Warhammer: Empire Reboot

He turned to the projection, where a robotic arm pointed to the battle damage report of Dragon Spirit Star.

"Do you know how hard it is to gather these things? Do you know that the cost of each Ominous Ark is enough to build twenty Imperial battleships?"

His voice echoed throughout the forging field.

"It was stolen by a warlord! A damned, inexplicable imperial dog that crawled out of a wrecked ship!"

Abaddon sat on a black stone at the edge of the forging field.

He watched Vashtor go crazy on the main control platform, his expression calm.

“You’re acting like a shrew from the bottom rungs of an imperial capital.”

Vashtor turned to look at him, all six mechanical eyes focusing simultaneously.

"what?"

Abaddon said, "Vashtor, you are a mechanical demigod of the warp, the master of the forging realm, a being known for absolute rationality and precise calculation, and now you are insulting a dead man."

Vashtor paused for half a second.

Then he answered confidently, "Swearing makes my computing power run more smoothly."

"Is this your own calculation result?"

"Yes."

With his six robotic arms crossed over his chest, Vashtor said, “After analyzing 7,423 computational bottlenecks, I found that when I externalized the negative data in linguistic form, the probability of core processor overload decreased by 12.7 percent. I found it really worked.”

Abaddon's lips twitched.

Vashtor turned back to the projection and continued to vent his dissatisfaction.

"Huron is useless, it's no pity he died. What's a pity is my Ark and my plan. Dragon Spirit Star was originally a good move. I used the Ominous Ark fleet to restrain the Dark Angels, Bellac established an anchor point on the ground, and my teleportation array directly sent power into the interior of the Great Stone Monastery. The plan was perfect, but the execution went wrong."

“The problem isn’t with Huron,” Abaddon said coldly.

“Huron is no useless man. He has been operating in the Maelstrom for hundreds of years and has fought more battles than most commanders in the galaxy combined. He lost because Lawson was stronger.”

He walked to the projector and looked at the battle damage report of Dragon Spirit Star.

"And the old lion has returned."

Vashtor's six mechanical eyes simultaneously turned toward Abaddon.

He already knew about the Lion King's return.

In the intelligence feedback from the Dragon Spirit Star campaign, in the last frame of perception recorded before his decapitation, Belakor clearly captured a Primarch-level soul imprint.

Leon Al Johnsen, Primarch of the First Legion, was one of the most outstanding tacticians of the Great Crusade.

He's back, and he's on Lawson's side.

Wastor's computing power operates at high speed within the cranial cavity.

Then he cursed loudly.

"That's because Huron is useless! So what if the old lion comes back? If Huron hadn't been so intoxicated by that ship's fame that he lost his mind, and had followed the original plan to carry out the containment mission, Bellacord could have built the anchor point, my teleportation array could have been activated, and the fragments in the Great Stone Monastery would have been mine! The old lion's return wouldn't have changed the outcome of the orbital war! The root of everything is that idiot Huron..."

He became more and more excited as he spoke, and he knocked away several forging drones around him.

"Let's chase after that wrecked ship that's been renamed!"

Abaddon didn't argue further; he knew that Vashtor understood the real problem.

Huron was the trigger, but the root cause was that Lawson's growth rate exceeded everyone's expectations.

The old Lawson was already troublesome enough.

The current Lawson is stronger than before.

The psionic power is more terrifying, the army is larger, the equipment is better, there are more allies, and he continues to grow stronger.

In Wastor's computing power model, Lawson's growth curve has already exceeded all preset limits.

This is what truly makes the mechanical demigods rage.

His computational model failed.

For someone whose core values ​​are absolute rationality and precise computing power, the failure of a computational model is more unacceptable than defeat on the battlefield.

Vashtor finally stopped cursing.

His robotic arm retracted, and his six eyes dimmed briefly before lighting up again—a sign that his computing power had switched from venting mode back to computation mode.

"After I become a god."

“I will personally tie Lawson to the bow of the Ark of Ominousness, and let him watch as I destroy his world piece by piece, starting with Agrippina, to Vigilant Star, to every planet he reclaims, and let him watch everything he has built turn to ashes before his eyes.”

"This is the only irrational goal I'm still holding onto, and I'm allowing myself to keep it!"

