Warhammer: Empire Reboot

Number 1 carried out the order without any hesitation.

However, green-skinned meat was something the empire explicitly prohibited from eating.

It's not a moral issue, it's a practical one.

Greenskin is an extremely special life form. Its spores constitute the core mechanism of its reproduction and spread, and its flesh and blood are also filled with a large number of unhatched spores, as well as the chaotic radiation remnants known as Wow energy that permeates from the subspace.

The best outcome for Imperial soldiers who ate green-skinned meat was that they would excrete a bunch of blackish-green stuff and then suffer from a persistent high fever for the next few days.

Less severe cases will hatch several spores in the gastrointestinal tract, requiring surgical removal; even worse cases...

There are records in the imperial documents, but those records are generally not made public to ordinary soldiers.

This is why legal officers would escort soldiers who ate green-skinned meat without authorization to a military court for prosecution.

Lawson stared at the question for a while, then remembered a detail he had left over from the battle debriefing.

When the system purifies the green skin's life points, it will separate out the polluted energy known as the Chaos Berserk Factor and store it separately in the waste area, giving him purified life points instead.

This means that the system extracted and purified the life energy of the orcs they killed at the moment of their death.

At the same time, it also cleansed those sources of pollution of "wah energy" from the soul level.

So, after the orc corpse has been drained of the Chaos Contaminant, does the Wow Energy still remain in its flesh?

Spores are physical entities, but the system doesn't concern itself with the physical level, so they should still exist.

But high temperatures can kill most of the spores; the Katachans have used fire to deal with even more disgusting things in the jungle.

As for the chaotic radiation of Wow energy that penetrates to the cellular level, since the system has already removed the source of pollution from the soul level, what remains in the body should only be a decaying residue.

It's theoretically feasible. But the gap between theory and practice can sometimes be as wide as a life.

Lawson decided to use number 1 for the experiment.

Number 1, hurry back! You've returned carrying an orc's thigh.

The circumference of the thigh is roughly the same as the waist circumference of an average human, and it doesn't look appetizing at all.

Lawson took out the flamethrower.

"It's baked."

Number 1 took the flamethrower, found a relatively spacious area on the ground, and set it on fire at the orc's thigh.

The moment the orange flame of the flamethrower touched the target, the entire area was filled with a smell that Lawson could never describe in his entire fighting career—something somewhere between burning rubber and damp fungi bursting at high temperatures.

Number 1 turned that leg around several times with a blank expression.

The outside was burnt, but the inside was still half-cooked.

Orc meat has a much higher density than ordinary meat, almost like some kind of hard organic material, and heat penetrates it extremely slowly.

Lawson looked at it for a while: "Cut a piece and eat."

Number 1 used the Fang of Katachon to cut a piece of flesh about the size of an adult's fist from that leg.

Lawson observed intently.

When tooth number 1 bit down, the hardness of the meat produced a sound similar to that of metal cutting a workpiece during the chewing process.

"Crunch... crunch crunch."

Lawson watched Number 1 chew with a very serious expression for a full thirty seconds. No abnormal prompts appeared on the system interface, Number 1's health did not decrease, and the hunger status indicator light changed from red to a less bright orange.

He ate it.

And it seems to taste pretty good?

Judging from Number 1's expression, at least, this thing doesn't taste as despairing as its smell.

Lawson waved to the people behind him.

"Yes, you can eat it. You can eat it all."

Number 1 cut off the remaining part, distributed the remaining meat from that leg to Numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5, then cut off another piece and turned to hand it to Lawson.

Lawson stared at the still-steaming orc thigh meat.

He politely pushed the meat back.

"I don't want it, thank you!"

He suddenly thought of something else.

Orcs reproduce using spores and grow out of the soil.

Strictly speaking, it belongs to the fungal class of organisms. The Greenskin civilization has been described by some imperial biologists as a different manifestation of a giant mushroom in essence.

So……

Is eating green-skinned meat considered eating meat or eating vegetarian food?

