Schrodinger's Loyalist added, testing the material by striking two stones together. "At this production rate, Oil-Guy would fall silent, and Imperial bureaucrats would weep."
"Be grateful," Wang Zhong sighed, bending down to get to work. "At least we won't be dragged off to be dissected or injected with Nurgle's broth. Not for now, anyway."
"And..."
Lowering his voice so only the squad could hear him, he said, "This place is a lot less tightly guarded than that underground containment facility."
"Look at the guards' positions, and those raw-material pipelines over there..."
A glint flashed in Mechanicus Oil-Lover on the Run's eyes. "Agreed."
"This is a labor-intensive facility with complicated personnel traffic. There are bound to be blind spots in the surveillance."
"From my initial observations, the guards patrol the area near the exhaust vent in the northeast corner about every fifteen minutes."
"The third conveyor belt overhead seems to lead to the refinery's core area. Security may be different there."
"Let's keep our heads down, figure out the patterns, and see if we can steal anything to save up some money."
Wang Zhong set the tone. "Don't forget, we can revive if we die, but reviving costs money, and we still have to endure the pain."
"Until we find a reliable way to... hmm, log out, or get our hands on weapons, don't do anything rash."
The grueling, exhausting, painful labor began.
Sorting ore by hand was no easy task. Sharp stone flakes quickly cut through the players' coarse work gloves and skin, while the heavy ore wore them out.
The overseers' whips cracked through the air from time to time. Occasionally, one really did land on some unlucky worker who was moving too slowly, drawing a genuine scream.
Complaints and jokes made to lighten the misery never stopped in the area channel.
"Holy shit, why are these rocks so heavy? I feel like I'm playing <Imperial Miner Simulator 2025 (Warhammer Hell Edition)>!"
"I just got whipped. My health barely dropped, but the intense pain status lasted ten minutes! Damn devs! Would it kill you to turn down the pain feedback?"
"Tell me, are we loyal little cogs of the Imperium now? Or the replaceable kind?"
"Cogs? Dream on! We're the rusty washers underneath the cogs, at best!"
"I miss mining... At least I was free back then, and I had a chance to kill monsters and get gold..."
"Have you noticed how the NPC workers next to us look at us funny?"
"Like they're looking at... the dead? Or lunatics?"
"Obviously. We're working while ranting and cursing up a storm in the area channel, making all kinds of faces. To them, aren't we just a bunch of nutjobs grinning, shouting, and rolling our eyes at thin air?"
"Got it. In the Warhammer World, sanity really is a rare quality."
The hard labor and the realistic pain made the urge to log out incredibly strong.
However, the system gave a cold notification: [Forced labor punishment status active. Logout function restricted]
[Please attempt a safe logout in the designated rest area during the overseers' shift change (approximately standard time 23:00–23:15)]
[Warning: If your vessel remains unattended in the work area and you cannot log back in promptly, it will almost certainly be deemed scrap and recycled into nutrient paste, with a 99.99% probability]
"Even logging out requires clocking in!"
Did White Scars speed today wailed. "This is even more ruthless than companies in real life!"
"At least a company won't physically destroy you for logging out and turn you into nutrient paste for the other wage slaves to eat."
Wang Zhong didn't join in much of the complaining. He silently tossed the sorted, acceptable ore into the metal basket beside him, sweat soaking his clothes.
He watched the overseers, the transport routes, and every detail of this enormous hell.
In the corner of his vision, the label "Psychic Talent: Inactive" still hung there.
"Inactive..." he murmured inwardly. "In this world, psychic power is both a curse and a source of strength."
"If... if that possibility really exists..."
He shook his head, banishing the dangerously tempting thought.
For now, the most important thing was to survive, see if he could steal some ore to save up Imperial Coins, and then wait for an opportunity.
Wait for an opportunity, or make one.
The players were herded into a so-called rest area filled with strange smells and furnished with only a few benches.
Most of the native workers huddled silently in the corners, trying to recover their strength while they could.
The players gathered together, quietly sharing what they had observed.
"There's a waste-disposal passage to the east. The stench could kill a Nurgling, but it seems to lead straight to the lower sewage pool, and there are no guards."
"The cooling-pipe area in the west has radiation warning signs that are almost worn away, but the heat readings are still high. It might be a dead end."
"The head overseer has a passkey hanging from his belt. It looks like a standard low-level Trade Alliance access card. If we could get it..."
"How? We don't even have a decent screwdriver! That crude pistol in the system shop costs 20 coins! Black powder! My fists are more reliable!"
Just as the players were quietly plotting, a piercing alarm suddenly rang throughout the work area!
It wasn't directed at them. It came from the refinery's core area above, accompanied by a muffled explosion and the shrill screech of twisting metal.
"What's going on?"
The overseers grabbed their weapons in alarm and looked toward the billowing smoke.
"It's the boiler room! Catalyst Reactor Number Seven is overloaded!"
"Damn it! Those cut-rate pipes must be to blame!"
"Get over there and put out the fire! Evacuate everyone who isn't needed!"
Chaos erupted at once.
Some of the overseers rushed toward the accident, while others tried to maintain order, but panic had already begun to spread among the native workers.
Taking advantage of the confusion, Wang Zhong signaled to his squad.
"Now!"
They blended into the surging crowd. Instead of rushing toward the accident or blindly following the others, they moved along the route they had observed earlier, heading for the foul-smelling waste-disposal passage.
As expected, no one was guarding the entrance. A half-rotted sign read: DANGER! NO ENTRY!
The inside was dark and damp, filled with an indescribable stench of decay.
"This smell... Even Grandfather would have to hold his nose and walk away."
Schrodinger's Loyalist gagged.
"Quit talking and get in!" Tax Brother shoved him forward.
The group quickly slipped into the darkness.
The passage wound downward, the ground slick and slimy beneath their feet.
After walking for several minutes, they saw a faint light ahead and reached a larger space: a vast underground sewage pool, where discarded mechanical parts and unidentifiable rubbish had piled up into mountains.
What made their hearts race even faster was that, in the shadows of the trash heaps, several suits of... armor seemed to be lying there.
And among them were rust-eaten metal shapes that still vaguely resembled weapons.
"What's that..." Wang Zhong narrowed his eyes.
[Item Name: Damaged Riot Armor] [Condition: Heavily corroded, power core nonfunctional, extremely low defensive capability] [Recyclable Value: Approximately 13 Imperial Coins] [Note: Seems to have belonged to an Arbites squad from a Hive City that has since been disbanded] [Item Name: Damaged Power Machete] [Condition: Power circuit severed; can only be used as a metal club] [Recyclable Value: Approximately 10 Imperial Coins] [Note: There is a dried, suspiciously colored stain on the chipped blade]
They were all junk, but this was the first time since entering this world that they had come across the remains of standard-issue equipment.
"We've struck it rich..." Tax Brother's eyes lit up.
"Rich? It's all trash."
Schrodinger's Loyalist kicked the armor. "The system would only give us a few coins for it."
"No." Wang Zhong crouched down and examined the break in the power machete. "What matters is, why are these things here?"
"Were they thrown away, or... hidden?"
He looked up, his gaze sweeping over the man-made rubbish barricades around the sewage pool. An idea occurred to him:
Maybe this wasn't just a dump. Could it also be a weapons cache deliberately hidden by someone?
In the distance, the refinery's alarms gradually died down, but perhaps the real chaos was only just beginning.
Before you continue