Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 132 The Foundation in the Ashes (Part 1)

Ten days after Grom's death, the clearing operation in Upper Nest continued. The sound of artillery fire echoed from the ruins and collapsed corridors several kilometers away, but by the time it reached the State Cathedral, where the Central Nest command post was located, it had become a muffled rumble. The acrid smell of burning green bark lingered in the air.

Kara's Stormtroopers and Relano's combat groups took turns attacking, with one combat group capturing two streets before retreating to the central stronghold to rest, replenish ammunition, and re-equip itself, while the other immediately moved in. The elite infantry regiments of the Garros Defense Forces also joined the rotation, and the three lightly armed forces advanced in echelons, minimizing casualties.

The stained-glass rose window in the cathedral's nave was long since shattered, leaving only its gilded frame. Low-angle starlight pierced through the smoke and dust, fragmented into countless dim beams by the frame. Cohen stood before the sand table, watching the blue markings slowly spread northwards from the governor's mansion like a rising tide. Upper Nest, less than a percent of the entire hive city, had once been home to Invernus's most powerful tribes. Now, their bones lay scattered among the rubble, indistinguishable from the orc remains.

Cole stood opposite him, his voice low: "The pre-war population of Upper Nest was 470 million, and so far we have found less than 30,000 survivors."

The central hall fell silent for a moment. Less than one in ten thousand.

"Keep searching." Cohen's voice was flat.

Cole nodded and marked the sand table. The core objective of the raid was never to rescue people, but to clear every street, every building, and every basement to ensure that there were no remaining Greenskins. Survivors were merely byproducts of the raid.

At the edge of the sand table, two dark red arrows are slowly advancing: orc skirmishers heading south from the Fire Wasteland, and barbarian tribes advancing west from the Equatorial Jungle. Grom is dead, but the WAAAGH! signal it emitted before its death has already spread across half the subcontinent.

"City defense plan." Cohen's fingertips traced the three main axes: the northern line, the western line, and the southwestern line.

Cole flipped open the data panel, speaking steadily: "The northern route leads to the Fire Wasteland, with open terrain. We need to build fortifications three kilometers deep, with a construction period of four days, requiring millions of engineering mechanics and laborers. The western route leads to the equatorial jungle, with fragmented terrain. There are old fortifications from the Imperial Wars that can be reinforced, with a construction period of two days. The southwestern route is the intersection of two axes. There is currently no clear enemy situation, so we need to reserve troops."

He looked up at Cohen: "The engineers have begun surveying, and the Zhongchao factory is rushing to produce prefabricated components. Within the Void Shield's coverage area, the threat of orbital bombardment is negligible. But the manpower shortage is too great: the Garros Legion has 600,000 men, most of whom have been drawn away for assault and mopping-up operations; the remnants of the Steel Legion number about 200,000, and the armed militia number about 3.5 million, most of whom are poorly equipped, and their heavy weapons are almost entirely supplied by Garros. Without expansion, we cannot hold all three lines."

Cohen paused for a moment: "Expand. Establish the Invernus United Army, under the auxiliary force of the Garros Legion. The remnants of the Steel Legion, armed militia, and civilians in the internment camps who are willing to take up arms will all be incorporated. Continue to recruit. There are still billions of people in Invernus, and there are more than just these who can fight. There is no upper limit to the size of the United Army. Equipment will be scavenged from local armories and ruins first, and any gaps will be filled by drawing from Garros' reserves. Heavy weapons and power armor will be issued according to actual combat needs."

"You want to bring them under Garros's command?" Cole asked.

"Yes. Those who wished to leave after the war could relocate to Garros with their families." He paused slightly before adding, "Hmm."

And what about family?

Cole jotted down a few notes on the data board, then said, “Sir, the survivors outside—the civilians crawling out of the ruins, the militiamen who received guns, the veterans watching their wounds heal in the medical stations—all call you the Emperor’s messenger, literally. Nobody mentions the Steel Legion anymore; they just want a new name, a new affiliation.” He paused, lowering his voice even further, “But you must watch the State Church’s reaction; the Sheriff’s people have been behaving very strangely lately.”

Cohen glanced at him: "If you need anything, just come to me. You just need to keep quiet."

