Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

"Still a prototype," the Emperor said, leading Malcador and Mors through the hollow mountains beneath the palace. "My plan for the Webway."

"Even I don't know much about my lord's plan." Malcador said, holding on to his long staff and walking slowly. His words were spoken to two people at the same time.

"It is not a good thing to keep secrets from your closest companions, Emperor." Morse said, holding the green leather bottle that had returned to transparency. Malcador expressed surprise at them, because the Imperial Prime Minister had never seen orcs that could exist in a tiny form.

The huge space with a height of over a hundred meters and a length and width of over a kilometer is still sleeping in the quiet golden light. From the distribution of the foundation and supporting columns, the remains of the buildings that once belonged to the imperial prison can still be seen.

Looking around, a deep experimental space containing endless potential shows a microcosm of great construction. The majestic sight in the dark space gave Morse a real sense that he was penetrating deep into the foundations of the Emperor's dream.

The half of the huge machine in the center of the space that has not yet been started relies on the smell of ozone and the unique low hum of the machine to naturally erase the traces left by the former prison and replace it with the brilliance of sleeping, exposed mechanical components. It shows that it is still in the middle of the construction process, and the unprocessed arc flashes bright and fleeting colors on the outer layer of the components. However, the various extremely complex and special components have shown far beyond ordinary people, and even most of the Mechanicus. The scope of the technician’s understanding.

Thousands of servitors, slave laborers and mechanical teaching technicians were busy weaving through the maze of cables and mechanical structures. Combined with the project to be launched here called the Webway, Morse inexplicably felt like witnessing the history of mankind. The illusion of the birth of the first computer. Human beings have become extremely small at the edge of this machine, but this machine is indeed built for such small humans.

At the core of the machine, a ten-meter-high golden throne began to appear, and more cables were connected to the two golden doors.

The two heavy golden doors were engraved with countless gorgeous and magnificent patterns. Just by glancing at them, Morse saw many typical images from mythology, such as the Cerunne deer drinking water on the island in the middle of the lake, and Nemea Xiong. A lion tears a lamb, a centaur points an arrow into the sky, etc. If he were to list them all, Morse couldn't compare the name of a custodian with the mythical list here, which one would be longer.

"I smell humanity's extensive modification of alien technology," Morse whispered, turning his green glass jar over and over.

"Why?" asked the emperor. In order to appear in front of outsiders, he had put on his golden armor and looked solemn and majestic. "I found this machine in the deserts of Terra Asia, not some distant planet."

"I mean the Webway," Morse said. "I've met the Eldar, and I've always wondered how they could travel faster than light by another method other than warp navigation. I found two bends. The abandoned door was surrounded by white bone-like material, and the remains of light blue mechanical wings fell outside the door. Now that I see your golden door, I realize that I may have missed some very interesting things, such as my knowledge of the Webway."

"What planet is that on?" the Emperor asked.

"Not far from Olympia," Morse replied, "Hae-clus, as the locals call it—if there are any locals on that planet with its volcanic ash-filled atmosphere."

The Emperor's expression did not change.

"Then," he said, "if the plan succeeds, it is likely that the journey from Terra to Olympia will be only a few hours' safe journey."

"What a wonderful dream." Morse stretched out his hand to expand his range of perception, and his spreading consciousness was testing outside the golden door. He immediately retracted his hand, "This door is not connected to any perfect road. It is not a webway door."

"Yes, Morse," said Malcador. "It's not yet."

"Our Emperor wishes to use this as a starting point," the gray robe prime minister tapped the ground with his cane, "to build a separate road to connect to the network itself. This machine is the guarantee for mankind to build roads in the non-material realm, otherwise mankind It is neither possible to operate safely within the webway, nor to insert materials from the physical universe into the unreplicable anima reflective matter of the webway.”

"Five minutes ago someone suggested they didn't understand the Web Channel," Morse said.

Malcador smiled slightly.

"The Custodes and the Adeptus Mechanicus will cooperate in the restoration of the Webway." The Emperor approached the golden seat in the center of the huge machine. Only his psychic body could adapt to the too tall seat, or perhaps an equally powerful person would be able to adapt to it. The tall Primarch.

The emperor lowered his head, his golden armor-covered hand passed across the side of the golden throne, and calmly looked at the half-finished work of the highest technology.

In Morse's view, the emperor's golden eyes reflected a rather cruel machine - he could see that only day and night psychic drive and endless self-dedication could satisfy this cruel machine. An insatiable appetite for huge machines in the style of the Dark Age of Technology.

