The central plaza of Red Town.
This patch of compacted earth was now packed to the brim with people.
Over two thousand one hundred residents had been herded here. They were dressed in rags, their faces sallow and bodies emaciated.
Every single pair of eyes was filled with terror—the most primal, instinctive fear of violence that belonged to those struggling to survive at the very bottom of the Warhammer universe.
On the north side of the plaza knelt a dense mass of people.
Two hundred and thirty-seven gang members, their hands tied behind their backs, forced to kneel in ten rows.
Some still had fresh wounds on their faces, blood scabs mixed with dirt forming a crust.
Some had soaked their pant legs, having pissed themselves in terror when they were captured.
Originally, there were more of them.
When the players had gone door-to-door to clear them out, nearly a hundred gang members had chosen to resist.
They had subsequently proven a universal truth with their lives:
In the face of these "mini-Astartes" armed with standard-issue lasguns, a thug's bravado was nothing more than a joke that accelerated their own death.
Out of over four hundred, only these two hundred and thirty-seven had survived.
The rest had become corpses littering the alleyways of Red Town.
On the south side of the plaza, a crude, meter-and-a-half-tall stone podium had been erected.
Paul stepped onto the podium.
He was clad in his full set of dark grey Power Armor. The crimson sun emblem on his chest looked as if it were genuinely burning beneath the dim, yellowish sky.
With the Chainsword at his left hip and the Bolter slung over his right shoulder, every step he took made the entire podium tremble slightly.
Standing at 2.45 meters, plus the added bulk of the Power Armor, he looked like a giant stepping straight out of mythology to these residents, whose average height was under 1.7 meters.
Suppressed gasps echoed across the plaza.
Children buried their faces in their mothers' chests. Women clamped their hands tightly over their mouths, terrified of making a sound. Men clenched their fists, their nails digging into their palms.
They had seen bandits. They had seen gang shootouts. They had seen the private soldiers of the Aru Group parading their might.
But they had never seen an entity like this.
That wasn't a size a mortal should possess. That wasn't gear a mortal should wield. That wasn't an aura a mortal should project.
Paul walked to the center of the podium and stopped.
He slowly raised his hand and tapped the side of his helmet.
Click.
The magnetic locks on the faceplate disengaged. The helmet split down the middle and retracted backward, folding neatly into the collar armor.
A face was revealed.
To everyone's surprise, it wasn't the grotesque, terrifying visage of a monster they had imagined. It was a human face.
Sharp features, a high nose bridge, a strong jawline, but his eyes... were very gentle.
Paul's gaze swept across the plaza, across the terrified residents, across the kneeling gang members.
He smiled slightly.
"Residents of Red Town."
Paul spoke.
His voice, amplified by the Power Armor's vox-speakers, echoed over the plaza.
"My name is Paul. I am the Chapter Master of Crimson Dawn."
He paused, giving everyone time to digest the information.
"Today, we breached this town."
"We killed the stationed guards and captured these men kneeling here before you."
One of the kneeling gang members spat on the ground.
He was immediately kicked hard in the back by a player standing guard behind him, sending him sprawling face-first into the dirt.
Paul ignored it and continued:
"I know you are afraid."
"You think we are just another group of bandits, another pack of raiders who attack a place, steal all the food, take the women and children, and then leave, leaving behind nothing but corpses and ruins."
His gaze sharpened.
"But I am telling you right now: we are not."
"We came here for one purpose, and one purpose only."
Paul raised his right hand, pointing his index finger toward the sky.
"Salvation."
That word sounded incredibly jarring in the Warhammer universe.
Incredibly... naive.
The plaza remained dead silent.
The residents stared at him blankly, their eyes full of distrust.
They had heard too many lies.
The Consul said collecting taxes was to "maintain order."
The gangs said collecting protection money was to "protect everyone."
Salvation? Who was saving who? And how?
Paul wasn't surprised by their reaction.
He turned to face the kneeling gang members.
"Before I explain how we will bring salvation, we must first deal with some matters that need to be dealt with."
He stepped off the podium. The boots of his Power Armor crunched against the ground.
He walked toward the ranks of the gang members.
Every step felt as if he were stepping directly onto the hearts of the kneeling men.
Paul stopped at the far right of the first row.
It was a man in his thirties. Bald, with a scar slashing diagonally from his forehead to his chin. Even while kneeling, he tried to keep his back straight, his eyes fierce.
"You," Paul asked. "What is your name?"
The bald man grit his teeth and refused to answer.
Paul didn't press the question.
He simply raised his left hand, palm facing down, hovering about twenty centimeters above the bald man's head.
Wisdom activated.
A faint, pale gold psychic glow seeped from his palm, enveloping the bald man's head.
He perceived the weight of the sins within the man's soul, the deeds he had committed, and the blood debts he owed.
Three seconds later, Paul withdrew his hand.
He looked at the bald man, his eyes freezing cold.
"Graham Salt."
"One of the leaders of the Mad Dog Gang in Red Town."
The bald man, Graham, jolted violently. He clearly hadn't expected this giant to know his name.
Paul's voice rang out. It wasn't loud, but everyone in the plaza could hear it clearly. "You directly participated in seventeen robberies targeting civilians, eight of which resulted in civilian deaths."
"You have raped at least nine women."
"Last winter, an old man refused to hand over his family's last half-ration of nutrient paste. You hacked him to death with an axe and threw his body into the scrap heap to feed the mutant rats."
With every crime listed, Graham's face grew a shade whiter.
"You also ran an underground casino on the east side of town. You lured people in to gamble, and when they lost everything, you forced them to sign indentured servitude contracts and sold their wives and daughters to the Kent Mining Hive."
Paul paused, delivering his final summary.
"You have twenty-three lives on your hands."
