Necessary Pain

In the basement of the Seventh Repair Workshop.

Rovi stood in front of an oil-stained workbench.

He held a cleaning cloth.

He slowly wiped the coolant smeared across his fingers.

His movements were slow, almost carelessly elegant.

But that was only a facade.

His gaze never left the machine before him, which was being "desecrated."

A Heavy Logging Gun.

The brass pipes originally used to circulate cooling water had been forcibly severed.

Priest Alpha was bent over beside the gun.

Three Mechanical Tentacles worked a welding torch and wrench at the same time.

He was connecting a black hose covered in heat-insulating asbestos to the cooling jacket around the barrel.

The other end of the hose was attached to a High-Pressure Steam valve in the wall.

It was a pipeline from the Fermentation Workshop.

What flowed through it was no ordinary water vapor.

It was a special kind of steam, heated by that Warp Crystal and infused with excess vitality and intense heat.

"Esteemed Advisor, this modification is in serious violation of the Imperial Armoury Codex."

Priest Alpha's voice rang out amid the crackle of electricity.

His infrared augmetic eyes flickered, betraying a hint of struggle from within his logic core.

"The Machine Spirit is screaming. It cannot understand why steam at four hundred degrees is being fed into an area meant to be cooled. The barrel will overheat and warp within thirty seconds."

"It won't warp, Alpha." Rovi put down the cleaning cloth and walked over to the gun.

"Because the enemy we're facing isn't made of ordinary flesh and blood. Kinetic rounds are like toothpicks poking at rotten butter when they hit a Nurgle Beast. They're utterly useless."

"We need heat, enchantment, and a little 'fight poison with poison' from the Warp."

He pointed at the dark red patterns beginning to emerge on the barrel from the excessive heat.

"This isn't overheating. It's 'charging.'" Rovi stressed the point. "As for the Machine Spirit's screaming... tell it this is the Emperor's wrath. Wrath is always hot, isn't it?"

Priest Alpha fell silent.

At that moment, the logic circuits within him were weathering a storm.

On one side was the Imperial Armoury Codex, inscribed in his core code and passed down for thousands of years.

It was an inviolable dogma.

On the other was the mad plan proposed by this mortal before him—a scheme full of theological sophistry, yet undeniably practical.

Under ordinary circumstances, any Tech-Priest would have drawn his Boltgun and executed this heretic on the spot for desecrating an STC template.

But Priest Alpha did not.

Perhaps it was because he had worked alongside Rovi for a while now, witnessing one seemingly "noncompliant" operation after another turn into astonishingly efficient results.

Or perhaps even a cold mechanical heart could feel a flicker of something akin to biological instinct when tempted by the prospect of more devastating firepower.

In the end, the purest desire for "destruction" pierced the firewall of dogma.

"Praise the Omnissiah."

The Priest hesitated no longer.

His voice trembled with fervor.

"Modification complete. Beginning pressure test."

As the Priest turned the valve,

a shrill hiss instantly filled the entire basement.

High-Pressure Steam surged into the gun's cooling jacket.

There was no physical explosion, as expected.

Instead, the Heavy Logging Gun began to vibrate.

It wasn't the vibration of a machine in operation, but more like a living thing taking a deep breath.

The metal barrel, black only moments before, turned a sickly dark purple within seconds.

Faint, glowing veins appeared across its surface.

The temperature around it rose sharply.

Rovi felt a stinging sensation on his skin.

It was mild Psychic Radiation.

"Kais, assess the status," Rovi ordered quietly.

The cold, synthesized voice of the Wetware Server came through his earpiece:

"Warning: phase transition detected in barrel's metal structure. Hardness decreased by 15%; thermal conductivity increased by 300%."

"As rounds pass through the barrel, their surfaces will be coated in high-energy plasma and Warp heat."

"Theoretical lethality: molecular-level burns and necrosis in organic targets."

"Good."

Rovi nodded.

He didn't need the gun to last long.

He only needed it to turn those damned Nurgle Chosen to ash before it blew apart.

"How many have you modified?"

"Six, Advisor. That's all our heavy weapons stock." Priest Alpha withdrew his Mechanical Tentacles, his voice fervent. "Now they're more like... Sacrificial Weapons."

"Whatever they are, as long as they can kill."

Rovi turned and headed outside.

"Get them to the defensive line. Notify Buck. Have him bring his squad leaders and machine gunners to my office."

Outside the basement, the world was shrouded in suffocating gloom.

The stench of rot had grown stronger.

Rovi crossed the Granary square.

The laborers were carrying sandbags and ammunition crates.

They worked hard—one might even say they were tireless.

But every face wore that same eerie, vacant smile.

One porter dropped a heavy ammunition crate on his toes, drawing blood.

He didn't scream. Instead, as though he couldn't feel any pain, he stupidly grinned, picked up the crate again, and hummed an off-key tune.

