Warhammer Survival Guide

Chapter 47 Love Story

The seventh granary has two underground floors.

This place was originally a low-temperature cold storage room used to store perishable meats, and the walls were covered with white frost.

Luo Wei stood behind the one-way glass, holding a cold, low-quality synthetic coffee.

He didn't drink it.

I simply use the slight warmth transmitted from the cup wall to keep my fingers nimble.

His gaze pierced through the glass.

It landed in the middle of the interrogation room, on several torture chairs welded from industrial waste.

"This is what they call an 'asset inventory'," Lowe said to himself silently.

In his field of vision.

Instead of grotesque and terrifying aliens, there sat a pile of erroneous accounts waiting to be cleaned up.

Father Alpha was busy around one of the prisoners.

The mechanical tentacles behind the priest moved nimbly.

The ends are connected to various probes and cutters that flash red light.

For this mechanic who decided to embark on the path of heretical technology.

These creatures before my eyes.

It is no longer something that needs to be purified, a desecration.

On the contrary, they are valuable "samples" that have not yet been written into the database.

"Advisor, based on preliminary physiological structure analysis and testing, their gene sequences exhibit a highly unstable 'pieced-together' feel."

Father Alpha's voice came through a loudspeaker, carrying a slight electronic noise.

"It's like a poor programmer trying to forcibly stitch two completely conflicting pieces of code together."

"Human genes are the foundation, but another aggressive foreign gene is trying to forcefully rewrite this foundation."

Luo Wei put down his coffee cup, pressed the call button, and asked:

"What are the specific generational characteristics?"

"Clearly layered." Father Alpha held up a freshly cut tissue slice with one of his tentacles.

"The man who attempted to attack the widow looked almost identical to a human, except for his pale skin, lack of hair, and ovipositor hidden deep in his throat. These are highly evolved characteristics."

"And the other few..." The priest pointed to several monsters nearby that were still hissing.

"They retained more chitinous carapaces, their arms exhibited deformed, multi-jointed structures, they were intellectually disabled, and they were more like wild beasts."

Lo Wei nodded.

This confirmed his knowledge about the "gene stealer" race.

This is not a simple mutation.

This is an invasion mathematical model with a five-generation cycle.

Extremely precise.

Luo Wei pushed open the heavy lead door of the interrogation room and went inside.

He walked up to the monster with three arms and a purple carapace protruding from its back.

A typical third-generation mixed-race individual.

The monster's mouth was pried open by a metal gag, and it could only utter indistinct whimpers.

His eyes were large, with cloudy yellow pupils filled with fear.

"Open his mouth," Rowe commanded calmly.

Father Alpha operated the control panel, and the metal gag popped off.

"Hiss... For... the Star God..." the monster gasped, its voice hoarse, "You... will all die... the Star God will descend... all beings are equal..."

Lowe was not angered by such a cheap curse.

He pulled up a chair, sat down in front of the monster, and crossed his legs.

Elegant posture.

It's like listening to a subordinate's work report.

"Star God?"

Luo Wei chuckled softly.

This is the laugh of an auditor when they discover obvious logical flaws in the accounts.

"Are you referring to a master who treats you like a expendable commodity, making you hide in the gutter to eat rats, while they enjoy a feast of flesh and blood up there?"

A flicker of confusion and anger flashed in the monster's eyes.

"This is a trial! We are... pioneers! In the Empire... we are monsters... trash... but in the cult... we are all brothers and sisters... there is no discrimination... no hunger..."

"Because you are all food," Rowe interrupted him, his tone cold. "In the eyes of diners, the meat on the plate is indeed equal."

He stood up.

I'll ignore this brainwashed wretch.

This hybrid species at the bottom level is just a worker ant in a huge ant colony.

Their entire lives were spent struggling in the dark side of the empire, shunned by society because of their physical deformities.

For them, even a false sense of "warmth" and "belonging" offered by the Genestealer Cult is enough to make them give their lives for it.

This is the tragedy of an empire.

This is also the most ironic reality of this galaxy:

The most loyal believers often turn to chaos;

Those at the bottom, who most yearned for salvation, became the vanguard of the destroyers.

Loewe walked up to the "fourth generation" hybrid.

This prisoner looks much better.

Aside from his bald head and slightly pale skin, he looked like any other malnourished middle-level clerk you'd see anywhere.

At this moment, his limbs were already locked in specially made alloy shackles.

The oviduct in the throat was also removed.

Lowe pulled an evidence bag from his pocket.

Inside was a bloodstained diary.

The cover was made of cheap synthetic leather and had a poorly drawn heart on it.

"This was found in your underwear." Lowe shook the bag. "The handwriting is quite good, neater than most of my clerks."

This fourth-generation mixed-race man remained silent, his eyes filled with malice.

The moment he saw the diary, his body trembled violently.

"Give it back to me..."

He forced the sound out from deep in his throat.

Lowe ignored his request.

He slowly put on white gloves and opened the worn-out diary.

"...Today's ration of corpse starch contained too much sand, and Mary got an upset stomach."

"I gave her my portion of filtered water. She laughed and called me a fool. At that moment, I felt as if a crack had appeared in the perpetually gray sky of the city, letting in a ray of light."

Luo Wei's tone was calm and even.

"...That voice echoed in my mind again. It screamed, it roared, urging me to give her that kiss, urging me to plant the sacred seed in her body. It said it was a blessing, an eternal union."

Lo Wei turned the page.

My gaze lingered for a moment on a passage of illegible handwriting that almost tore through the paper.

"...I was losing control. When she was sleeping next to me, her neck right next to my mouth, the desire was burning through my reason. So I went to the repair shop and used a soldering iron to burn the inside of my thigh."

