Warhammer: Empire Reboot

An extremely thin, living metal needle snapped open at the fingertip, transforming into a dull, short blade.

Just as Dragos caught the unusual movement out of the corner of his eye, the short blade had already sliced ​​into the seam of his left ribcage armor like a venomous snake.

The short blade pierced precisely through the soft lining and went straight into the major artery supplying blood to his secondary heart.

Immediately afterwards, a blinding burst of imperial gold fire erupted from the tip of the short blade.

The golden flames, like a red-hot iron rod, melted all the pain alarms and life-sustaining circuits in Dragos's neural cables.

Dragos couldn't even make a sound.

The infiltrator snatched the sealed box with lightning speed with his left hand, and then slammed his right knee into Dragos's lower back, kicking the tall officer directly into the still unstable purple teleportation light.

The spatial tension of the misalignment erupts.

Dragos's upper body was shredded by the violent warp energy and slammed into the center of the array.

Its lower body remained strangely standing in place until it collapsed with a crash two seconds later.

Black splattered blood and engine oil covered the gear runes that represented Vashtor.

"Enemy attack!" The remaining Black Legion guards finally reacted.

The infiltrator swung three miniature static explosive nails with his backhand.

A silvery-white force field unfolded, freezing the two guards who rushed forward and a screaming slave in mid-air.

The roar of the heavy-explosive gun finally tore the temple apart.

The massive bomb chased after the infiltrator's afterimage, blasting the side door wall to smithereens.

The Lurker rolled on the ground as the shockwave hit, its back armor taking several shrapnel shots. The outer black Legion paint peeled off, revealing the unmarked dark iron inner armor.

Kahmut raised his staff.

"Seal the gate!"

A ghostly blue flame rose from the ground before the main passage, forming a high wall of despair.

But the infiltrators had no intention of using the main entrance.

He skillfully slipped into a hidden maintenance corridor behind the side door.

Father Morger looked in that direction: "That's the maintenance layer leading to the auxiliary engine's spine!"

On the teleportation array, Dragos's remaining half of his body was still twitching.

"Chase him! Get the shards back! Skin him alive!"

The remaining Black Legion veterans, their eyes red, rushed into the utility tunnel.

Several thousand red-letter warriors also followed in, driven by the wizard.

The temple fell silent once more.

"My lord..." a low-ranking wizard reported, "the fragments have been stolen."

“I’m not blind yet.” Kahmut stared at the bloodstains on the ground.

Shouldn't we sound the alarm for the entire ship immediately?

Why do we have to go and pull it?

Kahmut straightened his robes. "Dragos confirmed the takeover himself. Surrounded by his own guards, he was stabbed in the heart by his own men. Thousand Sons' mission is now perfectly complete."

"But... General..."

"If the War Commander wants to blame someone, let him ask those incompetent black dead dogs why they can't even recognize the assassin who infiltrated!"

Kahmut scoffed, "We're only responsible for finding it. As for losing it, that's Abaddon's shame."

The alarm finally blared shrilly from the inner corridor, accompanied by the Black Legion's furious roar.

"Seal off floors three through seven!"

"Sever the inner ring on the starboard side!"

The Lurker—codenamed Nineteenth Blade—moved like a ghost through the intricate network of pipes.

At the intersection ahead, a veteran of the Black Legion, who was in the closest pursuit, just raised his explosive pistol.

The Nineteenth Blade reached behind his back and pulled out two molten bombs from his waist. Instead of throwing them at the veteran, he flicked his wrist and precisely tossed the bombs into the exhaust vent above his head.

"boom!"

A violent explosion resounded deep within the shaft, and high-temperature steam at thousands of degrees Celsius, mixed with fragments of metal, poured down like a waterfall, engulfing the entire pipe gallery.

The pursuers were forced to retreat repeatedly by the high-pressure steam.

As they rushed across the intersection in the sweltering heat, the Nineteenth Blade had already pried open a very well-hidden maintenance door on the left and disappeared into the darkness of the lower engine area.

The Nineteenth Blade burst through the maintenance door and collided head-on with a Dark Mechanicus overseer.

"Protocol authentication..."

"boom!"

The bomb shattered the foreman's mechanical skull.

The uncommanded servants stood frozen in place like puppets, allowing the Nineteenth Blade to brush past them and head straight for the core of the auxiliary engine's spine: the three magic steel stabilizing valves.

