Gerhard had placed all the resources he had managed to salvage into his inventory. The Inventory Window was a voice command that opened a window showing all the items he had obtained and stored, including the clothes he wore and the weapons he had equipped. This could be seen as a dimensional magic ability.
He could equip equipment directly from his inventory to his body, which will surely come in handy in the future. It will be of great help in fights as he could change equipment instantly once they were either damaged or he wished to simply change armours for some reason.
The plans formed in his mind.
First food and water. These two were the absolute must-haves, and while he had enough Corpse Starch to last a few days, the new Gerhard was not going to be content with eating that. Not when he had struck absolute gold with the seeds.
The next step, which was also partially part of the first one, was equipment. He was in the Warhammer universe, and having equipment was equal to survival. The poor died. It was as simple as that. But to fix his equipment and create new ones, he had to develop the relevant skills, and that would take a bit of time, research, and, most importantly... grinding. Grinding was the ultimate weapon of a Gamer, one that would defeat any opponent if he was given enough time. It was like preparation for Batman.
Then came skills. Naturally, skills played a role in every part of Gerhard's plan. It was the skills he created and absolutely needed that would either allow him to rise and thrive, or not, and he died too soon. And for that, he will need training, which again means grinding. But not yet. For now, he needed a place, a space where he could stay and start this new 'game'.
And eventually... War. Or rather Waaagh... Because one day, he will fight the Orks. Not just survive them and their occupation of the planet and the Hive City, but actively destroy them completely.
Gerhard exhaled slowly.
"Alright then. Let's start the game."
Gerhard crouched beside the rusted bulkhead door of the maintenance chamber and slowly pushed it open by a few centimetres. The hinges groaned faintly, a dry metallic sound that echoed far too loudly in the silent corridor beyond. He froze.
Silence. No heavy boots and Ork steps could be heard, no roaring voices and no crude Ork laughter.
Good. Slowly, he pushed the door open fully, slipped through the door and stepped into the corridor. The hive city stretched around him like the interior of a titanic metallic corpse.
A hive city, or simply a hive, is a massive arcology, or fully self-contained city, that is home to millions or even billions of human beings loyal to the Imperium of Man. Hive cities were often found in clusters on the densely populated urban planets known in the official Imperial lexicon as Hive Worlds.
Hive cities had been built up over thousands of Terran years, in many cases stretching back into the Age of Technology long before the founding of the Imperium. They are layered constructions of rockcrete and adamantium, comprising thousands of residential and industrial blocks leveraged one atop the other, forming a massive, man-made mountain usually capped by a crown of great spires that stretch thousands of metres into the sky.
In general, the higher one goes in a hive city, the wealthier and more powerful the residents become, until one reaches the hive's spires, where the city's nobility live, work, and play.
Conversely, the lowest levels of the hive, down below in the great tunnels that catacomb a hive's foundations, even below the industrial and forge levels, lie the Underhive, a massive slum inhabited by violent gangs and vicious mutants who have never seen the light of their world's sun.
Gerhard had known this intellectually before and had even lived here for years, but seeing it now, with the hive half dead, made the scale horrifying.
The corridor he stepped into was wide enough for cargo hauliers to pass through. Thick pipes ran along the walls like arteries. Many had burst and bent during the fighting, dripping foul-smelling fluids that pooled on the floor. Old light posts flickered overhead, casting uneven light that turned everything into a shifting maze of shadows.
Above him rose levels upon levels of structures. Hab blocks, manufactorum halls, conveyor tunnels, ventilation shafts, all layered together like a gigantic honeycomb of toxic fumes and metal. Unlike what everyone usually wanted in the Hive Cities, which was to rise and move to higher levels, Gerhard walked down.
He was heading towards the Lower Hive and even deeper than that.
The Lower Hive was the layer of the Hive City that lay just above the Underhive. It was comprised of the city's industrial sectors and working-class residential housing. The people of this level made up the majority of any hive city's population and were responsible for maintaining and operating the hive's manufactoria and generatorium power plants to keep the rest of the hive fed, clothed and productive.
Even though the Lower Hive was home to the massive fusion plasma generators that provided the entire hive city's power production, the people of the Lower Hive had to pay a premium for every watt of power they consumed. This meant that very few people in the Lower Hive could afford any luxuries.
In general, the people of the Lower Hive did their work, raised their families as best they could, sought to keep clear of the political machinations of the upper classes, maintained a deep if simple faith in the Emperor and the Imperial Cult and above all were grateful that they did not live in the Underhive.
Gerhard knew this feeling, this thankfulness of not having to live in the Underhive and even as a reincarnator, he could appreciate that. But now, faced with the dangers of the Ork infestation, that was exactly Gerhard's destination.
Most of the power was gone. The vast manufactories that once produced weapons, machinery, and countless industrial goods had fallen silent. Entire sectors had been abandoned long ago when the war pushed deeper into the hive.
Gerhard moved quietly through the corridors. His boots made almost no sound on the grated metal floor. The Gamer ability might not have given him a stealth skill yet, but he still knew how to move quietly, after all his father had taught him.
Never run in the hive, for you will look suspicious to the Arbites, never shout unnecessarily and never be where people expect you to be. Keep your head down, do your work, and go home to your family. That was all. And now, those lessons kept him alive. He reached an intersection where the corridor opened into a massive industrial hall.
