Shipping goods from the game to the World of Warhammer

The Skull Cannon's tracks rolled over the charred marks left by Dane on the floor, the metal spikes on the tracks scraping against the ground with a screeching sound. The chains wrapped around the sides of the fuselage trembled like living things, their ends leaving afterimages in the air. The demon engine was accelerating.

"Everyone scatter! Don't huddle together!" Rod's voice pierced through the billowing smoke and dust.

Two friars responded first, poking out from behind cover with bolters and firing continuously at the tracks of the skull cannon. The bolts hit the track plates, exploding into bursts of orange sparks, but to the demon armor that emitted a dark red glow, this amount of firepower was no different from a tickle.

The remaining raiders also began to move, their heavy power armor treading on the shattered floor, their grenade launchers aimed at the daemon engine that was turning.

However, the skull cannon was faster than anyone expected.

Instead of responding with its cannons, it accelerated and charged forward. The spiked front wheels crushed a Christian soldier who couldn't get out of the way in time. The soldier didn't even have time to let out a complete scream before being dragged under the tracks. The sound of metal grinding against bone lasted less than two seconds before the barbed entrance under the skull cannon opened again, and chains sprang out, dragging the dying soldier into the dark cavity.

It was that same nightmarish sound again, the sound of metal grinding against flesh that haunted people's minds.

"Damn it!" Kasal's mechanical arm suddenly grabbed Rhodes' shoulder armor, pulling him back a step. At the same time, he used the auxiliary tool arm in his other hand to open the communicator on his body. The signal shielding devices around the abandoned furnace had been mostly destroyed by Dann's laser, and he could barely make contact with the outside world.

"Guardians of the Faith, this is Kassar. A demonic engine has been discovered beneath the abandoned forge at this location. Requesting immediate support! Repeat, requesting immediate support!"

The communication panel emitted a series of intermittent static sounds, and it was unclear whether the signal had been successfully transmitted.

The skull cannon's muzzle glowed a dark red light once more. The fresh skull had been pushed into the chamber, and the pulsating tubing on either side of the barrel contracted violently, as if charging up for the final moment before firing. The muzzle was aimed directly at Rhodes's location.

Casal did not hesitate.

He turned around abruptly, using his mechanized body to block Rhodes's path. Before his logic processor made this judgment, something deeper had already driven his servo motors—this traveling merchant possessed STC technology capable of repairing the Thinker, a value far exceeding that of a technically-class Forging World Priest; this was the most basic calculation of a Mechanicus cultist.

The shell was fired.

The skull, wreathed in demonic fire, struck Casal squarely in the back, the shockwave driving dark red flames into the mechanical structure within his chest cavity. He felt his secondary spine snap, the two mechanical skeletons on his left side snapping outwards like broken wires, and a bowl-sized hole burst open in the center of his chest cavity, from which fragments of gears and pipes splattered, mixed with some kind of scorching black liquid.

His visual module flickered violently before becoming a snowflake-like noise, and his auditory sensor was left with only a high-frequency buzzing.

He fell down, back up, with smoke still rising from the edge of the large hole in his chest.

The logic unit's power was rapidly decreasing, and Casal's consciousness began to blur. He felt as if he had returned to many years ago, to the day he first stepped into the forge city of Mordax, where old gears and pipes crisscrossed overhead, and the air was filled with the smell of machine oil and metal.

He remembered kneeling before the icon of the god of all machines and reciting the first syllable of the initiation oath in binary language using the mechanical throat that had just been replaced.

The blurry golden light seemed to be approaching him, like something that had been turning deep within the gears for millennia, reaching out a hand to him—

The sharp sound of the drill bit piercing into metal abruptly pulled him back from the shimmering light and shadow.

Pain, a burning pain. But not the dull ache of impending organ failure; it felt as if something was cutting through the hardened, deformed metal frame of his wound, sparks flying onto the last remaining patch of skin on his face.

The visual module had recovered about 30% of its functionality. The image was full of noise and color distortion, but Casal could still barely make out what it was—a gray-blue space engineering vehicle was crouching beside him. The huge industrial drill was carefully cutting open the deformed and melted metal skeleton at the edge of the hole in his chest. At the same time, another mechanical arm pulled out an alloy tube of about the right length and thickness from the pile of scrap next to him, bent it into the shape of his broken auxiliary spine in a few quick movements, and welded it directly onto it.

He heard the sound of grenades exploding, one after another, the rhythm as steady as a calibrated metronome. Several raiders were suppressing the skull cannon's advance with alternating fire. Grenades exploded on the demon engine's armor, creating clouds of smoke and fragments. Although they didn't cause decisive damage, each hit from a gravity concussion grenade caused the skull cannon's tracks to slip and slow down, and the pulsating tubing to spasm briefly, as if some force field had disrupted its internal rhythm.

Rhodes stood behind the raiders' line of fire, one hand on his temple, his eyes fixed intently on the demon engine.

"Fix it quickly, don't worry about anything else, as long as it works."

There was no other way; the blacksmiths weren't around to provide the Mechanicus's holy oil and other metals. Rhodes could only have the SCVs find some materials from the abandoned furnace and smear them on Kassar.

If the rituals of the Cult of Mechanics are like the conditioning model of Traditional Chinese Medicine, then the way the SCV repaired the Thinkers was like the Western medicine model, with the former focusing on gentle conditioning and the latter on directly addressing the lesions.

So now, the SCVs on the battlefield are in medic mode, and their treatment methods can no longer be simply described as cruel and violent.

As for a complete return to its previous state? Let's wait until this oil-loving guy survives until this devilish engine shuts down.

The SCV pilot poked half his head out of the cockpit, muttered something under his breath, and then the drill spun even faster.

Casal lay on the ground, the drill bit and welding torch protruding through the large hole in his chest causing his pain receptors to keep alarming. However, his logic processor had regained its basic computing capabilities. He could feel that after his broken lumbar vertebra was replaced by a piece of scrap material picked up from somewhere, the servo motors in his lower body had miraculously regained a weak power supply.

This is illogical. The extent of his damage would require at least 72 hours of complete disassembly and reconstruction in any Mechanicus repair facility. Yet this gray-blue engineering vehicle restored his core systems to normal operation in less than two minutes.

The method was crude, the materials were haphazard, and the solder joints were crooked and twisted. Any member of the Cult of Mechanics would probably faint from anger upon seeing it.

But it does work.