Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 117 Gods' Grand Lottery

After the ever-changing master cast his gaze, the Black Pearl began to rock violently.

It wasn't the usual low-frequency tremor from subspace travel—the kind the crew was used to, like the ship's heartbeat, stable, regular, and negligible. This time it was different. This time the vibration came from the deepest part of the ship's hull, irregular and arrhythmic, like something repeatedly tearing at the boundary of the Geller Field, or like the seawater in the eye of a storm brewing some kind of unleashing force around the giant eye.

Cohen sat by the porthole in his private workshop, his right hand resting on the armrest. The field never stopped. The spherical perception with a radius of twenty-five meters continued to extend outward, chaotic matter surging in, decomposing, and peeling away. But maintaining that clean passage was becoming increasingly difficult—not because the field was malfunctioning, but because the outside world was changing. The flow of purple chaos was accelerating, the density of the turbulence was rising, like a river that was once navigable suddenly swelling into a flood. He glanced at the data panel fixed to the wall. The reading on the Geller position was no longer a smooth horizontal line, but had begun to fluctuate. The amplitude of the fluctuations was small, but the frequency was continuously increasing.

Outside the workshop, the emergency lights in the corridor cast a dim red glow underfoot. The illumination panels were dimmed to their lowest setting, flickering every few seconds—not a malfunction, but rather the Geller Force drawing excessive power from the energy system to resist the subspace turbulence. The service servitors moved slowly, their optical lenses flashing erratically in the dim light. Someone was whispering the Emperor's prayers, not with piety, but as an instinctive reaction squeezed out from between clenched teeth by suppressed fear.

Inside the bridge, Marcus stood in front of the holographic projection platform. He looked at the data stream on the dial over and over again, and each time the numbers changed—not for the better.

"The frequency of fluctuations in the Geller field is increasing. The pressure reading—has jumped into the yellow zone." The sensor's voice came from the communication panel, carrying a hint of tension that shouldn't be present on the duty officer's person. "The Geller field output curve is unstable. The equipment is not reporting any errors."

Marcus pressed the ship's intercom: "All departments, continue to monitor position readings. Engine room, closely monitor reactor output curves; report any anomalies immediately."

Hera Voss's voice came through the interstellar communication channel, hoarse but deeper than usual.

"Lieutenant Commander. The warp communication environment continues to deteriorate. It's not interference, the storm is intensifying. I hear—" She paused, as if trying to discern the faint signal squeezed through the psionic noise. "—Whispers. Between each other."

Marcus's right mechanical eye shrank slightly. "Continue monitoring. Report any threat signals immediately."

"Yes, ma'am."

Hera cut off the communication. Her fingers pressed against the psionic receiver array, beads of sweat sliding down her forehead and nose. She could feel that thing—not sound, not image, but an indescribable oppressive force surging from the depths of the warp. Targeting that battlefield. It seemed to be... an arm-wrestling match.

Sera's voice came from the navigation pod, carrying the ethereal quality unique to psionicists, but the last syllable trembled.

"Vice-Captain. The Starlight signal—it's weakening. Not gone—it's being blocked by something. Like someone's between that light and us—" She struggled to organize her thoughts, trying to describe in human language what only a psionicist could perceive. "—A hand reached out."

"Can the route be maintained?" Marcus asked.

"Yes." Sera's voice steadied slightly, then she confirmed. "It's gone. The moment that hand withdrew, the Star Torch's signal returned. It was just watching. Not trying to cut it off, just confirming its presence."

Marcus remained silent. His right hand tapped rhythmically on the edge of the tactical table.

Throughout his naval career, every time a subspace anomaly was "just seen," it was never a good thing.

On the observation deck on the other side of the bridge, Isa Velen gripped the armrests tightly, her eyes closed. Her lips moved, not to speak, but to resist. She wasn't resisting the whispers of chaos. She was resisting a growing, increasingly intense sense of despair surging from the depths of the warp, a despair that made her want to give up everything and kneel down. It wasn't growing from her mind; a storm was pouring into it.

Cohen's consciousness briefly detached during this time. Through the higher-dimensional anchor point, he confirmed that Wangshu and Garros were both normal. Then he maintained the field, not daring to easily interrupt it.

The cabin suddenly sank.

It wasn't just swaying, it was a plunge—the entire ship felt as if an invisible hand had lifted it from below and then released it; the gravity generator lost its stable output for a fraction of a second. People in the corridor instinctively grabbed the handrails, some lost their footing and fell to the ground. Alarms blared simultaneously from all the cabins.

Marcus's hand was on the communication key, and his voice came over the ship's broadcast: "Attention all personnel, gravity anomaly, hold station. It's not a malfunction—subspace turbulence has breached the buffer layer of the Geller Field. All departments, damage reports."

A series of reports came in from the communication panel.

