Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 155 The Chant of the God of Machines

After being upgraded to the Forgeworld, Cohen's schedule was compressed into a finely meshed gear—each segment packed with tasks that couldn't be missed. The list of meetings was endless: envoys from the Forgeworld, representatives of the Astartes Chapter seeking support, special envoys from the merchant ronin dynasty. But what truly consumed his energy were the unseen gears: the meticulous review of policies and regulations,

The main agenda of the Temple Council, the adjustment of the technical priest rating system, the deployment plan for the new power armor of the Apostolic Guard—every document signed is reshaping the skeleton of Garros.

But no matter how complicated his daily affairs were, he would always take time to enter the underground elevator in the side hall of the temple.

She wasn't alone today. Liz followed half a step behind him, the hem of her deep red technical priest's robe ruffled by the circulating wind, the back of the robe slightly bulging from the eight folded mechanical limbs. Her hair was gone; a hood covered her head, and dozens of extremely thin data cables extended from the back of her neck, converging along her skull into a low-hanging braid that disappeared into her collar. The face was still hers, but instead of biological eyeballs, two sophisticated optical sensor arrays were embedded in her eye sockets.

Liz had witnessed too much death and injury, and knew all too well the fragility and vulnerability of flesh and blood. That's why she was the first to accept the reshaping, and also the one who was the most ruthless in her transformation.

As she stepped into the elevator, the mechanical limbs on her back slightly adjusted their angle in the cramped space. The end of one of them scraped against the edge of the door frame as it retracted, making a very faint metallic scraping sound. Then all the mechanical limbs retracted back to their stationary position.

"The first batch of clones came out of the tank today," Cohen said.

"Yes, Director." Liz's voice came from the synthesized vocal generator in her throat, retaining the original timbre, but with a very faint mechanical resonance at the end.

The hydraulic shafts of the elevator hummed dully as the metal car plummeted rapidly down the bottomless shaft. Occasionally, the maintenance tunnel, illuminated by dim red emergency lights, flashed past the portholes, and the shadows of the multi-legged mechanical errand boys scrambled across the terracotta walls. Cohen stood in the center of the car, the hem of his deep red sage's robe swaying slightly in the circulating airflow, the dark gold gear patterns embroidered on the hem gleaming faintly in the dim light. His brain interface was currently synchronizing in real-time with the operational data of the Thinker's mainframe array—the pulse of the entire industrial system of Garros beat within his consciousness.

The elevator stopped after passing several decks, and the heavy, airtight doors slid open to the sides. A few steps ahead was a huge observation platform, with a spherical hall several kilometers in diameter inside, its interior shimmering like stars.

Millions of wet component bins are neatly arranged in the spherical, curved hall, each bin illuminated by a stable green indicator light. Countless silver-gray cables extend from the bins like the blood vessels of a living organism, converging into bundles of cables several meters thick, connecting to the anti-gravity silicon-based mainframe sphere suspended in the center of the hall. Pale blue data flows across the surface of that sphere, and the surrounding anti-gravity field emits a low-frequency hum, causing the air in the entire hall to tremble slightly with the mainframe's calculations.

Tens of thousands of specialized maintenance robots dart through the gaps in the wet parts compartments. They are spider-like, palm-sized, with eight carbon fiber mechanical legs precisely climbing between the compartment interfaces. Above them, a group of servo-driven skulls glides silently along a preset trajectory, while data probes hanging from the bottom hover briefly above each row of wet parts compartments.

Whenever a servo skull stops in front of a row of wet parts bins, the optical lens zooms quickly, stores the data in memory, sends out a short binary confirmation pulse, and then continues to glide forward.

However, when an indicator light in one of the compartments turns from green to red, the servo skull hovers briefly in front of the red light, emitting an abnormal pulse with an increased frequency—the wet component has reached its computing lifespan limit, its logic architecture has completely collapsed, and it can no longer maintain operations. The nearest spider servant then crawls over, uses its robotic arm with a suction cup at the top to open the compartment's sealed cover, and removes the failed wet component: a human brain that has lost all its activity, its neural synapses burned out during continuous high-intensity computation, and its tissue in a grayish-white necrotic state.

The servo machine places the failed wet component into the back recovery compartment, and another servo machine carrying a fresh wet component unit immediately takes its place, filling the compartment with an unactivated wet component, sealing, calibrating, and restarting. The green light illuminates again, the servo skull emits another confirmation pulse, and continues to glide forward.

