Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 169 The Internet Project (2)

Ever since Cohen entered the network and returned, the field has been inexplicably activating automatically from time to time. It's very weak, almost imperceptible.

After several attempts, consciousness finally detected that faint stripping away—a decomposition he hadn't actively commanded—occurring spontaneously at the boundaries of the field. Invisible psionic residue, of unknown nature, resembled chaotic aftershocks or psionic deposits diluted countless times, being broken down into weak, almost invisible universal atoms and stored in the warehouse. The frequencies were not low, originating from different directions and of varying sources.

He couldn't name it yet, but he made a note in his mind: "Passive decomposition phenomenon - suspected psionic residue - nature undetermined."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, deep within the throne room of Holy Terra, the psionic energy of the Golden Throne surged in silence.

The adamantine dome had faded to a dark gray after millennia of psychic burning, and the reliefs of holy icons on the walls had been worn smooth by time, leaving only blurred outlines. The air was solidified, compressed into a layer of unevenly dense fluid by the low-frequency pulsations of the golden throne. With each heartbeat, dust particles were briefly suspended in the beams of light before settling back down.

The Golden Throne is a massive and ancient contraption. Pipes and cables hanging from the dome resemble countless twisted veins clinging to its surface, each continuously channeling energy and sacrificial psychic power. The throne itself floats above a colossal, mechanized golden gate, beneath which lies the entrance to the Web, closed for ten thousand years—a passage the Emperor once attempted to open for humanity, now sealed by his own psychic power.

He sat there. Like a corpse dried by time and then reassembled. Sleeve's head was nearly flattened into a skull, his eye sockets sunken, with only a faint light flickering in their depths. His withered ribs were exposed, his skin clinging to the bones like a film dried and stuck to metal. Countless tubes and cables extended from the throne, piercing his spine, skull, and chest cavity. These tubes maintained the function of that mutilated body, and also transformed the daily sacrifices of psionic souls into the energy of the Startorch. At the same time, they were also the shackles anchoring his psionic powers, fixing an existence that could no longer be called "life" in the gap between reality and the warp. One of Sleeve's hands was gripping the armrest, his knuckles yellowed, his skin so shriveled that the direction of every bone seam was visible. His other hand was clenched into a fist, a posture maintained with all his might by someone enduring some kind of continuous oppression.

His body was slowly decaying, but Sleeve's consciousness remained active in the warp. Sleeve kept the starlight burning, suppressing the chaotic invasion from the rift beneath the throne, while simultaneously fighting against the four Chaos Gods. For ten thousand years, Sleeve had sat here like this, without moving. Not because he didn't want to, but because he couldn't.

Outside the entrance to the Throne Hall, along the long staircase leading to it, lay countless bones of pilgrims. They had come to Terra from every corner of the galaxy, traversing the palace's many gates, kneeling on a section of the steps leading to the Throne Hall, and then dying. Some died of exhaustion, some of despair, and some had their consciousness burned away by the psychic energy emanating from the throne the moment they knelt. Their bodies were not removed—the State Church regarded these bones as sacred relics of "loyal sacrifice," deliberately preserving them along the corridors as markers of faith for those who came after. New pilgrims continued forward, stepping over the old bones, searching for a place on the steps where they could still kneel.

There were also some survivors. They huddled among the bones, their gaunt faces buried in their knees, lips moving as they chanted prayers long since blurred. Their eyes were fixed on the tightly closed adamantine gate at the end of the corridor. They had never truly seen the Emperor's throne shrouded in layers of psionic barriers and armored panels, appearing from the outside only as a silent adamantine monument. But they could feel the light—the light emanating from the depths of the golden throne, piercing through all barriers, enveloping the entire corridor in a misty, warm golden light. They weren't sure if it truly was the Emperor, but it was the only thing they could grasp.

The nuns of silence stood in an informal line in the portico—these scattered survivors, officially disbanded but still secretly cooperating with the Imperial Guard, had not yet been publicly reinstated. They stood silently, like a row of statues forgotten by time, looking neither at the pilgrims nor at the bones. They looked only toward the throne.