"Yes. How should the Allied Forces' flag be chosen?"

"The cogwheel and skull emblem of Garros, with a line of Invernus script below—Invernus will never forget."

""

The news spread faster than the military order.

At the entrance of the medical station, a bald, middle-aged man sat up from a stretcher. The old scar above his left eye was particularly noticeable under the light, and his overalls bore the inscription "Invernus Factory No. 37." He heard someone next to him say, "The Emperor's messenger wants to incorporate us into the Allied Forces." He paused, then laughed—a laugh that came from someone who had waited so long for a single word, a laugh as dry as cracked tree bark.

"Gallos Auxiliary Army, we will fight alongside the Gallos."

The news spread from the medical station to the containment camp, from the containment camp to the labor corps, and from the front lines to the rear. The Allied Forces recruitment stations simultaneously opened in several half-collapsed buildings in the Zhongchao Industrial Zone, with long queues forming at the entrances.

The line moved silently, the only sounds the soft crunch of boots on gravel and the muffled rumble of distant mopping-up operations. A young woman stood in the middle of the line, cradling a baby wrapped tightly in a sheet. She wore dusty factory work clothes, and a laser gun, thicker than her arm, slung across her shoulder. The baby didn't cry, its face buried in her neck, occasionally letting out a muffled murmur in its sleep. Someone stepped aside to let her go first, but she didn't move, only tightening the sling of the gun over her shoulder.

Behind the folded table, the sergeant from the Garros Legion didn't even look up: "Name. Service record. Skills."

"Gareth Sawyer, retired artillery captain of the Invernus Steel Legion." The ID card was slapped on the table.

"Assigned to the joint artillery regiment, temporarily serving as gunner. What is the armor size?"

Sawyer recited the numbers, took the armored suit with his right hand, and braced his left hand on the table, the mechanical prosthetic knee making a short click. "Can we issue Garros's power armor?" he asked. The people of Invernus had seen the Iron Skull Legion's parade of the Holy See's guards; now, those finely crafted gray-white armors were the true elite, while the Iron Skulls were nothing but skeletons.

The sergeant glanced at him: "Powered armor will be prioritized for frontline assault troops. Artillery will temporarily use shell armor; we'll see how they perform later."

.

Sawyer nodded, tucked the armor under his arm, and turned to leave. His mechanical prosthetic leg stepped steadily on the gravel, but the sound was much heavier than that of a biological leg.

The Invernus Allied Forces advanced rapidly. The remnants of the Iron Legion were scattered and mixed with armed militia, redistributed according to region and combat experience, and Garros' sergeants and officers were embedded in every level of the command chain.

The clearing operation in Shangchao proceeded as planned. The Kara, Relano, and Defense Army infantry regiments rotated every 48 hours, with the withdrawn troops returning to Zhongchao for rest and reorganization. Cohen inspected the medical station daily, and the wounded were recovering at a rate far exceeding conventional medical logic.

The pace of the clearing operation was deliberately kept very steady: too fast would only increase casualties, while too slow would give the remaining Orcs a chance to regroup. Every building, every floor, and every basement had to be searched—a tedious, lengthy, and dangerous process. Some were ambushed by elite Orcs hiding in the ruins, some stepped on landmines, and some had their neck armor bitten through by ghouls emerging from the ventilation ducts while clearing basements. But the blue markers continued to gnaw and expand inch by inch.

In the temporary sacristy in the side wing of the cathedral, Patriarch Augustus Valens knelt before the imperial icon. The icon was mostly blackened by soot, with only the emperor's right hand and the tip of his sword still gleaming with the cold light of adamantine. He knelt for a long time, his knees pressed against the cracked marble floor tiles. A section of the left sleeve of his robe had been torn off during the orcish occupation, revealing several not-yet-fully-healed abrasions on his exposed arm.

He was praying, his lips moving, the prayer squeezed out from deep in his throat, dry and hoarse, like a gear without oil turning hard.

He wasn't praying for imperial glory, imperial victory, or Invernus's redemption. He was praying that he could believe.

"The Emperor's messenger."

As these words came out of his mouth, a chill ran down my spine—not from awe, but from fear.

