The Price of Survival

The Laborers swarmed forward.

Suddenly, Rovi felt the ground tremble beneath his feet.

It wasn't an explosion.

It was a writhing from deep underground.

"Alert." Kais's cold electronic voice rang in Rovi's earpiece. "High-energy biological reaction detected beneath Sector E4. Energy level: massive!"

Rovi spun around.

In the middle of the square, the rebel corpses—corroded by acid, shredded by bullets—weren't lying still as usual.

They were melting.

Flesh, bone, even their clothes.

All liquefying at breakneck speed into pools of dark green slime.

The pus didn't seep into the ground. Instead, as if alive, it converged toward a single point.

That point was where several rebels had just been electrocuted trying to touch the airdrop crate.

"Is this... a sacrifice?"

Rovi's expression turned grim.

Grabbing supplies might have just been a cover.

Their deaths themselves were the ritual.

"Retreat! Everyone retreat!"

Rovi roared at the top of his lungs.

At the same time, he kicked a Laborer in the ass—the man was still greedily rifling through a rebel's pockets.

"Dump the stuff in the truck and run!"

In an instant, the ground split open.

A massive hand, made of countless rotting limbs and fungi, thrust up from the pool of pus and slammed into the Harvester's treads.

The hand was the size of a truck.

Covered in still-rolling eyeballs and drooling mouths.

"Nurgle Beast..."

Rovi recognized the thing.

Though it was just a low-level Warp entity, on a mortal battlefield lacking heavy firepower, it was invincible.

"Alpha, overload the boiler!"

Rovi jumped back into the Command Tower, gripping the handrails tightly.

"Vent all the steam—aim it at that hand!"

"On it!"

The Harvester let out a pained shriek.

All the exhaust valves on its side opened.

A surge of superheated steam, tinged with an eerie pale purple.

Erupted like a volcanic blast.

It swallowed the rotting giant hand in an instant.

This wasn't just water vapor.

It contained the "excess vitality" released by that Warp Crystal.

Nurgle's blessing lies in "stagnation" and "slow cycles"—keeping decay in an eternal symbiosis.

But this steam was an extreme catalyst.

It forcibly accelerated the Nurgle Beast's cellular metabolism billions of times in an instant!

For a creature made of rot and viruses, this runaway acceleration was deadlier than strong acid.

It shattered the balance of symbiosis.

Every cell burned through all its energy in a flash, splitting madly until it self-destructed.

"Oww!"

The hand, shrouded in steam, let out a shriek—not just of pain, but of ravenous hunger.

The maggots and fungi inside it, catalyzed by the steam, grew wildly, instantly swelling into grotesque monstrosities.

Then, their energy spent, they withered and carbonized at breakneck speed.

This is a biological short circuit: biological burnout.

The once tough and moist carrion, after a moment of frenzied proliferation, had turned completely into lifeless ash.

Those eyeballs, like fruit ripened to their limit, burst with a wet pop.

The giant hand released the tread.

It became a charred, withered stump.

"Go, full reverse!"

The Harvester roared, its treads spinning wildly in the air.

Kicking up a storm of mud, it tore free from the mire and bolted toward the granary.

Buck led the Defense Force in a fighting retreat, laying down dense fire to hold back the smaller derivatives trying to pursue.

The Laborers no longer lingered in battle.

The spiritual "euphoria" had vanished before the giant hand's roar.

They hoisted their crates and ran back like madmen.

Rovi kept his eyes fixed on that giant hand.

It didn't give chase.

It seemed bound by some rule, confined within the range of that formation.

Or maybe it had just come out to say hello, to tell humanity that the real war had begun.

By the time they returned to the granary, it was evening.

The rain had stopped.

The sky was still that oppressive purple-red.

Casualties were tallied.

Forty-seven Laborers dead, over a hundred wounded.

Most injuries came from the stampede and chaos during the retreat.

Still, the haul was substantial.

A full three tons of medical supplies, five hundred high-energy batteries.

That was enough to keep Granary Seven going for another month.

Rovi sat in his office, the silver briefcase he'd swiped from the airdrop crate resting before him.

He hadn't let anyone see it.

First, he inspected the case.

No traps or bio-locks detected.

Click.

The case opened.

Inside, there was no treasure, no classified documents.

Just a single vial of potion and a slip of paper.

The potion was deep blue, giving off an eerie cold gleam under the light.

Rovi picked up the paper.

The handwriting was elegant yet firm.

Clearly Governor Alicia's own hand.

Only one line:

"This is both the cure and the poison. Give it to those who most need to stay clear-headed."

Rovi knew what it was.

A high-purity mental stabilizer, exclusive to the nobles at the top of the Hive City.

It could instantly purge any psychic contamination—hallucinations and euphoria alike—restoring absolute rationality.

The side effects were obvious.

