Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 104 God's Machine 939.M41

Wangshu is slowly traveling towards the main star in the Galos system. It will later become the artificial moon of Galos, and the administration's propaganda department has already begun to promote it to avoid causing panic when the celestial body suddenly appears in the sky above Galos.

This asteroid, hundreds of kilometers in diameter, has been completely terraformed. Its surface is covered with thick terracotta armor plates, copper-colored pipes crisscrossing at the seams, and massive artificial light pillars neatly arranged along the edges of its shell, bathing the entire planet in a cold, white light. Dozens of giant reactors operate day and night deep within the rock layers, powering countless production lines. A dock cavity extends for kilometers inside the planet, its dome, supported by a fine-gold framework, so high that its top is invisible to the naked eye. This is the true industrial heart of Galos after its current state, the prototype of the forging world, and a physical replica of the central computing hub. The Thinker's mainframe operates beneath Galos, orchestrating the trajectories of billions of machines throughout the Galos galaxy.

A spherical field with a radius of 25 meters extends outward from Enpu's body, covering the predetermined sculpting area within the cavity. Since the last bottleneck loosened, the field radius has not increased, but the speed and precision of sculpting are now vastly different.

The 20-kilometer-long Foundry Ark—LA-0187—belongs to the Pronoris Foundry World.

Its owner is Enp Shakra, the Mechanical Sage. Marcus's records happened to contain detailed information about Punolis, which Cohen used as the origin of the Ark. Its external outline and internal compartments are basically complete. Every trace of corrosion and every repair patch on the hull silently tells the story of that arduous voyage forgotten by time. After several months of effort, the Ark has completed its basic structural construction and atomic shaping, thanks to the collaborative work of the small casting world of Wangshu. However, the Titan hangars, varying in size and class, still need filling.

In the deepest part of the Ark, in a massive reinforced hangar, the "wreckage" of an Emperor-class Titan, nearly a hundred meters tall, is firmly secured by an adamantite frame. This is the largest and safest of all the compartments, with armored compartments several meters thick, an independent void shield generator that is always on standby, and even the hangar's sealed doors were specially cast for it.

This "wreckage" wasn't actually salvaged from the battlefield—it was a replica deliberately crafted at the atomic level based on the obtained Emperor-class Titan blueprints. Through deduction and cross-verification with other Titans, its completeness was approximately 70%, which was Cohen's current limit. The volcanic cannon penetration wound on the torso had been repaired, the left arm weapon platform had been replaced with a temporary plasma cannon, and the reactor chamber's outer shell still showed signs of old damage. The locomotion mechanism and most weapon systems were largely intact, with only a few core components missing. Above the torso, the iconic cathedral stood majestically. The faces of the saints on the spire were clearly visible, gleaming with a golden sheen under the searchlights; the stained glass windows of the viewing platform were pristine, depicting the Great Crusade of Pronis forging the world. Every flying buttress pointed straight to the sky, as if proving some indestructible piety to Om Messiah. In the doctrines of Mechanicus, the Cathedral is both the command center of the Titans and a mobile temple dedicated to the god of machines; every expedition is an act of fulfilling the Emperor's will.

The restoration of this "wreckage" was never truly undertaken. The seemingly "cleaned" marks, the patched armor plates, the replaced parts—all were merely deliberate attempts to age the surface, to convince the outside world that the Great Sage, returned from the Warp, was working to restore this divine machine to its former glory. It stood there like a monument ravaged by war, all "restoration progress" existing only in the imaginations of onlookers. It needed repair, and perhaps Lucis could be of considerable help. This was part of the plan.

On either side of the Ark's central hangar stood two heavy-duty elevators. These behemoths were specifically designed for the Titans' orbital-to-surface deployment, capable of carrying one Imperial-class Titan or four Warlord-class Titans at a time. Their armored hulls were also covered in the corrosion marks of warp travel, but the elevator clamps and cargo hold restraints appeared to have been meticulously repaired and were ready for immediate use. They were the core equipment of the Ark as a Titan transport ship, and the final piece of the puzzle for this Titan legion to descend from orbit onto the battlefield.

Titan.

