Warhammer: Empire Reboot

The battle continues, and only one person remains.

a woman.

She is about 1.85 meters tall, which is considered above average height among female warriors in Qatar.

But her physique far exceeded the first impression of her height, with broad shoulders, thick arms, and back muscles that clearly bulged and flattened with each swing of her knife.

Her waist and abdomen were as firm as a steel plate, and her legs were firmly planted in the mud as stable as tree stumps.

Her skin was tanned a deep bronze by the scorching sun of Qatar, and it was covered with old and new scars.

His left arm was covered with a tribal totem tattoo from his shoulder to his wrist, with bold lines.

His short hair was soaked with sweat and stuck to his forehead.

She held a Katachon combat knife in her right hand and a modified automatic pistol in her left, with a ring of vines wrapped around the barrel, probably some kind of makeshift sound-dampening device.

Her enemy was a Katachan thorn python.

This python is over twelve meters long and its entire body is covered with hard scales. The edges of the scales have barbed horny protrusions, hence the name "thorn python".

The python's body was coiled around the deformed corpse of a Katachon warrior. As it digested its spoils, the python swung its tail at the female warrior.

She took a step forward as the thorn python's tail swept across.

The python's tail swept past her abdomen, and taking advantage of the gap left by the tail, she thrust her combat knife from bottom to top into the seam of a scale in the middle of the python's body.

The blade had penetrated two-thirds of the way in.

The python let out a sharp hiss and its body twisted violently.

It abandoned the half-digested corpse in its mouth, and its twelve-meter-long body, like a furious whip, lashed out at the female warrior.

The female warrior released her grip on the hilt of her sword.

She raised her gun with her left hand and fired four shots at the python's head.

Two shots hit the snake in the eye area. The python's left eye exploded, and yellowish-green fluid splattered everywhere.

But the python still had its other eye, and its attack remained undiminished.

The python raised its upper body, its three rows of sharp teeth bared, and lunged straight at the female warrior's head.

The female soldier threw away her pistol.

She grabbed the python's jaw with her bare hands.

His bronze-colored arms were bulging with muscles, and the veins snaked like earthworms.

This woman is insane.

She couldn't hold on any longer; the python's strength was dozens of times that of a human. Her arms began to tremble under the pressure, and her knees bent half an inch.

She was waiting for the python's mouth to open to its widest extent...

Then, with all her might, she stuffed her head and upper body into the python's mouth.

Qianxian cheered from the tree branch.

But as the female warrior's right hand entered the python's mouth, she drew a second combat knife from behind her waist.

She stabbed upwards through the python's upper jaw from inside its mouth, the tip of the knife emerging from the scales on the python's head.

The thorn python's body convulsed violently three times before collapsing.

When the female warrior emerged from the python's mouth, her entire body was covered in the python's bodily fluids and her own blood.

Her hair was a tangled mess, her face was covered in slime, and her left shoulder had three deep, bone-revealing cuts from the python's sharp teeth.

She knelt on one knee, panting heavily.

Then she looked up and saw Lawson on the branch.

And behind Lawson were two women dressed in inappropriately elegant attire.

"Who are you?" the female warrior asked warily, looking at Lawson. "Merchants?"

"Imperial Merchant."

Lawson leaped down from the tree branch and landed at the edge of the clearing. "Just passing by."

The female warrior's amber eyes swept over Lawson, then glanced at Ash and Qianxian.

Ash looks like a reserved imperial noblewoman, while Qianxian looks like a free-spirited artist.

In the eyes of the Qatari people, they were just two reckless women from an alien region who had followed the merchants into the jungle seeking thrills.

"I was lucky."

The female soldier stood up from the ground. "If you had been a quarter of an hour later, you would have had to pick me out of the thorn python's droppings."

She turned and walked toward the bodies of her three companions.

She took a necklace of animal teeth from the neck of the first corpse, untied a woven rope from the wrist of the second, and pulled a dagger from the boot of the third.

In Qatar, collecting the belongings of fallen comrades is an ironclad rule.

The body can be left in the jungle; this is an unspoken agreement among the Katachan people regarding this land. However, the belongings must be taken back to the tribe and given to the family.

The female soldier carefully wrapped the three relics and tied them around her waist.

“My name is Kara.” She glanced at Lawson. “The tribe is thirty kilometers to the east. Follow me and don’t touch anything.”

Lawson, accompanied by two great demons, followed Kara through the jungle.

The tribe appeared in a space surrounded by four giant trees.

Approximately four hundred people.

