Shipping goods from the game to the World of Warhammer

The blacksmiths' binary prayers continued to ring out, and the smoke from the sublimated holy oil swirled around the thinker's terracotta shell, filling the air with a mixture of holy oil and the scent of burning purification prayers.

Dark red gibberish raged and expanded across the main display panel, swallowing up a small patch of normal green data every few seconds. The blacksmiths' chanting grew more urgent, yet increasingly futile.

Just then, a series of heavy metallic footsteps came from the passage behind them.

"Thump! Thump! Thump!"

The footsteps coming from behind were deep and rhythmic, each step accompanied by a slight tremor in the floor—a sound far beyond what human footsteps could produce. Almost simultaneously, all the blacksmiths turned around, then froze.

A humanoid machine nearly four meters tall emerged from the dimly lit passage. Although it was equipped with fuel-powered propulsion systems on its feet that could operate in various complex terrains, it still chose the most primitive method of walking in this room.

Its overall paint scheme is a common gray-blue tone, and the cockpit is protected by a thick transparent alloy shell, through which an operator can be vaguely seen sitting in front of the control panel.

The machine's left arm is a massive power drill, its drill bit made of an alloy that Rhodes couldn't identify but was clearly extremely hard, gleaming metallically under the lights. The right arm houses a multi-functional drive tool pliers, its two thick fingers tipped with various maintenance interfaces, seemingly capable of both tightening bolts and soldering wires. Next to it hangs a multi-functional toolbox module, neatly packed with various maintenance tools that Rhodes also couldn't name.

Before Kassar agreed to take Rhodes to the Thinker, Rhodes had the SCV in the shuttle enter the forge city and follow him and Kassar all the way to the room where the Thinker was stored.

This is the standard engineering unit for the Terran race in StarCraft, the SCV (Space Engineering Vehicle). Although it is larger than a Marine wearing power armor, its operational precision is in no way inferior.

From tiny widow torpedoes smaller than a person to large battlecruisers, all can be repaired by one or more SCVs.

Considering that even units with only a steering wheel left can be repaired with 1 HP, the SCV's repair capabilities are undoubtedly excellent.

Of course, the blacksmiths present did not know this name.

The leading blacksmith examined the SCV before him, clearly searching his database. The search results caused a puzzled electrical hiss from beneath his mechanical panel; the vast archives of the Mechanicus yielded no record matching this mechanical creation.

Casal turned to look at Rhodes, a complex light flickering in his two crimson eyes.

"Is this what you call an STC product?"

Rhodes nodded, his expression seemingly calm, but he was more nervous than anyone else.

Casal was silent for a moment, then turned his gaze to the Thinker, which was still struggling amidst the dark red gibberish.

The purification ritual has entered its third round, but the area corrupted by the Code Demon has not decreased but increased, and the green area on the main display panel has shrunk to less than a quarter.

"Let it try," Casal finally said, his tone tinged with a sense of desperation, as if he had nothing to lose. "Om Messiah bears witness, our ritual has done its best."

The blacksmiths exchanged a few disgruntled glances, but at the beating supervisor's capable subordinate Casal's prompting, they made way for the Thinker.

The SCV strode heavily to the front of the Thinker. The operator in the cockpit seemed to be quickly scanning something before the nearly four-meter-tall engineering machine raised its left arm.

The power drill emitted a sharp whistle as its high-speed rotating drill bit aimed at a maintenance port on the Thinker's top casing—and then drilled straight down.

"Crunch—squeak squeak squeak—"

The ceramic steel casing emitted a piercing metallic cracking sound as the drill bit violently broke through it. Debris and sparks flew everywhere, and a half-meter square casing plate was completely lifted off, revealing the dense wiring and secondary processing array inside.

The blacksmiths present all gasped in shock.

If before they were merely dissatisfied, now they are pure rage. To the followers of the Cult of Machine God, the Thinker's shell is equivalent to the skin of its machine soul, and dismantling it without ritual is tantamount to blasphemy.

But this rebellious machine clearly didn't care about any of that.

Its right arm, pliers, reached inside the Thinker and precisely grasped a bronze incense burner that a blacksmith had placed beside the offering trough—it still contained more than half a burnt pot of holy oil. Before everyone's astonished eyes, the SCV tilted the burner, evenly pouring the warm holy oil onto a fist-sized secondary processor inside the Thinker.

Golden liquid flowed slowly down the processor's heatsink fins, seeping into the gaps in the circuitry below.

Immediately afterwards, SCV "borrowed" a roll of data paper filled with purification prayers from a blacksmith next to him—or rather, snatched it directly from the other party's hand with pliers—and then carefully placed the roll of paper on a main circuit board that looked abnormally hot. The binary characters on the roll of paper just happened to cover several logic nodes whose indicator lights were flashing.

The Thinker's main display panel suddenly went black at that moment.

"Blasphemy! This is blatant blasphemy against the God of Machines!" The leading bronze-faced blacksmith finally couldn't hold back any longer. A deafening electronic roar erupted from his throat speaker, his right hand gripping the handle of the power hammer at his waist, his mechanical knuckles cracking. "This heretical creation treats the Thinker's machine soul—Casal—with such brutality! I demand an immediate end to this farce and that this pile of scrap metal be dismantled into parts!"

Rhodes stared at the enraged group of blacksmiths, sweat nearly dripping from his forehead. He quietly used his psionic powers to access the communication channel in the SCV cockpit and asked in a low voice:

"Hey, are you sure this is okay?"

The operator's slightly bewildered voice came from the other end of the communicator: "Boss, I was just following the prompts that popped up in the SCV operating system... The system told me to apply the repair fluid to the overheated parts and then cover the damaged lines with insulating material, and I just did it."

Rhodes's lips twitched. The repair fluid must be the holy oil of the Mechanicus, and the insulating material was probably those prayer scrolls. The SCV's operating system was clearly translating the materials of this world using its own logic, but the actual results were considered utterly treasonous by the Mechanicus.

He could only grit his teeth and silently pray that the SCV wouldn't make things worse.

However, the situation was already spiraling out of control.

After the SCV operator pulled out another piece of computing circuitry from inside the casing and casually tossed it at the feet of several blacksmiths, the blacksmiths raised the power hammer. A blue energy field hummed on the surface of the hammer. The lead blacksmith stepped forward and raised the heavy power hammer above his head, aiming it at the SCV's cockpit canopy.

Just before they were about to swing their weapons, the Thinker's main display panel lit up.