novelraw Chapter 9 Preparation
Chapter 9 Preparation
Life returned to its previous rhythm: leaving early and returning late, scavenging, breaking down, and accumulating.
Unlike before, Liu En now had a clear direction. He knew which planet he was on and what was on its surface. Marcus's data didn't provide a complete internal structure map of the hive city, but it did provide basic geographical information about the planet and the locations of several major hive cities. The hive city he was in—named "Helsard," as Marcus's records indicated—was located near the equator of Amighiddon and was a medium-sized industrial hive city.
The route out of the bottom hive had some vague clues in this body's topographical memory. North of the pumping station, across about twenty kilometers of gang-controlled territory, lay a large vertical transport shaft leading to the middle levels of the hive capital. Although controlled by the gang, the shaft wasn't completely sealed off—bottom hive inhabitants could sneak onto the cargo elevators or climb up the maintenance ladders along the shaft's edge. As long as they had money or supplies.
Liu En had both. But he didn't want to bribe the gang with money or goods. He could use his own methods—in a hidden location near the shaft, he could use his abilities to dig a slanted tunnel into the wall, bypassing the gang's checkpoints and entering the middle level. Marcus's data contained some structural information about the Helsard hive; the precision wasn't enough for direct navigation, but it was enough for him to know which areas were structurally weak points.
There is a plan. But before it can be implemented, there are a few things he needs to do.
The first thing was supplies. He had far exceeded his expectations in this regard. After weeks of continuous scavenging, he had almost emptied the area within a ten-kilometer radius of the pumping station. This included not only abandoned factory areas, but also a large number of residential areas, industrial areas, and even several forgotten military warehouse ruins. The supplies in the warehouses had reached an order of magnitude that he was too lazy to count—there were just enough to equip him with enough gear to build a small army.
The second thing is knowledge. Marcus's data core is currently his most important asset. Every night, he sits at his workbench, spending hours analyzing high-order binary-coded data. He's not reading a book, but exploring a maze, jumping from one index to another, linking one data block to another.
He wouldn't blindly worship these data. Marcus's data might be incorrect, incomplete, or contain parts he couldn't verify. He would cross-verify it with the material composition information he extracted from the bottom of the junk. For example, regarding Marcus's description of the Voss-type Leman Rustank's power system, he had never seen a complete tank engine in the bottom junk fragments, but the diagram pieced together from information on hundreds of scattered parts matched Marcus's data by more than 80%. The remaining 20% was temporarily unverifiable and remained questionable.
He spends his days collecting materials and his nights poring over data; that's his entire life now.
The third thing is an assistant.
Liu En realized a problem early on: he was all alone. Scavenging, disassembling, shaping, data processing, route planning, equipment preparation—he had to do everything himself. He didn't need a real partner—that was too dangerous; he couldn't explain his abilities to anyone. But he could create an assistant who wouldn't ask questions, wouldn't betray him, and would completely obey orders.
Servant. The most basic service unit of the Mechanicus. In the Warhammer universe, servants are cyborgs created by combining the nervous systems of human criminals, slaves, or volunteers with mechanical prosthetics, used to perform simple, repetitive manual labor. Their intelligence is deliberately limited, allowing them only to understand and execute basic commands.
Marcus's data contained the complete process of creating mech servants. From processing neural tissue to casting mechanical prosthetics, from cognitive inhibition to calibrating the command input system, each step had detailed technical specifications. The Mechanicus typically used living humans as raw materials for creating mech servants, but Liu En did not need living bodies. He could mold them.
He began constructing the material composition information of the first machine servant in the database. This was far more complex than shaping a gun or a car, as it involved the combination of organic tissue and mechanical parts. He found a standard machine servant design blueprint in Marcus's data, unfolded it layer by layer, and analyzed it item by item.
The servant's brain is the most crucial part. It's not a complete human brain, but a version that has undergone targeted development and functional reduction. Marcus's design blueprint clearly states that the servant's cognitive functions only need to be retained to the extent of understanding voice commands and basic logical judgments; the majority of the functions of the higher cognitive centers—the prefrontal cortex—need to be suppressed.
Liu En sculpted the brain tissue according to the design blueprint. Atoms were retrieved from the warehouse and arranged according to the information to form nerve cells, glial cells, and vascular networks. This was an extremely microscopic operation, lasting several tens of minutes. He did not infuse the brain with any consciousness. In his design, it only needed to exist as an instruction processor, like a biological version of a computer.
He sculpted the servant's mechanical body. The skeleton was made of plastic steel, lightweight yet sturdy. Servo motors and transmission mechanisms were installed at the joints of the limbs. Inside the chest cavity was a small energy module. The head had only one sensory organ—a simple optical lens connected to the visual cortex of the brain.
The entire molding process took about two hours. When the last piece of terracotta armor plate was installed on the servant's torso, a complete humanoid mechanical body stood before his workbench.
It was about 1.7 meters tall, slender, with long limbs. Its face was bare, revealing only its metal skull and the optical lens. Its fingers had a simple grasping structure. Its feet were large, providing stability.
Liu En stood in front of it and gave the first command.
"Get up."
The machine gunner rose smoothly from its seated position. Its optical lens was aimed at Liu En.
"Come with me."
The servant began to walk, following behind him. His footsteps were steady and even, each step landing in his footprints.
Stop.
It stopped.
"sit down."
It sat back in its original spot.