The cycle repeats endlessly. The replacement rate has dropped to 17.2%, a decrease of 0.1 percentage points from last month. Each wet component is replaced after exhausting its computing lifespan, requiring no additional operations. They are what sustain the enormous computing power of the entire Galos galaxy.

Cohen stood at the observation window, looking down at the swarm of servants bustling about like an anthill. His gaze didn't linger on any one spot, sweeping across the flickering sea of ​​light to confirm that everything was normal.

Liz stood beside him. She didn't speak, but the focus of the optical sensor array was locked on a spider-like servant in the distance, replacing a wet component—the servant had just removed a grayish-white, malfunctioning brain and was filling an empty chamber with a fresh wet component. She watched the whole process until the green light came back on, then looked away.

"The replacement rate dropped by 0.1 percentage points," she said, "and fell below 17.3 for the first time last month."

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Cohen didn't turn around. After a moment, he turned and walked towards the deeper elevator platform. Liz followed, keeping a half-step distance from him.

This is only the shallow level; he needs to transfer to an elevator platform leading to the truly deeper levels. It's a relatively long journey, with the elevator platform traversing countless industrial layers and traveling for tens of minutes through the skeleton of the entire honeycomb-like hollow world before finally reaching its destination.

The 132nd floor—there lies the gene cloning and breeding center personally created by Cohen, where the first batch of clones is about to mature.

The lifting platform restarted, descending deeper. The miniature Thinker array behind Cohen's head began updating environmental parameters in the background. The air pressure gradually increased, the temperature slowly rose, the concentration of metallic dust in the air gradually increased, the filtration efficiency reading of the circulation system fluctuated continuously, and the safety threshold rose and fell between yellow and red.

Tiny pressure changes brushed against his biological eardrums—a marker of the depths of the underground world. With each level he passed through, there was a slight sense of pressure before it eased. The circulating air inside the cabin warmed from cold, carrying the heat characteristic of the lower industrial area. It seeped in through the gaps in the airtight doors, mixing with the dry, cold air above, creating a subtle temperature stratification in the enclosed space.

Outside the porthole, the outline of the industrial buildings slowly unfolded in the lights. Furnaces in the foundry spewed a dark red glow, while ship sections awaited transfer in the assembly workshop, conveyor belts stretching along the rock walls. Every floor was in operation, their tracks marked by the movements of servants. Occasionally, a technical priest could be seen standing beside equipment, staring at a data panel without looking up. His figure flashed past the porthole.

Several tens of minutes later, the platform slowed down and came to a stop on the 132nd floor. A smell mixed with nutrient solution and ozone wafted from the passageway. Cohen stepped off the platform, his boots landing on the terracotta floor.

A transverse passageway extended from here, its walls constructed of a metal framework and terracotta steel lining, marked at intervals with numbers in a mixture of low Gothic and binary script. He boarded a railcar and traveled along the passageway for several tens of kilometers, the hum of the electromagnetic rails echoing through the empty space.

The carriage came to a smooth stop before a massive door, its surface etched with the gear and skull emblem of Garros and a line of low Gothic inscription: "Gene Cloning and Breeding Center—Garros Foundry World, Property of the Foundry Director."

The inscription was surrounded by the emblems and protective runes of the Mechanicus. On either side of the gate stood servants equipped with plasma weapons, their optical lenses lighting up simultaneously as Cohen approached. A dark red spot of light lingered on him for two seconds before fading and returning to standby. The shield generator above the gate emitted a pale blue glow.

Cohen walked to the verification table in front of the gate and attached his mechanical prosthetic left hand to it. He passed all three verification procedures in turn.

The heavy alloy doors creaked open and slid slowly to the sides, revealing a massive, seemingly endless incubation hall behind them.

Cohen walked slowly along the outer corridor, the hem of his deep red sage's robe swaying slightly as he walked, the dark gold gear pattern on the hem occasionally gleaming in the cool white light.

The outer corridor was suspended in the middle of the side wall of the hall, about thirty meters above the ground. He stood on the edge of the railing, his hands resting on the cold metal bars, looking down at the incubation center he had created with his own hands.

Five months ago, he carved out a space within these 132 layers of rock, grew a metal skeleton, poured ceramic steel lining, laid pipes and cables, and installed the base for each incubation tank. He implanted the first batch of embryos, activated the life support system, and set the maturity countdown; today is harvest time.