Gerhard carefully peeked around the corner. The hall was enormous. Spacious enough to host large buildings and, if necessary, mechanical constructs. At some point in the past, it had been a cargo transfer station, large enough to move entire trains of industrial freight. Now the rails were twisted and broken. Huge cranes hung motionless from the ceiling like skeletal arms.
And in the centre of it all... roamed Orks.
Massive green boyz, a bit over 7 feet tall, stomped around the hall, carrying things around that the higher boyz or nobs asked of them. Their crude armour was made from scrap metal plates bolted together, which, for some reason, worked as intended. One of them was hammering something with a massive wrench, another was shouting crude instructions in the brutish Ork tongue, while another was welding a large wheel to a car of some sort.
Gerhard didn't need to hear the words. He knew what they were doing.
Building.
That was the terrifying thing about Orks: they didn't just invade. They spread, like the spores of the fungi they originated from, infesting everything that didn't burn them away. Once Orks settled somewhere, they began constructing ramshackle workshops and weapon foundries almost immediately, using whatever scrap they could find, stripping almost everything bare. Given enough time, the hive would become a massive Greenskin fortress, from where they would launch campaigns or fight amongst each other.
And once the spores took root... the infestation would never end.
Gerhard slowly leaned back behind the wall.
'Right… definitely not fighting that,' he thought.
Even with the Gamer ability, he was still level one, with nothing to show for himself. Level one against six Orks was suicide; hell, against a single one, it was suicide without weapons. So, unlike some protagonists, Gerhard was smart; he quietly backed away and took a different route.
The further he moved downward, the worse the hive became. Not in terms of Ork presence, but the overall situation of the Hive City. The corridors narrowed; in some areas, the lights disappeared entirely. The air grew thicker with toxic dust and the smell of death and decay. It was filthy, utterly so.
This was the border between the Lower Hive and the Underhive. Few sane people willingly came here, and even fewer ever left it again.
The Underhive was the region of a hive city where the poorest of the poor and those citizens of the hive city who had been exiled for committing crimes or for political reasons lived. In the Underhive, there was no law save for that created by the gangs that ruled this dark ghetto. It was a difficult place to live, where power was long since cut off by the hive city's authorities, and the only rule was that might makes right.
All manner of crimes and atrocities went unpunished every solar day in the seething, violent anarchy of the Underhive. Working technology was the only real currency that mattered in the Underhive and the recovery of the right equipment could transform a lowly ganger into the ruler of all they knew... until they were displaced by someone bigger, stronger, smarter or just possessed a working lascannon.
The people of the Underhive ruled through fear and shunned those, rich and working-class alike, who lived above them in the better levels of the hive. Now, though, there were most likely not many gangs left, and if there were, they had hidden themselves deep underground and were even more trigger-happy than before.
.
Gerhard reached a vertical service shaft and climbed down a rusted maintenance ladder.
Thirty meters.
Fifty meters.
One hundred meters.
The deeper he went, the darker it became. Light was a luxury few truly appreciated as much as they should. When his boots finally touched the floor again, the environment had changed completely.
The corridor here wasn't a corridor anymore. It was more akin to a tunnel carved through mountains of scrap and collapsed architecture. This was the Underhive proper.
Gerhard slowly walked forward, his eyes scanning everything. The space suddenly opened into a vast dome that looked like an entirely new but destroyed city in the darkest night. Yet, even in darkness, the scale was staggering.
The dome stretched for hundreds of meters. But the word dome barely did it justice.
Gerhard slowly stepped forward as the vast city opened around him, his boots crunching over layers of rust flakes and powdered debris and what could easily be the remains of corpses and bones. The ceiling arched so high above him that it disappeared into darkness, a colossal metal shell supported by ribs of ancient plasteel beams thicker than transport vehicles.
This was only one dome. Entire districts existed within single domes like this one.
Gerhard tilted his head upward, squinting as hard as he could, using what little light there was to find his way around. In a sense, he wasn't really looking for anything specific, only a place to stay for the moment and build his strength and headquarters.
The ground beneath his feet was uneven and treacherous. Broken hab structures leaned at impossible angles, entire apartment blocks had fallen sideways and fused together with factory walls, forming chaotic piles of architecture. Dust floated constantly through the air, thick with toxic particles and chemical residue that had accumulated over centuries.
Every breath tasted metallic, and every movement stirred clouds of filth. This part of the underhive was a graveyard of industry.
Between the collapsed structures lay open spaces where the dome had once been organised into what might have been called districts by the gangs. All of it connected by a maze of tunnels. Those tunnels stretched out like arteries into other domes, forming the labyrinth that made up the Underhive.
In the past, which was not even that long ago, maybe a week by now, those passages had been battlegrounds for gangs fighting bloody wars over resources and territory. Scouts who could navigate them were some of the most valuable members of any group. Now, though, who knew what was happening down here?
Gerhard slowly turned in place.
The dome had multiple tunnel entrances. Some were partially collapsed, others disappeared into complete darkness. Many of them were probably flooded, blocked, or filled with unknown horrors. Large parts of the Underhive were still unexplored simply because nobody had survived long enough to map them, and those mutants that did, didn't bother about maps.
Gerhard dared to venture into one such narrow path.