Liu En checked all its systems. The energy module was functioning normally, the servo motor temperature was within a safe range, and the neural signal patterns in its brain were stable. It didn't think, it didn't ask questions. It only executed commands.
He named his servant "Enpu".
Over the next few days, he built two more machine servants. One was used to move and organize supplies, and the other was used to assist him in data analysis. The data analysis servant had an additional data interface installed outside of his visual cortex, which could connect directly to the translator to perform preliminary classification and indexing of Marcus's data. Although its cognitive abilities were limited, it could at least do some mechanical tasks—such as grouping data blocks according to keywords, or organizing the low Gothic text output by the translator into tables according to a preset format.
Three servo machines lined up on the worktable, silently awaiting orders. Their presence changed the atmosphere of the underground bunker—it was no longer the silent space where only his breathing could be heard, but a workplace occasionally filled with the hum of servo motors and the sound of metallic footsteps.
Then there are the intelligent control mechs.
This is a combat unit at a higher level than the Servant. Marcus's data includes a standard design blueprint for the Intelligent Legion Infantry—those robots sent into the Necropolis during early reconnaissance missions and ultimately wiped out. Intelligent Legion Infantry do not require organic organization; they are fully mechanized combat units with built-in combat protocols that allow them to autonomously identify threats, select weapons, and coordinate attacks.
Liu En doesn't plan to build a complete intelligent mech for the time being, because that involves a complex weapon system and combat logic, and his current needs haven't reached that level. However, he has stored all the material composition information of the intelligent mech in his database, just in case.
In preparing to leave the bottom nest, he also did an important preparatory work—testing the effects of ability on living organisms.
The Bottom Nest never lacks live test subjects. During a scavenging trip, he captured several Bottom Nest rats—gray, rodent-like creatures that had bred countless generations in the darkness, twice the size of their predecessors, and with a volatile temper. He touched one of them with his ability, and the field clearly displayed every cell, every blood vessel, every nerve within its body. He tried to disassemble one of its hind legs—an atomic-level stripping—and the rat didn't even utter a painful cry. Then he rebuilt the leg, atomically recombining it. The rat stood up, ran a few steps, and showed no abnormalities.
He then tried a more complex procedure—fine-tuning a mouse's visual genes to enhance its light sensitivity in low-light conditions. After the modification, the mouse's behavior in the dark changed significantly. It survived, at least for the next few days.
With this experimental data, Liu En gained even greater confidence in his abilities. Modifying himself was feasible, but he didn't plan to undertake any radical procedures for the time being. Facial modifications were sufficient.
Everything is progressing according to plan. The day to leave the bottom nest is drawing ever closer.
He began the final preparatory work: deciphering the identity system within Marcus's data. This was not something to be rushed; the Mechanicus's identity verification system was extremely rigorous, involving multiple encryption algorithms and verification mechanisms. He spent three nights specifically studying this part of the data, but progress was slow. It wasn't that the data was incomplete—Marcus had backed up enough details—but rather that his foundation was too weak. His understanding of the Mechanicus was limited to Marcus's data and his reading memories from his previous life; that fragmented knowledge was insufficient to support a complete understanding of the underlying logic of the entire identity system.
But this wasn't an obstacle. He didn't need to fully understand it; he just needed to find a small enough entry point. Marcus's data contained identity templates for expatriates—low-ranking technical personnel sent to remote worlds and chronically out of contact with headquarters. These individuals' identities were in an "active but unverifiable" state in the headquarters database, and would remain in this state for decades or even centuries unless someone actively checked them.
More importantly, Liu En discovered a field temporary identity template in Marcus's data that had never been activated. This template was prepared by Marcus hundreds of years ago for a planned field assignment, but the assignment was never carried out, and the template had been lying dormant in a corner of the data core ever since. The template was fully formatted, containing all the necessary fields such as name, position, parish, and issuing authority, awaiting only the filling in of specific information and activation.
In theory, he could use this template to generate a completely new, verifiable identity for himself within the system. Not to impersonate someone already dead, but to create an identity that never existed before, yet was perfectly legal in its format. He could use a pseudonym for his name, fill in the lowest rank, "Second-Order Technical Craftsman," and list a parish in a remote, small foundry world so remote that no one would likely verify it. As long as he didn't actively seek out the core area of the Mechanicus, this identity would be sufficient to pass the routine checks of the Middle and Lower Nests.
Theoretically feasible. In practice, some data comparison and verification calculations are still needed. He got stuck here, but not completely.
Liu En sat at his workbench, staring at Marcus's data core, and took out the metal nameplate with his name on it from the drawer. He wouldn't use it to impersonate anyone, but he would use it to corroborate his understanding of the Mechanicus—if one day he needed to explain why he knew so much inside information, he could vaguely mention "the discovery of a deceased priest's belongings in the Underhive." This was not a lie.
He needed to create a complete identity verification system. Metal plates, data cards, clothing, machine servants—everything that would make people "trust him at a glance." Zhongchao wasn't the headquarters of the Mechanicus; the people there wouldn't use the highest level of encryption to verify the identity of every passerby every day. Most people, even lower-ranking members of the Mechanicus, were perfunctory in their identity checks of outsiders. As long as the documents were complete, the appearance was presentable, and no one raised any objections, they were allowed to pass.
He could become that "decent" person. A deep red robe, ceremonial tools, silent servants, and a well-made document—that was his ticket.
Liu En put the core back in the drawer and stood up from the workbench. Tomorrow he would begin shaping those outfits, making more servants, and creating everything that would make him look like a true member of the Mechanical Order.