"Engine room, reactor output fluctuations, currently being manually stabilized."

"Sector B, gravity generator overload restarting."

"Medical ward, no casualties. Sedative cabinet overturned, has been dealt with."

Marcus wrote the first line in his duty log, then pressed the communication button to connect to the private workshop's channel.

"Captain, the Geller position has become more volatile, and the ship is experiencing subspace turbulence. There is currently no structural damage. Sierra reports that the Starbeam signal has recovered after a brief weakening."

Cohen's voice came through the channel, calm and steady: "Maintain course."

"Yes, sir." Marcus didn't ask "what caused it." Asking such a question in the warp is like asking "why the ocean has waves"—it's pointless, and the answer might be even more terrifying than the question.

On the escort ship "Silent Prayer" at the rear of the fleet, Valeria stood before the observation deck. The armored porthole covers were tightly shut, and she could see nothing, but her eyes remained closed. She was perceiving—not through her eyes, but through faith.

Her brow furrowed deeper. Two centuries of warfare had taught her one thing: only a small fraction of the storms in the warp are natural phenomena. The rest are caused by people breathing up there.

Something was changing in the warp. It wasn't the storm—storms were the norm, the background, the treacherous path Imperial ships inevitably traversed on every voyage. This time was different. Something deeper, something more fundamental, was trembling at the foundations of the warp. She pushed open the hatch and walked into the observation corridor in front of the bridge. There was a narrow, bulletproof observation window there—not for the navigator, but for the commander. Through that window, a purple chaos churned between the gaps in the armor plates. Faith guided her gaze—to the direction of Armageddon.

That planet, shrouded in warp storms for months. That hungry, thirsty planet, drawing countless eyes from the shadows of the entire galaxy. In the warp's reflection, she could sense it not as a celestial body, but as the center of a psionic storm, a colossal, swirling vortex that devoured all attention. That cold sun trembled slightly in the warp's reflection.

It wasn't an illusion. The entire subspace was stirred up by something in that instant—like a boulder thrown into stagnant water, like a sharp blade slicing through taut skin. She didn't know what it meant. But she was certain that countless eyes across the entire galaxy opened simultaneously at that moment.

In Terra, within the Deep Well of the Star Court, hundreds of Star Speakers ceased their whispering at the same instant. Blood gushed from their third eyes simultaneously; some collapsed silently, some fell from their psionic thrones, and some screamed the word "Amigidon" into the void. The light pierced the psionic barrier surrounding the Golden Throne, penetrated the walls of the palace, and pierced the edge of the solar system, like an undecipherable alarm rising from the depths of an abyss.

Inside Ophelia VII, atop the Navigator family's spire, the ancient nobles who never left their silencing pods were abruptly awakened from their deep psychic meditation. Their withered third eyes blinked violently at the same moment, as if some immense gravitational force was tugging at their senses. The patriarchs exchanged intermittent pulses on encrypted channels; no one knew the exact meaning of those pulses, but all were locked onto the same direction.

On the edge of the Eye of Fear, in those dark worlds forgotten by the Empire, on shattered planets teeming with the forces of Chaos, wild prophets, unregistered psionicists, twisted prophets—whoever they served, whatever their beliefs—all raised their heads in that moment. Some knelt, some laughed maniacally, some wept silently. What they saw was not all the same, but the direction was one and the same.

The gods are arm wrestling high in the heavens. Mortals are merely dust that has been shaken down.

Valeria's gaze shifted from that direction to the location of the Black Pearl. She couldn't explain why, but faith was gathering—something was there, on that ship, at the source of that streak of light. She felt it was the Emperor's will coalescing, yet another blade cast from the chaos by the Golden Throne. But she knew that faith didn't need explanation; it only needed to exist. She traced her name's sacred symbol on her chest, her lips moving.

"The divine emperor is majestic, and all evil forces retreat."

Inside the Black Pearl's medical bay, Liz sat in a chair at the nursing station.

The column for emptying the intensive care unit read "zero." It wasn't written today; "one" had been written a few days ago. But that number hadn't changed. No new critically injured patients were being brought in, and those pulled back from the brink of death hadn't deteriorated. She turned a page of the report, put down her pen, and leaned back in her chair. Quiet. Too quiet. It wasn't that there was no sound—the beeping of the cardiac monitors, the white noise of the circulatory system, the footsteps of the servitors in the distant corridor. All those sounds were there. But the quiet seeped into her bones; it was the chilling silence unique to the eye of a storm.

She glanced down the corridor. After the captain's visit, the seriously wounded no longer needed resuscitation.

