Warhammer: Empire Reboot

While the Vampire's Hellblade can inflict damage on the soul level, its physical attacks are effectively negated by the instantaneous hardening of living metal.

The force field of the power sword was equally effective against the demon's dark red carapace. Although the demon's body was formed from subspace energy, it still obeyed basic physical laws in the material world.

Swarm intelligence is also continuously calculating and optimizing the warriors' combat techniques.

A week later.

The fighting continues unabated.

Chapter 69 Second Enhancement

The four forces are like four chainsaws with their gears jammed together; if any one tries to break free, it will be pulled back by the inertia of the other three.

The orcs couldn't stop. Gorgar Skullbreaker's army, in a state of collective berserk frenzy in the Waaagh arena, had lost all possibility of retreat. In this state, the concept of retreat was physically erased from the orcs' minds.

The demons wouldn't stop. The bloodthirsty madman's orders to stop at nothing continued to take effect. Lawson's Fire Seed Squad would occasionally kill a few demons on the edge. The rage of having their souls captured kept the demons' berserk level constantly boiling.

The gene stealers wouldn't stop; the orcs had already reached the entrance to their lair. If they didn't fight back, they would die inside.

The Chaos Warriors are relentless. Their strongholds are attacked, their brothers are killed, and their power armor is stolen. Valentine is convinced that the Orcs are responsible and is carrying out a retaliatory massacre.

The four sides are locked together.

No one can escape.

Lawson's troops relentlessly reaped the spoils on the outskirts of this hell.

A week's worth of data was laid out before Lawson.

The total number of suicide soldiers has steadily increased to nine thousand.

The control area between the six outposts covers a range of more than sixty kilometers.

The computing power of swarm intelligence increases several times with the number of nodes.

Lawson's psychic powers extended his perception range to over one kilometer.

The most crucial figure is the warp energy, which surged to over 14,000 points during the demon harvest.

The threshold for the second genetic base leap is 10,000 points.

He has already surpassed it.

In the deepest isolation chamber of the forge stronghold, Lawson looked at the confirmation prompt on the system panel.

[Genetic Basal Leap: Second-Stage Initiation]

[Subspace Energy Consumption: 10000 points.]

The lifting process lasted approximately thirty seconds.

The human genome has its inherent upper limit.

The first leap pushed Lawson to the edge of this limit, about twice the limit for mortals, equivalent to an unarmored Astartes scout.

That's the pinnacle that can be achieved through optimization without altering the underlying structure of the genome.

Beyond that, optimization is no longer an option.

To break through the limits, the underlying architecture itself must be rewritten.

This is what emperors did when they created gene seeds in ancient Himalayan laboratories: inserting entirely new genetic sequences into the human genome.

The system does the same thing in principle, but the path is different.

The emperor used grafting of exogenous gene fragments.

The system uses pure subspace life-origin energy to stimulate the existing genome, activating those gene segments in human DNA that have been silenced, locked, and marked as useless during millions of years of evolution with energy violence.

These silent genes are not junk.

They are the remnants of ancient abilities that the human species once possessed during its long evolutionary history but which were later shut down due to environmental changes.

The system used 10,000 points of subspace energy to retrieve all these blueprints and activate them simultaneously.

The skeleton is the first system to be reconstructed.

During the first leap, the change in the skeleton is densification, with cross-weaving added to the original honeycomb-like trabecular structure to increase density and toughness.

This time, the microstructure of the trabeculae underwent a qualitative change.

The geometric advantage of close-packed hexagons increases the overall load-bearing capacity of the structure by an order of magnitude.

While the density increased, Lawson's skeleton became lighter because the hexagonal close-packed structure required far less material than the interwoven structure for the same strength.

This means that while the strength doubled, the total weight of the skeleton decreased by about eight percent.

Lighter, harder, and tougher.

The Holy Grail Triangle in engineering was realized in thirty seconds by ten thousand points of subspace energy.

Muscle changes are due to a change in materials.

The first leap doubled the density of myofibrils, but the protein composition of the fibers themselves remained unchanged, still consisting of the standard human actin and myosin.

This time, the protein structure in the muscle fiber was rewritten.

The system activated a set of ancient gene fragments that had been silent in the human genome for millions of years.