Blow up the entire ark? No, he only needs to drive three fatal nails into the spine of this behemoth.

He slammed the first thermobaric bomb, about half the size of a fist and disguised as a maintenance module, onto the base of valve number one.

[5 seconds.]

He ducked to avoid the overhead searchlights, and the second bomb was tucked into the intersection of the power feeder and the nerve plexus.

[4 seconds.]

Heavy footsteps came from behind.

Veterans of the Black Legion charged out amidst the steam, their heavy slingshots spitting fire.

Die, you bastard!

The bomb tore through the Nineteenth Blade's left shoulder armor, and half of his mechanical servo arm hung limply.

He used the force of the impact to fall forward, then rolled on the ground and slid to the foot of the third valve.

The last bomb, the magnetic lock engaged.

[3 seconds.]

The veteran threw down his empty-handed explosive gun, roared, swung his chainsaw axe, leaped high into the air, and cleaved the head of the nineteenth blade.

On the iron plate beneath the Nineteenth Blade's feet, a static force field was quietly activated.

The chainsaw axe roared as it sliced ​​into the edge of the light barrier, sending sparks flying, but it could only cleave through a dissipating silver ripple.

The force field was now completely empty.

The veteran slammed his fist heavily onto the third valve.

He suddenly looked down, his gaze meeting that of the molten metal bomb on the valve base, which was flashing wildly.

[1 seconds.]

"dismantle……"

"boom!!!"

The first burst of compressed incandescent light exploded at the base of valve number one.

The high temperature of tens of thousands of degrees vaporized the magic steel shell, and the liquid metal poured into the control shaft like lava, burning the precision core into a lump of scrap iron.

Immediately afterwards, the second bomb detonated in the nerve plexus, and a dark blue energy gushed out like a severed artery.

Finally, there's bomb number three.

The killing machine servant that pounced to defuse the bomb, along with the valve, was melted into a bright puddle of paste by the blinding heat of the molten light.

Three nails, perfectly capturing the essence.

The Ominous Ark is making its final preparations for entering the warp.

The simultaneous failure of all three core stabilizing valves and the rupture of the nerve cord are tantamount to having one's spine broken while the machine is speeding along at high speed.

A sickening metallic hiss emanated from deep within the engine.

To prevent a chain reaction of explosions, the main engine was forced to trigger a forced frequency reduction protection.

The entire ark trembled violently, and its speed visibly plummeted.

Inside the teleportation sanctuary, Father Morger looked up from the chaotic control panel: "Assisted propulsion disabled... starboard energy blocked... the Ark has been forcibly downclocked!"

Kahmut grabbed his robe: "How much has the speed decreased? Can we still get into the planned route!"

"It's impossible..."

Moerger frantically pounded on the keyboard, “The warm-up has completely failed. We’re like a dead turtle in a sea of ​​stars now.”

The low-ranking wizard scrambled into the temple: "My lord! The assassin detonated the molten bomb and escaped using some kind of short-range teleportation before the explosion!"

The Thousand Wizards fell into a deathly silence.

The remaining Black Legion guards, however, were like powder kegs with their fuses lit: "This is your ship! The security you set up! You actually let an assassin kill the receiving officer right under the War Commander's nose, steal the fragments, and blow up our engine!"

Kahmut slowly turned around, his eyes blazing with murderous intent: "Shut your filthy mouth. That assassin was wearing your armor, mingling in your ranks, even standing right behind Dragos. And now you're questioning me?"

“You…” The guard suddenly raised his heavy explosive pistol.

"You dare to fire on Thousand's territory, you idiot?" The red-letter warriors around Kahmut raised their explosive rifles in unison.

The situation is on the verge of erupting.

But what interrupted this infighting was an even more shrill announcement.

A wizard in charge of the astrology station stumbled in, throwing his staff aside.

"My lord... a large-scale track has been detected in the direction of the Vol system!"

He pointed to the observation platform outside the temple, "It's the Necromancer's Tomb Fleet! They've caught up with us, following the warp trail we left behind!"

Kahmut shoved the crowd aside and strode onto the observation platform.

On the holographic star map, behind the massive dot of light representing the ominous Ark, a string of cold green spots of light, representing death, is approaching at an extremely fast speed.