Warhammer: Empire Reboot

"The mutated wasteland beast is 28 meters long and weighs about 70 tons. It has a multi-limbed structure and a highly keratinous carapace on its body. It is suspected to be affected by both pollution from old industries and natural mutations."

The sandstorm was torn apart...

The thing burst out of the gray mist, with a huge head, a mouth that split open all the way to behind its ears, revealing three layers of inward-curving teeth, thick forelimbs, and a back covered with heavy bony armor.

When the monster charged out, the earth shook and the scene was incredibly powerful.

Settlements are never safe; after being attacked by monsters so many times, they have long since developed countermeasures.

The new humans responded quickly; the larval nests contracted inwards, and the nurturing mother was escorted into an underground shelter.

The craftsmen pushed in large metal barricades, and the hunters on the perimeter picked up spears and scrap guns and quickly lined up.

At a glance, Lawson and the others knew that the sheer size of this behemoth would bring immense disaster to the settlement.

Er Gou's hand rested on the power axe: "Boss?"

"Continue to observe."

The battle has begun.

A hunter rushed to the side of the behemoth, his spear piercing the gap in its leg joint.

Another hunter took the opportunity to stuff an explosive canister into the gap between the giant beast's teeth.

"boom!"

The explosion blew half of the giant beast's mouth apart, leaving it a bloody mess, but that was all. The monster went berserk and became even more dangerous.

The second group of hunters pounced from the side, and the three of them used steel cables to lasso the giant beast's forelimbs.

The behemoth went berserk, dragging five people away. Two were crushed on the spot, while the remaining people continued to pull, using their bodies as anchor points to wrap the steel cable around the rock pillar.

As the behemoth struggled, the rock pillar cracked.

A young hunter was strangled in the waist by a steel cable, his upper body falling onto the sand in a gruesome scene, but the other hunters continued to charge forward without fear of death.

Lawson remained aloof and indifferent throughout.

With perfect teamwork, no fear, and strong physique, such a group would be a natural source of soldiers for the imperial war machine.

They were just as fearless as the Krieg soldiers, but with better physiques.

With good genes and rapid reproduction, if used properly, they will be an excellent resource for the empire.

The battle with the behemoth lasted for twenty minutes.

Guided by the hunters, the giant beast was eventually lured to the outer edge of the pit.

More than thirty hunters used their own bodies to complete the final luring, causing the giant beast to lose its footing and half of its body to sink into the pit.

The alpha wolf leaped down from the defensive line, grabbed a bone spear loaded with explosives, and charged down from the top of the giant beast's head, plunging the bone spear deep into its ruptured mouth.

The explosion ripped through the sandstorm, shattering the giant beast's head from the inside.

The massive body fell down; it had been killed.

The crisis at the gathering place has been temporarily averted.

The count began; 147 hunters had died in the tribe.

When the alpha wolf stepped off the defensive line, its left arm was torn open by the giant beast's teeth, revealing the bone.

The alpha wolf first confirmed the loss of the cubs' nest, the mother's relocation, and the food reserves. Only after all the data was compiled did it sit down and have someone stitch it up.

Lawson's evaluation of the alpha wolf rose another level.

He is a qualified leader.

As night fell, several older New Humans lit a brazier beneath the long spear with its spine hanging from it in the center of the settlement.

They gathered around the fire, placing bone fragments, animal teeth, and old metal plaques on the ground, muttering incantations as if in prayer.

Aoqi whispered, "What kind of ceremony is this?"

"The Creator bestows bones!"

"The Creator bestows blood!"

"The Creator keeps us from getting sick!"

"The Creator gives us no fear!"

"The Creators allowed us to continue in the wasteland."

"The loving father has departed, the new alpha wolf has been set, and the new creator watches over him in blood."

Er Gou frowned: "Father? They're talking about Bayer?"

Lawson seemed to be deep in thought when he found the household information.

Bayer remembered this thing: Pat Mutatis—the new humans' reverence for their creators.

Bayer believes this is not religious superstition, but a biological obedience structure etched into the genetic code, just like a wolf pack recognizing its alpha wolf, or a cub recognizing its mother.

The new humans will instinctively revere the beings who created them and control their genetic destiny.

Bayer wrote himself as the "creator".

But he was killed by Lawson.