Over two million incubation tanks are arranged in concentric arcs, stretching from directly below to a distance untouched by the light. Each tank is three meters tall, its transparent glass body filled with a pale green nutrient solution. Naked bodies of fully developed young men and women float in the solution, connected by dozens of cables of varying thicknesses—a neural interface at the back of the head connects to a thought-induction system, neural pathways in the spine transmit physiological monitoring data, life support tubes in the chest deliver nutrients and oxygen, and electrodes in the limbs monitor muscle development. At the top of the tanks, countless cables and pipes, like vines, climb the dome, converging into the main nutrient supply system in the center of the hall; at the bottom, they sink beneath the terrazzo floor, connecting to a wastewater recycling and metabolic circulation system.

More than two million cloned embryos were implanted into culture tanks, beginning a long process of selection through multiple stages.

The initial gene template screening eliminated 90% of the samples. Those with mutation risks, unstable gene sequences, or insufficient brain volume were all destroyed, and their remains were sent to a biomass refining furnace to be processed into nutrient solution raw materials.

By the third month of embryo culture, the first cognitive compatibility test eliminated 80% of them. Those who could not access the knowledge transfer system, had insufficient brainwave activity, or showed signs of schizophrenia were all sent to the raw material warehouse of the machine servant production line.

In the fourth month, a second thinking-based test will be conducted, eliminating another 90%. Those with a knowledge retention rate of less than 70%, those who do not meet the standards for logical thinking, and those who do not have a tendency to worship machines will also be sent to the raw material warehouse.

Half of them are eliminated in the final screening before maturity. Those with genetic defects, substandard physiological functions, or wavering faith in Om Messiah still cannot escape the fate of being recycled.

After layers of screening, out of more than two million embryos, only 20,437 were ultimately deemed suitable. The rest were dismantled, recycled, and reintroduced into the industrial cycle. Brain tissue became the wet core of the servants, bones were crushed and used as aggregate for terracotta armor, and proteins from the blood were extracted and used as a special binder in the casting process. In the forging world of the Cult of Mechanics, nothing is superfluous.

Cohen's gaze swept over the data panels on the nearest row of tanks: neural link activity 97.3%, thought infusion completion 99.1%, and all physiological indicators within the normal range. His consciousness lingered on the data stream for a moment—confirming that there were no abnormalities requiring intervention.

Most deviations were precisely eliminated—except for one.

The boy, numbered A-7742, had an activity level in the logical reasoning module that was 37 percent higher than the average. His left hand exhibited a rare mutation during genetic engineering: a sixth finger grew from the base of the fifth finger on the outside, approximately two-thirds the length of the little finger, with a joint structure almost identical to a normal finger. According to standard procedure, this should have been flagged as a "minor genetic deviation" and eliminated in the final screening. But Cohen noticed that data.

The activity level of the logical reasoning module was 37 percent higher than the average—this implies greater information processing potential and suggests that he might maintain effective brain-computer interface load for a longer period after entering the accelerated learning channel. The six fingers were secondary. He added a binary note at the end of the temporary observation list: A—7742—δ-level deviation · Logical reasoning anomaly · Retained observation.

"Logical deduction anomalies and six fingers appear on the same individual," Liz said. One of the mechanical limbs on her back unfolded, its end scanning probe aimed at the row of culture tanks below where A-7742 was located. "Neural mapping sampling shows that his synaptic density is about 40% higher than the average. This shouldn't be classified as a normal deviation."

Cohen didn't speak. His gaze lingered on the data panel for a second longer before shifting away.

This was already the highest success rate Garros had ever achieved. Cohen's database contained the file of High Priest Marcus, a priest with a background in genetic engineering who had recorded that Voss's original cloning project had a success rate of only three in a thousand. Even a one percent success rate was enough to make the sages of the entire Mechanicus take notice. Marcus himself was a product of this kind of genetic engineering—one chosen from hundreds of thousands of embryos, rising step by step to the position of High Priest.

The content of their thought processes is strictly limited—basic engineering principles, fixed chapters of mechanical manuals, and the core sequence of standard operating procedures. Creative judgment is not within the scope of this indoctrination. That is not a weight they are required to bear. They know who they are, what they are meant to do, the glory of the Ohm Messiah, and the fate of being eliminated. They only know that they are mechanical apprentices, belonging to the Galos Forging World, belonging to the Ohm Messiah.

The countdown ticked across every panel of the large metal frame: 00:10:47.

The countdown reached zero. All the incubation tanks beeped simultaneously, and the indicator lights changed from green to blue.

The sound of the drain valve starting came from below, continuous and low, like something slowly being drawn out from the depths.

The light green nutrient solution was drawn from inside each tank through pipes, the liquid level slowly dropped, and air gradually filled in. The bodies inside the tanks began to react, their fingers twitching slightly, and their chests heaving more. After the nutrient solution was completely drained, warm air rushed into the tanks.

