This is the bonus chapter for reaching 400 Powerstones.
--
"Cease fire! Cease fire!"
Zeke grabbed Tax Bro, who was still firing madly into the swirling blue light, roaring so loud his spit almost sprayed into the other man's helmet.
"Our garbage guns are useless against that thing! Do you think you're shooting Khornate Bloodletters? This is a Tzeentchian ritual! We need psychic powers or a fucking bigger gun!"
The barrel of Tax Bro's heavy stubber-turned-shotgun was practically glowing red. He panted heavily, his single eye locked onto the warehouse.
Rayne's group had completely deformed. Their bodies twisted and stretched like melting wax, constantly shifting geometric patterns surfacing on their skin, and their chanting had devolved into inhuman shrieks.
In the center of the blood-red pattern, space had torn open a rift. Through it, one could faintly see a bizarre, churning nightmare of countless eyes, books, and twisted clocks.
"Motherfuckers... Heretics!" Tax Bro spat. "We're just going to leave it alone?"
"Leave it? What the hell are we supposed to do about it?" Zeke pointed at the sky, then at the continuous chain of explosions and gunfire drawing ever closer from outside the factory zone.
"Hear that? The fight outside is way livelier than ours! The Aru Group aren't idiots; with a commotion this big, reinforcements are definitely on the way!"
He dragged Tax Bro backward while roaring in the squad channel: "Everyone! Fall back! Return to the looting... I mean, return to the primary resource recycling battlefield!"
"But Zeke," Schrödinger Bro held his lasgun, the crosshairs still trained on the center of the ritual. "We're just going to let them finish the summon? What if a Greater Daemon comes out..."
"If it comes out, it comes out!" Zeke had already turned and started sprinting, his voice echoing in the channel with a reckless exhilaration. "None of our fucking business! We are players! The Fourth Scourge!"
"Even if a Greater Daemon spawns, it has to follow the process! First comes the scripted wipe, then we wait for a version update to drop a strategy guide! Besides, what game puts the final boss in Chapter 1 of the beginner village? If the devs actually dared to do that, the players would flame their ancestors to ashes!"
The logic was bizarre, yet inexplicably convincing.
The players of the direct strike team exchanged glances, then uniformly holstered their weapons and bolted after Zeke toward the depths of the factory.
Over there, the noise of [Soul of Cadia]'s group dismantling equipment sounded like a heavy metal cutting convention.
Passing by the warehouse, Zeke cast one final glance.
Rayne was slowly turning his head. On a face completely devoid of facial features, countless tiny mouths split open simultaneously, emitting overlapping, mocking whispers:
"Knowledge... grants you choice... clever ants... Go forth... forage... in the feast of change..."
Fuck, that's creepy as hell.
Zeke's scalp tingled, and he ran even faster.
–
When they rushed back to the Promethium Smelter zone in the northwest corner, the sight before them made everyone gasp.
Not in fear, but in pure excitement.
That 80,000-coin Promethium Smelter was gone.
In its place was only a massive, smoking crater of a foundation, scattered with dozens of thick, violently severed pipes and power cables.
Meanwhile, [Soul of Cadia] was leading a group of people, dismantling a third massive ore crusher into parts like ants moving a colony, and shoving them into portable recycling terminals continuously operated by a dozen rotating players.
The numbers on the terminal screens ticked up wildly. Every crisp ding meant thousands of Imperial Coins hitting their accounts.
"Zeke! You're back!" [Soul of Cadia] wiped grease from his face, grinning like he'd just robbed a bank. "How did it go? What's the situation over there? The explosions are sounding closer and closer!"
"Forget about them, it's too complicated to explain right now." Zeke quickly scanned the battlefield. "What's the haul? Report numbers!"
"We're swimming in it!" [T'au-Kun, You're Right, But the Bolter is Righter] ran over from the east side, clutching a processor board just ripped from a control console.
"Conveyor control tower dismantled: 32,000! Raw material pre-processing assembly line on the west side: 45,000! Plus seven heavy transport vehicles, averaging 12,000 each! Current total recycling value is..."
He glanced at the synced data on his terminal, his voice cracking: "One million, two hundred seventy-eight thousand, four hundred Imperial Coins!!!"
The channel went dead silent for a second.
Then, it exploded.
"How much???"
"1.27 million???"
"I'm bad at math, don't mess with me!"
"Averaged out, that's over 200 coins per person?!"
"Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!"
"We're rich! We're fucking rich! We made an absolute killing! An absolute killing, brothers!"
The players' eyes were bloodshot—not from the killing intent of battle, but the manic red of beggars staring at a mountain of gold.