As Trajan Valoris, commander of the Imperial Guard, passed through the gate, his armor, crafted from radiant gold, gleamed with a dim, warm light in the darkness, like enamel polished by time. The patterns on the armor trembled slightly—each transmission of an emperor's will left a faint resonance in its structure. The Time Chains at his waist hummed almost imperceptibly with each step; the ancient artifact had been slowly changing even before he reached the throne room.

Trajan realized something. He walked down the steps and knelt on one knee.

A surge of psychic energy erupted from the throne's base, piercing the adamantite floor and climbing up his spine along the armor plates. The pulse weakened countless times before reaching his consciousness, like someone trying to place a boulder on an egg. Trajan still felt the burning sensation. The Emperor's will—it transmitted fragments of perception, gaps in memory, the scorching marks left on the psychic plane by ten thousand years of solitude and suffering.

He felt a name. Complete, etched into his very bones. Rellano.

Then came the second name. Sebastian Arreek.

The two names appear in the same pulse, as if pierced by the same thread. The two names seem bound together, and Arek is clearly just a tool for finding Rellano—a tool for finding the other.

Trajan saw a planet. Amighidodton. It was a command—a powerful sense of direction, an irresistible pull—to find them. To bring Terra.

Then came the fragments. Continuous, broken fragments, fragments squeezed from the depths of the throne—remnants of the battlefield of Amegiddon, piled-up bones, burning hives, ruins overrun by the Greenskins. Arek's silhouette stood on a high platform, his mechanical arm pointing into the distance.

The inside of Thujan's skull was burning hot from the psionic pulse, as if someone were repeatedly carving the same line of text with a red-hot iron stick.

To live. For both of us. At all costs. What living brings.

The two words repeated three times in the psionic pulse, each time weaker than the last, like the final vibration of a string before it snaps. After the third echo dissipated, the pulse vanished as well. The throne room fell silent once more.

He knelt on one knee, waiting for several seconds to confirm that the stream of consciousness wouldn't return. Then he stood up and turned. Another thin, hair-like psionic burn mark appeared on his armor, leaving an arc running from the shoulder plate to the breastplate on the surface of the radiant gold armor. He didn't look down at it. The Emperor's decree had been delivered—fragmented, arduous, but complete.

Four hours later, the twelve Royal Guards and four Silent Sisters departed Terra. These "Imperial Messengers" boarded an ancient, dark gold ship, took off from a secret berth deep within the Forbidden Zone, crossed the boundary of the solar system, and leaped into the warp. Course: Armageddon.

Trajan stood at the entrance to the Hall of Commanders, watching the tail flames dissipate in the darkness. He didn't know what the name Rellano, which his men were about to bring back, meant. He only knew that the Emperor's orders were not to be questioned, and that he had already passed them on.

On the other side of the galaxy, Cohen's exploration of the net continues.

By his fifth entry into the network, he had established a stable pace of advancement through continuous back-and-forth trips. Each entry lasted one to two days, occasionally extending to more than ten days. The distance he advanced was increasing, and his proficiency in blocking and repairing was also improving. The automatically decomposing psionic remnants still appeared at the edge of the field, with varying frequencies and sources, but he was no longer distracted by them.

Day three.

He started from a small passageway at the Garros node, advancing about ten kilometers before entering a secondary passageway several tens of meters in diameter. More primary passageways converged here, and more psionic pulses intersected. He continued forward along the secondary passageway, blocking unexplored branches along the way and etching marking numbers onto the temporary sealing layers. Repair and sealing alternated, and the tens of kilometers of network were marked, reinforced, and archived segment by segment behind him. During this time, he encountered several gravity anomalies, and the field-of-view array and sensor readings also deviated—the channel distances they captured were inconsistent. He couldn't determine which was closer to reality, so he could only record the coordinates and continue forward.

Seventh day.

A colossal cavity, spanning hundreds of kilometers, unfolded before him. The walls were no longer the smooth, standard structure of the network, but rather jagged, fractured surfaces, as if torn apart and then rejoined—a hub where multiple passageways converged. At the bottom of the cavity lay a relatively flat area, its edges marked by the remnants of some ancient architectural ruins. The lines were more fluid than those of the Imperial style, curves replacing right angles, and the walls were covered with a layer of grayish-white sediment—the skeletal remains worn smooth by time. The anomalies in gravity and scale persisted, a subtle discrepancy remaining between his sensors and his vision. He labeled these as inherent characteristics of the network, recorded them, and ceased further investigation.

