Warhammer: Empire Reboot

Lawson was unsure whether this speculation was correct.

Whether those ancient consciousnesses were the ancestors of the Tyranids or a civilization devoured and assimilated by some early Zerg life form, the memory holds no answer.

But one thing is very clear.

Tyronn wasn't born looking the way he does now.

Everything they have now seems to be the result of being forced to choose under extreme pressure.

How long the escape lasted, I have no memory of.

Among those fragments, there are only stretches of near-eternal darkness and galaxies that occasionally appear and are quickly swallowed up.

It may be tens of millions of years, or it may be hundreds of millions of years.

It may also have a lifespan longer than that of many stars in the Milky Way.

The swarm constantly changes as it flees.

They devour every life they encounter along the way, not entirely because of hunger.

At least initially, not entirely.

The insect swarm needs to acquire more biomass.

More ships need to be built.

They need to find new structures within each of the devoured races that can help them survive.

A more robust carapace, more powerful psionic energy, and organs better suited for deep space travel.

And weapons that can fend off pursuers.

No matter how large the swarm of insects became, the instinct to flee from the depths of their memory never disappeared.

They keep moving forward.

They rarely occupy a star field for an extended period of time.

After devouring one world, it immediately searches for the next.

After devouring a galaxy, it will move on to even more distant stars.

The Zerg swarm appears to be chasing its prey.

From another perspective, they may never have stopped running away.

Subsequent information has been completely lost during the long process of transmission.

Lawson couldn't determine what had happened, nor could he confirm whether the darkness was the presence of the creatures chasing the Tyranid swarm.

It's possible that it was just some kind of cosmic catastrophe.

It's possible that it's a civilization capable of destroying an entire galaxy.

It's also possible that what's hunting down the insect swarm isn't life in the conventional sense.

It's not even certain whether that thing is still chasing us.

Lawson stared at the incomplete images and remained silent for a long time.

The Tyranid swarm is enough to drive all civilizations in the galaxy to despair.

But if these memories are real, they may not be the most terrifying things in the universe.

They were simply fugitives, driven ever hungrier, ever larger, and ever more like monsters.

An entity capable of forcing the Tyranid swarm to traverse countless galaxies and flee for billions of years...

What could it be?

Lawson looked up out of the bridge window.

The starlight in the Pacific region is gradually returning.

The scattered Zerg fleet turned into distant black shadows.

In the past, the Empire always believed that the galaxy was everything.

Humans, Eldar, Orcs, Undead, Chaos, and Tyrande—these are enough to fill all war and fear.

But the Milky Way is just an island floating in darkness.

Beyond the islands lies an even wider expanse of starry sky.

However, Lawson had no time to explore or reflect. He rubbed his face and said to Guilliman and the Lion King, "The situation here has stabilized. You two, come with me to a place!"

P.S.: 10,000 words updated today.

Chapter 267 Rescue Mortarion!!!

While the Terran Wars in the Pacific Sector were raging, the war at the edge of the Eye of Terror was also gradually spiraling out of control.

At least that was the case for Abaddon.

Initially, he did not believe that the Seventh Blackrock Fortress could truly block the Eye of Terror.

Blackrock does indeed control the warp.

That fortress was indeed enormous, even capable of constantly shrinking the most stable shipping lanes at the edge of the Eye of Terror.

Even the largest fortress is just one target.

As long as it stays there, it can be bombarded.

As long as it needs to withstand attacks, it will inevitably suffer losses.

The Black Legion, the Dark Mechanicus, the Demon Legion, plus the forces sent by Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeentch—if they keep bombarding it with cannons, cursed weapons, boarding troops, and siege engines day after day, even if they can only knock off a single piece each time, they will eventually be able to dismantle it.

This was Abaddon's plan.

They do not seek to conquer the enemy in one battle, but only to wear them down.

The near-infinite number of ships, slave armies, and demons within the Eye of Fear relentlessly assaulted the Seventh Blackrock Fortress.

