zhulong escorted fifteen short-distance crossings, and the Suanni was responsible for the purification of six plague sites. All battle reports have been archived, except for three items that the war zone's brain has marked as requiring your personal review."

"Leave it for now."

Lawson raised his hand and zoomed in on the star map to a larger area.

"I'm not concerned with sporadic battles right now."

The boundary of the Agrippina sector lights up.

A cube with sides approximately two hundred light-years long slowly takes shape in the darkness.

Before the Great Rift, there were about five hundred human worlds registered here.

Nesting planets, conscription planets, agricultural planets, mining planets, frontier outposts, punitive mining areas, monastic fortresses, wandering supply depots, and many semi-independent colonies.

The imperial administration liked to write everything down in booklets.

The booklet mentions loyalty, but that doesn't mean a planet is truly loyal.

The booklet says it's stable, but that doesn't mean no one will starve there.

When Lawson entered the Agrippina sector, what he actually saw was a rotten ledger.

Some planets still have double-headed eagles, yet they sell their populations to pirates.

Some governors pray to the Emperor every day, yet lock the Star Guard conscription roster in their cellars and maintain their thrones with their private guards.

Some unions controlled the clean water supply, selling it to upscale bathhouses and forcing middle-class residents to drink recycled water that smelled of corpses.

Some prison wardens in the disciplinary mining areas would write off prisoners, vagrants, political enemies, orphans, and mobs as labor camp losses, when in reality they were being sold to black market slave ships.

And some are even worse.

On the agricultural moon, tainted by filth, granaries are crawling with maggots that sing hymns.

The communication tower, modified by the Tzeentch sorcerer, sent out three contradictory distress signals from the Empire, causing the rescue fleet to fight amongst themselves.

The noble hives controlled by Slaanesh followers disguised famine as an aesthetic movement to purify inferior bloodlines.

The remnants of the Khwarazmian war gang occupied the lower stronghold and converted the Ministry of Justice fortress into a gladiatorial arena.

These worlds cannot be restored simply by planting a flag.

It's not something that can be resolved simply by killing a governor.

Lawson looked at the star map, his gaze darkening.

"Statistical results."

Andrei raised his hand, and a set of numbers unfolded.

[The pre-Great Rift human world was approximately 500 years old.]

[Human civilization structures confirmed to be completely destroyed or irrecoverable: 94.]

[After the Chaos Sacrifice, only contaminated wasteland remains: 37.]

[Disease isolation, long-term lockdown required: 21.]

[Provisional resource recovery target after large-scale population extinction: 30.]

[Currently recoverable, takeoverable, and rebuildable human world: 318.]

Andrei said, "Of the 318 recoverable worlds, 112 have made initial contact. 49 have completed military takeover. 16 have completed the administrative reconstruction framework. Only the Obolus Triad, the Klein agricultural system, the Agrippina core star, and some of its associated mineral planets are fully under the jurisdiction of the swarm's sub-brain."

"What about Albitel-3?" Rosen asked.

"The company left behind by Bi'an has completed the basic purge. The three million Cornerstone Sequence has taken over clean water, food, corpses, promethium, orbital defense, and family registration. Mid-level rations will be restored within seventy-two hours. The lower nest is still in chaos and will take two to three months. The interrogation summary sent by the prison is here."

A video pops up.

Governor Melchior confessed while bound by chains.

In order to survive, he was dismantling the entire Albitel aristocratic system and showing it to Lawson.

"A smart person."

"That's what Lawson commented."

Andrei nodded.

"The judge said the same thing. He suggested sparing Melchior's life, at least until the end of the first phase of the sector purge. This man knows a lot about the governor's mind. His testimony can be used to persuade other fence-sitters to surrender."

"approve."

Lawson waved to turn off the video.

The Agrippina sector is rotten, rotten to the point of being like the Empire.

It wasn't simply destroyed by chaos.

Chaos merely tore open the outer shell, letting out the rotten stuff inside.

In the past, the empire could rely on the Star Torch, tithes, navy, Ministry of Justice, state religion, and courts to forcibly suppress this corruption under order.

With the arrival of the Great Rift, communications were cut off, the navy lost contact, the Star Speakers were burned to death, and documents from the Ministry of the Interior could not be delivered. Many people immediately revealed their true colors.

Lawson was not one to clean up the mess left by the old imperial order.

But now he has no choice but to wipe it.