The huts were built with hardwood from giant trees and giant fern leaves, with the base raised more than three meters high to prevent ground-crawling predators from directly invading.

Between the sheds stretched a vine rope that emitted a pungent odor; Kara said it was "snake-repelling vine," the scent of which would keep most snakes away.

Lawson took out several boxes of food, standard Starfire-1 rations, directly from the arsenal of the stasis field.

The effect is immediate.

After confirming that the food was not poisonous, the tribal elders welcomed Lawson with a rough and almost savage enthusiasm.

In Qatar, outsiders who are willing to share food are trustworthy, because every bite of food here is earned with their lives.

Lawson took a walk around the tribe.

He met the children of Katachán who were training.

A group of seven- or eight-year-old children are conducting a live-fire exercise in the open space below the shed.

The exercise involved capturing a live acid beetle tied to a wooden stake. This beetle is about 30 centimeters long and, when startled, will spray a corrosive liquid from its abdomen, with a range of two meters, capable of penetrating ordinary leather.

Seven- or eight-year-old children surrounded the beetle, barefoot, bare-handed, and wearing only shorts.

Their task was to flip the beetle over and trap it before it could spray acid.

Lawson saw a little girl, about seven years old, half a head taller than the children of the Imperial Hive City of the same age, but with nascent muscle definition. She dodged the spray of acid with an extremely agile side slide, then rolled onto the beetle's back, precisely wedged the beetle's two forelegs with her hands, and pressed her abdomen with her knees, firmly pinning it to the ground.

The entire movement was completed in one smooth motion, taking less than two seconds.

The adults around glanced at it and went on with their own business. In their eyes, it was no different from a child learning to walk in the Imperial City.

Lawson then observed the eating habits of the Catachan people.

Several hunters returned carrying their prey. The prey was a Katachang leaf-boar, a medium-sized wild animal covered in sharp, leaf-like scales, whose meat was said to be delicious.

The hunters slaughtered, skinned, and cut the leaf pigs into pieces, wrapped them in giant leaves, and then buried them in hot ashes to roast them.

The process of preparing meat is not much different from that on other planets of the Empire.

The difference lies in the vegetables.

A woman carrying a basin walked up to the long table.

The pot contained several spherical plants that looked like large cabbages, bright green with smooth surfaces.

Lawson's psychic senses told him that these "cabbages" were alive.

And it's moving.

The woman placed the bowl on the table, and the "cabbages" immediately began to roll out of the bowl. The outer leaves unfurled, revealing countless tiny tentacles inside. The tips of the tentacles secreted a transparent mucus, which Lawson's psionic scan indicated was a weakly acidic digestive fluid.

This is a predatory plant unique to Katachán.

It feeds on insects and small reptiles, and hunts by disguising itself as a harmless sphere with its outer leaves. Once the prey gets close, it wraps around it with its tentacles and dissolves it with its digestive juices.

The people of Qatar eat it as a vegetable.

A burly man reached out to grab one of the cabbages. The cabbage's tentacles immediately wrapped around his palm, smearing his hand with digestive fluids.

The burly man squeezed hard, crushing the core of the "cabbage," and the tentacles instantly went limp. Then he broke it into pieces like he was breaking a loaf of bread and distributed them to the people next to him.

Qianxian stared in disbelief: "They fight with their food before they eat?"

“In Qatar, eating meat is a basic necessity.”

Kara chewed on a piece of pork leaf and explained to Lawson, "Being able to eat vegetarian food is a real skill, these things..."

She pointed to the last "cabbage" in the pot that was struggling frantically. "Not just anyone can catch it. Only the strongest hunters in the tribe are qualified to gather them. In Katachan, being vegetarian is the standard for the strong."

Lawson glanced at the piece of roasted pork lying obediently on the giant leaf beside him, and then at the green sphere in the pot that was desperately trying to climb out with its tentacles.

Qianxian reached out to poke the struggling "cabbage," but a tentacle wrapped around her index finger.

She let out a cry and shook her hand, but the tentacles remained firmly stuck.

"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts... Hehe, it's actually quite interesting."

Lawson shook his head and took out a few more boxes from the static force field.

Spark-1 rations, compressed biscuits, and canned minced meat are the most basic rations in the Imperial Dark Side's supply depots.

But in Qatar, these things are treated very differently.

With a shout from Turk, men, women, and children from the tribe all gathered around.

Several boxes of rations and compressed biscuits were distributed.

The people of Katachan eat at an astonishing speed, an instinct developed over generations in an environment where food could be taken away at any moment.

A compressed biscuit is usually eaten within five seconds of being unpacked.