A conquest quest actually triggered.
Vane stared at the prompt, momentarily caught off guard.
Reaching a hundred percent conquest progress meant he’d unlock every crafting recipe and secure absolute admin privileges for this entire universe.
“Starting me off by having me wipe out Hive Fleet Leviathan…
this broken-ass task mod is seriously out to get me.” Whatever.
Let’s save these normies first.
Making up his mind, Vane turned to Steve.
“Steve, deploy an Iron Golem squad.
Wipe out those bugs.” Steve wordlessly executed the command, taking a platoon of Iron Golems standing in formation inside the storage room and airdropping them straight to the ground.
“I should probably go make contact with the locals.
Man, how long has it been since I actually talked to another human being?” Muttering to himself, Vane stood up and headed for the exit.
— “Dammit, these bugs just won’t quit!” General Dhrost was still reeling from the sheer shock of a cathedral standing up when the blaring alarms of an incoming Tyranid swarm violently yanked him back to reality.
Heavily armored Tyranid Warriors and Genestealers crested the horizon, sprinting toward them at terrifying speeds.
“Open fire!
Don’t let them close the distance!” Dhrost ordered his men to use the transports for cover and lay down overlapping fields of fire.
He directed their heavy vehicle-mounted weapons to focus on the massive, thick-skinned bio-forms.
Dhrost was an exceptional commander.
Unfortunately, he was up against the Tyranids.
Driven by the Hive Mind, the alien bio-forms had absolutely zero concept of fear or death.
They charged face-first into the withering hail of las-fire, pushing over the corpses of their own kind to rapidly close in on the Imperial perimeter.
Their tactics were brutally simple: rush the trenches, use their terrifying physical superiority to slaughter the human infantry, shatter the defensive line, and claim victory.
Suddenly, a shrieking whistle tore through the sky.
Massive white objects plummeted from the sky at breakneck speed.
They slammed into the earth with deafening thuds, kicking up massive clouds of dust and debris.
The terrifying kinetic impact left deep craters and spiderweb-like fissures radiating across the ground.
“What the hell was that?” Just as Dhrost was trying to make sense of the situation, pairs of glowing red eyes pierced through the dust cloud, exuding an intense, suffocating aura of aggression.
Heavy, rhythmic metallic footsteps echoed out.
Forged entirely of solid iron, clad in full plate armor, and wielding massive blocky broadswords, the Iron Golems stomped out of the smoke and charged straight into the Tyranid swarm.
Their physical strength was downright absurd.
With a single swing of their swords, they effortlessly cleaved right through the thick chitin plating of the Tyranids.
Even barehanded, a single punch was enough to snap a Tyranid’s bladed limbs like twigs.
The Iron Golems aggressively took over the battlefield, tying up the swarm before it could reach Dhrost and his men.
“Is this some new toy the Cogboys cooked up?” a staff officer stared at the Iron Golems slaughtering bugs, his head practically spinning with question marks.
“Hoping those tech-priest weirdos actually invent something new?” another officer couldn’t help but shoot back.
“Enough.
Now is not the time,” Dhrost snapped, cutting off his subordinates’ complaints about the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Those red-robed gearheads were notoriously petty; it wasn’t safe to talk trash about them out loud.
“These hunks of metal pack a serious punch,” a guardsman muttered, his eyes wide as he watched an Iron Golem literally rip a Termagant in half with its bare hands.
“These machines were probably deployed by that mobile fortress.” Dhrost looked up at the colossal monolith still actively eating the cityscape.
A staff officer followed his gaze.
“General, who do you think built that thing?
They hid it perfectly.
We’ve been garrisoned on this planet and never heard a single whisper about it.” “There aren’t any cog wheel insignias on it.
I highly doubt this is the work of the Mechanicus.” The veterans and officers around Dhrost had dealt with the Cult Mechanicus plenty of times before.
They all knew those petty tech-priests would carve their holy cog emblem into every single hex nut and bless it with sacred incense if they could.
For a machine this astronomically huge to not have a single cog symbol could only mean one thing: it didn’t belong to the Mechanicus.
If not the Mechanicus, then who the hell possesses this kind of manufacturing tech?
Dhrost muttered to himself, thoroughly bewildered.
Relying on their overwhelming combat stats, the Iron Golems effortlessly mopped up the Tyranid raiding party.
The battlefield was left a gruesome, bloody mess of severed limbs and alien viscera.
After executing the last of the enemies, the Iron Golems immediately began hauling the corpses onto a large metal platform lowered by the mobile fortress.
Once the platform was stacked high with bug carcasses, massive gears ground to life, hoisting it up and dumping the bodies straight into the fortress’s industrial meat grinders.
After processing, the biomatter was tossed into composters to generate Bone Meal, which would then be used to speed-grow crops.
In vanilla Minecraft, composters only accepted plant matter.