Considering the size of the machine, he silently decided in his mind a name that the Emperor was going to put on the seat.

"I understand the general idea, Emperor." Morse and Malcador stood in front of the golden gate waiting for the Emperor to return. "How about introducing some specific matters to me?"

"You are already here. It seems that no one can make you leave until I satisfy your curiosity."

The Emperor walked back calmly, his expression calm, although his facial expression had not changed even a single eyebrow since he stepped into this huge laboratory.

"First, we obtain the coordinates of the webway closest to this place and establish a connection with the Golden Throne. Then, we complete the machine. After that, we build a road between this door and the main body of the webway for members of the Mechanicus to penetrate The network channel will be inspected, maintained and modified. After all is completed, it will be a limited navigation test. "

Morse was silent for a few seconds.

"Do you know how this makes me feel, my Emperor?"

The Emperor blinked. "I don't know what's going on in your mind, Morse."

"It gives me the feeling that anyone who understands the above terms can make up a more detailed set of rhetoric than this." Morse deliberately made the sound of teeth clashing amplified, "The current technical difficulties and resource issues What about your construction regulations and personnel organization issues? Or do you want to let the Custodes and Mechanicus take full control of it? That's fine, but who will build this webway for the Emperor who is away at war? , or who will command the army for the Emperor who is building the Webway?"

"There are still some technical problems that have not been solved. This is a technological field that is completely unfamiliar to humans." The emperor's volume seemed to have dropped. "The Mechanicus has rich experience, and I don't think it is necessary to overly interfere in the work of professionals."

"Okay, Emperor." Morse closed his eyes and opened them after a few seconds, "I'm worried. It's still early now, the youngest Thirsty One was born not long ago, and the warp is generally still quite peaceful. You have Time unfolds steadily.”

"So, do you have any ideas for solving these problems - especially the difficulties with the ancient alien technology?" Morse said, "By the way, I have no problem with you. If you think what I say is unpleasant, then I must have been spending too much time with Roger Dorn."

"You are different from Rogal Dorn. Your bad words are caused by subjective and deliberate sarcasm." The Emperor said solemnly, and glanced in the direction of Malcador, who understood and let his expression be confused. Covered by the shadow of the hat, he leaned the tip of the scepter against the golden door.

"Then I'm really sorry, Neos," Morse said, speaking quickly and softly, the syllables coming together in a blur.

The Golden Gate, which was large enough to accommodate the Titans, opened a slit. The Emperor took the lead in entering the void behind the door, and turned back to look at Mors and Malcador.

"Your bottle?"

"Good seal."

The Emperor nodded, and Malcador and Morse followed him in turn.

The golden cold psychic energy turned into bricks at the feet of the Empire's most powerful psykers, sliding forward along a thread that could only be observed with etheric vision. After the Webway is completed, this section of the void will be replaced by a complete protective layer, making it easier for Imperials to travel through.

At the other end of the void, the mist gently embraces a hazy milky-white building. Endless and sourceless light caresses the appearance of the milky-white building, interspersed with the flowing mist.

The Webway is not a perfectly seamless tunnel. Its existence is far more mysterious than any transportation artery that humans can recognize. They drifted into the webway space, and the thick mist spreading on the ground reflected irregular spots of light from the Emperor's golden boots, and they let out a faint groan when the three intruders arrived.

If Yinwit's day and night are eternal, then these two concepts have simply been lost in the Webway. The existence of the sky in the conventional sense is completely denied, and all space is immersed in eternal hazy mist.

They landed in an extremely huge city. Due to the inversion of space, it was difficult to estimate the specific size, and it was impossible to imagine the extreme point of its boundary.

Vast but deserted streets and crumbling towers are spread in every corner of the city. The boundaries between churches and residential buildings are blurred. Huge alien blocks that are complex and uncountable are covered with the soles of the feet called the ground. Looking directly above, it is also covered with pale and unknown buildings, which are deep and profound. As far as the eye can see, you can still only see a lot of mist and buildings intertwined.

In this mysterious city, majestic towers soar into the sky, but miraculously end at the ground; roads extending in all directions extend vertically upwards. If any mortal travelers set foot here, they might be obsessed with the concept of the ground - Morse briefly tried to touch the gravity field here and found that no matter which plane the travelers were on, their feet would Stick firmly to a flat surface and accept the protection of gravity as if you were walking on the ground.