Zeke's heart was also pounding wildly, but he forced himself to stay calm, asking quickly: "How much have we dismantled? How much is left?"
[Fugitive Cogboy of the Mechanicus]'s voice crackled through the channel:
"According to the preset priority list, high-value targets are 78% dismantled and recycled. Remaining recyclable large-scale equipment includes: the central cooling tower core unit, Promethium Refinery Furnace No. 2, three medium conveyor drive engines, various scattered mid-sized equipment, and raw material inventory. Estimated value: 150,000 coins. If completely dismantled, the total value is projected to exceed 1.6 million Imperial Coins."
He paused, then added: "But we don't have enough time."
"Based on audio spectrum analysis of the external firefight, the attackers have breached the outer perimeter defenses. They are projected to enter this sector within fifteen minutes. And the Aru Group's reinforcements, calculated according to standard Hive City military response times, will arrive in one hour at the latest."
Zeke's mind raced.
1.6 million coins. Over 300 coins per person.
What could over 300 coins buy?
A proper Lucius-pattern lasgun in the store was only 80 coins. A basic set of flak armor was 50 coins. Basic Physique Enhancement was 100 coins...
In other words, as long as they could evacuate safely today, these five thousand players would instantly upgrade their arsenal, transforming from a ragtag miner guerrilla force into a fully fledged, properly equipped light infantry company!
"Accelerate!" Zeke gritted his teeth. "All squads! Forget about precision dismantling! If you can blow it up with explosives, blow it up! Recycle the fragments directly after the blast! It doesn't matter if the conversion rate is lower! We need speed!"
"Tech squad! Mark the structural weak points of the cooling tower and the refinery furnace! Plant the charges!"
"Squad 1, Squad 2! Head to the raw material warehouse! Carry whatever you can! If you can't carry it, pile it up and use the terminals to recycle it on the spot!"
"Go, go, go! Time is money!"
The players roared and sprang into action once more.
This time, all caution was thrown to the wind. It was total madness.
The demolition team charged toward the cooling tower foundation, lugging crude explosive charges bought from the System store. These things were absurdly cheap—15 coins for a massive pack with the yield of three frag grenades taped together.
Tech squad members lay on the ground, drawing X's on the metal plating with markers bought from the store.
"Here! Coolant pipe junction! Blow this, and the whole structure collapses!"
"And here! The main load-bearing pillar! Damn, is this pillar solid steel? The Aru Group actually didn't embezzle construction funds when they built this thing?"
"Stop talking! Plant the charges!"
"Three, two, one, get down!"
BOOM!!!
With a muffled roar louder than all the previous explosions combined, the upper half of the cooling tower slowly tilted and collapsed, sending a pillar of dust into the sky.
Before the dust had even settled, the players charged in, frantically sweeping their recycling terminals across the ruins.
[Recycling Complete: High-strength alloy structural components... Estimated Value: 43,000 Imperial Coins]
"Hell yes!!!"
Almost simultaneously, explosions echoed from multiple directions across the factory sector. The other player squads followed suit, initiating violent demolition.
And amidst this frenzied, constructive destruction, the outer defense line of the factory zone was finally, completely torn open.
–
At the same time, in Aru City, at the Ximans Trade Consortium Security Council.
"Useless! You're all useless!"
The bald Director's fist slammed into the reinforced alloy table for the third time. This time, the entire tabletop dented inwards, its edges warping upward.
The holographic projection screen in front of him was divided into a dozen smaller windows, displaying the real-time battle situations of various factory sectors across the Redblaze Wasteland.
Among them, Refinery No. 3—the one housing the players—showed the most chaotic feed. Internally, smoke and explosions were everywhere. Externally, a massive swarm of armed personnel in mismatched clothing, yet moving with considerable tactical discipline, were using the factory structures as cover to exchange fire with the remaining overseers and the Consortium's security forces.
"The Siclaeman Insurgency... the remnants of House Blaec that should have been exterminated eighty years ago!"
The red light in the bald Director's cybernetic eye practically overflowed. "Where is the Intelligence Officer?! Why did we not receive a single warning about a military mobilization of this scale?!"
At the control console, an operator answered with a trembling voice: "Director, sir..."
"The Chief Intelligence Officer of the Aru Group and his core subordinates transmitted their last signal seven days ago. We lost contact with them after that. We assumed he was just conducting a routine deep-cover reconnaissance..."
"Assumed? You assumed?!"
The bald Director snapped his head around, a glare so lethal it nearly made the operator collapse. "The Consortium allocates a three-million-credit budget to your Intelligence Department every year! Just to breed a bunch of useless trash who 'assume' things?!"