But after Vane installed the “More Compostables” mod, he could use absolutely any biological matter for composting.
“They’re collecting the Tyranid corpses.
This is our opening.
We can use that platform to get up there and investigate.” Dhrost, along with his inner circle of guards and officers, quickly approached the corpse-loading platform, hoping to sneak inside the mobile fortress.
Just as he stepped up, a voice echoed from right behind him.
“That platform is exclusively for corpse disposal.
If you ride that thing up, you’re going straight into the industrial shredder.” Dhrost whipped around to see a man with black hair and dark eyes standing there.
He stood about six feet tall, dressed in a sleek black hooded robe.
He was undeniably handsome, yet he radiated an indescribable aura of utter loneliness.
“Who are you?” Seeing the mysterious man appear out of thin air, Dhrost’s nerves snapped taut as he went on high alert.
His bodyguards and officers immediately raised their lasguns, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.
At the slightest hint of a threat, they would pull their triggers.
“Names are just meaningless titles.
But if you must, you may address me as your Forefather.” This sudden arrival was, of course, Vane.
He had actually come down ages ago.
He just drank a Potion of Invisibility and chilled on the sidelines watching Dhrost’s squad, trying to brainstorm the most badass way to make his grand entrance.
He had even swapped outfits a few times to absolutely max out his aura for this debut.
After all, trouble is temporary, but drip is eternal.
You can’t half-ass these things.
Furthermore, the Chaos Gods in the Warhammer universe were incredibly vile and notoriously underhanded.
God only knew what kind of chaotic warp fuckery they could pull off just by knowing someone’s true name.
Maintaining an air of mystery didn’t just make him look incredibly cool; it was also basic self-preservation.
“Forefather…” Dhrost’s face darkened.
He deeply wanted to dial up the Inquisition and have this brazen heretic brutally sanctioned right on the spot.
Taking a few deep breaths to suppress his sheer exasperation, Dhrost pointed at the moving fortress.
“Is that thing yours?” “This little mobile fortress?
It’s just a minor trinket.
I threw it together in my spare time.” Vane brushed it off casually, completely omitting the part where he and Steve had been grinding like absolute sweatlords for fifteen days straight, looking like sleep-deprived zombies.
Dhrost looked visibly shocked.
He just threw it together in his spare time?
Just who the hell is this guy?
“Are you a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus?” a staff officer asked.
“Don’t insult me by comparing me to those idiots,” Vane scoffed dismissively.
“What I possess is the technology of humanity’s Golden Age of Technology.” Hey, 2nd Millennium tech is still tech, alright?
Say no to chronological discrimination.
Do your part.
“Golden Age tech?” Dhrost frowned deep.
“Where exactly do you come from?” “Show some respect.
Like I said, I’m your Forefather.
Which literally means I am your ancestor, hailing from the forgotten era.” Vane put his hands on his hips, sounding completely justified.
I was born in the 2nd Millennium.
How does that NOT make me the ancestor of humanity in the 41st Millennium?
Damn it, is the Imperium of Man really out here disrespecting their elders?
Get the Big E down here right now, is this how he raised you kids?
“Ancestor?” Dhrost’s eyes bulged.
“You?!” “What?
You don’t buy it?
If we’re tracking this by my birth year, I’m pushing forty thousand years old.” Dhrost and his men collectively inhaled sharply.
Forty thousand years old?
What kind of ancient monster is this guy?!
One officer stepped forward to challenge him.
“You look completely young.
There’s no way you’ve lived that long.” “Are you seriously questioning one of the forefathers of the human race?” Vane gave him the side-eye.
“You younger generations have zero manners these days.
I’m reporting this straight to Terra.
You ungrateful brats.” Dhrost: “…” Looking at how dead serious this guy was, and then glancing back at the mobile fortress actively devouring the city…
Could this guy actually be an ancient human who survived the Golden Age of Technology?
Dhrost had once worked alongside an Inquisitor and learned a deeply classified secret: there was a faction of humans known as Perpetuals.
They possessed infinite lifespans and forever maintained their bodies and minds at absolute peak condition.
If the man standing in front of him was a Perpetual, then his youthful appearance actually made perfect sense.
“If you are our ancestor, then what are you doing out here?” Dhrost asked.
“What else would I be doing?” Vane clasped his hands behind his back and stared up at the sky at a perfect forty-five-degree angle.
“Cleaning up the messes left behind by my disappointing descendants, obviously.” “You got bullied this hard by a bunch of bugs.
Do me a favor and stop calling yourselves humans.
It’s incredibly embarrassing for our family tree.” “Back in my day, we walked out of Old Terra and steamrolled the entire galaxy.
Nobody dared even look at us funny.
Now look at you guys…
what a disgrace.” Dhrost and his men turned pale, their faces flushing red with shame.
Could you not be so brutally honest?!
— Next one in around half an hour and so on till we reach 15k words!