Warhammer: Empire Reboot

As Dante said, not even a fly should be let out.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, the Krut, who have always been the most loyal auxiliary forces of the Tau Empire, made their own choice.

An elderly Krut chieftain crouched in the shadows of the ruins, watching the battle unfold for a full three hours.

He then threw the fine titanium electromagnetic rifle in his hand into the sewer.

"Chief! Are we no longer fighting for our employer?" the young Krut warrior asked in a panic.

"The battle is over. The Tau are finished."

The chieftain made this decision because of the Krut tribe's most sacred belief: they acquire genes and evolve themselves by devouring the dead.

The chieftain pointed to the slain Imperial Dark Side assassins on the street and said to his people, "I have a feeling that eating these human corpses will only lead to the extinction of our people. Retreat and go into hibernation immediately!"

The real killing blow was only just beginning when the city's resistance descended into a bloodbath.

Tens of thousands of Cornerstone assassins deployed extremely primitive, yet unmute, "sonic vibration generators" at the city's highest points.

Pure physical sound waves began to resonate throughout the atmosphere of the entire planet Tau.

"Residents of Titan, please cease your futile resistance."

The broadcast was in the Tau language, but that wasn't the scariest part. The scariest part was that, in this global broadcast, the swarm mind used forty-seven different Tau dialects simultaneously in an extremely perverse way!

In every neighborhood, you hear the purest accent belonging to their clan and province.

The grammar is flawless, and even the most cumbersome class honorifics are used perfectly.

A Tujia civilian hiding in a bunker trembled violently when he heard the broadcast, tears welling up in his eyes. The synthesized voice was actually in the Tujia language of his distant hometown, with even the ending sounds being exactly the same.

The extreme sense of intimacy mixed with the extreme sense of inhumanity creates the uncanny valley effect.

"Those who lay down their weapons will not be harmed, the wounded will receive humanitarian treatment, and the army of the Empire's dark side will not point its guns at any unarmed civilian areas."

"The Visionary Enclave has been incorporated into the Empire's Dark Side territory through legal procedures. At this moment, your expeditionary fleet is slaughtering the citizens of my Empire's Dark Side there. The presence of the Empire's Dark Side fleet here is a legitimate act of self-defense and a legal response, not an act of aggression."

Lawson's justification for his actions came into play at this moment, directly defining the Tau as invaders and undermining their sense of justice in defending their homeland.

Prior to this, the official channel of Titan had been repeatedly broadcasting Ether's reassuring message: "We are effectively resisting, and the enemy has suffered heavy losses."

The broadcast from the Empire's shadowy side directly reported a set of data:

“截至星时14点00分，帝国暗面损失机甲83台，阵亡412名；钛星防御部队损失战斗服11740台，火氏阵亡128万人。真实的交换比为：每损失141台钛族战斗服，帝国暗面损失1台。”

Subsequently, a huge holographic projection unfolded above the sound generator.

That's a live-action video from Vision Enclave...

In the scene, the Fire Clan warriors, representing the glory of the Tau people, are indiscriminately conducting a plasma cleanup on the seventh residential area of ​​the Vision Enclave.

The images were not censored; millions of innocent Tau civilians were burned to ashes by their own kind of artillery fire. The tallest buildings were only nine stories high, filled with unarmed elderly and weak people.

"This is the atrocity your ether ordered against your own kind."

At the end of the broadcast, the synthesized voice coldly concluded: "Now, this planet is surrounded by us, and your ether has no way to leave this planet."

Inside the Grand Council at this moment in the High Dome.

The pure white walls remained spotless, while the upper echelons in the hall were in complete chaos.

Only the High Ether Anvar remained seated on his floating throne, his expression eerily calm.

His legitimacy in ruling the Tau race is based on the premise that "the highest good" is the objectively optimal form of organization in the universe. If today, a human warlord who practices plunder and dictatorial rule can completely overwhelm the Tau Empire in terms of military strength, efficiency, and even logistics, then it would be tantamount to proving from a physical perspective that "the highest good" is a joke.

This conclusion is even more devastating than the destruction of Titan.

"This was just a barbaric robbery, a sneak attack without any scruples."

Anwa slowly said to the panicked high-ranking officials, "They will leave after they have looted, because the tyrant's army cannot sustain this level of supply for long."

"Moreover, they are using the stealth combat suits we manufactured. This proves that the Tau people's technology is still the most superior in the entire universe. What they surpass us in is merely their low-level, savage production capacity. The Fifth Expeditionary Fleet will soon return, and the garrison fleets of the Second, Third, and Sixth World Domains are on their way. Victory still belongs to the Supreme Good Path."

However, inside the hall, a Fire Clan staff officer rushed forward, sweating profusely, and presented the battle loss exchange ratio that he had just intercepted.

Anwa merely glanced at the shocking data and calmly said, "This sampling model is flawed; the calculation method doesn't conform to our standards. Archive it. Don't let false data undermine morale."

Anwa couldn't let the thinking continue.

He issued the final order: "Connect the highest-level broadcast on the entire network and, in my name, send the order for 'fight to the death' to the entire planet."

The etheric governance mechanism is an extremely sophisticated mixture of biology and sociology.

Ether's pheromones require physical proximity to be effective, therefore, Ether's control radius is equal to the coverage radius of a communication network.

Anvana's ethereal and gentle voice echoed through the streets via the communications tower.

Upon hearing Anwa's voice, the crowd began to move uncontrollably.

An ordinary mother from the Titanium tribe mechanically stuffed her young child into an air-raid shelter, then turned and walked expressionlessly into the street.

What she was holding was just a plasma welding torch used to repair hovercrafts.

