Warhammer: Empire Reboot

The will to survive is the best navigator.

"It's just ahead."

Fekus's voice began to tremble: "Any further ahead we will..."

Before it could finish speaking, its body began to show adverse reactions, and the skin around its single eye started to blister.

Its tiny entity, sustained by subspace energy, is being negated at its most fundamental level by some force.

"We can't get any closer!"

Zikrus let out an almost screaming wail in Jia Wu's palm: "If you come any closer, I'll fall apart, please!"

The two little devils' reactions confirmed Lawson's judgment.

He ordered Jia San and Jia Wu to stop.

Then, the scene at the end of the corridor appeared in the beams of the suicide squad's tactical flashlights.

A wall.

But this wall was unlike any he had ever seen in the wrecked ship.

The material is dark silver, and the surface luster, when illuminated by a flashlight, exhibits a uniformity that does not belong to any human metallurgical process.

Runes were carved on the wall.

Straight lines and arcs intertwine in mathematically near-perfect proportions, forming a symbolic system that does not belong to any known human civilization in the Milky Way.

If you look closely at the lines of the runes, you can see a very faint, dark green fluorescence slowly flowing within them.

The moment Lawson saw this wall through the telepathic connection, his breath hitched again.

"It's a space necromancer."

As the beam of the tactical flashlight swept across a wider area, the complete picture gradually came into view.

This is half of the hull of a Necropolis frigate.

The rear half was embedded in the metal structure of the wrecked ship, tilted at an angle of about 45 degrees, with the bow pointing upwards and the stern downwards, like a broken sword half stuck in the mud.

The jagged, irregular shape of the torn metal edges indicates that the undead frigate was not severed by precise weapon fire, but rather violently torn apart by some immense physical force.

Lawson quickly deduced the most likely scenario.

During its deep slumber, this necromantic frigate encountered some catastrophic external force. After losing orbital control, it drifted aimlessly in the real universe for countless millennia before being caught in the accretion process of a space wreck and torn in two.

The front half is missing, while the rear half is embedded in the metal structure of the wrecked ship.

The necromancer's building materials contain a large amount of black stone.

Instead of being corroded or softened during hundreds of years of subspace immersion, it remained firmly embedded in the wrecked ship like a nail, creating a perfect subspace vacuum region.

Half a Necropolis frigate.

Lawson stared at the black hull covered in necromantic runes.

"Notify the forge outpost. Send ten tactical squads over, carrying all available heavy equipment."

Ten tactical squads arrived at the assembly point within three hours.

The advance teams of Jia 3 and Jia 5 have already established a basic perimeter around the breach.

The components of the multi-barrel rapid-fire cannon were taken from the armory space and set up 30 meters directly opposite the rift.

Lawson simultaneously controlled the entire field of vision of all the assassins present through swarm intelligence.

"Jia San, lead the first team in. The rest of you, stand by outside."

Jia San led nine assassins sideways through the dark silver rift.

The beam of the flashlight scatters through the interior corridors of the necromancer frigate.

Lawson observed this space, which had been dormant for countless millennia, through the perspective of Jia San.

All the assassins raised their grenades, their muzzles locked onto every dark corner and vent of the corridor.

Lawson was extremely wary of the Netherworld Scarabs that could swarm in from all directions at any moment.

In the system of space necromancers, they are repairmen, cleaners, sentinels, and the only line of defense that remains operational during the Great Sleep.

They will mercilessly devour the intruders with their disintegrating force fields.

However, nothing happened in the deathly silent corridor.

Lawson waited for ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds.

"Sir, look here!"

Chapter 57 Auspicious Opening of the Coffin! (Third Update)

Jia San's flashlight shone on the ground.

The corridor floor was scattered with countless flat, oval-shaped metal fragments.

That was the Tomb Scarab he had been wary of.

Unlike the terrifying miniature structures in the Imperial Records that flowed like mercury, these scarabs were now dull and lifeless.

The intricate articulated limbs were stiffly curled up in the abdomen, and the energy nodes that had been glowing with a ghostly green light were completely extinguished.

Once the living metal loses its vitality, it stops flowing and solidifies into a heavy, inert substance resembling dead gray pig iron.

Jia San, carrying a gun, walked about fifty meters down the corridor, counting the remains of more than two hundred scarabs along the way.

All machines were shut down, without exception.

Lawson quickly deduced the reason from the outpost.

According to the necromancy, a living metal being fatally wounded will automatically trigger phase teleportation to escape the scene.

However, the wreckage scattered across the ground proved that the life-saving law had failed. After the half-destroyed frigate was swallowed by the warp rift, the chaotic dimension completely severed its network coordinates with the Necromancer's Tomb.

Phase transmission failed, and external energy supply was cut off.

These scarabs, which rely on underlying programs to operate, exhausted their last bit of energy in the desperate situation of being unable to contact the master node, and one by one they stopped and crashed.

Tens of thousands of years have passed.

There are no patrollers, no repairmen, and no awakeners.

This half-destroyed necromancer has become an undefended tomb.

After confirming this assessment, Lawson issued the next instruction through their shared consciousness.

"Enter all. Search all compartments. Locate the hibernation sarcophagus. Do not open it; await my command."

One hundred assassins were divided into ten groups and began searching the dark silver corridor.

The internal structure of the Necropolis Frigate is much simpler than that of the Imperial warships.

There were no exposed pipelines in the maintenance access area, no rusted valves or leaking pipes.

Each cabin is a standard hexagon, with walls as smooth as a mirror and seams so precise they are indistinguishable to the naked eye.

The technology is from 60 million years ago.

Even today, it would still make the empire's best forging masters feel inferior.

This extreme geometric order makes the search extremely efficient.

Twenty minutes later, the third team discovered the first hibernation chamber in the midsection of the ship.

The hatch was half open, and the shockwave from the impact damaged the door's locking mechanism.

Jia San used his shoulder to push open the heavy alloy hatch.

Inside is a rectangular space of about 200 square meters.

Stone coffins were neatly arranged in the space.

To be precise, it's a hibernation pod.

Each hibernation pod is approximately two meters long, seventy centimeters wide, and fifty centimeters high.

They are arranged neatly in four rows and ten columns on the floor of the cabin, with the distance between each pair of hibernation pods being exactly sixty centimeters.

There are forty in total.

Jia San walked to the nearest hibernation pod and shone his flashlight on the hatch.

The hatch is semi-transparent.

The beam of the flashlight pierced through the hatch, and the scene inside was vaguely revealed in the dark silver light and shadow.

A metal skeleton.

The head is relatively large, the eye sockets are triangular, and the mandible extends to both sides to form two symmetrical sharp angles.

The torso's skeleton is like a precision metal frame, with complex circuits and micro-mechanical functional units embedded within the bones.

Space Necromancer.

The ruler of the Milky Way 60 million years ago has been sleeping ever since.

The self-repairing ability of living metal means that conventional weapons are almost incapable of causing permanent damage; if you shatter it, it will piece itself back together; if you melt it, it will reform after cooling. The only way to destroy it is to destroy the imprint core in its chest cavity.

"Continue the search. Mark all hibernation pod locations."

Over the next forty minutes, the ten search teams discovered more hibernation pods.

Final statistics.

Twelve hibernation chambers, totaling 472 space necromancers.

Two smaller, more elaborately decorated separate compartments were also discovered, each containing a significantly larger hibernation pod.

Two high-order units.

472 Necromancers plus two high-tier units.

If they were to awaken, given the combat prowess of the necromancers and the self-repairing ability of the living metal, even if only one-tenth of them were to awaken, the firepower of a hundred necromancers would be insufficient.

We must never let them wake up.