Reality wasn't a game. You couldn't click on a barracks and, before your butt had even hit the seat, have an endless stream of fifty-credit bros pop up beside you. That kind of utterly counterintuitive, fantastical scene simply didn't happen.
If he really had that kind of power, Hogg wouldn't have come up with this crooked scheme that would cost him eight hundred to deal a thousand in damage. Who wouldn't want to live off the system, shout "Deep Blue, add some points!" and become invincible from then on, before finally saying, "It was all thanks to my perseverance and hard work"?
Then again, in this godforsaken place, maybe the system couldn't be trusted either. For all he knew, it was blue—and just when he thought himself invincible, a blue, soft-bodied creature would be writhing and crawling in the shadows behind him.
By now, Hogg had laid out the entire plan for the "Rite of Passage" operation. Not only did his bros know about it, but even the Chaos Gods knew. After all, Hogg hadn't intended to keep it from them.
But a plan was one thing; figuring out how to carry it out was another. No one knew what Hogg would become once he went mad—not even Hogg himself.
Thanks to the military STC module he had traded for from Sera, the Imperium had gained a more convenient and efficient planetary-environment modification device. Even the Lunar base, whose environment had once been utterly hostile, was starting to look a little more human.
Beneath the base's dome, a grove of lemon trees planted by the Imperial Fists was thriving, bearing enormous, square, black lemons. Just looking at them made Hogg's mouth go numb. He turned and shouted toward the back:
"Have you made up your minds yet? What's the best