Goal = 450 Powerstones.
--
Every eye around the conference table instantly locked onto him.
"To us, the abandoned instruments and equipment themselves aren't actually that important," Schrödinger Bro said unhurriedly. At that exact moment, a striking notification suddenly popped up on Zeke's system interface:
[System Notification: Schrödinger's Loyalist, Chapter Master of the Crimson Spirit, has initiated a transfer of 1,800,000 Imperial Coins to your Chapter's fund account, Crimson Dawn]
Zeke's eyes went wide. He stared blankly at the figure, his brain completely stalling for a second.
One point eight million?!
"Schrödinger, where... where the hell did you get so many Imperial Coins?!" Zeke's voice was laced with pure disbelief.
Only then did Schrödinger Bro let out a chuckle. Beside him, Cogboy, Tax Bro, and White Scars also cracked grins.
"Because we took that entire empty outpost base," Schrödinger Bro said, emphasizing every single word, "and recycled it completely. Even though that outpost looked like a worthless pile of rusted metal frames and crumbling walls on the surface, its main structure was actually built from a unique alloy native to Aurelian IV, heavily enriched with promethium. Eighty years of weathering meant severe surface corrosion and massive energy depletion, but it had one massive saving grace—sheer volume. Once I realized that, I immediately told the remaining players in the Chapter to buy the cheapest heavy-duty cutting and dismantling tools from the system shop. We didn't bother looking for hidden treasures. We just treated that massive outpost like a set of building blocks, slicing it into giant chunks from the roof right down to the foundation, and then..." He made a quick gesture with his hand. "...we sold the whole thing to the system shop. One point eight million was the recycling price the system offered."
Hearing this, Zeke was a mix of shock and pure joy. He slapped Schrödinger Bro hard on the shoulder. "Schrödinger, you're a genius! Absolutely brilliant!" He gave him a massive thumbs-up.
With this massive windfall, the base's immediate financial crisis was mostly resolved, meaning many stalled projects could finally be restarted.
"But.. have the players who took part in the operation gotten their shares yet?" Amidst his excitement, Zeke didn't forget this crucial detail.
Schrödinger Bro shook his head, his smile fading slightly. "Before you got back, we originally planned to split this evenly among everyone who helped. But after seeing you bring back so many local refugees, and hearing Blood Angel recount everything you did on the way, well..." He glanced over at White Scars.
White Scars took a deep breath and picked up the thread. His voice was lower now, heavy with a suppressed weight. "Chapter Master, there are some things... I need to report in detail."
For the next ten minutes, White Scars used a dry, raspy voice to describe everything he had witnessed in Red Town. It wasn't a generalized overview like before, but raw, specific details and bloody, horrific realities.
There was a man who sold his wife and daughter to a casino for a measly five hundred Aurelian Coins in gambling chips. When the casino turned around and sold the mother and daughter to a passing band of bandits, the woman's weeping pleas were delivered in a local Aurelian dialect, featuring perfect grammar and precise word choices. It possessed a level of sound, internal logic that no simple NPC script could ever replicate.
As White Scars spoke, his eyes welled up with redness. "The screams of that mother and daughter are still ringing in my ears... Meanwhile, her husband was sitting at the gambling table, completely indifferent, throwing down those pathetic chips. Five hundred Aurelian Coins... Heh, I looked into the local prices. Five hundred coins can only buy five tubes of nutrient paste. Yet, the price paid was two human lives completely extinguished... This is something I couldn't even fathom back in the real world," he choked out.
The newly appointed officers and Zeke were visibly shaken upon hearing this.
"And there's a shop inside the town where they openly carry corpses in to sell for cash," White Scars added.
"Heh, what could they possibly use dead bodies for that makes them worth money?" someone scoffed.
"What else do you think they use them for in Warhammer?" White Scars replied darkly. "If the other players hadn't held me back at the time, I swear I would've pulled a gun straight out of my inventory and executed those bastards right then and there..."