In the barracks at the end of the corridor, an old soldier leaned against the wall, a small knife clutched in his hand. He wasn't sharpening the knife, nor was he doing anything related to combat. He was carving—carving characters, stroke by stroke, on the back of his identification tag with the tip of the knife. His fingers were cut by the blade, blood seeping into the carvings. He didn't wipe it away. It wasn't that it didn't hurt; it was the pain that made him feel alive.

Before that, before the captain walked past his bedside, he wasn't sure if he would survive.

The inscription reads: "The Emperor was watching the Captain, and then the Captain saved me."

On the next bed, someone was repeating the phrase in a low voice, not reciting it, but confirming its truth. Someone was scraping the words "The Captain came, the wound won't hurt" with a bayonet on the metal cabinet next to their pillow. Further away, a young soldier—one of the second batch conscripted from the Garros Defense Force, who hadn't seen much combat—wrote "The Emperor borrowed the Captain's hand" in charcoal on the bulkhead above his bed. Then he crossed out "borrowed" and rewrote "sent" below it.

No one organized it. No one gave orders. But everyone was doing the same thing. Not praying, but engraving the captain's and emperor's names on the same metal cabinet, the same bulkhead, the same identification tag. This wasn't the standard format of the state religion; it was the soldiers' own language. The old soldier finished, leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, as if nothing had happened. But his hand didn't let go of the identification tag, his knuckles turning white.

The storm is intensifying.

The pressure curve at the Geller position jumped from yellow to the edge of red, and the readings continued to rise. The bridge lights began to flicker erratically, not as a malfunction, but as the reactor was operating at its limit, and the energy distribution system automatically cut off power to non-critical sections. The corridor lighting panels changed from cool white to dark red, and the emergency lights cast a dim trail of light across the floor.

The people running are not fleeing; the damage control team is on their way to the reactor compartment.

Marcus's finger hovered over the communication key, hesitating for a second before not pressing Cohen's channel. He couldn't interfere with the captain at this moment. He knew some things couldn't be said, asked, or disturbed.

Sera lay in the navigation pod with her eyes closed, the light from her third eye trembling. Sweat beaded on her forehead, her long, silvery hair clinging to her neck, soaked through. The Star Torch's signal flickered between strong and weak due to the psionic storm, like a candle tossed about by a gale. But it was there. Its light was still there. And so far away... and then she saw...

Not the Star Torch. It's that direction. At the edge of the storm, in the deepest part of the chaotic vortex, something has cracked open. Not a rift, but an exit. It's the reality coordinates of Amegiddon tearing open in the darkness of the psionic storm. Not calm, not stable, but the kind of fragile, yet undeniably real light that could close at any moment, could be swallowed by chaos at any moment.

"First Mate." Her voice was hoarse from exhaustion. "Exit. Amighadoon. In the eye of the storm."

It's there.

Marcus's right mechanical eye aperture shrank to its smallest size. "Lock coordinates." He turned to the internal communication panel and connected to Hera Voss's channel. "Star Speaker, broadcast to the entire fleet: Exit confirmed. All ships, follow the lead ship's path and prepare to exit the warp."

Hera's voice came through the interstellar communication channel, carrying the ethereal echo unique to psionic transmission: "Yes, sir. Black Pearl interstellar communicator, all fleet broadcast outlets confirmed. All ships, follow the lead ship's path. Prepare to leave warp."

A moment later, her voice rang out again, this time carrying a relaying tone: "Captain. Flagship Star Speaker responds. Retribution-class received. Combined fleet will follow the Black Pearl's path. Commander von Hoffmann confirmed. All fleet, prepare to disengage."

Marcus switched back to the ship's broadcast: "All ships, prepare to exit subspace. All departments, final checks."

The atmosphere inside the cabin changed in that instant. It wasn't relaxation, but a brief, stagnant calm after tension had reached its peak. No one cheered, no one relaxed. Those who have spent too long in the warp know that the moment of leaving the warp—

The moment the Geller Force closes and the physical laws of the real universe regain control—that's the most dangerous moment of the entire voyage. Rifts might tear open then, contaminants might seep in then, and those things that have followed the fleet to the edge of the warp might pounce at that moment.

But not this time. Sera's third eye locked onto the rift, the door to the realm of life torn open in the eye of the storm. The combined fleet formed a long track in the clean passage opened by the Black Pearl, and nearly a hundred ships simultaneously initiated disengagement procedures from their Geller positions.

Cohen leaned back in his chair. His consciousness sank into a higher dimension. The stockpile of universal atoms in the warehouse continued to grow. Enpu remained seated in the casting hall deep within Wangshu, electron beams connected to the data bus, servo skulls slowly swirling.

The porthole armor cover remained tightly shut. But everyone knew that when it was opened, what they would see might not be hope, but perhaps more fire.

The Black Pearl was the first to break through the storm. The ship trembled, the purple chaos was torn apart, and a brand new starry sky unfolded outside the portholes.

Amigidoton has arrived.

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