"The number of people who died indirectly because of you is uncountable."
Graham finally broke. He roared hysterically.
"So what?! In this world, if you're not strong, you die! I was just—"
"You do not have the right to defend yourself."
Paul cut him off and turned back toward the podium.
Tax Bro stepped out from the ranks of players.
He was wearing a sleeveless utility vest today. In his hands, he carried a modified heavy stubber shotgun with a sawed-off barrel, making it look even more vicious.
Paul pointed at Graham, then swept his finger across every single person kneeling behind him.
"These men are all sentenced to death."
"Execute them on the spot."
The moment the words fell, the plaza exploded.
The gang members howled, cursed, and begged for mercy.
"No! You can't!"
"I surrender! I surrender!"
"You animals! The lords of Aru will punish you!"
"I have an old mother at home!"
"Please, I was just an errand boy!"
Tax Bro flashed a wide grin, showing off a set of perfectly white teeth.
"Bout time we cleaned house."
He waved his hand. Fifty players from Crimson Strike stepped forward. Working in pairs, they grabbed the gang members and dragged them toward the edge of the plaza.
A massive pit had already been dug there.
The first one dragged to the edge was Graham.
He had started out begging for his life, but when he saw Tax Bro rack the slide on his shotgun, he completely lost his mind.
"You'll rot in hell! The Aru Group will avenge us!"
"The Group Army will kill every last one of you! I'll be waiting for you down below!"
BOOM!
The roar of the shotgun cut his curse short.
A hole the size of a bowl blew open in Graham's chest, snapping his spine. His corpse toppled backward into the pit.
The gunshot acted as a signal.
Immediately after came the second shot, the third...
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A dense barrage of gunfire rang across the plaza.
The roar of solid-slug weapons echoed endlessly.
As Tax Bro always said: when you're executing scum, you gotta use a weapon with a satisfying kick. Lasguns are too soft.
The players moved efficiently. Drag 'em over, force 'em to their knees, pull the trigger, kick 'em into the pit. The process was brutally smooth. They had long since stopped caring. Life and death of these gang members were trivial; if someone steps out of line, you put them down.
Some of the gang members tried to struggle, but the augmented players easily picked them up with one hand.
Two minutes.
Two hundred and thirty-seven gunshots.
The pit was piled high with corpses. Blood seeped from the bottom, dyeing a massive patch of the ground red.
The plaza was as silent as the grave.
The residents' faces were deathly pale. Some vomited, some fainted, and even more were shaking uncontrollably.
They had seen murder before, but they had never seen an assembly-line execution like this.
Paul stepped back onto the podium.
He didn't speak immediately. He just quietly looked out over the terrified residents.
"Are you afraid?"
He asked suddenly.
No one dared to answer.
"Then remember this fear."
Paul raised his voice slightly.
"Remember why these men died."
"Not because they resisted us. Not because they belonged to a specific gang."
"They died simply because they committed evil, harmed others, and treated human lives like weeds."
He pointed toward the smoking corpse pit.
"Under the order of Crimson Dawn, this is the fate of the irredeemably wicked."
"There are no indulgences. There is no buying your way out of trouble. There is no excuse of 'I was just following orders'."
"A life for a life. It is the natural law."
Another wave of silence washed over the crowd, but this time, the look in some of the residents' eyes began to change.
The pure terror morphed into a complex mix of emotions. The fear was still there, but there was also a hint of... vindication?
Those who had been oppressed by the gangs, those whose loved ones had died at their hands—as they stared at the corpse pit, their eyes gradually reddened with tears.
Paul caught the shift in their expressions.
He continued.
"Now, we process the second group of people."
His gaze swept over the ranks of the residents.
The Wisdom trait operated once more, precisely picking out those whose crimes didn't warrant death, but who had undeniably committed wrongs.
A pale gold psychic ripple expanded outward with him at the center, washing over the entire plaza.
The residents felt a faint wave of warmth, though they didn't know what it was.
Paul pointed his finger.
"You. Third row, seventh from the left. The man in the grey coat."
The man he pointed at jolted, his face draining of color.
"You. Fifth row, third from the right. The woman with the headscarf."
The woman slumped to the ground.
"You. Eighth row..."
In total, he called out one hundred and forty-three people.
Some of them were thieves, some were fraudsters, some had done dirty work for the gangs, and some had stolen food from others during famines. None of their crimes warranted execution, but they had harmed others.
"White Scars."
Paul looked to the side.
"Sir!"
White Scars stepped out. He had changed into a set of lightweight leather armor today, with two laspistols strapped to his waist. He moved nimbly.
"Take these people away and lock them up."
"Draw up a labor reform plan. They will compensate their victims with their labor and earn their own redemption."
"Understood!"
White Scars led a group of players from Crimson Wind forward. They separated the hundred-plus people from the crowd, bound their wrists with plastic zip-ties, and moved them to the other side of the plaza to squat down.
With that done, the remaining people in the plaza were almost entirely ordinary civilians.
Paul took a deep breath.
He knew that the next part was the most crucial.
"Now, it is your turn."
He looked at the remaining two thousand residents, his voice softening.
"I know what you're thinking."
"You're thinking: 'These people killed the gangs and locked up the bad apples. Now it's time for them to steal our food, ruin our women, draft the able-bodied men as slaves, and kill off the old, the weak, and the sick.' Right?"
Quite a few people subconsciously nodded.
"I am telling you right now: that will not happen."
Paul spoke with absolute finality.
"Crimson Dawn did not come here to pillage, to conquer, or to act as new petty tyrants in this cesspool of a world."
He raised his right hand, clenched his fist, and placed it over his chest—right over the emblem of Crimson Dawn.
"We are here to save the citizens of the Imperium."