This is our Warhammer journey

Chapter 304 You can't only love the Empire when the situation is out of control.

Hazy Starfield - Forging World Cyprus - Mendy
The massive Ramirez-class star fortress is collapsing.

Its steel skeleton twisted in the void, like the remains of a dying behemoth.

It had already suffered heavy damage in the previous unprecedented raid, and now, the artillery fire of the Chaos Traitors and Heretics continues to relentlessly tear apart its remaining shell.

The outer armor of the Star Fortress was completely stripped away, revealing the charred skeleton beneath. Those once deadly firing ports were now burning scars, spewing thick smoke and flames.

This planet is under an unprecedented siege.

For the Nokmond and Cardian sectors, forging the world of Cyprus is no ordinary place.

Its strategic value is immeasurable.

As one of the birthplaces of Ramirez-class star fortresses, six to eight of these steel behemoths are perpetually entrenched in the orbit of the Forging World Cyprus, forming an impregnable defensive line and serving as the Empire's most important military stronghold in the Misty Starfield.

The fully armed Ramirez Star Fortress is itself a mobile death fortress, its firepower so fierce that any fleet would hesitate to approach. Its cannon arrays are loaded with devastating energy, and its macro-cannon arrays are enough to tear enemy ships to shreds, while its close-in weapon system ensures that no fighter jets or landing craft can easily get close.

Do you think you can conquer such a star fortress using conventional fleet warfare?
That's nothing short of a pipe dream.

Because the required troop strength far exceeds the limit that any single warship can carry.

Unless... what's attacking is a derelict spaceship.

Unless... what's coming are several derelict spaceships.

Boom! Boom!
Countless flames ignited in the void.

The shock of the explosion spread silently in the vacuum, with only the thin gas sweeping across the warship's sensors transmitting a dull echo, like the dying gasp of an ancient behemoth.

"Warning, warning, high stress, abnormal hormone levels."

In the empty command room, the alarm of the physiological monitoring system blared sharply and piercingly.

Fabian Watz, the casting director of Cyprus, curled up in his protective cabin, his eyes wide with horror at the sight before him.

Those massive, twisted spaceships, accompanied by the shrieks of the warp, were like spears of destruction hurled by the gods, piercing the upper structure of the Ramirez-class star fortress.

As the two forces pressed against each other, a chain of explosions occurred at the contact surface, and molten metal poured down like a waterfall, creating towering waves of fire in the void.

The battered Starfortress could no longer withstand the onslaught. Its framework caved and collapsed with a mournful cry, the wreckage of abandoned ships and fragments of warships shattering along with the Starfortress's steel skeleton, raining down upon the heavens that had forged the world.

From the perspective of space, the shattering of Starfortress was so silent, and its fall would engulf everything that forged the world of Cyprus in a terrifying earthquake.

"No!"

The foundry director let out a wail.

He regretted it.

He regretted not heeding the advice of the mechanical priests of the Eighth Underworld, choosing instead to provide a base for the rebels, and rejecting the Primarch—

He was angry.

He was furious that these rebels had betrayed him and used false lies to cover up their foolish attempt to protect their so-called 'interests' with a permanent indenture.

He was sad.

His world of forging is about to be destroyed.

While Agrippina chose to consolidate the Pioneer fleet and begin focusing it within the system, and while the VIII of the Underworld actively participated in the construction of the Primarchs' 'Warning Star Defense Line' and integrated itself into it, Cyprus chose to observe.

He symbolically responded to the Primarch's resource concentration and provided some of the resources, while also offering protection to the Mechanicus who resisted the Primarch, hoping to make the Primarch hesitate to act when necessary.

Now, he has lost everything.

The collision of several star fortresses raised clouds of dust that polluted an area of ​​tens of thousands of kilometers in the southern part of the planet. The murky clouds slowly rolled and surged, enveloping everything and obscuring all living beings.

From the wounds in the earth's crust, lava gushed out like pus and blood.
Everything happened so suddenly.

Whether forced or with other motives, the heretics chose the most violent form of destruction, and the knowledge they destroyed in this attack far exceeded what they found in the ruins.

The casting director's gaze struggled to move forward through the swirling clouds, sweeping over one broken monitoring device after another.

He found his biological sage in a sanctuary.

The impact from the sky destroyed his Guardians, and the shattered dome crashed down, crushing the Biological Sage beneath it.

He is still alive.

He lay on his back, surrounded by heretics tainted with blasphemous beliefs, his exposed skull connected to tubes.

His eyes were wide open, his mouth agape, and he wore a pained expression.

Time is running out.

Unable to withstand the attack with Cyprus's strength, the traitors of the 12th Legion swam over the ramparts in the lava, behind them were the members of the Dark Mechanicus who were greedily plundering the remaining knowledge.

"Ravenna! Ravenna!"

The casting director shouted loudly.

He must seize what he needs before those heretics completely corrupt the remaining brain tissue of the biological sage.

Ravenna's psionic technology, those forbidden mysteries, are now confined within this crumbling physical vessel.

