The burly man stood where he was, waiting for orders.
Lawson let out a long breath of stale air.
"You'll be called Two... no, forget it."
"You're Number One."
Lawson gestured to the surroundings.
"Scout this deck. Feed every piece of scrap metal you find into the system, and search for any usable weapons while you're at it. Kill any lone greenskins you run into. If you see a large group, go around them. Don't be reckless."
Number One raised his hand again and gave a crisp military salute.
"Loyalty!"
Then he vanished into the shadows of the side passage.
Only then did Lawson finally have the chance to focus on the translucent system interface before him.
[Host: Lawson]
[Deathsworn Count: 1 / 10000]
[Life Point Reserve: 20]
[Adamant Steel Reserve: 0.2 / ∞]
Below that was a newly unlocked block of explanatory text. Lawson read through it slowly.
[Note: Due to the host's current power level and soul-bearing limit, the maximum total number of Deathsworn is currently capped at 10,000.]
Deathsworn may be deployed within a designated area centered on the host within a radius of 50 meters, or dropped at any distance using an existing Deathsworn as an anchor point. However, at the current power level, any drop beyond 100 kilometers is limited to no more than 100 units at a time.
[Supplementary Resource Acquisition Rules: When Deathsworn independently kill xenos targets in combat, they may also generate Life Points for the host. However, due to warp fluctuations and the host's current psychic-link strength, this benefit is subject to strict distance limitations. Current zero-loss collection radius: 100 kilometers centered on the host. Beyond 100 kilometers, Life Point gains will suffer severe attenuation based on distance. The farther away the target, the greater the loss.]
Three additional functional panels had also been unlocked:
[Shared Awareness]: Instantly acquire the full sensory input of all Deathsworn under your command. What they see, you see. What they think, you know.
[Consciousness Override]: At any time, project your consciousness into and take control of any Deathsworn body, gaining its full senses and direct control over all actions.
[Skill Sharing]: Freely share and assign specialized skills to any Deathsworn without limitation.
Lawson stared at those three lines in silence for a while.
He was no stranger to these abilities. He had used them for a long time before.
Shared Awareness meant a sensor network spread across the entire battlefield. As long as Deathsworn were present, intelligence was present. No more blind spots.
Consciousness Override meant he could shove his own mind directly into the shell of a killing machine at any moment and take the field personally without personally getting himself killed.
And Skill Sharing...
That meant if one of his Deathsworn learned how to drive a tank, operate an orbital cannon, or repair the primary engine of an Imperial Retribution-class battleship, he could instantly synchronize that skill to every single Deathsworn under his command and give them the same level of mastery.
Lawson thought, The best combat academies of the Imperium need twelve years to train a skilled artisan. All I need to do is push the skill out once I learn it.
But then he realized there was another problem, and it made his brow furrow.
Power.
The system page kept repeating the same word: the host's power level.
The stronger he became, the farther he could airdrop units, the more Deathsworn he could deploy at a time, and the wider the radius from which he could harvest Life Points.
This was a leverage system built around his own individual strength.
But in the hellhole that was Warhammer 40,000, the paths available to an ordinary human seeking power were so narrow they bordered on despair.
He was a Catachan Jungle Fighter, which already placed him near the peak among mortals. But mortal was still mortal. One stray round, one bolt shell, and he could still be blown into a cloud of blood.
Above mortals stood the Adeptus Astartes.
Above them, the Adeptus Custodes.
Above them, the Primarchs.
Above them all, the Emperor Himself.
Each step upward was not a simple increase in strength, but a leap across orders of magnitude. The gulf between him and beings like that was not something he could bridge just by killing more greenskins.
He could either accept mechanical augmentation with its absurdly low chance of success...
Or embrace the warp and become some Chaos-mutated monstrosity with eight tentacles and three heads.
One path would most likely kill him.
The other was worse than death.
Lawson felt his teeth ache a little.
He still did not have the faintest clue how he was supposed to grow stronger.
"Want me to keep increasing my power..."
He curled his lip. Was he, a Catachan who already had to rely on freakish muscle just to brute-force the recoil of a boltgun, somehow supposed to keep killing greenskins until he surpassed a Primarch? Surpassed the Emperor? March up to the Golden Throne, kick that ten-thousand-year-old dried corpse off it, and sit down himself?
What a joke.
Even Khorne would probably hear that thought and decide he was insane.
"Forget it."
Lawson shook his head and forced those absurdly distant thoughts out of his mind.
For now, a ten-thousand-man cap meant nothing.
At present, he did not even have the resources to make ten men, let alone worry about bottlenecks after ten thousand. That was nothing but pointless anxiety.
"My first priority right now is surviving inside this damned iron coffin."
In the next instant, his perspective shifted.
It was like another screen had been cut open inside his mind.
He was seeing through Number One's eyes.
Number One was moving rapidly through the chambers ahead, busy at work like a tireless resource-harvesting machine.
Lawson watched as Number One strode up to a heavy blast door that had already been half-melted by plasma fire.
The door had to weigh at least half a ton.
Number One gripped the edges of the breach with both hands, and the muscles across his body swelled instantly. The moment the door tore free from its frame and was lifted in both hands, a system notification immediately appeared on Lawson's panel:
[Absorbed large-mass scrap metal. Refinement complete.]
[Adamant Steel Reserve: +0.3 cubic meters.]
"Nicely done," Lawson praised inwardly.
In just over ten minutes, Number One had already bulldozed his way through three abandoned maintenance bays.
He tore down rusted drive shafts, discarded armor plating, and heavy fragments of reactor casing.
The adamant steel figure on Lawson's panel began rising rapidly.
Very soon, it was already closing in on 2 cubic meters.