The effects of the Green Soup were deepening.

The "happiness" tainted by the power of the Warp was stripping away the most basic warning mechanisms these people had as living beings—

pain and fear.

Rovi hurried into the office.

He locked the heavy blast door behind him.

From a hidden compartment at the very bottom of his desk, he took out a silver briefcase.

He opened it.

The deep-blue medicine lay quietly on its velvet lining, giving off a faint, icy glow.

It was the "Clarity" Governor Alicia had sent.

Rovi didn't hesitate.

He took out a set of chemical test tubes and some distilled water and began diluting it.

He wasn't a pharmacist, but he understood basic dosage calculations.

If he injected this high-purity mental stabilizer directly into soldiers who had suffered from malnutrition for a long time, it might make their hearts stop.

He needed to divide it into twenty doses.

That would reduce its potency and slow its effects.

But it would still be enough to tear through the false haze of happiness.

Ten minutes later.

There was a knock at the door.

Buck came in with five Defense Force squad leaders.

They looked "well."

Buck's single eye no longer held its usual ferocity. Instead, it gleamed with a dreamy, gentle light.

A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

It was a side effect of drinking too much Enhanced Green Slop.

"Advisor, you wanted to see us?" Buck saluted, his movements somewhat limp. "The boys' morale is high. Everyone feels... full of hope."

"Hope?"

Rovi stopped what he was doing, raised his head, and looked coldly at him. "Buck, do you think what's out there is hope?"

Buck froze for a moment, as if struggling to think it through.

But his brain had clearly been clogged with something like cotton. "Uh... at least no one's hungry anymore, and they're not afraid. Isn't that a good thing?"

Rovi didn't answer.

He lined up six syringes filled with pale blue liquid on the desk.

"This is a 'Stimulant' granted by the Governor." Rovi told a lie—a necessary one.

"It can improve your reaction speed and perception. There'll be a major battle tonight, and only the most senior officers are eligible to use it."

At the words "Stimulant," a flash of instinctive greed appeared in Buck and the others' eyes.

In the depths of a Hive City, anything that could make someone stronger was valuable currency.

"One each. Inject it now," Rovi ordered, leaving no room for argument.

Buck hesitated.

But the long-established habit of obedience made him pick up a syringe.

The other squad leaders followed suit.

The needles pierced their veins.

The pale blue liquid slowly entered their bloodstreams.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

Suddenly, the syringe slipped from the hand of a burly squad leader and clattered to the floor.

Then he clutched his head with both hands, a beastlike growl rising from his throat.

"Arghhh!"

It was a scream of excruciating pain.

It was as if a red-hot knife had been shoved straight into his cerebral cortex and twisted violently inside.

Then came Buck.

The man who had killed without blinking on the battlefield suddenly crumpled to his knees.

His face turned deathly pale, and beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.

He retched violently, as if he were about to vomit up his innards.

The overpowering medicine brutally ripped away the false "happiness filter" clouding their senses.

The true sensations of the real world came crashing back like a tsunami.

The itch of healing wounds became agony;

the sour stench of cheap synthetic starch in their stomachs rushed up their noses;

the fragrant rot in the air instantly became the nauseating stench of corpses.

Worse still was the collapse of their emotions.

Their blissful euphoria vanished.

In its place came the fear, anxiety, and oppression that had sunk deep into their bones from surviving in this hopeless universe.

After being suppressed for so long, every negative emotion erupted with ten times its former intensity.

"Advisor... wh-what is this...?"

Buck lay on the floor, trembling, the blood vessels in his single eye swollen red.

His expression changed in an instant from dreamy to horrified and ferocious.

"This is 'Clarity,' Buck."

Rovi sat in his chair, looking down at the officers writhing in pain, his voice cold.

"Specially formulated Green Soup can turn you into tireless slaves—or idiots who don't know enough to stay alive."

"If you went into battle with that stupid smile on your faces, the plague would swallow you up in a single encounter."

He stood, walked over to Buck, and crouched down to look straight into his trembling eye.

"Does it hurt?"

"It... it hurts so much I want to die..." Buck gritted his teeth, blood seeping from his gums.

"Good. It's supposed to hurt."

Rovi patted Buck on the cheek, not gently.

"Pain is humanity's last line of defense. Only pain can remind you that you're still alive, that you're still human and not a pile of Walking Dead."

He stood and pointed toward the door.

"Remember this pain. Take it with you when you operate the Heavy Logging Guns. I want you to use that fear and anger to pull the triggers. Only the clearest-headed will deserve to survive tonight."

Buck gasped for breath and struggled to get up from the ground.

His body was still trembling.

His eyes were still filled with fear of the world.

Yet the feigned weakness had vanished, replaced by murderous intent.

"It's... Advisor!"