Force it to open fire, force it to expose its defensive structures, force it to expend energy and its garrison.

If a thousand boarding troops aren't enough, then ten thousand will do.

If 10,000 assault boats aren't enough, then drag more out of the Eye of Fear.

No matter how fortified Blackrock Fortress is, it cannot magically produce an army and ammunition out of thin air.

Abaddon had thought so until reinforcements from the Empire's dark side arrived.

"Commander."

The adjutant's voice came from the side of the bridge.

"The battle moon is adjusting its orbit again."

Outside the enormous observation window, the Seventh Blackrock Fortress lay across the edge of the Eye of Terror, its sharply defined black shell cutting off the rolling crimson light in the distance.

On the left side of the fortress, a steel moon is slowly rotating.

Metal spheres with a diameter of over a thousand kilometers are covered with gun muzzles, hangars, and armor layers, with massive weapons rising from beneath the earth's crust-thick armor.

It was a mobile war world, its firepower even more ferocious than that of the Seventh Blackrock Fortress.

The Death Ray from Blackrock Fortress requires target locking and is suitable for destroying large warships and warp artifacts.

The Battle Moon is not picky at all; its macro cannons, gravity weapons, railgun arrays, and millions of conventional firepower can tear apart approaching assault ships, boarding torpedoes, and small biological units.

In the past, the Black Legion could rely on dispersing its fleet to prevent the Seventh Blackrock Fortress from locking onto all targets simultaneously.

They had just dispersed when the Battle Moon's artillery barrage would cover the entire shipping lane.

Blackrock Death Ray is responsible for killing the biggest ones, while Battle Moon is responsible for cleaning up the rest.

On the other side of the Seventh Blackrock Fortress, a warship that Abaddon knew all too well was moored.

The Vengeful Spirit!

Or, to put it another way, the current "Abaddon".

The Eye of Horus on the bow has been removed and replaced with an exaggeratedly enlarged imperial emblem.

The armor coating that originally belonged to the Black Legion was also reapplied.

What Abaddon found most unacceptable was the large Gothic script on both sides of the ship's hull.

USS Abaddon

Lawson didn't even give it a normal name.

He thus renamed Abaddon's former flagship as the USS Abaddon.

Every time that warship fired at the Black Legion, Abaddon felt as if the shells were hitting him in the face, not the fleet.

Behind the Vengeful Spirit, there were thousands of Imperial Dark Side warships.

The adjutant stared at the tactical projection, his expression growing increasingly grim.

"Damn Lawson."

"He doesn't even act anymore."

"The Battle Moon, the Vengeful Spirit, and all those fleets behind it are all guarding this place. If this Blackrock Fortress weren't his, I'd cut off my head and stuff it into Khorne's bronze throne!"

Abaddon gave him a cold look: "Nonsense, who else in the Empire's dark side besides him can mobilize such power?"

When Blackrock Fortress first appeared, some people did suspect that it might be an automated defense system left behind by an ancient race, or a relic that Lawson discovered by chance and used temporarily.

Nobody thinks that way anymore.

"War Master... the winds of warp have shifted. The Pantheon's messengers have just whispered that the gods are extremely displeased with the delays caused by the Seventh Blackrock Fortress."

Abaddon's gaze remained fixed on the holographic projection: "What else can the gods do besides complain? What are they barking about this time?"

The adjutant swallowed hard. "The messengers say it's ultimately a siege, and they intend to tear open the rift and... awaken the Lord of Steel."

Abaddon paused for a moment, then slowly turned around: "Perturabo? That old mole who welded himself to the scrap heap in Medrengard and spends his days in helpless rage at blueprints from ten thousand years ago?"

"Yes……"

The adjutant reported, "The messenger's exact words were... Faced with an extreme defensive system like Blackrock Fortress, the Iron Warriors' siege skills are more suitable than the Black Legion's to 'take charge' at this moment."