In theory, this structure should collapse.

But it did not disappear; instead, it was transferred to a more revered target!

The T-sequence detection data came in simultaneously: "Wide-area neuroendocrine fluctuations were observed in the tribal group, with keywords: new alpha wolf, new creator, blood gaze. Suspected authoritative anchor redirection of the boss at the genetic level."

San Gou looked at Lawson: "Do they know the boss?"

Aoqi whispered, "After Bayer's death, the authority of the creator was vacant. The boss intercepted all of Bayer's consciousness data. From a biological perspective, the boss killed the old alpha wolf and seized control of the clan's fate. Therefore, their genetic code identifies the boss as the new creator."

Er Gou grinned and said, "This actually works?"

Lawson looked down at the new humans beside the brazier.

They cannot see him, nor can they hear him, yet they are acknowledging a new creator in the most primal way.

This discovery was truly unexpected.

The Creator is dead, and a new Creator takes up the bones and blood.

Then, is Lawson the new master of the tribe's destiny?

Just then, a very faint feedback came from the depths of the swarm's mind.

A very weak energy appeared.

It was so weak that if Lawson's consciousness hadn't already covered the entire swarm network, and if he hadn't just witnessed the new humans chanting softly around the brazier, this wisp of fluctuation would have been mistaken for some kind of background noise on the wasteland planet and filtered out directly.

Lawson focused his attention on it, and with his psionic ability, he indeed detected this faint trace of power.

It was rising from the group of new humans by the fire pit along some unseen connection, like a wisp of gray smoke about to be blown away by the wind, and finally falling into the outer structure of the swarm consciousness.

Unlike the fervent, burning faith found in the worship of emperors.

It was not the filthy, screaming echo of the subspace when Chaos believers sacrificed their souls.

This faint energy is even more primal.

Like young animals searching for their mother in the darkness, like a wolf pack confirming the location of the alpha wolf in the wind and snow, it's also like searching deep in their instincts for the highest anchor that controls their destiny.

Of course, this energy is very weak and has almost no real effect right now.

If we compare the faith of the empire's billions of believers in the emperor to a sea of ​​stars that ignites the galaxy, then this little thing before us is at most a speck of ash floating from a brazier.

It doesn't even qualify as gray.

The swarm intelligence approach immediately began its analysis.

Currently, within the NH-17 tribal settlement, approximately 3,700 new humans have participated in the Creator Ritual. Less than 10% actually exhibit detectable faith fluctuations, indicating an unstable faith orientation and a lack of the continuity and self-propagation characteristic of a mature religious system.

The respect that the new generation holds for Bayer is largely based on biological obedience, group instinct, and the memory of the creator.

It is fundamentally different from the church in the state religion.

It's just a direction written into the genes.

Bayer probably didn't even feel this power himself, let alone use it.

So when Bayer died at the hands of Lawson, that meager, almost meaningless power was simply not enough to protect him from anything.

It cannot stop swarm intelligence.

Even more so, it couldn't stop Lawson from personally taking away his memories.

The new humans were still chanting by the brazier.

"The Creator gives bones."

"The Creator gave blood."

"The new creators gaze upon the blood."

Yet it is precisely these most primitive words that have formed a circuit deep within their flesh and blood.

Beyond the firelight are nests of young, nurturing mothers, hunter camps, medical sheds, the carcasses of giant beasts that have just been dismantled, and over a million new humans continuing their existence in the wasteland.

An idea popped into Lawson's mind.

"What if we gave these new humans fertile ground to multiply rapidly?"

"Currently, a conservative estimate is that the total number of new humans in the more than 70 wasteland worlds combined does not exceed 3 million. If they are given suitable environments to steadily reproduce and expand, and if they enter the imperial system in the future, they will multiply on more planets and form a larger ethnic group..."

"Then this power of faith will amplify as the population grows."

One wasteland world after another lit up before Lawson's eyes.

NH-17, NH-23, NH-41, NH-58…

Similar tribal structures exist on every planet.

They differ in scale and stage of development; some are still engaged in hunting and migration, some have formed stable settlements, some have mastered basic smelting and the repair of old machinery, and some have even begun to develop primitive symbol systems.

But they all have one thing in common: the traces of the creator are etched in their genes.

Bone and blood.

Continuing in the wasteland.