"I do have a planning document." The emperor said, "It is currently written in a standard document format on page 3020. Most of the content is a study of the technical issues of the construction itself. As for the engineering safety regulations, this Things are not in a hurry.”

"You are a technical researcher, Emperor. As always," Morse said.

Malcador nodded for Morse. "Exactly," the prime minister glanced at the tall man in golden armor, "Besides, safety regulations still need to be written in conjunction with more specific construction details."

"Of course, even Perturabo understands this." Morse tossed the green can in his hand, and the green can staggered around.

His green leather bottle feels strange to hold now, and he feels uneasy to put it down. It is better to hold it than to weigh the two aspects. The miniature green skins in the bottle were stunned to see new things, and each of them pressed their faces against the glass to observe the situation.

"If I must give an evaluation, Perturabo is a skilled master of engineering, even more so than a general and marshal who leads armies in war. My Emperor, if you need a Primarch to assist in the construction of the Webway, I am indeed objective. I recommend Perturabo to you."

"The Primarchs have their mission," said the Emperor. "To fight and to revive, they walk in the light of the world."

"But the Webway is another critical battlefield. Repair, strengthen, and defend, so that the empire in your heart can rise." Morse retorted, "If you personally entrust Perturabo with such important tasks, He will bring out more than all his talents.”

The emperor shook his head thoughtfully, without any clear objection: "In any case, we must first overcome the technical problems. Even the pinnacle of human technology has not surpassed the technology of the Web Channel itself, not to mention that too many cutting-edge technologies currently have Lost."

"The race that built the Webway was related to, if not the Ada," said Morse, carrying his green-skinned glass bottle. He always felt that the praise of the big golden man seemed to be coming from the bottle. "Unfortunately, I am afraid that it is no longer possible to find a race that is proficient in such ancient technologies."

"The Eldar have been devoured by the evil they brewed." Malcador said calmly in his old voice.

Several people walked along the street, crossed the crystal bridge across the abyss of nothingness, and stepped into a spiraling crystal tower. There are some badly weathered alien statues erected on both sides of the curved corridor in the tower. The idols that were once worshiped have been eroded by time together with their race itself.

The Emperor stretched out his hand, palm down, as if to envelop the vast city.

"This place is one of the relics left by the Eldar. It is also the gateway and important intersection of the Webway. The Webway extends outward from the edge of the city. According to my observations, thousands of secondary passages and main roads are all connected. Connected to this city, it leads directly to the farthest edge of the galaxy."

"In my design, the steel of Terra and Mars will be integrated with the channels formed by the supernatural material here, and the anima reflective material will maintain a fusion state with the laws of physics under the guidance of the Golden Throne."

"So, the core of the plan still lies in using huge spiritual energy to forcibly bind the material universe and the Web. As long as the thrust is enough, the masonry can also escape the constraints of gravity." Morse shook his head and said nothing more.

He saw that the Emperor was also powerless against this: no matter how brilliant a genius was, he could not decipher the legacy left by that mysterious race countless thousands of years ago in just a few decades.

All they can do is stretch out their hands and grope forward, praying that no sudden disaster will destroy the entire project. Both externally and within the entire program itself.

"We have no choice," the Emperor said. "We cannot expect any descendant of the Ancients to kneel down and assist us in humanity's restoration of the galaxy. It is up to us to open the Webway ourselves."

A strong vibration came from the bottle in Morse's hand. He frowned slightly, picked up the bottle and took a look. His hands were shaking so much that the bottle almost fell off the tower and fell into the bottomless abyss.

I saw that the green skins in the bottle used the soil and a small amount of metal materials that Morse had added before to erect a golden statue of the emperor at some point. A group of green skins that had been passed down for countless generations were surrounding the emperor. Like the big waaaagh saying "Long live the golden big guy", at the same time, they happily rubbed their messy miniature creations with the metal scraps on hand. A small forge appeared out of nowhere, which was why the bottle vibrated.

If this was the case, Morse would only laugh for a while. What really made him completely unable to understand was that this group of vulgar and barbaric guys with extremely bizarre technological development gathered around and relied on mysterious power to simulate and rub the small building model. In front of you is an extremely small corner of this huge city connected to the Webway.

Next to this miniature corner, what is being happily expanded by the greenskins is a super tattered version of the network tunnel a few microns long, which is made of metal scraps inexplicably transformed into a half-baked super-deteriorated version of anima reflective material.