Underhive Scavenger

Alvin's vision was swallowed by darkness, as if he had sunk into a freezing abyss. His whole body was numb and stiff.

In a daze, he seemed to see a cold, pale sun. Its dazzling radiance shone like a brilliant halo of stars, frozen in the pitch-black void.

His eyelids felt as heavy as if they were chained, and his head was groggy and throbbing, as though he had a terrible hangover.

It took him a long time to finally open his eyes.

"Where... am I?" He looked around in bewilderment.

The damp, gloomy alley was piled high with reeking garbage.

Overhead, a crisscrossing web of pipes crowded the ceiling. Not a ray of sunlight could be seen, and the oppressive air was filled with a pungent, rotten stench!

Thick clouds of dust and smog drifted through the gray air. Every breath made him feel as if his lungs were caked with grime.

"Cough, cough..."

Alvin could barely tolerate the foul conditions and broke into a fit of coughing.

"I'm talking to you, damn it! Are you pretending to be deaf?!"

The furious voice struck like thunder, making his head ring and dragging his thoughts back to the present.

He lifted his head. What met his eyes was a terrifying face. A vicious scar slashed diagonally across it, cutting through the man's brow and lips. As his face twisted with rage, the scar writhed like a worm, and his cold eyes gleamed with a blood-red savagery.

"Answer me!"

Without warning, the scarred thug raised his foot and kicked Alvin in the chest like a cannonball.

Bang!

The force nearly knocked the breath out of Alvin.

He was sent flying and slammed hard into a drainage pipe.

The pipe cracked on impact, spraying foul sewage that made the already putrid air even more unbearable.

The scarred thug stepped forward, planted a foot on Alvin, and pressed a nicked knife against his throat.

"If you can't hand over three portions of supplies by tomorrow, I won't hesitate to kill you!" The scarred thug bent down, his eyes cruel and greedy as he looked at Alvin like an animal. "Understand, brat? Don't make me say it a third time!"

He stared at the blade at his throat. Its chipped edge was smeared with dark brown clots of dried blood.

There was no doubt about it: the man was a ruthless killer who wouldn't think twice about taking a life. Who knew how many people he'd killed?

Following the principle that you had to bow your head when you were under someone else's roof, Alvin took a deep breath and answered without hesitation. "I'm sorry. I was wrong. I'll hand over the supplies on time tomorrow!"

The scarred thug put away his knife and glared at him before spitting a mouthful of phlegm to the side. "If that bunch of scum in the Iron Hammer Gang hadn't left us short-handed, I'd have chopped you up with one swing."

After delivering his threat, the scarred thug turned and left, leaving Alvin alone in the damp, gloomy alley.

After returning from the brink of death, Alvin's jumbled, rigid thoughts cleared in an instant.

Then fragmented memories surged in like a tide, brutally shoved straight into his mind without so much as a warning!

The explosive pain felt as if someone had driven a chisel into his pituitary gland and twisted it hard. Alvin clenched his teeth, the veins at his temples bulging as he struggled not to make a sound.

Breathe in. Breathe in. Fortunately, the pain came quickly and vanished just as fast.

Once he'd recovered, Alvin took off the cheap gas mask on his face and stared at the dense pipes overhead. The last glimmer of hope in his eyes disappeared.

The good news: he'd transmigrated to Terra.

The bad news: it was Holy Terra.

This was the Warhammer Universe!

A deranged universe where every race would go completely insane just to survive!

It was a place of extreme militarism, lunatics, fanatics, and xenophobia—in short, a terrifying universe that would make even the hordes of transmigrators from Qidian think twice.

War was the eternal theme of this universe.

Every living thing here was like someone swimming through a cesspit. It wasn't about who could swim the farthest, but who would choke to death first.

Although he couldn't see his own face, Alvin was sure that right now, his expression looked like what netizens might describe as a Gretchin with a stubbed toe!

The original owner of this body had also been named Alvin. He was a scavenger in the Underhive of some Hive World within the Imperium of Man.

Put simply, he was a bottom-of-the-barrel scrap rat.