The question slowly unfolded in his mind, then stopped where he couldn't reach a conclusion.

This was the first time since he had crossed over into the Warhammer universe that he had encountered a purely meaningless philosophical puzzle outside of tactical logic, and it was about the classification of food.

Number 1 put the piece of meat into his mouth and crunched it.

Five assassins squatted on a pile of scrap metal, using the teeth of Katachon as utensils, gnawing on a green-skinned thigh that was roasted to medium-rare.

Lawson opened the Imperial compressed ration, took a bite, and found it hard, dry, and with a peculiar, indescribable taste—perhaps best described as brick mixed with starch.

He chewed slowly, watching the five assassins around him eat quietly.

Meat or vegetarian?

The answer hadn't appeared yet when green appeared at the corner of the passage.

A large group of orcs turned the corner. Leading the way were six burly orc lads, followed by a swarm of elves whose numbers were difficult to count in a short time—at least forty or fifty of them—crowded together, shouting and shoving, unaware of the scene they had entered.

Until they saw it.

One human and five humans were squatting on the ground, holding knives, sharing a beastman's thigh.

The orc boy stopped, and so did the fart spirit.

Lawson stopped chewing and swallowed the last bite of his ration.

The crunching sounds of the few assassins chewing were particularly clear in the silence.

Chapter 10 Come on, let's have a one-on-one fight!

The air freezes.

Six orc boys stood at the other end of the passage, each holding a weapon of various twisted shapes.

Forty or fifty farts huddled together, their pointed ears perked up. They had been arguing and pushing each other, but now they were all silent.

Lawson crouched at one end of the passageway.

The five assassins behind him held the Fang of Katachon in their hands, had medium-rare orc thigh meat on their laps, and grease on their lips.

Time stopped here for about three seconds.

Three seconds is enough for a bullet to fly from the barrel into the target's body and complete its mass reaction and explode, and it is also enough for an orc boy's brain to complete the most complex logical deduction of his life.

While orcs have simple and brutal brains, they possess an astonishing accuracy in recognizing the flesh of their own kind.

After all, cannibalism among young orcs is commonplace during their growth in spore culture piles.

"Those... shrimps..."

"Are you eating our brothers?"

The farting fans behind him let out a series of gasps.

In the Green Manchu culture, eating the flesh of one's own kind is not a taboo.

On the contrary, large orcs eat small orcs, and the strong eat the weak; this is one of the most basic operating rules of the greenskin society.

But humans eat orcs?

They've never seen anything like this before.

Lawson held the Katachon's Fang level, its tip pointing at the scarred orc boy opposite him.

He hooked his left middle and index fingers together, then placed his thumb across his throat and slowly made a sweeping motion.

Come on, let's have a one-on-one fight.

Numbers 1 through 5 took similar actions simultaneously.

Five Katachon's Fangs were pointed at the other side in unison, and the five burly men issued a provocative statement.

Then, the scarred orc boy laughed.

On that broad, green face, the corners of his mouth stretched wide, revealing two rows of jagged fangs: "Hehehe..."

In the common understanding of all orcs, any creature that dares to eat the flesh of its own kind, regardless of its race, is instinctively categorized as a tough nut to crack.

Only true powerhouses treat their prey as food, not as a threat.

The scarred orc boy looked down at the heavy Death Gun in his hand, then at the knives in the hands of the six humans opposite him.

"boom!"

Death Gun was thrown on the ground.

The scarred orc boy pulled out a huge chain-toothed cleaver from behind.

"Waaaaagh!"

When an orc drops its ranged weapon, draws its melee weapon, and responds to its opponent's provocation head-on, it signifies that it acknowledges the opponent's qualifications as a warrior.

The other five orc boys saw what their leader was doing.

Six dead guns and crudely made shooting weapons were thrown to the ground one after another.

Instead, all sorts of exaggeratedly shaped melee weapons have taken their place.

The sycophants were in an uproar.

"Fight! Fight! Fight!"

"Kill those shrimps! Boss! Smash their bones!"