He served the Church of England for forty-three years, rising from novice to parish priest. He had read every edition of the Book of Word commentary, memorized every biography of a martyred saint, and presided over thousands of Masses. He knew that the Church of England had "living saints"—mortals touched by the Emperor's light who could ignite golden flames on the battlefield, raise dying soldiers, and maintain the purity of their souls in the filth of the Warp. But he had also read the Inquisition's encrypted files and knew what "false saints" were: false prophets, heretics, traps disguised as the Emperor's will by Chaos. The appearance of every false saint was accompanied by the destruction of a galaxy.

He couldn't believe it.

He first heard this story three days after Zhongchao was recaptured. An old woman, crawling out of the ruins, knelt on the metal floor of the containment center, clutching the hem of a State Church monk's robe. She said that the Emperor's messengers, dressed in greyish-white armor, had snatched her granddaughter's life from the Greenskins. He simply nodded, wrote the old woman's name in the register, and asked no further questions.

The second, the third, the fourth — the word spread like a plague among the survivors: militiamen whispered about it during patrols, wounded soldiers recounted it in hoarse voices at the medical station, and laborers stopped welding as they cleared rubble, exchanging rumors that "when the governor walked past the medical station, the seriously wounded survived." Each time he heard it, his stomach clenched tighter.

He went to the healing nuns. They were members of the state religion, had survived the entire orcish occupation of Deepholm, and their faith had withstood the test of fire. If they said yes, he believed; if they said no, he did not believe.

The leading medical nun was in her fifties, with short, graying hair and a freshly stitched wound above her left eye. She had just come out of the post-operative intensive care unit. She stopped Maki in the medical station corridor, her eyes devoid of fanaticism or ecstasy, only possessing the calm of someone who had crawled out of the ruins.

"Lord Maki, you want to ask if that's true?" she asked directly, her voice hoarse.

Mu Zheng nodded.

The medical nun remained silent for a moment.

"Pastor, I have served in the Order of the Holy Religion for thirty-one years. I am not a theologian and do not understand the commentary on the Acts of the Saints, but I do understand one thing—what it means for someone who should not have lived to survive."

Her voice was flat, as if she were reciting a case report.

"On the day the bottom hive was cleared, a militiaman whose chest had been ripped open by orcs, his heart exposed and ribs lodged in his lungs, was supposed to die on a stretcher. He came back to life the moment the Emperor's emissary walked past his bedside. His chest closed and his heartbeat returned."

She paused.

"There was another child. Acid sprayed half his face, his eyeballs melted, and his skull was exposed. I thought he wouldn't survive when I was cleaning the wound. He came back to life the moment the Imperial Messenger walked past his bedside. New tissue began to cover the exposed skull."

She looked into Mu Zheng's eyes.

"He didn't need to see the wounded. He didn't need to know who was lying in the hospital bed. He just walked by. And then, those who shouldn't have been alive came to life in that instant he passed by."

"No golden light, no flames, no imperial blessing." But the waveforms, blood oxygen, and...

His cardiac output jumped from near death to normal in the single second he passed. It wasn't a gradual improvement, it was a sudden leap. There was no transition between the two seconds.

She looked away.

"Pastor, I won't tell you who he was. I'll only tell you what I saw. A man who neither prayed, nor preached, nor proclaimed the name of the Emperor walked by, and then a man who shouldn't have lived came to life in the instant he passed. You've read more acts of saints than I have. Tell me—what does this mean?"

Mu Zheng did not answer.

He knelt before the icon in the sacristy, his knees pressing against shards of marble, a torn strip of cloth from the left sleeve of his robe hanging to his side. With his eyes closed, all he could see were those images: the greyish-white power armor, the gear and skull insignia, the waveform on the monitor jumping from red to green, and the instantaneous stabilization of all vital signs as Cohen walked through the prayer room.

In the biographies of the living saints he had read, Saint Celestine burned with golden flames on the battlefield, Saint Sabbat cleaved the head of a chaos sorcerer with a single sword, and Saint Angela raised dying soldiers to their feet during a siege. They all prayed, preached, and proclaimed the glory of the emperor.

