It stood nearly one and a half meters tall at the shoulder, its body covered in greasy, matted gray-black fur. Its muscles bulged, and corrosive drool dripped from the corners of its mouth, burning the ground and sending up white smoke.
Most striking were its eyes, murky yellow tinged with unnatural scarlet, and its unusually powerful forelimbs, with bone protrusions like sickles.
It was clearly displeased with the little snacks outside its lair.
"Holy crap! What the hell is that?" Tax Brother cried.
"Who cares what it is? Hit it!"
Schrodinger's Loyalist was absolutely certain now. He shouted and hurled the steel pipe in his hand like a javelin!
The pipe slammed into the beast's shoulder blade with a dull thud. It let out a pained roar, but the blow clearly wasn't fatal. Instead, it only enraged the beast.
The beast dug in with its hind legs and launched itself at Xue Brother, who was at the front, like a cannonball!
"Move!" Wang Zhong swung his steel pipe sideways, striking hard at the beast's ribs.
Tax Brother attacked the beast's hind leg from the other side.
The fight erupted in an instant.
There were no flashy skills or pinpoint marksmanship, only the most primitive, clumsy swings, smashes, jabs, and dodges.
The beast's snarls, the clang of steel pipes, and the players' shouts all blended together.
Wang Zhong felt his arms go numb from the force of the impacts. Adrenaline surged through him.
The beast was strong and fairly quick, too. Its sickle-like bone blade grazed his work clothes, leaving a tear and a fiery sting. His status barely changed, but a prompt for mild pain had appeared.
Xue Brother slipped up and got his thigh raked by the beast's claws. He avoided the bone blade, but still ended up with a gash. Blood seeped out, and his movements immediately grew sluggish.
"I'm hurt! Bleeding status!"
"Hang in there! Go for its eyes and joints!"
Roaring with fury, Tax Brother jabbed a steel pipe near the beast's eye socket. He missed the eye, but still made the beast jerk its head away in pain.
Wang Zhong seized the opportunity, poured all his strength into the jagged end of the broken steel pipe, and drove it hard into the side of the beast's neck, exposed as it turned its head!
"Squelch!"
Warm, foul-smelling liquid sprayed out.
The beast let out a shrill wail, and its struggling weakened abruptly.
Tax Brother and the injured Xue Brother immediately piled on, attacking the beast's wounds and head with metal scraps, their feet, and anything else they could find.
After a long while, the beast finally stopped moving.
The three collapsed onto the ground, gasping for breath, their clothes covered in dust and blood.
The wound on Xue Brother's thigh was still bleeding, and his face had gone a little pale.
"We won... We took it down!" Tax Brother's face showed a mix of relief and excitement.
"Quick, see how much this thing is worth!"
Fighting back his disgust, Wang Zhong checked the system.
He focused his attention on the beast's corpse.
[Discovered: Mutated Mine Hyena-Beast (deceased)] [Assessment: Rich in unstable biomass. Some mutated glands may have low value. Bones, claws, and fangs can serve as basic materials. Recyclable. Meat is slightly salty. Estimated total value: 69 Imperial Coins.]
"69 coins!"
All three cried out at once. Their exhaustion vanished, and their eyes lit up.
"We're rich!" Xue Brother even felt as if his leg hurt a little less.
They gave Xue Brother's wound some basic treatment, then, after tremendous effort, used rope and poles to make a makeshift stretcher and dragged the heavy beast's corpse back to Workshop No. 7.
When they appeared with the beast, unmistakably their trophy, the whole area around the submission point erupted.
"Holy crap! They killed a monster!"
"How much did it drop?!"
"That looks disgusting... but it seems pretty valuable?"
"Let's team up! We've gotta go hunting! Mining's too slow!"
Under everyone's envious gaze, the three submitted the hyena beast's corpse.
[Submission complete... Received: 69 Imperial Coins.]
"Split it evenly?" Wang Zhong asked his teammates.
"Of course!" Tax Brother and Xue Brother answered without hesitation.
[Trading function enabled] [Loyal to the Emperor Forever paid the Emperor's tax even if the world ended and Schrodinger's Loyalist 23 Imperial Coins each] [Transfer complete]
Each of them received 23 coins!
With the coins he'd earned from mining earlier, Wang Zhong now had 23.7 Imperial Coins. Tax Brother and Xue Brother each had over 20, too.
