Warhammer: Empire Reboot

Ilancia's taut shoulder line loosened slightly.

She knew it was a cage.

But having a patch of soft ground in the cage is better than being dragged across the battlefield by the neck the whole time.

She was silent for a moment, then suddenly asked, "There's something I don't understand."

Lawson looked at her.

"The Vigilant Star is hundreds of light-years away from Obulus. Your troops, or even yourself, can travel between the two locations in seconds."

"This transportation efficiency already surpasses that of most of the Ark Eldar's network tunnels. Now that you've mastered the means to traverse the star sea, why are you still eyeing that dilapidated network tunnel gate beneath the Renkudi Nest?"

"Why do you still covet our things?"

“Let me correct you.” Lawson put down his cup. “The Net Path is not your Eldar’s.”

Ilancia's expression finally changed.

"When the ancestors of the Ark were navigating the net channels, you humans were still throwing stones at each other in the mud of your home planet."

"So what?" Lawson stood up. "You found the legacy left behind by the Ancient Ones, hid inside for tens of millions of years, destroyed the sidelines, sealed the nodes, and let in your dark kin, demons, gene stealers, and all sorts of trash. And now you're telling me it belongs to you?"

Ilancia's long ears tensed slightly: "You calling plunder 'cleaning up' is quite human."

Lawson walked up to her.

His shadow fell, blocking the light behind her.

“To put it more bluntly,” he looked down at her, “the network is a galactic infrastructure left behind by a pre-era super-civilization. Whoever can clean up the chaotic garbage inside, whoever can restart the nodes, whoever can ensure that the channels are not contaminated by the Slaanesh and Comoros lunatics, has the right to use them.”

Ilancia tilted her head back, forcing herself not to back away.

"Robbers also like to rename their door locks."

Those who can't guard the door should talk less about locks.

These words were like a slap in the face; they didn't land on my face, but they were even more hurtful.

Ilancia's chest heaved slightly.

She wanted to refute, to say how much the Eldar had paid for their survival, to say that humans were short-lived, brutal, ignorant, and greedy, and were not worthy of touching that ancient path.

Klossen didn't give her any time to be proud.

He suddenly reached out and grabbed the back of her neck.

“Instead of reciting your pathetic property laws to me,” Lawson whispered in her ear, “think about how your people would value you.”

Ilancia's body stiffened.

"If the prophets of Saim-Han calculate that the cost of war exceeds the value of you and those three thousand-plus Soul Stones; if they decide that negotiation is not worthwhile, ransom is not worthwhile, and even admitting that you have been abandoned is cheaper than angering me—"

His fingers tightened slightly.

"Ilancia Moonblade, what do you plan to use to continue your arrogance?"

Her lips were slightly pale, but she still answered firmly, "When I left the Ark to take on the mission, I was already prepared to sacrifice myself for my people."

Lawson's smile was devoid of warmth: "Fools love to call being abandoned a sacrifice."

The light from the static force field suddenly engulfed the two of them.

The next second, the soft carpet beneath Ilancia's feet disappeared.

The cold, icy command center of the vigilant star assaulted her senses.

The tactical sand table is suspended in mid-air, the foundation sequence shuttles back and forth, and the data light curtain unfolds layer by layer.

Lawson let go and pushed her in front of a workbench.

On the table were rubbings of ancient Ling clan sounds, reports on Dark Ling clan poison crystal powder, underground structural diagrams of Renkudi Nest, and several pieces of parchment with bloodstains darkening the edges.

"translate."

He turned and walked toward the tactical sand table.

"Missing one word: there's no protein in tonight's dinner."

Ilancia gripped the edge of the table and slowly took a breath.

She wanted to call him rude, despicable, and utterly lacking in aristocratic manners.

But in the end, she only picked up the first rubbing.

This human really does what he says.

In the following weeks, the vigilant star ventured deeper into the desolate nest.

Today, layers upon layers of old pipes, insect hive chambers, fragments of Eldar seals, and flawed late-period Imperial reinforcements have been peeled away beneath the ruins.

Deep inside, a twelve-meter-high spirit bone gate stands silently.

It's more like a white scar standing upright in time.