But Cohen Severo didn't pray, preach, or mention the emperor's name. He simply walked by. And then the "those who shouldn't have lived" came to life.

The priest opened his eyes and looked at the blackened face of the holy image, the cold light of the adamant gold dancing on the emperor's right hand and the tip of his sword. He recalled a fragment of a book he had read decades ago, which had been classified as "uncanonical" by the state religion. The author was a chronicler who had accompanied the emperor during the Great Expedition. At the end, a sentence had been crossed out with ink by a later censor, but the words under the ink were still legible: "He does not demand worship, only obedience."

Mu Zheng's fingers clenched tightly on his knees, his knuckles turning white.

He stood up, his knee throbbing with pain, but ignored it. He pushed open the armored door of the sacristy, cratered by shrapnel, and entered the nave.

Cohen stood before the sand table, starlight streaming through the shattered rose window, beams of light cut by the adamantine frame falling on his grey-white power armor and the gear and skull emblem on his breastplate. He didn't turn around.

The priest stood at the entrance to the nave, watching that figure recede into the distance. He recalled the words of the Healing Sisters—"Those who do not pray, preach, or proclaim the Emperor's name, but who should not live, have all lived." He recalled the words crossed out in the surviving scrolls, and the people who crawled out of the ruins. They had never heard Cohen preach, never seen the golden light, never witnessed a miracle; they had only watched him walk through the ruins, through the medical station, through the prayer room, and then they survived.

The priest lowered his head, his lips moved, and he silently recited a prayer—not for imperial glory, not for Invernus's redemption, but for forgiveness: forgiveness for his long hesitation in fear, forgiveness for not daring to believe even after seeing the evidence.

When he looked up again, Cohen was still looking at the sand table and didn't turn around.

Mu Zheng didn't go over. He turned and walked out of the central hall, into the side corridor, and towards the medical station. His footsteps echoed on the marble floor, his torn left sleeve swayed gently with each step, and the hem of his robe was stained with dust. He didn't look back.

He wanted to see for himself those who "shouldn't live."

The armored door to the medical station was ajar, the beeping of monitors mingling with the low groans of the wounded, the hushed instructions of nurses, and the clanging of metal trays. He pushed the door open and went inside.

The medical nun was still standing behind the triage station, her surgical gown stained with blood. Upon seeing Mu Zheng, she showed no surprise, no greeting, only a nod.

Mu Zheng stood in front of the triage table, looking at the wounded on the metal beds: some had their chests torn open by shrapnel, some had lost both legs below the knees, and some had half their faces sliced ​​off. But they were all breathing, and the waveforms on the monitors were beating steadily.

He stood there for a long time.

Then he lowered his head and made a gear and skull gesture in front of his chest—not the imperial emblem, not the symbol of the state religion, but the emblem of Garros.

The beeping of the monitor struck his eardrums, but Mu Zheng's neck remained cool.

He had served the Church for forty-three years and had long since learned to stand in fear. Something more subtle—like the smeared scroll in the sacristy, like the deliberately lowered tone of the healer nun as she narrated, like the fact that Cohen Severo never prayed, never preached, and never proclaimed the Emperor's name.

"He does not ask for worship, only for obedience."

He silently recited the ancient phrase gleaned from the ink stains, his fingers forming a gear and skull gesture in front of his chest. Obey what?

Obey a man who doesn't pray? Obey a messenger who merely walks by without speaking? Doesn't the emperor's will need to be proclaimed?

I recall those who crawled out of the bottom nest, kneeling on the containment site floor. They were overwhelmed by the facts—the wounds healed, and people believed. No explanations, no prophecies, no divine light or fire. Just being alive was enough.

Mu Zheng slowly lowered his hand.

He believed it. Because he dared not disbelieve anymore. But that unease didn't dissipate; it sank from his stomach to the depths of his bones.

He didn't know whether he was trusting the emperor's envoy or something else entirely.

He looked up at the medical nun. She was stitching up a wounded soldier's wound, her fingers steady, without looking at him.

I turned and walked out of the medical station. The bell was still ringing in the corridor.

He listened to the tolling of the bell and stepped into the shadows of the central hall. His fingers gripped the cuffs of his robe, his knuckles turning white.