Even though Cogboy, Tax Bro, and Schrödinger Bro had already heard about it, their fists still clenched white-knuckled at the retelling.
On a street corner, a few militia soldiers were beating an elderly scavenger half to death just because the old man had picked up a cigarette butt they threw away. The old man's ribs were shattered, and the blood he coughed up had tiny parasites wriggling inside—a textbook symptom of drinking heavily contaminated water over a long period.
In a corner of the shantytown, several children huddled together in the freezing wind. The youngest looked barely five years old, his belly horrifically bloated—not from a full meal, but from severe malnutrition edema. The child's eyes were massive, protruding starkly against his emaciated face, his gaze as hollow and empty as a pair of dried-up wells.
"...When we left, we found that man's corpse in a scrap heap about three kilometers outside of town," White Scars' voice began to tremble. "He was stripped completely naked and tossed aside. There were seventeen stab wounds on his body—I counted them myself. His fingers were still deathly locked around two unspent gambling chips."
He looked up, his eyes bloodshot. "We inspected the body. He hadn't been dead for more than six hours, meaning he died barely four hours after selling off his wife and daughter. Judging by the footprints and tracks left at the scene, the killers were none other than that exact same casino gang. A degenerate gambler who destroyed his own family certainly deserved to die, but the behavioral logic behind the entire event exposes a chilling reality."
White Scars' knuckles popped loudly as he squeezed his fists. "Chapter Master, what kind of game designs a storyline this complete? What kind of game goes out of its way to arrange for an NPC to be murdered and dumped like trash after they've already served their purpose of moving the plot forward? This isn't fucking game logic. This is too real. It's so real that it feels exactly like an actual, living world."
A deathly silence enveloped the hall. The faint, buzzing hum of the battery-powered lanterns sounded exceptionally piercing in the quiet.
Schrödinger Bro spoke up slowly, his voice terrifyingly crisp amid the stillness. "And this isn't an isolated incident. Aurelian IV has a total population of roughly twenty-three billion. It falls short of the minimum fifty-billion threshold required for a standard Hive World, so it can best be classified as a semi-Hive World or a mining-hive hybrid planet. Since most of its surface consists of desolate wastelands and extensive mining pits, it is highly likely a frontier mining planet. Over eighteen point five billion of those people live crammed inside hives. The largest hive, the City of the Holy Anthem, holds five billion citizens, while even the smallest secondary hives house tens of millions. There are countless small towns scattered across the planet's barrens. Despite the hostile conditions of the surface wasteland capping their average lifespan at under thirty years, they still manage to stubbornly survive, accounting for a population of over a billion. Furthermore, this Redblaze Wasteland we currently occupy falls under the jurisdiction of the Aru City Hive Zone, controlled entirely by the Aru Group. The total population of this hive zone alone is five hundred and fifty million."
Schrödinger Bro raised his eyes, sweeping his gaze across every face at the table. "Out of all these people, how many are enduring the exact same nightmare as Red Town right now? How many fathers are selling off their children? How many kids are starving to death? How many elderly folks are being thrown onto scrap heaps to die?" He paused briefly, looking directly at Zeke. "Zeke." Schrödinger Bro called him by his real name.
Zeke's body stiffened slightly.
"We've known each other in the Terra Underground Cyber Tavern group for over five years now," Schrödinger Bro said calmly, though his words carried an immense, crushing weight. "Even though we've never met in real life, the amount of time we've spent staying up late on voice chat playing games, shooting the breeze, and shooting the shit adds up to more time than you spent dating your ex-girlfriend. I know exactly what kind of guy you are at your core. You're an idealist. You have that inner fire that absolutely refuses to stand by when you see injustice. It's just that the real world was too stable, too safe, and too mundane, so that fire got buried and ground down by routine." He tapped his finger against the rough stone tabletop, then pointed out the window toward the pitch-black wasteland. "But here—in this dark universe—that fire of yours is exactly what's needed. We admit that we don't have that kind of capacity ourselves; we aren't invested enough, and we lack that kind of absolute resolve. But all of us want you to lead the charge! This isn't just a game, Zeke. Even if it were just a game, since we've already ended up here, we might as well try to change it for the better, don't you think? You don't need to worry about your real-life finances either; you can go ahead and quit your shitty day job tomorrow. My family just went through a massive property redevelopment back home, and we were compensated with over a dozen apartments. I also happen to hold a tiny, teeny-tiny percentage of shares in a certain corporation. I can easily sponsor you to eat steaks every single day!"