There are thousands upon thousands of people like her who, knowing they are going to die, rush towards the saber-toothed tiger, which is tens of meters tall, like moths to a flame.

Lawson's orders were simple: lay down your weapons and you're a civilian; pick up your weapons and you're a warrior. The Empire's Dark Side never showed mercy to its enemies.

At the same time, Lawson ordered the destruction of the Ethers' communication towers.

After the communication tower was destroyed, the Ethers' control was greatly weakened.

As flames soared into the sky and the massive communications tower collapsed, the brainwashing voice suddenly vanished from the air.

The civilians of the Titan race, who were charging forward frantically just a second ago, suddenly stopped in their tracks on the dilapidated streets, like puppets whose strings had been cut.

Some people looked down blankly at what they were holding in their hands.

He didn't know why he had used that thing to smash an 18-meter-tall killing machine.

Some people's knees buckled, and they knelt down in the ruins and vomited.

Some people suddenly realized what was happening, threw down their tools, and ran frantically towards the shelter to find their families. They had woken up.

The sky above Titan is burning.

One hundred and seventy Manta heavy bombers, fully loaded with plasma bombs, took off successfully with a determination to destroy everything.

However, as they struggled to climb to an altitude of four thousand meters, the clouds overhead were torn apart.

Thousands of Imperial Dark Side Raptor fighter jets, like a school of bloodthirsty flying fish, swooped down from the higher stratosphere.

The air battle was a foregone conclusion, lasting only eleven minutes.

Hundreds of blinding blue fireballs exploded in the sky, and the wreckage of 170 Manta bombers turned into a rain of burning metal that fell on the land.

The interior of the High Dome Council was now deathly silent.

The alarm stopped.

The staff officers' reports stopped.

Even the brainwashing broadcasts from Anvana have stopped.

Outside the hall, the heavy footsteps of heavily armored soldiers pounding on the alloy floor echoed. It was Wolverine and Bear Guard taking over the last corridor.

The High Dome Council has now become a magnificent cage.

The four hundred and seventeen most noble high-ranking members of the Titanium Empire were all trapped in this hall, which represented the highest power of the Supreme Good Path; they could not escape.

Through the huge transparent crystal in the dome, they could clearly see that the tops of all the buildings within a three-kilometer radius were covered with menacing heavy weapons, with dark cannon muzzles and missile launchers all pointing in this direction.

In the spacious square in front of the parliament hall, thousands of Wolverine and Sabretooth heavy armored mechs formed a huge semi-circular formation, but remained motionless.

This stillness is more suffocatingly terrifying than a frenzied attack.

People in the council kept glancing out from under the dome.

What are those mechs waiting for? Whom are they waiting for to come?

The main lighting system in the lobby has been cut off, leaving only dim emergency lighting.

In this oppressive gloom, the Etheric High Council, which had maintained its dignity for thousands of years, finally showed cracks.

"The responsibility lies with the overall flawed decision-making of the parliament."

An ethereal figure attempted to maintain the overall situation, stating, "Our assessment of this human warlord's combat capabilities was entirely based on the intelligence model submitted by the Water Clan, which was a serious miscalculation!"

The Shui clan's top representative immediately jumped up as if his tail had been stepped on, retorting, "The standards for accepting intelligence models were set by the Huo clan's strategic department! We are only responsible for collecting objective data; it is the Huo clan that assigns weight to that data!"

The Supreme Commander of the Fire Clan, Osham, retorted coldly, his face ashen: "The Strategic Department is acting on the priority of the ruling personally issued by the Supreme Aether!"

Osham's words touched upon a taboo that should never be crossed.

Almost everyone glanced instinctively at the throne suspended at the highest point.

Another senior etherian quickly coughed, abruptly bringing the conversation back on track: "Gentlemen, there's no need to go that far. The most urgent thing is that we must understand one issue."

He voiced the deepest confusion in the hearts of all the Tau leaders, a question that ultimately concerned the dignity of their entire civilization:

"According to intelligence from all our sources, the Human Empire is simultaneously waging a bloody war across the entire galaxy against the Orcs, Chaos, Tyranids, and Necrons. Their technology is severely deteriorating; they can no longer even build the things they designed two thousand years ago. Their administrative system is so rotten that it can only barely function through endless purges."

"All the indicators, all the data, and all the logical deductions point to the same conclusion: the human empire is a huge, rotting corpse!"

"But... this very half of a corpse, in just a few hours, flattened our capital, Tau! Our model is correct! We just don't know... why the Dark Side of the Empire is so powerful?"

Just as the Ethers were trapped in this unsolvable and desperate puzzle, a commotion finally broke out in the plaza outside.

The massive Wolverine squadron, like the Red Sea parted by Moses, glided neatly to both sides, clearing a wide passage in the middle of the plaza.

Then came the heavy, rhythmic sound of footsteps.

The main gate of the Grand Council in the Dome is twelve meters high. It was designed to demonstrate the Tau people's inclusiveness and respect for all races in the universe, and it has never been closed since its construction.

Lawson walked into the hall.

The moment he stepped into the hall, the first reaction of all the high-ranking members of the Titan Clan was a purely physiological one.

Their breathing involuntarily stopped, their knees went weak, as if the gravity around them had suddenly increased several times over.

Some of the high-ranking members of the Fire Clan had fought to the death with the Demon Prince, but they swore that they had never felt such a stellar-like pressure from a "living being".

A second person followed Lawson into the room.

When the person's face was clearly seen, a very slight commotion arose in the hall.

It was O'Showa.

This person is already considered "dead" in the official archives and historical records of the Tau Empire.