More importantly—
[Ding! Mission: A Worker's First Step complete] [Reward issued: 10 Imperial Coins deposited] [Aurelian Language (Advanced) unlocked] [Store inventory preview function enabled]
New prompts appeared in all three of their fields of vision, along with a new, faintly glowing [Store] icon.
"The store's open!"
"Let's see what's in it!"
Wang Zhong eagerly focused his thoughts and opened the icon.
A simple but information-packed list appeared in his mind.
His gaze swept rapidly down the list:
Nutrient paste, purified water... All right, basic survival supplies.
Precision-forged mining pick, metal cutter... Tool upgrades.
Simple pistol, hunting knife... Weapons!
Basic physical enhancement (Type I), neural reflex optimization (Type I), sensory enhancement (Type I)... Genetic enhancements?!
Wilderness Survival Basics, <Basic Mechanical Structure Identification and Disassembly>... Skill books?!
His breathing grew faster.
The item names, descriptions, and even that bluntly straightforward Type I labeling style...
Then his eyes landed on the enhancement descriptions: "Slightly increases strength and stamina limits," "Requires training and adaptation, and may slightly affect the carrier's appearance"...
Then he saw the price tag: 100 Imperial Coins.
Then he thought of the mutant hyena beast they'd encountered, this dilapidated industrial world, the Imperial Coins, the survival tax, and that cold system voice...
A guess he'd been desperately trying to deny sprouted in his mind like a seed nourished by a Chaos Daemon's whispers, then grew and spread wildly.
"No... That can't be..."
Wang Zhong felt his heart pounding, and cold sweat beaded on his palms.
"This UI style... This enhancement path... The oppressive tone of this whole world... And Imperial Coins..."
"Coincidence... It has to be a coincidence!"
"The name's Era 40k: Mecha. It's normal for them to borrow a few elements!"
"Right, just borrowing elements!"
"How could this be that world? Impossible. It has to be impossible."
He stared at the store list as if he could find proof there to refute his suspicions.
But all he saw were the requirements for unlocking gene-sequence development progress, the note about potentially affecting the carrier's appearance, and item names that reeked of cold pragmatism and had no aesthetic appeal whatsoever... The resemblance was way too strong!
Schrodinger's Loyalist cried out beside him:
"Holy crap! Genetic enhancements! Isn't that, you know... the Astartes route?"
"But they get nineteen surgeries and Gene-Seed. This looks like a simplified, junior version?"
Tax Brother grimaced at the simple pistol. "This thing... Give me a Lasgun!"
"I'd take even the worst Lucius Pattern! Black powder? What era is this? Oh, right, maybe the game's set in a post-apocalyptic world..."
Post-apocalyptic? Wasn't Warhammer 40k one giant apocalypse for the people of a Hive City?!
Wang Zhong screamed inwardly.
He abruptly closed the store interface, his expression shifting back and forth.
"Heretic!"
He roared at himself in his mind. "That thought is heretical! There's no Aquila!"
"No Ecclesiarchy prayers! No mention of any Primarch or Chaos!"
"The mechs are sci-fi, too! The devs must be making a reference! It's clever satire!"
"Or... Or maybe it's some kind of parallel-universe setting?"
"Right, a parallel universe! Like an alternate timeline where the Emperor went down the tech path instead of the psychic one?"
He did his best to convince himself.
But that suspicion, like Nurgle's blessing, had taken root the moment it occurred to him. It stubbornly dug in, impossible to remove.
He looked up at the dim workshop's exit, at the perpetually gray-yellow sky hidden beneath polluted clouds, then at the towering steel megastructures of the Hive City in the distance, rising like tombstones into the clouds.
A chill crept up his spine.
"I don't believe it... I don't believe it... I don't believe it..."
He murmured as if reciting a chant to ward off daemons.
"Until I see the Golden Giant with my own eyes, see Astartes, hear someone shout 'For the Emperor!' and face Chaos Daemons myself..."
Wang Zhong clenched his jaw. His gaze grew firm again, even tinged with a hint of obsession.
"I, Loyal to the Emperor Forever, absolutely refuse to say aloud that this terrifying possibility exists!"
"This is just a mech game that's a little hardcore, a little dark, and borrows some elements from Warhammer 40k!"
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