Zeke fell silent. He recalled his conversation with Blood Angel amidst the freezing wasteland wind. He recalled the warping of the air when Helovia Elnor awakened, the frostbitten hands of the laborers, and the severely bloated bellies of the starving children. He recalled the sheer despair in the eyes of that mother and daughter from White Scars' description. At this moment, numerous fragmented memories began to assemble themselves in his mind: the dissection tables in the industrial district's underground shelter, and Rayne's eyes transforming into eerie blue flames during the chaotic ritual. Every piece of this puzzle was too complete, too... real. It was real enough to make it hard to breathe.
Zeke exhaled slowly, his breath condensing into a pale white mist in the freezing hall. He lifted his head, his gaze once again sharp and focused. "I understand." He looked around at his companions seated at the table. "What do you want to do?"
Schrödinger Bro, Tax Bro, Cogboy, and White Scars traded glances. It was a look of absolute unspoken understanding—a plan they had already hammered out beforehand. Finally, Schrödinger Bro spoke up, delivering a proposition that sounded rather peculiar: "Transfer that 1.8 million Imperial Coins from the Chapter's public fund into your own personal account."
Zeke frowned. "Transfer it to me? Why?"
"Just transfer it, and you'll see."
Zeke looked at his old crew—the buddies he had spent five years shooting the breeze with in the online chat group, and a full month fighting alongside in this hellhole. He didn't press further. Trust required no explanation. Bringing up his system interface, he tapped through a few menus.
The entire treasury of Crimson Dawn—the remaining ninety-thousand-odd coins plus the one point eight million just sent by Schrödinger Bro, totaling 1,892,370 Imperial Coins—was completely transferred over to his personal account.
[Transfer Complete]
[Player Eternally Loyal to the Emperor — Personal Balance: 1,892,370 Imperial Coins]
The very moment the digits locked into place and his balance surged past the one-million mark, a crisp chime resounded inside his mind.
[Ding!]
[System Notification: It has been detected that Player Eternally Loyal to the Emperor's personal holdings of Imperial Coins have exceeded 1,000,000 units]
[Basic Shop Upgrade Triggered]
[Would you like to upgrade immediately?]
Zeke snapped his head up, locking eyes with Schrödinger Bro, who gave him an encouraging nod.
Taking a deep breath, Zeke commanded in a low voice, "Upgrade."
[Command Confirmed]
[Upgrading Basic Shop...]
[Upgrade Complete]
[The Basic Supply Shop has been upgraded to the Advanced Genetic Technology Shop]
Zeke instantly reopened the shop menu. A far more intricate layout had replaced the old broad categories. A dazzling array of new items flooded his vision: high-tier personal weaponry, advanced armor sets, and heavy vehicle components.
However, his gaze was instantly and unyieldingly locked onto a single option prominently showcased at the very top of the screen, enclosed in a dull gold frame and radiating a faint, mystical glow. The option was straightforward, containing only a handful of words. Yet, it was precisely those words that caused Zeke's breath to hitch in his throat.
[Gene-Seed Selection]
[Price: 1,000,000 Imperial Coins]
[Note: This option only provides the selection of a Legion's Gene-Seed and does not include subsequent implantation surgeries. Acquisition unlocks deep augmentation trees and corresponding future redemptions for the chosen pathway.]
"Gene... Seed..."
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