The spirit race runes on the door frame, after tens of thousands of years, still gleam with a faint blue light.

Those curves were slender and elegant, carrying the arrogance that the Eldar of the Ark were best known for.

As Lawson stepped out of the static force field, T-001 was already waiting in front of the door.

"BOSS".

The mechanical assassin looked up. "The deduction of the network outer gate cracking model is complete. Through the ancient sound fragments provided by Ilancia, the captured runes, the semantic fragments of the Ark side quest, and the exhaustive deduction of the swarm nodes, we have found the entry point to bypass the defense logic."

Lawson looked at the door.

"Success rate".

"Ninety-two point eight percent. If the secondary defense is triggered, the cornerstone sequence can physically melt down the counterattack link within three seconds."

"open."

T-001 took a half step back.

All four T-series assassins simultaneously connected to the edge nodes of the door.

High current, simulated psionic pulses, forged spiritual imprints, and massive amounts of redundant data are simultaneously injected into the spirit bone structure.

The runes on the door lit up one by one.

A defensive command that should have pierced the mind of the intruder had just awakened when it was overwhelmed by the garbage data crammed in by the swarm's computing power.

It crashed gracefully, like an Eldar gatekeeper forced to read a billion forged documents at once.

The twelve-meter-high spirit bone gate slid open silently inward.

Behind the door was a void corridor shimmering with a pale glow.

Lawson narrowed his eyes.

"Combat Sequence First to Third Squads, Foundation Engineering Team, enter."

Thirty heavily armored combat soldiers raised their explosive guns and stepped across the threshold.

One hundred key members carrying the detector array followed closely behind.

Shared visions flooded Lawson's mind.

The internal workings of the Web are completely different from the real universe.

The passage beneath their feet was made of a substance that was almost transparent, yet far more solid than adamantite.

Outside the corridor, colorful subspace storms rolled, tore, and roared, like a whole sea that had gone mad.

But the chaotic energy was firmly blocked by the wall, and not even a whisper could get in.

“It is indeed safer than a space jump,” Lawson concluded to himself.

No wonder the Eldar from the Ark sent their elite forces to guard this place back then.

Once gene stealers, chaos cultists, or dark Eldar infiltrate the network through this branch, it's like injecting poison into the bloodstream of the galaxy.

The exploration is progressing very quickly.

This branch line isn't complicated; it doesn't have any maze-like forks. It's more like a hidden needle, specifically designed to lead to a fixed exit.

Two days later, the forward team sent back footage.

They reached the end of the branch line.

This is what the Spirit Race refers to as the Inner Gate.

Lawson was directly teleported to the front lines via static anchor points.

He stood in the transparent corridor, looking up ahead.

It was a massive wall of spirit bones, hundreds of feet high, lying across the end of the road, like a huge white plug stuffed into the throat of the net by the Ark itself.

"interesting."

The virtual projection of T-001 appeared beside him: "BOSS, physical scan shows that the wall is over fifteen meters thick and the material density far exceeds that of refined gold. There is a high concentration of psychic energy resistance matrix and a segmented self-destruct protocol inside."

Lawson has no intention of engaging in a boarding melee with an ark that is 3,600 kilometers long.

At least, not today.

"Withdraw the main force."

Lawson ordered, "Leave three keystone nodes as long-term beacons. Do not touch the walls."

The combat suicide squad began to retreat.

"T-001, now that the door has been found, the network cable is already connected."

Lawson continued, "By using the gravitational interference between the wall and the surrounding space, the refractive index of the network, the micro-fluctuations in energy supply, and the periodic echoes of the Ark's port, we can reverse-calculate its macroscopic coordinates in the real universe."

"Understood, Boss. Connect the swarm's computing power of 3 billion nodes to the network."

"Establishing the network topology model. Gravitational tidal comparison in progress. Subspace current damping calculation in progress. Branch port echo sampling in progress. Correction of actual anchoring errors in progress..."

The entire bee colony network began to be mobilized.

It's like standing on the edge of an endless deep sea, trying to deduce the course of a giant ship on the other side through the vibrations transmitted from a fishing line thinner than a human hair.

The long stream of data finally stopped.

"Analysis complete."