Eight General-class Titans, each over forty meters tall. They are painted in dark gray, with the legion insignia from the Great Crusade etched on their shoulder armor. The insignia has long been forgotten by the Empire, but the remaining lines are still clearly discernible. Under the cold white beams of searchlights, the eight General-class Titans are arranged in two rows along the central axis of the hangar, kneeling on their transport bases.

Each General-class Titan has an inverted trapezoidal torso, with layers of armor plates stacked high, extending from the waist to the shoulders, exceeding half a meter in thickness. On each shoulder is a weapon hardpoint, housing an Apocalypse-class missile launcher. Its arms hang at its sides; the left arm is an Ariok power claw, its hydraulic jaws half-open, the serrated claw blades reflecting a cold light under the lamplight. The right arm is a warlike volcano cannon, its barrel longer and thicker than the two on the shoulders; the double-forked muzzle brake casts a deep shadow under the light, and the energy conduit's diameter is several times that of ordinary weapons. The General-class's legs are robust, with knee joints constructed from multi-layered hydraulic push rods and planetary gear transmission mechanisms; the foot armor is so thick it can crush any ground cover. The armor surface of each General-class Titan bears the marks of battle damage—craters, erosion, and knife marks—as if it drove directly from the battlefields of the Great Crusade into this hangar.

The Marauder-class Titans are located on the tactical deck, with six arranged in two rows. They are over twenty meters tall and their size falls between that of a Warlord and a Warhound. They are more slender than Warlord-class Titans, with greater bending angles in their leg joints and more flexible locomotion mechanisms.

Under the searchlights, the weapon configurations of the six Marauder-class tanks varied. Three were equipped with Laser Destroyers on their left arms, their long, slender barrels and focusing crystal lenses gleaming a dark purple under the light. The other three were equipped with Thermomelans on their left arms, their muzzles thicker, and cooling vents arranged around the base of the barrels; in standby mode, waves of heat could be faintly seen rising from the vents. All three were uniformly equipped with Gatling guns on their right arms, their barrels short and thick, and ammunition boxes fixed to the back of the right shoulder. All three were fitted with Apocalypse-class missile launchers on their backs, the warheads gleaming a brass-colored sheen under the light. The Marauder-class was designed for fire support and assault breakthroughs. Its back-mounted missile launchers could project suppressive fire onto enemy lines before entering the main battlefield, followed by sustained suppression from the Gatling guns on the right arms, and finally, the heavy lasers or thermomelans on the left arms to destroy enemy fortifications and armored units.

The Warhound-class Titans, numbering twenty-four and over ten meters tall, are distributed across the rapid deployment pods along the edge of the Ark. They are the smallest and most unique class in the Titan Legion. The Warhound's appearance is strikingly different from the General and Marauder classes—it sacrifices its humanoid form, adopting a canine-like structure with reverse-jointed legs, knees bent forward, and claw-like feet. This design grants the Warhound greater mobility and stability in rugged terrain, allowing it to maintain a low center of gravity and reduce the risk of capsizing during high-speed runs.

The Warhound-class's weaponry is concentrated in its arms, with a standard configuration of a plasma blast cannon on the left arm and a Vulcan giant bomb cannon on the right. The plasma blast cannon has a trumpet-shaped muzzle, with energy confinement coils arranged around the barrel, emitting a low hum of electricity when idle. The Vulcan giant bomb cannon is a six-barreled rotary cannon, with a barrel diameter nearly one-third the length of the Warhound-class's arm. The Warhound-class's upper body armor is thinner than that of the General-class and Marauder-class, but its Void Shield generator is powerful enough to withstand heavy enemy fire in small-scale engagements. Warhound-class units typically operate in pairs, one for reconnaissance and one for cover. In the Titan Legion, they are the eyes and ears of the vanguard. The shoulder armor of these Warhound-class units bears faded legion insignia, and their numbering system does not match any current Imperial standards.

The Knight mechs were in the hangar on the other side. Nearly a hundred Knight mechs were neatly arranged, with Ranger, Paladin, and Priest types each occupying a separate area. The Ranger type was the lightest, equipped with a communication antenna array on its back for long-range reconnaissance and target marking. The Paladin type was the most balanced, its weapon configuration a combination of a chainsaw sword and a thermobaric gun, suitable for close to medium-range assaults. The Priest type had two heavy explosive cannons mounted on its shoulders, and a spare energy pack for powered gauntlets hung on its waist. The cockpit seats of each Knight mech bore the marks of wear, as if countless generations of pilots had sat on them; the depth and angle of the grip marks on the armrests conformed to the natural wear and tear of human ergonomics.