For the next few days, the user would feel pain and depression several times more intense than normal.

It was the bane of happiness.

Rovi was silent for a moment.

He didn't inject himself.

He placed the potion back in the case, locked it.

Then he tucked it into the hidden compartment at the bottom of his desk drawer.

He didn't need this yet.

The faint "sweetness" from the Warp Crystal was dangerous, but it was also one of the forces keeping his mind sharp and high-intensity in this hellish environment.

He needed that mania.

At least for now.

"Advisor."

The heavy blast door slid open, and Alpha the Priest walked in.

Grease still wet on his mechanical prosthetics, the Servitor Skull behind him humming faintly.

"Supplies are stored. Also, while cleaning the Harvester, we observed phenomena that defy physical laws."

Rovi looked up from the stack of documents. "Speak."

"The Harvester's front rollers and tracks were heavily coated with Nurgle Beast bodily fluids during combat." The Priest extended a metal tentacle, projecting a holographic scan.

"According to the database, that highly acidic slime can eat through three-inch-thick plastic steel plates in ten minutes."

"But..." The Priest paused, his tone laced with barely concealed confusion and fervor. "It didn't."

The hologram zoomed in, showing the microstructure of the track surface.

"The metal wasn't corroded. Instead, at the interface where the slime met the metal, a layer of chitin-like material grew—similar to crustacean shells. It's extremely hard and even deflected our sampling drill."

The Priest's voice dropped a few notes. "It's as if... this machine was 'feeding.' It absorbed the Nurgle Beast's biomass and used it to evolve itself."

A machine feeding?

Rovi stared at the image, his mind racing.

Pure Nurgle corruption would rust and rot metal, never make it harder.

The only variable was the steam sprayed at the time.

That was high-energy steam heated by the Warp Crystal, infused with concentrated concepts of "life force" and "forced ripening."

When that vitality-laden steam met the Nurgle Beast's biomass-rich fluids and reacted violently on the metal surface...

It catalyzed some impossible alchemical reaction.

The Crystal provided the energy for "growth."

The Nurgle Beast provided the raw material of "flesh."

And the Harvester's frame became the vessel for it all.

This was no longer pure science.

It was a blasphemous miracle—a forbidden fusion of machine and flesh.

If the Martian clergy saw this, Rovi and Alpha the Priest would be turned into servitors on the spot.

"Seal the information." Rovi made a snap decision, his eyes sharpening. "Drag the Harvester into the deepest isolation bay. No one but you and me gets near it. Memory-wipe all Servitor witnesses."

"Your will be done." Alpha the Priest bowed deeply, the red light in his eyes flickering. "Is this... another revelation from the Omnissiah?"

"No. It's the price of survival."

After the Priest left, Rovi walked to the window and peered through the gap.

Outside, the square was buzzing.

Laborers were lining up for "extra rations"—

Field rations stripped from rebel corpses, not yet fully rotten.

And oversized rats, killed in the crossfire, not yet mutated.

No mourning. No grief.

For the living, a dead comrade's vacated bunk meant they could stretch their legs straight tonight.

And the saved portion of Green Soup meant one more second of life tomorrow.

This fervor wasn't celebration.

It was a near-beastly, greedy grab for survival resources.

Watching it all, Rovi felt the string in his heart tighten further.

He used the power of Chaos to produce food, feeding these people.

Now, he'd accidentally discovered that same power could strengthen machines.

He danced on the edge of the abyss, a bottomless drop beneath his feet.

But there was no turning back.

Rovi pulled the curtain shut, blocking out that suffocating, purplish-red sky.

He sat back at his desk, fingers tapping on the console.

"Kais."

"Here, Esteemed Advisor."

The cold, synthesized voice of the Wetware Server rang out.

"Create a new simulation model." Rovi calmly ordered.

"If I inject high-energy steam heated by a Warp Crystal through a conduit into the cooling system of a Heavy Logging Gun, letting it directly contact the barrel... what would happen?"

The screen flickered with a frenzy of garbled code.

That was the logic circuits overloading as they processed data that defied common sense.

A few seconds later, a line of red text popped up:

"Simulation result: The barrel's metal structure will undergo irreversible activation. Estimated lifespan reduced by 90%, but until complete failure, fire rate can increase by 200%."

"Additional effect: Upon exiting the barrel, each round will be enchanted, carrying trace amounts of Warp thermal energy, dealing additional burn damage to organic targets."

"Warning: This action severely violates Article 402 of the Adeptus Mechanicus Universal Catechism, constituting technological heresy."

Staring at the red warning, the corner of Rovi's mouth curled up slightly.

It was the cold smile of a gambler just before going all in.

"The Catechism won't save us, Kais."

He murmured softly.

As if explaining to the already-dead Supervisor.

And as if declaring war on this mad universe.

"But heavier firepower can!"