"It hurts, it hurts so much. But the pain keeps me awake. As long as I can feel pain, I am still her husband, not that monster's slave."

Luo Wei closed his diary.

They didn't throw it away like trash.

Instead, he gently placed it on the iron table.

He raised his head, his dark eyes scrutinizing the man before him for the first time with a serious look at his distorted face.

"Alpha told me that they found twelve deep burn scars on your inner thigh."

"And your gastric juice test report showed that it contained an excessive amount of industrial sedative, enough to be fatal. That was the drug you used to fight the call of the 'Hive Will'."

The fourth-generation hybrid's ferocious expression froze.

He was trembling all over.

Like a mollusk stripped of its outer shell, revealing its most vulnerable core.

"Relying on your meager human will, you waged a doomed tug-of-war between 'genetic instinct' and 'acquired emotions.' For three whole years."

Lowe did not mock him.

On the contrary, it was a very objective evaluation.

"As a living being, your willpower is astonishing. You didn't hesitate to torture yourself to the point of being completely broken in order to prevent your wife from becoming a breeding ground for procreation."

"This isn't a pretense." The fourth-generation half-blood lowered his head, his voice filled with a heartbreaking despair. "I truly... love her."

"That voice told me that as long as we assimilate her, we can stay together forever inside the Star Goddess's belly..."

"But I don't want her to become a monster. I just want her to be Mary, the Mary who would smile at me over half a bottle of filtered water..."

Two streams of murky tears slid down his hairless, pale cheeks.

"Please... don't let her see me like this."

"Tell her I died in a factory accident, and I died cleanly... Please..."

This humble plea plunged the interrogation room into a brief silence.

Even Father Alpha, who was adjusting the instruments nearby, showed a slight pause in the movement of his mechanical tentacles.

However, Lowe remained silent for only two seconds.

Then, he turned around, his back to the weeping man, and said:

"I regret to inform you that although your soul belongs to a human, your genes belong to an alien."

"In the general ledger of biology, there is never a subject called 'love,' only 'reproduction' and 'survival.'"

"Your love may be real, but it's too fragile."

"If that so-called 'Star God' were to send out even a slightly stronger psionic energy wave, your sanity would instantly collapse."

"At that time, all your love for her will be transformed into the most efficient predation and infection."

"This is a dead end at the genetic level, with no solution."

"Shut up, what do you know!" The fourth-generation hybrid finally lost control of his emotions. He roared, tears streaming down his face. "All you know is exploitation, turning people into machine servants. At least we... we have love between us!"

"like?"

Luo Wei shook his head.

"In the biological ledger, that's not love; that's a disguise for an 'efficient reproductive strategy.'"

"You evolved human emotions only to better lie in wait and better assimilate."

Lo Wei raised his hand.

He made a cutting gesture.

The last trace of emotion in his voice vanished.

"Alpha, remove his vocal cords."

"His noise interfered with my thinking."

"Yes, sir."

With a faint hum from the laser cutter.

The roar behind him abruptly stopped, leaving only heavy breathing.

Compared to the cruel methods used by the courts to treat mixed-race individuals.

It's already quite merciful of Rowe to let them live until now.

He walked to the corner of the interrogation room.

There is a tactical whiteboard there.

He picked up a marker and drew a pyramid on it.

"Generation I, infected."

"Second generation, deformed hybrid."

"The third generation, that is, the multi-armed monster from earlier."

"The fourth generation, almost perfect human imposters, like this 'ladies'."

Lo Wei's pen tip touched the top of the pyramid heavily.

"So, what about the fifth generation?"

This is a perfect biological cycle.

Gene stealers are like a meticulously designed "Trojan horse" implanted into the human empire.

They start with a tiny infection.

Through generations of breeding, genes are continuously optimized until a perfect "purebred" animal is born:

The fifth generation of gene stealers.

These fifth-generation purebreds will send signals through the psionic network to the Tyranid fleet deep within the universe:

There is food here.

The defenses here are weak.

Come and have your meal!

"Advisor, what did you find on that fourth-generation specimen?" Father Alpha asked, wiping the bodily fluids off his scalpel.

"The smell," Rowe replied casually. "Besides the stench of the sewers, his cuffs also had a scent similar to vanilla, mixed with aged amasec."

"What is this?"

"The 'St. George' brand of premium incense is used only by the nobles of the upper echelons of the city. It is used to mask the decaying odor that comes from their long-term inbreeding."

Luo Wei's eyes sharpened, and he voiced his judgment.

"A half-breed hiding in the sewers couldn't possibly smell like that. Unless... he's in frequent contact with someone in a high position."

"Or rather, his 'upstream' person originally lived in the upper-level area."

Lowe wrote a few words on the whiteboard:

【penetration】

[Center of Power]

【spy】

If even in a marginal area like the Seventh Granary, four generations of hybrids have appeared.

So, according to this damned breeding pyramid model...

The core area of ​​the Nest City of Abundance II, which is the Spire where the Governor's Mansion is located.

There are definitely higher-ranking commanders lurking in the shadows.

It could even be a gene-stealing "patriarch".

He might be a department head.

Perhaps he was the illegitimate son of a nobleman.

It could also be a deacon of the state religion.

They wear human skin and sit on the throne of power.

While enjoying the empire's stipend, they secretly opened the gates for the Zerg swarm.

This explains why the planet's defense system is so vulnerable.

Why did the plague of Nurgle spread so quickly?

Because someone is deliberately paralyzing the immune system!

"It's absolutely rotten."

Luo Wei angrily threw down the marker in his hand.