Warhammer: Empire Reboot

"how long?"

"That depends on what price you're willing to pay."

The first contact was not a formal transaction.

Raskian could not bring a Dark Eldar to the heart of the Golden Throne without verifying his abilities.

Lassilo would not allow a Bloodlust to roam freely in the underground palace.

They only opened up the outermost part of the equipment to it.

The Blood Man was restrained in a static restraint frame, with explosive devices attached to his limbs and spine.

Dozens of Inquisition Stormtroopers stood guard around it, while two Mechanical Sages recorded its every move.

Even so, it still quickly pointed out several errors in Mechanics over thousands of years.

A structure defined by the mechanical school as an energy transmission pipeline actually undertakes phase correction between reality and the network.

A set of silver fibers, intended as discarded neural interfaces, were not damaged, but rather awaiting a psionic frequency that the Mechanicus had never provided.

The most serious problem is an auxiliary stabilizer installed on Mars three thousand years ago.

That device did alleviate the energy fluctuations at the time, but it continued to interfere with another, much older set of core components.

In order to fix a visible fault, the Mechanic is accelerating another unobservable fault.

The mechanical sage who was accompanying them immediately denied it.

"This stabilizer has been running for 3,217 years. If it had the problem you described, the throne would have experienced much more severe fluctuations long ago."

Bloodthirsty Man turned his face to the side, and a soft laugh came from under the mask.

“You cut a patient’s throat to make it easier for him to breathe. Then, because he doesn’t bleed to death immediately, you think your surgery was successful.”

"Isn't that funny?"

The Blood Man proved his worth.

This also proves once again that the Cult of Mechanics' ignorance of the core structure of the Golden Throne is far more serious than the three High Lords previously admitted.

Laskian had originally planned to have it continue inspecting several sets of peripheral components.

Lacillo rejected the proposal.

"It has seen too much."

After the meeting, she stood outside the isolation room, watching the Blood Man being locked back in the stasis cage.

"Send it back to the Tribunal's restricted area. It must not have access to any throne equipment until the formal transaction is completed."

The judge in charge of escorting the vehicle asked, "Does it need to undergo memory processing?"

Lassilo glanced at him.

"What methods do you have to reliably erase the memories of a Bloodlust person?"

Lacillo arranged meticulous measures for this escort.

But they still underestimated Comoros.

The problem lies with a stormtrooper.

To be precise, it was the thing wearing Stormtrooper armor.

Before the escort team entered the lower levels of the palace, they briefly changed shifts at a net-covered isolation station.

The surveillance footage shows that all personnel passed the identity verification in sequence.

It wasn't until afterwards that the court discovered that one of the video clips had been played repeatedly for eleven seconds.

In those eleven seconds, a stormtrooper was dragged into the shadows.

What emerged has been replaced by carefully cultivated substitutes by the Dark Eldar.

As the Static Cage passed an abandoned sanctuary, the imposter deliberately lagged behind the rest of the group.

It activated a miniature phase beacon embedded in the bone.

The fluctuations generated by the beacon are extremely short-lived.

The static cage failed for less than a second.

For the Blood Actors, that was enough.

It flipped its left shoulder blade outward.

The phase-thin blade hidden in the bone interlayer severed the three constraint locks.

The next moment, it tore open its abdomen and pulled out a curled bone tool from its body, piercing the control node of the cage.

The static field has failed.

As the stormtroopers opened fire, the Bloodlust had already pushed one of his guards toward the gun barrel.

The bomb tore the guard's body apart.

Bloodlust then used the splattered blood and flesh to rush into the side to repair the pipes.

The entire process lasted only a few seconds.

The judge in charge of escorting the suspect immediately sealed off the surrounding area, cut off underground transportation to the palace, and ordered all troops to pursue the suspect according to the pre-arranged plan.

But he made a mistake.

He thought the Bloodlust wanted to escape Terra.

In fact, the alien never believed it could return to Comoros alive.

Its real task is to verify the status of the Golden Throne and then transmit the obtained data back to the Dark City.

The escape was only the second stage of completing the mission.

The Bloodthirsty Man infiltrates the lower-level residential area of ​​the palace.

The underground pipe network there is intricate, and many areas don't even have complete maps.

It established its experimental site within an abandoned sewage treatment pipeline.

Hundreds of residents have gone missing.

Some people had their skin completely peeled off, while others had their limbs dismembered.

More victims were strapped to the pipe walls.

The psionic energy they released as they died in fear was channeled into a makeshift Webbeacon.

The Bloodline only needs to send a set of data back to Comoros.

When the beacon was activated, a brief psionic anomaly occurred in the underground palace.

The courtroom detected this fluctuation.

Erasmus Crow also came into contact with the case as a result.

Initially, he only received a missing persons report.

Three hundred and seventy-two lower-class residents disappeared within seventeen days.

Local law enforcement agencies classified it as a pipeline collapse accident.

The list of the deceased has been entered into the system, and compensation applications have been closed.

After reviewing the list, Klaus discovered that sixteen of the people on it had received food rations after the accident.

The work records of nine other individuals show that they continued to enter the palace maintenance area after their alleged deaths.

The list of the dead is fabricated.

He immediately requested to view the surveillance footage.

The mechanical school refused.

The reason given was that the relevant footage involved palace maintenance equipment, which was outside the ordinary investigative authority of the court.

Klaus then retrieved the casualty records from nearby medical stations.

The records were also deleted.

The sheriff in charge of the missing persons case died of heart failure the day before he was scheduled to question the suspect.

Klaus did not accept this coincidence.

He continued his investigation along food rations, travel records, and sewage pipes, and soon found the first body in an abandoned area.

Klaus immediately cordoned off the area.

The court personnel accompanying him recommended that the matter be immediately reported to the lord-level authorities.

Klaus refused.

“The other party has already deleted the list of the deceased, surveillance footage, and medical records. If you report it now, it will only let them know that we have found this place.”

“But this place is close to the inner palace, and we have no right to act independently.”

Klaus stared at the still-writhing fleshy structure on the wall.

“Those things won’t stop and wait for our authorization.”

The court's actions alarmed the Imperial Guard.

Shield Guard Nafradaran was dispatched to confirm whether the alien activity threatened the Emperor.

He did not trust Crow at first.

There are too many factions within the court, and too many judges violate taboos in the name of necessity.

Until he saw that flesh-and-blood beacon with his own eyes.

"It has already sent a message once."

Nafradaran inspected the device, his voice coming from beneath the golden helmet.

"Do you know where it went?" Clown asked.

"Net Way".

"Comoros?"