The ruins of the Eldar. An abandoned network port.

He paused at the edge of the cavity, letting his consciousness extend forward. The ruins were vast, far beyond the limits of his perception. Remaining walls, half-collapsed towers, and broken arches stretched out into the distance along the bottom of the cavity.

He moved along the edge of the cavity. This cavity connected passages of different directions and sizes, the largest of which was nearly a hundred kilometers in diameter. It couldn't compare to a colossal hub like Gamor, capable of containing stars, but it was sufficient for Garros to establish a foothold. The larger the network, the busier it was, and the more dangerous it was for Garros. In the areas the field passed through, the material information of the spirit bone remains was peeled away layer by layer, and the material fragments left behind by the Eldar creations were archived as atomic clouds.

The thirteenth day.

On a relatively intact platform in the center of the cavity, he began to sculpt the base ship that he had been repeatedly rehearsing in his mind for weeks. It was named "Eternal Bulwark".

Thirty kilometers long and twelve kilometers high. It has no subspace engines, no Geller Forces. It is a base, a fortress. It integrates all the ship blueprints known to Cohen, combining the industrial functions of the Mechanical Ark with the firepower of a battleship. The destination, which took nearly twenty hours to reach through a five-meter-wide passageway, is, on the scale of the harbor, just an inconspicuous little entrance.

The outer layer is made of sacred bone material and a boundary membrane, coexisting with the psionic cycle of the entire network when docked. The inner layer is a composite of adamantite skeleton and ceramic steel. It includes living quarters, a small dock, production facilities, servant production lines, reactor arrays, and the Thinker control core. Various weapon arrays and an air deck cover the entire firing range in the direction of the Nexus. Conventional plasma engines are mounted at the stern, sufficient for movement within the network and for traversing the void of the universe.

The cost of this design lies outside the Web. The sacred bone material and the outer shell of the boundary membrane can draw psionic energy within the Web to maintain defense, but in the real universe, there is no Web psionic energy available. To maintain the same level of protection, it would require a continuous supply of psionic energy from thousands of psionicists. He assessed that this cost was feasible, but unsustainable. It should only be used as a last resort, reserved for future use.

Day 56.

The hull's outline was complete. But most of the cavities inside, which would become cabins, hangars, and reactors, remained empty. Of the fifteen large plasma reactors, only two had been constructed, and more than half of the outer weapon array was only in shape. His priority was ensuring the hull, power, life support, and defense. The rest would be left to the servitude and technical priests who would arrive later.

During Cohen's exploration of the Network Hub, the Star Relay Tower in Garros received a call to arms from Commissar Arrek.

An astronomical broadcast arrived in encrypted format: "Expeditionary Sequence Confirmed for the Amegidon Theater. The Phoenix Legion expeditionary force, committed to the world-building promise of Garros, is hereby ordered to assemble in the theater according to the scheduled timetable." The astronomical signal included rendezvous coordinates and a time window—the Garros fleet must arrive at the rendezvous point on the outer edge of the Amegidon system before the scheduled date.

The core forces of the Phoenix Legion were quickly prepared. The Mars-class battlecruiser "Phoenix," two Odysseus-class combat transport ships "Courageous" and "Hercules," one light cruiser, two frigates, and Garros's only Goliath-class industrial ship—this was the reinforcement provided by Cohen to the Phoenix Legion. An additional light cruiser and two frigates were incorporated into the expeditionary force, forming an independent squadron with the industrial ship.

Rellano paused before boarding. He stood at the foot of the Phoenix's gangway, with Marcus opposite him, clutching a data pad containing the encrypted communications Cohen had left him: "The expedition's top priority is preserving strength. Garros' bottom line is that you must return."

Rellano paused for a moment, then spoke: "Tell the director. I've thoroughly reviewed this expedition based on the shared intelligence. As long as you're fast and ruthless enough, taking advantage of a bait is nothing new. I've done it more than once."