That damned biological sage, that arrogant monopolist, he was the only one who could maintain the stability of psionic pathways in a highly disruptive field.

And now, they are going to let his skull be crushed by a heretical blasphemous ritual?

No, absolutely not.

The technology must be recycled, even if it means cracking open its skull to extract the last bit of useful data.

'Sizzle~ Sizzle~'

The only answer was the sound emanating from the shattering machinery of the surface-casting sage, followed by endless pain that flooded the brain through the senses.

The casting director then realized that the pipes connecting the heretics to the head of the biological sage were not knowledge-extracting machines at all.

Rather, it is the butcher's nail.

Madmen, they're all madmen. "Ravenna!"

The casting director yelled before disconnecting.

"Where is Lord Romulus? Where are the Primarchs?"

Impulsively, he chose to confront the waves of subspace.

The subspace is so noisy.

Choosing to open your heart to it is like opening a door to millions of screaming supplicants, countless people praying, countless people shouting, countless people yearning for a response.

When searching for a specific cry for help from this endless sea of ​​cries, the chaotic and disordered information offers no assistance whatsoever.

He braced his hands against the glass wall inside the cabin, desperately trying to immerse himself in the consciousness of the psionicists. He lowered his head, listening to the clamor as if he were listening to the howling wind.

A strong wind was approaching.

"You can't wait until the situation gets out of control before you think of the Primarch."

The gale continued to howl outside the psionic barrier, but the invisible barrier was now as solid as an iron wall, forcefully pulling the forging director's consciousness, which was on the verge of collapse, back from the chaotic screams.

His mind was still reeling, as if he had just woken up from a nightmare on the verge of drowning.

"Hmm, this technology is quite amazing. It relies on sacrificing real-world creatures to temporarily establish a stable channel? And it's delivered by demons without any regard for their origin? So those demons actually take delivery orders?"

The voice murmured in a low tone, its tone a mixture of sarcasm and astonishment.

The casting director's auditory sensors captured fuzzy bytes, but he was unable to decipher their meaning amidst the chaotic aftershocks.

"Uh—Old Luo, why don't you do it?"

As if suddenly remembering something, the other person lowered their voice, a subtle hesitation in their words.

The voice remained muffled, as if veiled by a thick curtain, rendering the enhanced audio recognition module, which the casting director had subconsciously activated, in vain.

Then——

"Excuse me, are you Fabian Watz, the foundry director of Foundry World Cyprus-Mendy?"

The sound suddenly became clear from within the curtain.

Even though they were separated by countless light-years, and even though their souls still trembled from the tearing of the warp, the Forging Director could still feel the power contained in that voice, not through volume, but through a kind of innate authority etched into the very essence of existence.

That is a dominance that needs no declaration.

A natural ruler.

"Yes, sir, yes."

The casting director's response came out almost reflexively, and a sliver of hope rose in my heart.

"The attack you suffered."

The voice remained steady, without any inflection or unnecessary self-introduction.

No announcement is needed; one will know who he is simply by hearing his voice.

"Enemy fleet size, combat personnel, and your damage status."

The casting director immediately replied excitedly.

"We have been attacked by the Dark Mechanicus and the Chaos Space Marines. The main force of the fleet, according to records, is the traitorous Queen of Glory named 'Conqueror', along with more than forty capital ships. Two-thirds of the planet has fallen. One Ramirez-class fortress is still operational. The remaining fleet consists of one mechanical ark and part of its escort fleet. We are currently resisting."

"We need support."

"How much longer can you hold out?"

The other party's inquiry was calm and composed, as if such a huge loss was within the original entity's expectations.

"Two months, no—three months, or 97 days according to standard Terra time."

The casting director's mechanical voice automatically output the calculation results, then suddenly fell into an eerie silence.

In his mental matrix, countless probability models are running wildly, and every variable is screaming the same fact.

Three months.

Can the Imperial fleet break through the warp storm and arrive within three months?

impossible.

Three months later, will he still be able to rely on this shattered fleet and these scarred fortresses to continue protecting the last legacy of the Forging World?

An overheating warning for the processor core flashed on his visual interface.

With nearly a thousand years of battle damage reports, supply records, and reinforcement response times for the Imperial Fleet, along with the sea route closest to the Forging World, all the data ultimately converged into a straight line leading to despair.

He was dead.

It takes traveling merchants three weeks to travel from the nearest star system to Cyprus, let alone during wartime.

Communication was not yet completely blocked, and the countless cries of agony emanating from the waves undoubtedly proved that the various star sectors surrounding Cardia had been engulfed in war.

Will I be able to wait for reinforcements?

This time, the casting director's voice was tinged with a tremor that even the mechanical tone couldn't conceal.

That was a tearful plea from someone clinging to the last straw on the edge of an abyss.

Will the Primarchs be able to catch up?

Can they achieve extraordinary efficiency?
"Hold on and hold on."

Faced with that almost tearful questioning, the voice remained as unbreakable as refined gold.

Each syllable carries immense weight.

"we are coming."

(End of this chapter)