"Are you kidding me?"

Having absorbed the memories, Alvin slumped to the ground like a pile of mud, his eyes lifeless. "I just went to get a wisdom tooth pulled. How'd I wake up in this hellhole?"

Had he done something so heinous in his past life that it had earned him the wrath of heaven and earth?

What kind of damn tooth extraction could land him in the Warhammer Universe?

He could complain all he wanted, but once he'd let it out and his emotions had settled a little, Alvin could only accept reality.

The scarred thug from earlier was a member of the Blood Axe Gang, an Underhive outfit that collected protection money from people like him.

In the Warhammer Universe, even the lowest-level scrap rats had to pay "protection money."

But lately, word was that the Blood Axe Gang and the Iron Hammer Gang had been fighting each other so viciously they were practically beating each other's brains out.

The Blood Axe Gang had suffered heavy casualties, so they'd tripled the protection money they'd demanded before!

Had anyone resisted?

Of course—but without exception, the Blood Axe Gang had cut off their heads to warn everyone else.

But it was obvious that Alvin, a bottom-level scavenger who often went three days on nine meals' worth of hunger, could barely afford food, let alone spare "supplies" to hand over.

If he couldn't pay, Alvin would either be dragged off to feed the Blood Axe Gang's Genestealer or made into the next warning.

Driven into a corner, Alvin had finally decided to risk sneaking into a scrapyard southeast of the Underhive, in Iron Hammer Gang territory, to steal something.

Unfortunately, his luck had been awful. He'd just picked up something that looked valuable when he stumbled upon members of the Iron Hammer Gang talking to a person draped in a black robe. They'd been too far away for him to hear clearly, but he'd caught words like "skull" and "sacrifice."

Then Alvin had been discovered!

The person in the black robe had only needed to glance at him for his head to split with pain, as if filled with twisted, evil, chaotic whispers.

It had felt like hundreds of red-hot needles being driven into his brain and viciously twisted around.

In unbearable agony, Alvin had clung to a shred of reason and escaped the scrapyard. He'd made it as far as this alley before his soul was completely crushed.

When Alvin woke again, his soul had been replaced by that of a young man from the 2K era.

"From now on, I'm Alvin."

Alvin murmured to himself. Their memories had fused, and from then on, there would be no telling them apart.

He lowered his head and looked at the tattered bag at his waist.

Inside was the "thing" his predecessor had traded his life for. He opened the filthy bag and found a wristwatch.

The outside environment had corroded its strap, leaving the metal covered in rust and the joints close to breaking. The watch face was smothered in a layer of filthy black grime.

"Could this thing cover the protection money?"

Alvin's brow twitched. He doubted anyone would even pick the thing up if he threw it on the ground. If he tried to pawn it, he'd probably be chopped up and fed to the dogs on the spot.

Still, the previous owner had paid for it with his life. Throwing it away felt like a disservice.

"God bless—no, the Emperor Lord bless me!"

Clinging to his last shred of hope, Alvin wet his sleeve with the dirty water and carefully, gently wiped the grime off the watch face.

Once the black grime was gone, an intricate watch face appeared.

Alvin stared at it, stunned by the precision and complexity of its inner workings. Countless gears of different sizes interlocked, filling the mechanism with an artistic beauty. Around the outer edge, instead of numbers marking the time, there were unfamiliar symbols he couldn't make out.

"What in the world is this thing?"

As Alvin stared at the intricate watch face, it suddenly changed!

Click-click-click.

The watch face, which had been motionless, began to turn.

Amid the crisp, sluggish clatter of the mechanism, countless gears in the center of the watch face began to rotate. Then, suddenly, they flipped over to the other side.

The central dial was pitch-black and deep, as if engraved with some kind of writing. The characters lit up one by one in order.

A mechanical-sounding voice rang out in Alvin's mind.

[Respected Navigator, would you like to travel to a new world?]

[Beep-beep-beep! Warning! Insufficient energy!]

[Current reserves: 0.1 standard units]

[Activating Interdimensional Device requires 100 standard units of energy!]