Abaddon felt a mixture of sympathy and schadenfreude.

"The most crucial key fragment of the Stone Monastery is now in Lawson's hands. If you can't synthesize the complete key, you can't open the dimensional portal to the Ancient Treasure. If you can't open the portal, how can you become a god?"

Vashtor's mechanical arm slowly tightened its grip at his side.

Abaddon continued, "The core fragment you need is in Lawson's hands. Lawson won't hand it over. You can't send troops to take it; it's a dead end."

Vashtor sneered, "Abaddon, have you forgotten who I am?"

"I am Vashtor! The Forger! The Spirit of Machines! The flames of every Daemon Engine in the Warp originate from my furnace!"

His voice resounded throughout the forging field.

"Not enough key fragments? I'll make up for it myself. I'll use the subspace force and the laws of forging to create replacement components. I'll fill in the missing fragments with my own power. I don't need the complete original; just 70% of the original fragments plus the replacements I created will be enough to forcibly activate the dimensional gate."

Abaddon was a bit troubled: "Can a key made like this be stable?"

The Primal Fragment is an artifact of the Ancients, its materials and craftsmanship surpassing the comprehension of all current civilizations in the galaxy.

No matter how strong Vashtor is, he is not an ancient saint.

His replacement components can only simulate some of the functions of the original fragments and cannot be perfectly replicated.

Can a key pieced together from broken parts and replicas open a dimensional portal built by ancient saints?

Vashtor roared, "That's not important!"

The sonic shock shattered all the data spheres surrounding the main control panel.

"I don't want a perfect key, I just want a working key, as long as it works!"

After saying this, he turned and walked towards the core forging furnace deep within the forging field.

Teleportation runes lit up beneath his feet.

"Soon, I will forge that key!"

His figure vanished in the ghostly blue flames.

The forging industry returned to calm.

The gears turned slowly in the void.

The furnace flames returned to their normal cold blue, and the shattered data spheres on the ground emitted a faint, lingering glow.

Abaddon stared in the direction where Vashtor had disappeared, then shook his head.

"Losen, you've turned an absolutely rational mechanical demigod into a mechanical madman."

“An unstable key opens a door to an ancient sage. Even if it can open, will it be stable? Will the door collapse halfway through? What will the collapsed dimensional door release? Even Vashtor himself is not sure.”

Abaddon turned and headed toward the exit of the forging field.

"But he doesn't care anymore."

The shadow at the exit swallowed his figure.

…………

Warning Star, Inner Court.

Lawson held a black stone in his hand.

It was larger than all the fragments he had collected before.

It is about the size of a palm, nearly three centimeters thick, and has a complete arc-shaped interface and geometric patterns that are precise to the molecular level.

It has a peculiar weight when held in your hand.

This is a core fragment of the Stone Monastery, which the Lion King sent Zabril to deliver personally last week.

Adding to the seven key fragments previously seized from the Alpha Legion, the one retrieved from the underground of the Temple of Assamolo, and others collected from other scattered battlefields, Lawson now possesses a considerable number of key fragments.

He held the fragment up to his eyes, and his swarm intelligence conducted its thirty-seventh deep scan.

The scan results were the same as the previous thirty-six: the material composition was unknown, the internal structure was beyond the current analytical capabilities, and the surface textures appeared to be some kind of superdimensional information encoding, but could not be interpreted.

Ancient sages created things.

Lawson has no intention of forcibly dismantling it.

The swarm has given clear advice: before fully understanding the principles of the ancient technology, any violent analysis at the physical or psionic level could lead to the self-destruction of the fragments or trigger unknown effects.

He was more curious about another question: what exactly could this thing open?

Vashtor went so far as to mobilize the Disaster Fleet to plunder the entire galaxy for it.

If a demon demigod is willing to pay such a high price to become a god, then what's behind the door must be extraordinary.

Ancient treasures?

Is there a power that can allow demons to cross the threshold of becoming gods?

Or something more dangerous?

Lawson returned the fragments to the separate storage area of ​​the armory.

The fragments are in his hands; Vashtor cannot obtain them.

Time was on his side.

The swarm intelligence tool pushed out the next pending task.

Lawson stepped out of the static field and appeared on a mining planet hundreds of light-years away.

Clavis-XII.