Creating Titans is far faster than creating ships. An Odysseus-class combat transport ship is 7.5 kilometers long and displaces hundreds of millions of tons. A Warlord-class Titan, on the other hand, weighs only a few thousand tons. On the scale of atomic creation, the time and effort required to create a Warlord-class Titan is less than a fraction of that required to create an Odysseus-class. In less than a month, eight Warlords, six Raiders, and twenty-four Warhounds were all completed. This was a fully-equipped elite strike group.

But the biggest obstacle to creating a Titan is not its size, but its mechanical soul.

Titans need machine souls. When Istvan III disintegrated its wreckage, the machine souls within those fragments had long since dissipated. Enp used the millennia-old machine soul of the Defiant One from Rellano as a model—the most complete one he possessed.

The most stable machine soul source sample. He disassembled the blueprint of the fearless machine soul into atomic-level memetic fragments and embedded them into every key node of the Titan blueprint: the walking controller, the aiming array, and the void shield logic. After the Titan was shaped, the machine soul was not concentrated in a single chip, but rather dispersed throughout the entire body, spreading like a nervous system.

The moment the first Warlord-class Titan took shape, that nascent consciousness slowly coalesced within the silicon-based lattice.

It sensed the presence of the shaper at the atomic level.

Each subsequent Titan was a copy of the first, built from the same blueprint. Born from the same atomic blueprint, they each developed their own distinct characteristics during their formation—some favored long-range bombardment, others preferred close combat, some were as silent as iron, others as violent as flame. But regardless of their individual differences, their machine spirits all pointed to the same source, like countless tributaries flowing into the same bloodline. Even the Emperor-class Titan possessed a machine spirit etched with suppressed rage and the instinct to struggle for survival—they were the fearless descendants of the Rellano Titan, the blood and bones of millennia of loyalty perpetuated in steel.

The core of the Knight Mech is the adaptation of its machine spirit. The Titan's machine spirit is independent of the pilot and possesses its own will;

The Knight Mech's soul is directly connected to the pilot's nervous system through the chair core, serving as an extension of the pilot. When creating the Knight Mech, Enp simplified and directionally modified it, making the Knight Mech's soul a filter layer—it receives the pilot's commands, purifies any hesitation or noise, and then executes them with near-perfect precision.

The armor plates of the Warlord-class Titans are etched with the legion insignia from the Great Crusade era, their paint faded to a dark gray, and the shoulder armor bears the name of a Titan legion long forgotten by the Empire. The numbering system for the Warhound-class Titans doesn't match any of the Empire's current standards. The Knight's cockpit seats show signs of wear, as if countless pilots have sat on them; the depth and angle of the grip marks on the armrests conform to the natural wear and tear of human ergonomics. Some Titans and Knights even have deliberately created traces of dried wet parts inside their cockpits—traces of frantic struggle in the warp, untouched by the divine machines. Of course, many parts and structures are also newly cast, evidence of the restoration work done by the Great Sage Enpu.

No one would doubt their existence, nor would anyone question that they are all brand new.

Enp stood at the feet of the last Warlord-class Titan. His palms rested on the ankle armor plates, his consciousness probing deep into the machine's soul. The dark red light pulsed slowly in the ocean of silicon-based lattices, like a sleeping heart.

He withdrew his hand and turned to walk towards the dock exit. The hem of his dark gray robe remained motionless in the vacuum. Behind him, dozens of divine machines stood silently in the cold beams of light, the aged marks on their armor plates gleaming dimly under the lamplight, as if they had just returned from a battlefield ten thousand years ago, or as if they had never left.

Enpu stood on the observation platform in the dock, watching the two-kilometer-long steel behemoth undergo its final adjustments. The vacated dock space would be cleared to install the keel of the new ship, allowing Garros's mortal technicians to enter. Everything was ready, awaiting only the arrival of the naval office personnel.

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