Chaos Corrupted Code

With the Forge Fiend taken down, two people widened their eyes at the same time. Gao Yi stared blankly at the sudden influx of 10,000 Psionic Crystals, and only after Norris reported to him did he figure out what was going on.

"A Forge Fiend? Isn't that a daemon engine? Has Canto hooked up with the Dark Mechanicus?"

Meanwhile, on the Bridge of the Tyrant, Zesta stood frozen in place.

A Forge Fiend gifted by the great Soul Furnace master Vashtor had died? Who the hell were these people?

"Damon! Some Chaos-corrupted mechanical constructs have appeared inside this ship—their armor is tough! Your weapons might not be able to punch through reliably! Where are you? I'm coming to support you!"

"You're too late! We've already run into these bastards! What the hell is this thing, a living machine? Don't come over—we can hold for now! Go finish the mission the captain gave you!"

Damon and his men had just tried to pull back when they ran into the corrupted tech-priests and the Forge Fiend coming to find them.

Even a dozen Rangers were trapped in the adjacent compartment.

These things were far beyond what the ordinary soldiers on this ship could handle.

The moment Damon stepped out, he ate a volley of fire from the Forge Fiend.

Damn—if he hadn't swapped to this set of Adamantium Combat Suit, he might not have survived it.

But even so, the impact that came through made Damon feel like his organs had been shifted out of place.

Compared to Space Marines, the mortal bodies of Ranger users still had their limits.

"Hold them off! The other squads have already received the signal and are coming to reinforce us! By then, they'll be the ones surrounded—no need to throw away lives for nothing."

Damon quickly stopped the Rangers who were charging out. The losses this time were already heavy enough, and every veteran was precious.

He admired the fearlessness of the humans in this world, but when facing the enemy, you couldn't just keep shouting that sacrifice was the foundation of humanity, that for the God-Emperor, returning to the Golden Throne was worth charging in, right?

It was as if sacrifice and death meant nothing in this world.

"Zesta, is this the truth you spoke of?"

Canto glared furiously at Zesta. All that smooth talk, and not a single result?

He had taken the risk to shelter this heretic, marked by the Adeptus Mechanicus, just so he could deal with his enemies at critical moments, hadn't he?

And now? One Forge Fiend had been killed by some unknown existence, and the other was being held off by the enemy.

And Zesta, who had been so confident of victory, was no longer calm.

He said nothing. He was waiting—waiting for the Corrupted Code he had crafted to do its work.

For now, the Corrupted Code showed no anomalies.

Ever since Corrupted Code had caused severe damage in several major Imperial campaigns.

The current Thinker systems had dedicated screening code to check for abnormal code. Once detected, a program called the Hunter Killer Code would activate.

And Corrupted Code also had varying levels of strength, all depending on the creator's skill.

Clearly, Zesta's skill wasn't enough to instantly paralyze a fully repaired warship; otherwise, he wouldn't have needed Canto to cover his tracks.

The Corrupted Code Zesta had created was of a corruptive nature.

This kind of Corrupted Code was very good at hiding, but once it entered beings like tech-priests or engineers, it would spread its corruption. Originally, the tech-priests on the Tyrant hadn't been corrupted—Zesta had relied on this code to make them abandon their faith in the Omnissiah.

And once the tech-priests on the Golden Ram were corrupted and controlled, these people, who knew the ship better than anyone, would bring devastating destruction to it.

Because of this battle, nearly all the tech-priests were at their posts, operating the Thinkers, maintaining damaged equipment, soothing the Machine Spirits—and their connection to these mechanical constructs became the medium for the Corrupted Code's invasion.

The Corrupted Code found its breakthrough. It split, multiplied, and with the aid of Warp sorcery, countless segments of code that should never have existed in the sacred circuits revealed their true nature.

The Hunter Killer Code in the Thinkers detected them, but the Corrupted Code multiplied too fast. The Hunter Killer Code cleaned out a considerable portion, but the remaining Corrupted Code still infiltrated the processing components of the tech-priests.

One by one, the tech-priests stopped their work, and their mechanical bodies began emitting continuous sparks.

Their bodies started convulsing, as if enduring unbearable pain.

Pavian, who was supervising the STC production in the Barracks, also noticed the anomaly.

He wasn't directly operating the Thinkers, and the Barracks' completely isolated system network from the ship spared them from the Corrupted Code's invasion. That was also why Pavian hadn't been hit by the Corrupted Code immediately.

But the other engineers and tech-priests in the Forge Workshop weren't so lucky.

The sound-processing components on their bodies kept emitting piercing noise.

"What the hell is going on?!" He hurried to his colleague's side to check.

But the moment he touched the body of the kneeling tech-priest, the Corrupted Code began infiltrating him too.

"By the Omnissiah! The sacred circuits have been invaded and polluted! It's those apostates!!!"

Feeling his own voice growing increasingly unresponsive, Pavian realized what was happening.

The Corrupted Code was attacking his processing components, forcibly stuffing blasphemous knowledge and images into his brain.

The Corrupted Code was tempting these tech-priests, who believed in the Omnissiah, to fall. It preached the beauty of forbidden knowledge, and false images were trying to shatter their faith.

The fallen forge worlds, the monopoly on knowledge, the oppression of seekers—it told the tech-priests that as long as they embraced the great Vashtor, they would have the right to study all knowledge, and countless technologies would be shared with them. What a temptation that was for the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

"False—this is all false. I have seen the true Omnissiah with my own eyes. I have witnessed the birth of the Holy Machines. They are the maintainers and guardians of all machinery in the world, in all things. They have completely transcended this world."

The faith in Pavian's heart began to help him resist this Corrupted Code.

And the Holy Machines Pavian spoke of were none other than those SCVs.

The anomaly among the tech-priests was immediately reported to Gao Yi, who was on the Bridge. But even without the report, he already knew what was happening below. As the warped-in units shared their visual feed with him, his Warp projection began to change.

A power he had never felt before was strengthening his Warp projection—though it was still pitifully weak, since the tech-priests worshipping the SCV were only aboard his ship.

"Is this... faith?"

And as this faith entered his Warp projection, his Xel'Naga projection actually began to respond to those tech-priests?

"Ah? Can the faith of the Adeptus Mechanicus get any more mixed?"

Originally, the faith of the Adeptus Mechanicus was a trinity: the Omnissiah represented the God-Emperor, the Machine God represented the Void Dragon fragment buried on Mars, and some members worshipped the Source Energy, representing power sources like electricity. These three entities split the faith of the Mechanicus members.

Then came Vashtor, worshipped by the Dark Mechanicus, who took a share of the faith generated by mechanical technology in the physical universe. And now, Gao Yi had joined this grand feast.