The most noticeable effect is that, with the same density of muscle fibers, it can now output nearly one and a half times the force of the first leap, while the contraction speed has increased by forty percent.

But the most significant change is the muscle switching ability.

Human muscle fibers are divided into two types: fast-twitch and slow-twitch. Fast-twitch fibers are responsible for explosive power, while slow-twitch fibers are responsible for endurance.

The ratio of fast and slow muscle fibers in normal humans is fixed; sprinters have more fast muscle fibers, while marathon runners have more slow muscle fibers.

Rosen's new muscle fibers no longer have this distinction.

Each fiber has the ability to switch between fast and slow muscle modes in real time. When a burst of power is needed, it switches to fast muscle mode for output, and when endurance is needed, it switches to slow muscle mode for sustain.

Lawson can now seamlessly switch to long-distance march mode the very next second after a full sprint.

The upgrade to the nervous system was the most unexpected thing for Lawson.

The first leap reduced the conduction speed of the synaptic cleft from 0.15 seconds to 0.08 seconds, nearly doubling it.

This time, the system did not continue down the path of accelerating transmission.

It took a completely different approach: redundant parallel connection.

On either side of Rosen's spine, two new auxiliary nerve cords grew, which are two nerve channels connected in parallel next to the original spinal cord, specifically for high-speed signal transmission.

These two auxiliary nerve cords transmit only the highest priority motor commands and sensory signals, bypassing the relay nodes in the spinal cord that are responsible for processing low-priority information.

The time it took for Lawson's finger to receive the trigger command from the brain and complete the action dropped dramatically from 0.08 seconds to less than 0.04 seconds.

The more critical change is not speed, but parallel processing capability.

The original nervous system was a single-channel system; the brain would issue one instruction, wait for it to complete the execution, and then issue the next one.

Now it is a three-channel parallel connection. The original spinal cord processes the routine signals, and the two auxiliary nerve cords process the high-priority instructions of the left and right halves of the body respectively.

The three channels operate simultaneously without interfering with each other.

This means that while Lawson is wielding his sword with his right hand, his left hand can independently perform a completely different action, such as drawing his gun, parrying, or taking out a grenade from his waist.

It's not about finishing one thing before starting the next; it's about doing them simultaneously.

In combat, the value of this parallel capability is devastating.

The changes in his heart caused Lawson to experience the most intense pain during the strengthening process.

During the first leap, the heart undergoes changes such as strengthening, thickening of the myocardial wall, enlargement of the ventricles, and increased pumping efficiency.

It's still a human heart, only stronger.

The Astartes route involves adding organs: a second heart, a third lung lobe, and an extra kidney.

Using redundant stacking to trade for performance.

This path is simple, but the ceiling is low.

You can only add so many organs; once you've added them all, that's the limit.

The system chose a different path: to make that one and only heart stronger.

It's so powerful that it doesn't need a second one.

Chapter 70 The Fundamental Difference Between the Primarch Route and the Astartes Route (Third Update)

The newly formed myocardial tissue is arranged in a spiral, multi-layered spiral, similar to the pressurized structure of a steel wire coiled in a high-pressure water pipe.

This arrangement creates a rotating pumping effect in the ventricles during contraction, pushing out more than four times the amount of blood with each beat compared to a normal heart.

Lawson's resting heart rate dropped from about sixty beats per minute before the intensive training to thirty-two beats per minute.

Thirty-two beats per minute.

Each heartbeat pumps the equivalent of four heartbeats for an average person.

When he enters combat mode and his heart rate rises to sixty or even eighty beats per minute, the blood supply reaches a level that would allow muscles with three times the density to operate continuously at peak power even if they were in excess of demand.

More importantly, this heart did not touch the ceiling.

It evolved along with his genome.

The lungs, liver, kidneys, stomach, and other organs followed the same evolutionary path.

This is the essential difference between the Primarch route and the Astartes route.

The Emperor created twenty Primarchs, which were so powerful that they did not require redundant backups.

Lawson stood up.

His height increased from 2.1 meters to 2.3 meters.

However, the overall proportions are harmonious, and it doesn't turn into a bloated, muscular monster.

Lawson saw the enhanced overall rating in the system panel.

[Genetic Basal Leap - Second Stage Completed]

[Comprehensive Physical Fitness Assessment: Equivalent to Imperial Standards - Unarmored Astartes Official Combat Brother]