Warhammer: Empire Reboot

Cyrus immediately adjusted his direction.

"The seven fragments are not the complete key. Without the arrangement we provide, you can only obtain seven dangerous black stones."

Lawson looked at the box and asked, "Do you know the arrangement?"

"I know part of it."

"Was it given to you by Vashtor?"

"Part of the deal."

"Have you memorized it?"

Ceres paused for half a second.

In that half-second, he considered two possibilities: if he said he hadn't memorized it, Lawson might let him interrogate him slowly with the complete version; if he said he had memorized it, Lawson might...

"I've memorized it."

Lawson understood: "Then we don't need to keep anything other than your head."

The psychic field instantly pressed into Seros's skull, severing the control of his jaw muscles.

Er Gou stepped out from behind Lawson, grabbed the edge of Cyrus's helmet, lifted him up, and slammed him onto the bridge floor.

The three dogs opened fire simultaneously.

Herax's head flew off.

Iskan's arm was severed, and his chest was then pierced.

Cadmus was pressed into the wall by the combat sequence on the weapons deck. Before the self-destruct core inside his helmet could be activated, the golden flames burned through the circuitry.

The remaining Alpha members died almost simultaneously.

Lawson did not give them time to fight back one by one, to self-destruct one by one, or to leave their last words one by one.

The Alpha Legion excels at planning, feigning surrender, and setting a second trap before their demise.

Therefore, Lawson's solution was extremely simple: kill them all, leaving only Ceres' head.

Er Gou stepped on Cyrus's breastplate and ripped off his helmet.

Even as Cyrus's consciousness was torn apart, he still tried to lay out false clues on the surface of his memories.

The Alpha Legion has been trained to counter interrogation, to develop personality stratification, and to bury the true objective in meaningless details and noise while in a near-death state.

The swarm intelligence dissected his memory fragments, comparing them piece by piece with his tone of voice, changes in heart rate, pauses in his gaze, and timestamps of battlefield data.

What Cyrus saw in the end was that all eighteen of his carefully prepared false clues were simultaneously marked in red and discarded.

Then the soul was severed.

Er Gou threw the body aside.

The T-001 projection lit up on the main control panel of the bridge.

"The control of the 'Murderous Signal' has been rewritten multiple times by the Alpha Legion. Its machine soul has been contaminated by the disguise protocol, but has not been demonized. It is estimated that basic navigation control can be restored in 47 minutes. Complete cleanup requires towing it back to Agrippina."

"Drag it back."

"Should we notify Blackwatch to return the warship?"

Lawson glanced at the corpses of the Deathwatch veterans on the bridge.

"What do you mean 'pay back'? I found the traitor and cleaned up the ship for them; they still owe me."

He walked past the corpses.

"The Blackwatch warrior's remains have been prepared. The gene seed, relics, and personal insignia have been sealed away. Let them come and claim them themselves."

"Alpha Legion armor?"

"Stripped."

Er Gou grinned.

Lawson glanced at him.

"We can't waste our own production line; we can't lose our thrifty habits."

Er Gou composed himself: "Understood, boss. Jia stays, and the body is burned."

Lawson picked up the Black Stone Resonance Box.

The seven key fragments settled down in the box, sensing the presence of the fragments on him, as well as the more important core component beneath Assamolo.

The battle order takes over the bridge.

The T-series assassins began cleaning up the console.

The Xuanwu fleet used a towed array to lock the hull of the stealth warship.

The optical camouflage of the Fiend Signal was turned off, and the black hull stood out against the starlight background.

Lawson did not stay on the ship for long.

When he returned to the Great Star Platform, O'Showa was still in the same spot.

After the warp gate closed, the ancient structure that had been covered by blood-red light was revealed.

Below the black stone steps, a tiny crack is emitting low-frequency vibrations.

All seven fragments lit up simultaneously.

The depths of the Great Star Platform responded to them.

Lawson looked at the downward-sloping passage.

"Open."

Xiong Wei and the T-series assassins acted simultaneously.

The black stone sealing layer was cut open section by section, and the ancient mechanism was physically bypassed before it could fully awaken.

Half an hour later, a black stone component that was thicker and heavier than the ordinary fragments was delivered to Lawson.

Its surface has a more complete arc-shaped interface, and its internal resonance frequency is lower than the other seven, like a heart that has been removed but is still beating slowly.

Lawson put it into the resonance box.

The seven fragments moved toward it at the same time, and the box wall hummed softly.

The entire Great Star Platform shook.

Lawson closed the box lid.

"It really is a core location."

He handed the box to Er Gou behind him.

"Now it's mine."

The war in this star system is drawing to a close.

On the outer orbit of Arthasmore, the remaining Orc fleet was still sporadically leaping out of the warp.

The ship's hull was covered in red paint, sheet metal, and crookedly welded cannon barrels, while the distinctive howl of the green-skinned ship leaked from the communication frequency.

Several orc killing ships had just completed their leap when they were pinned down by the gravitational pull of the battle moon, and their orbital cannons picked them off one by one.

Orcs don't care about strategic failures.

All they know is that there's fighting, big ships, and noisy gunfire here.

But this remnant can't change anything anymore.

Lawson stood on the ruined black stone platform of the Temple of Arthasmore, watching the last batch of orc remains explode on the tracks.

Surface winds rushed into the cracks of the temple, and the ancient black stones hummed in the wind and sand, like a machine that had been buried for too long refusing to stop.

The problems of this planet were not solved with the end of the war.

On the contrary, war merely cracked open one layer of its outer shell.

Arthasmoron can suppress the warp.

Its temple can seal away fragments of the key.

Its black stone structure can confine the Khorne demon to a fixed exit.

It also has some connection to the alien sword in O'Shaughnessy's hand.

These things coming together don't seem like a coincidence.

"Continue scanning the underground structure. Preserve its original appearance and establish a temporary research station. Leave one team of the Cornerstone Sequence, thirty T-Series members, and twelve psionic assassins."

T-001 responded: "Authorization has been granted."

O'Showa stood a dozen meters away.

His armor has been repaired so that he can walk normally, but his weapon systems are still locked.

The Blade of Dawn is not in his hands.

This made him even less comfortable than losing an army.

From the moment he acquired that blade, it became an extension of his being. Fire warriors viewed weapons as a symbol of honor, but for Oshova, the Blade of Dawn was more than just honor.

It accompanied him on his expedition to Damocles, helped him turn away from the High Ether, and helped him build his own path in the Enclave of Vision.

Now, the knife hangs in the projection array in front of Lawson.

The blade surface is smooth, without any trace of titanium-based processing, and it doesn't resemble an imperial forging.

The material's reflection spectrum is constantly changing; some areas absorb light, while others respond to the black stone structure beneath Assamolo.

Lawson looked at the scan data and said something.

"You've lived on it for a long time."

O'Shovar did not shy away from the question: "Every time I kill a powerful enemy, my physical condition recovers. Wounds heal faster, aging stops, and fatigue disappears. I used to think it was some kind of alien energy field effect, or that the remnants of Arthasmore technology had become bound to me."

Lawson looked at the data on the blade.

"It extracts the life force of the killed and feeds back to the holder."

O. Visage stood behind O'Shova, his sensor lens flashing. As the chief scientist of the Tau, he had examined O'Shova's physical data multiple times. The results had always been unreasonable; the Tau had a limited lifespan, and even with medical treatment, cryogenic hibernation, and armor assistance, he shouldn't be in his current state.