Patch It Up

In a corner of the Chemical Refinery, boisterous cheers and the crisp clatter of dice rolling drifted over from afar. Most Players were immersed in the rare leisure time following the battle.

But Ruan Wenbo had not joined them. He sat alone atop a relatively quiet cargo container, a translucent system shop interface floating before him. His gaze slowly moved across the dazzling array of items as he sank into thought.

Soft footsteps approached. Ruan Wenbo looked up and saw a Player walking toward him. It was the Player with the ID [JK]. Ruan Wenbo remembered him—a clever fellow with sharp observational skills.

"Why aren't you watching the tabletop campaign with them?" Ruan Wenbo asked casually.

JK shook his head and sat down in the empty spot beside him, a trace of exhaustion on his face. "Company Commander, you didn't go either."

He sighed, his voice subdued. "I saw something. After coming back, I really wasn't in the mood to watch people play anymore."

So he told Ruan Wenbo everything he had just experienced in Zone C-1, exactly as it had happened.

After hearing him out, Ruan Wenbo fell silent for a long time. He looked at those carefree comrades in the distance, shouting and laughing, then recalled the image of the child JK had described. A powerful sense of disconnection and heaviness pressed down on his heart. In the end, he could only utter a somewhat powerless sentence.

"You're right. All we can do is win the war. Maybe... maybe after the war ends, their lives will get better."

"I'm afraid the war might not be the only thing causing their situation." JK shook his head again, doubt in his tone.

Ruan Wenbo reached out and patted JK on the shoulder. The firmness of his hand conveyed an unquestionable resolve. "At least on Pedetia right now, war is what has made them this way! Let's focus on what we need to do now."

His voice grew stronger. "Be brave in war and lively in rest—we're doing that well already, aren't we? Anything beyond that isn't something we should be thinking about at this stage."

JK was silent for a moment before finally nodding. "You're right, Company Commander. I probably was overthinking things."

As he spoke, he shifted his gaze to the panel before Ruan Wenbo and changed the subject. "Company Commander, are you... deciding what to buy with your merits?"

"Yeah." Ruan Wenbo used the opportunity to pull his thoughts back to reality. "My merits have passed ten thousand. It's time to buy something to improve our overall combat strength."

JK looked surprised. "Over ten thousand merits? Company Commander, haven't you been promoted yet?"

"Theoretically, I have." Ruan Wenbo said, "When Commissar Walter spoke to me just now, he used a consultative tone. He clearly sees me as an officer of equal rank. Holding a position with just a hundred men, killing a Chaos Sorcerer, taking the Chemical Refinery, even taking down a pure-blood Genestealer—it's simply too unbelievable."

He paused, then added, "But practically speaking, where are they supposed to find enough troops to assign under me and elevate the Death Seekers into a regiment? That will probably have to wait until the third closed beta."

Mentioning unit organization reminded Ruan Wenbo of another issue. The Astra Militarum's structure was somewhat chaotic. Warhammer was a United Kingdom creation, and the Astra Militarum's organization seemed to have inherited the British Army's historical tradition of treating regiments and battalions as inseparable.

He was even considering whether to establish a battalion-level structure within the Player forces himself. After all, both Germany, which swept across Europe during World War II, and the Soviet Union, which ultimately defeated Germany, had mature and efficient battalion-level tactical units. Ruan Wenbo did not think he was smarter than the general staffs of the German Army or Soviet Army.

But the game's realism also gave him some reservations. What if the Astra Militarum's peculiar organizational structure had its own reasons for existing in this brutal Warhammer universe?

After all, most Imperium institutions were like that. Noble fiefdoms, High Lords, tithes—none of them could be called reasonable, or even normal, yet somehow they functioned when put together.

And as everyone knew, when you didn't understand why a system worked, the best choice was not to try fixing the Bug inside it...

JK nodded in understanding. Clearly, he had not thought that far ahead. He simply suggested excitedly, "Then, Company Commander, why not buy a Leman Russ tank and take it for a spin? You should have enough merits now, right?"

"I do," Ruan Wenbo did not deny that he had enough merits to exchange for a main battle tank, "but there's one problem: do you know how to resupply a Leman Russ with ammunition?"

He looked at JK and said seriously, "The tanks we buy come with one basic load of ammunition. What happens after we fire it all? We can't exactly expect it to grow more ammo on its own."

"Uh..." JK was stumped by the question. He scratched his head and said uncertainly, "Didn't we just capture the Chemical Refinery? It should be able to produce shells, right?"

Ruan Wenbo shook his head, dismissing the assumption. "The Chemical Refinery only produces explosives and Promethium. It isn't a machine shop. A tank shell isn't just a lump of explosive—it also needs a precision-machined casing, primer, and propellant charge. We can solve the explosives issue, but we can't make the shell casing."

JK stared blankly. "It's that complicated? Then aside from buying shells with merits, we have no way to resupply at all?"

"That's right. Without a foundry or technical personnel who know what they're doing, once the tanks we buy run out of ammunition, they become expensive piles of scrap metal." Ruan Wenbo spread his hands helplessly. "We can't even make the most basic shell casings."

"That does seem to be the case..." JK agreed deeply. "Then yeah... buying an iron coffin as a single-use gun platform would be way too wasteful."

Ruan Wenbo then raised a second question. "And have you considered whether anyone among us Players actually knows how to operate a tank?"

Seeing JK about to speak, Ruan Wenbo added before him, "I'm not talking about the kind of 'operating a tank' where you move forward, reverse, and fire the gun. With the assistance system, that's easy for any Player. I mean the other kind of 'knowing how'... For example, how do you use terrain to avoid possible enemy anti-tank fire? The Cultists have people who can use psychic powers. If we're driving a tank through open terrain and the enemy suddenly fires a Psyker Missile from some blind corner we can't see, what do we do?"

Seeing JK's thoughtful expression, he softened his tone. "I'm not criticizing Players for not knowing how to operate tanks. Asking everyone to become ace crews without any experience would be unreasonable. What I mean is, this is obviously a project that requires paying a great deal of 'tuition.' The enemy will easily destroy several, perhaps even dozens, of our tanks before we can gradually cultivate an excellent tank crew through countless deaths..."

JK finally understood what Ruan Wenbo meant. "At this stage, we obviously can't afford that tuition."

"Exactly." Ruan Wenbo nodded and concluded, "And we currently can't produce tank shells either. We can only buy them with merits, which is another enormous expense. In short, something as extravagant as operating tanks is absolutely beyond our means right now."