New STC Revelation

Rovi looked over the wheat fields, but his brow remained furrowed.

Though efficiency had improved, he had done the calculations.

It still wasn't enough.

The twenty percent yield increase target was still just out of reach with manpower alone.

Moreover, the weather forecast showed that a Warp Storm was approaching.

If they could not finish the harvest within three days, the wheat would rot in the fields.

"Alpha." Rovi turned around. "Has that big thing been modified?"

"It's done." Alpha Priest said excitedly. "But... it's a little radical. The other Tech-Priests think it's a monster."

"Take me to see it."

Deep within the Repair Workshop.

A massive canvas sheet was pulled aside.

A vicious Steel Beast was revealed.

It stood a full ten meters tall.

Its chassis had been pieced together from two scrapped Chimera Personnel Carriers.

All manner of armor plates and pipes had been welded onto its body in a chaotic mess.

The most conspicuous part was the harvesting apparatus at its front.

It was not made of ordinary blades.

It consisted of several rows of rotating Serrated Rollers.

The rollers were also connected to grinders and high-pressure vacuum cleaners.

Atop the vehicle, where a machine-gun turret had originally been mounted, Rovi had installed a nozzle for spraying chemical agents that could rapidly dehydrate crops.

This was not a Harvester at all.

It was a mobile fortress of destruction.

"How's the power system?" Rovi asked.

"We connected three engines in parallel."

Alpha Priest pointed at several thick Exhaust Pipes at the rear. "The output is overloaded by two hundred percent. Once it starts up, the noise could deafen people."

After hesitating for a moment, Alpha Priest added, "Its Machine Spirit is... very irritable. During yesterday's test run, it nearly dragged a Servitor inside."

"Of course it's irritable." Rovi patted the rough armor plating. "It was born to race against time. It doesn't need to be docile. It only needs to be ferocious."

Just then, an angry voice came from the doorway.

"This is blasphemy!"

A senior Magos in red robes strode in.

Several Faith Militant followed behind him.

He was the Supervisor of this parish and rarely showed himself.

"Who are you?" The Magos pointed at Rovi. "Was it you who tore apart these sacred vehicles and turned them into this monstrosity?"

"I am Rovi, the Special Agricultural Advisor." Rovi remained neither servile nor overbearing.

"An advisor? A mere mortal?" The Magos's Mechanical Tentacles flailed furiously.

"How dare you arbitrarily splice together Standard Template Construct templates?"

"How dare you connect sacred engines to filthy grinders?"

"This is an insult to the Omnissiah! I'll send you to the Ordo!"

Alpha Priest shrank back in fright.

But Rovi smiled.

He walked up to the Magos and stared directly into his red-glowing electronic eyes.

"Lord Magos, do you hear it?"

"Hear what?"

"The Machine Spirit's song."

Rovi placed a hand on the engine hood.

A low rumble came from within, like the roar of a trapped beast.

"You call this blasphemy. I call it evolution."

"This crude assembly solves the heat dissipation problem. These serrated teeth may look ugly, but they can sever a hundred stalks in a second."

"Look at this RPM." Rovi pointed at the dashboard. "Four thousand revolutions per minute. Can an ordinary engine do that?"

The Magos froze for a moment.

He glanced at the dashboard.

Indeed, the figure was absurdly high.

"This... this defies logic," the Magos muttered. "At such a high speed, the bearings should have melted long ago."

"Because I used a special lubricant," Rovi said. "Grease refined from corpses. It withstands heat better than Sacred Oil."

Rovi leaned closer to the Magos and said in a low voice:

"What do you think the Omnissiah prefers? A pile of rusting parts lying in a warehouse, or a Steel Beast capable of producing tens of millions of tons of grain for the Empire?"

"If it can move, work, and roar, then that means the Machine Spirit approves of this union."

"This is the will of the Machine God: make full use of everything, with efficiency above all else."

The Magos fell silent.

His logic circuits calculated frantically.

Doctrine told him this was heresy.

Yet the data told him it was fucking incredible.

Within the Adeptus Mechanicus, data was truth.

"If you can prove it is right..." the Magos finally said after a long while. "If you can prove that it can harvest this test field within an hour..."

"Won't take an hour." Rovi climbed into the cab. "Half an hour will do."

"Alpha, get up here! Be my assistant!"

Alpha Priest shakily climbed aboard.

"Start it!"

Rovi pressed the red button.

"ROAR!"

A deafening boom erupted.

Black smoke billowed out.

The enormous Serrated Roller began to spin, letting out a shriek that tore through the air.

The Steel Beast moved.

Like an out-of-control tank, it charged out of the workshop and into the wheat field.

At that moment, everyone—

whether refugees, Defense Force soldiers, or priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus—was stunned.

Wherever the monster passed, the rolling wheat vanished in an instant.

Whether wheat stalks, field ridges, or even mice hiding in the fields, all of it was sucked in, pulverized, then spat out from the rear as neat bundles of straw.

Rather than harvesting, it was devouring.

Rovi sat in the cab, feeling the violent vibrations.

It felt as though his whole skeleton was about to come apart.

But he was grinning with delight.

He watched the wildly jumping numbers on the dashboard.

At that moment, he was no longer a lowly scribe.

He was the brain of this Steel Beast.

He was the master of this land.

Half an hour later.

The Steel Beast came to a stop.

The test field behind it was completely bare, without even a single weed left behind.

The Magos stood at the edge of the field, a timer in hand.

His electronic eyes flickered with an eerie light.

"Twenty-eight minutes..." the Magos muttered. "Efficiency has increased... by three hundred percent."

He raised his head and studied Rovi again as he climbed out of the cab.

This time, there was no anger in his eyes—only fervor.

"Praise the Omnissiah!" The Magos raised both arms. "This is a miracle! This is a new STC revelation!"

He rushed over and seized Rovi's oil-stained hand.

"Advisor Rovi—no, Priest Rovi! I don't care whether you are a mere mortal or not. From today onward, you are the Seventh Diocese's Honorary Tech-Priest. I will upload these blueprints to Mars headquarters!"

Rovi wiped the dust from his face.

"Yes," Rovi said. "But before that, I want to mass-produce this thing."

In the distance, the window of Supervisor Kase's office slammed shut with a bang.

Rovi glanced in that direction.

Clearly, Kase was afraid.

But that was not enough.

He had men, guns, food, and now the backing of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Next, it was time for him to take the initiative.

Rovi touched the Governor's Ring in his pocket.

Lady Alicia, he murmured inwardly. Your investment is about to double.