He turned and walked up the gangway. Marcus, Ellis, Cole, and the other high-ranking officials who had come to see him off stood there watching him until the gangway rose, the hatch closed, and the thrusters left a blue trail of light in the darkness, gradually converging into a single point before dissipating.

Deep within the network, Cohen continued his work. The arrangements were made; Garros's operations wouldn't cease in his absence.

Several weeks later, the Netway permanent residency plan approved by Cohen began to be implemented.

The seven friars, totaling approximately 70,000 men, were selected from the reserves—and entered the network in batches under the arrangement of Cole and Ellis. The first group, clad in dark gold power armor and covered by crimson cloaks, marched in formation along the five-meter-wide passageway, their servo skulls rising and falling in clusters. They were joined by hundreds of thousands of servants carrying ammunition and supplies in single file. The vanguard had already entered the compartments of the Eternal Bulwark, while the rearguard remained waiting in the berth area of ​​Wangshu, publicly stated as a reserve training exercise.

At the entrance to the port of call, pre-deployed flight attendants guide each arriving crew to their pre-assigned cabins and posts.

The living quarters beds, the mess hall workbenches, the training equipment, and the medical bay equipment—all were put into use within a week. The Eternal Bulwark transformed from an empty shell into a manned fortress.

Once all seven regiments had arrived, supplies were plentiful, and patrol and garrison duties were assigned, the team of technical priests, along with hundreds of thousands of families of the apologists, began to enter the network on a large scale. A messenger team of only ten people was formed under strict vetting; they were responsible for communication between the real universe and the network.

The harbor itself was also slowly expanding. On the Eldar ruins at the edge of the hub, Cohen sculpted the basic framework and core systems—the harbor foundation, berthing platforms, gravity generators, and life support systems. Subsequent expansions were taken over by the resident technical priests and servant teams, who recycled and reshaped the Eldar remains into ceramic-steel composite materials, gradually expanding the harbor's scale into a comprehensive, large-scale base.

Cohen stood on the bridge of the "Eternal Bulwark." Looking out the porthole at the vast white network of tunnels, he saw that the large, interconnected tunnels were the areas that Garros needed to explore first, while the smaller, blocked tunnels were of lower priority and had little strategic value.

In the dry dock midway through the "Eternal Bulwark," the medium-sized furnace complex and foundry are in place, the raw material warehouses are full, and the technical priest is commissioning the first production line. The artillery barge—the outpost of the first line of defense, equipped with bombardment cannons and long-range light lance arrays—slightly smaller than a frigate, lacking a warp engine and Geller's Field, will be the first mass-produced ship in the network. This is a mature design, based on Lucis's blueprints, with examples found in the Garros asteroid belt and Mandeville point; servants can pilot them.

Cohen departed the Eternal Bulwark, traversed the hub port's passageway, and returned to Garros. From the hub port, the terracotta steel passageway directly connected to the smaller network of tunnels, with life support piping lining the inner walls. Air circulation and temperature control systems extended along the passageway. Layers of airtight terracotta steel doors were installed in sections along the passageway, isolating and sealing different areas to ensure that air pressure and temperature were maintained independently in each section. The passageway extended all the way to the main gate of the Garros node.

The small, 1.5-meter-diameter entrance to the Garros network node severely restricts the distribution of supplies and the movement of personnel. The network base needs to be strengthened as quickly as possible, which necessitates finding larger network nodes and acquiring resources from outside for development.

The initial idea was to expand the radius of the network, but experiments revealed it was impossible. He tried extending it a short distance and discovered that the sacred bone's spiritual energy simply wouldn't flow beyond the new boundary, as if it had encountered some insurmountable underlying limitation. The entire network was a structure where everything was interconnected—every branch and every node was precisely calculated, with parameters such as energy flow and spatial dimensions forming a precisely balanced system. He could create additional structures, and he could seal and repair, but he couldn't change the network's own wall boundaries. The new passage was an addition growing within the network's internal space, not an expansion of the walls. The size of this node was determined by the ancient saint; he was merely the user, not the designer.

He had done all he could. The skeleton was in place, the core system was online, and the servant production line was pulsating. The rest was up to the Papal Guards in their dark gold power armor and the crimson-robed tech priests.