The electric shock pulse traveled along the data bus throughout the entire hall. Twenty-four hundred and thirty-seven bodies inhaled the first breath of air at the same instant.

Coughs echoed among the sparsely packed tanks. The sounds of over twenty thousand throats expelling residual liquid blended together, low and probing the weight of the air. Some were coughing, some were vomiting, some simply opened their mouths, their chests heaving, unable to utter a sound. These sounds emanated from the tanks, converging, reflecting, and attenuating in the empty hall, ultimately transforming into a persistent, low-frequency hum.

The sergeants pushed carts filled with crimson apprentice robes to each incubation tank. After the glass doors slid open automatically via hydraulic actuators, they handed the robes to the newly awakened clones. These clones were all around 1.75 meters tall, with short black hair, pale skin, and expressionless faces. They took the robes and expertly put them on, their movements so synchronized as if they were cut from the same mold.

The first boy emerged from the jar, his feet landing on the wet, pale green terracotta floor. He looked down at his hands, one finger opening, closing, opening again. Then he looked up, his gaze traversing the hall, settling on the outer corridor where Cohen stood. His eyes were filled. He performed a gear salute, his right fist clenched, knuckles touching the apprentice badge on his chest, and nodded slightly. The movement was precise, without hesitation.

The second. The third. More. Servant shuttled between the rows, guiding the procession. Crimson robes formed regular squares in the cold white light.

Cohen saw A-7742 walking in the middle of the line. The boy's steps were as mechanical as the others, his face expressionless, but his left hand wasn't hanging down at his side as required. His fingers were gently curling and then unfolding, as if confirming the existence of a sixth finger. He didn't look down, didn't stop. Then his left hand returned to its normal hanging position, and he continued walking forward with the line.

As the last batch of clones emerged from the incubation tanks, donned their robes, and formed a neat square formation, they simultaneously raised their heads to look at Cohen on the outer corridor. Twenty-four hundred and thirty-seven young faces turned toward him at the same time, then simultaneously performed a gear-like salute. The movements of over twenty thousand people were so synchronized that they seemed like those of a single person.

"Praise be to Om Messiah!" The voices of twenty thousand people rang out simultaneously, cold, uniform, and devoid of any emotional fluctuation, echoing throughout the hall.

Cohen stood there without saying a word. He raised his right hand, made a fist, and placed it on the gear emblem on his left breast, slowly performing a gear salute in return.

Then he lowered his hand, turned around, and walked along the outer corridor toward the exit. The alloy doors of the incubation hall slowly closed behind him, leaving behind the more than 20,000 composed apprentices and more than two million empty incubation tanks.

Liz followed behind him. As they passed through the last airtight door, she glanced back. The lights in the depths of the hall were gradually going out, converging inwards from the furthest circle. Her optical sensor array paused for a moment in the last ray of light, then turned back to follow Cohen.

Returning via the same route, the train traversed the dozens of kilometers of tunnel again, and the transfer platform began to rise. Outside the porthole, the engineering mechanics were still busy. Construction of the honeycomb-like hollow world continued. Cohen's brain-computer interface had already received a reminder of the next schedule—the ignition ceremony for the 108th floor plasma furnace complex was scheduled to begin in seventeen minutes.

The elevator platform continued its ascent, the emergency lights in the elevator shaft illuminating his sage's robes, the dark gold gear patterns gleaming with a dim yellow hue. Faintly, a loud chime echoed from a foundry on one of its floors—a chant in praise of the god of machines. The industrial pulse of Garros beat ever faster.

"I will continue to record the neural network sampling of A-7742," Liz's voice came from behind. "If his logical reasoning ability does indeed exceed the baseline, I will submit an evaluation report before the end of his internship."

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"approve."

The elevator continued its ascent, piercing through the dark industrial layers and heading towards the surface. The apprentices emerging from the incubation tanks would follow a predetermined procedure, starting with basic equipment maintenance and gradually working their way up to become qualified technical priests. Most of them would perish in the process—but that was the norm in the Forging World. From the moment they awoke, their lives no longer belonged to themselves.

Batch after batch. A one percent harvest rate, on the books of the world's manufacturing industry, is an impeccable profit.

The elevator platform passed through the final industrial level, the light in the corridor changing from dark red to cool white. Liz stood beside Cohen, the optical sensor array now focused closer. She watched the exit gradually light up ahead; this was now, for what seemed like the umpteenth time, she had stood beside the God of Machines.

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