(The text was drafted by the Custodes and written by the Grey Knights.) (Loyalty!!) (Let’s see who is disloyal.) “——!” The chaotic and rapid sounds of running echoed from the dark cave.
A group of grotesquely shaped, twisted-limbed shadows that looked human yet inhuman ran and flickered, chasing the disheveled fleeing figure ahead and squeezing out screams of ecstasy and madness from the deepest parts of their throats.
“He ran away——” “Catch him——” “Offer him to the master——” Behind them were some figures wearing dark red cloaks, rapidly pursuing the running figure ahead.
…
Lynn fled in a panic.
Under his feet were the uneven stones of the mountain cave.
He missed his step once, tripped over a pit, and knocked his knees on the ground, hurting so much he bared his teeth.
But he did not stop, quickly getting up to continue running.
Flee, flee, flee.
He had seen these things while playing games.
On the screen, he thought the design of these things was truly imaginative, and the art style was amazing.
Now he actually saw them.
He didn’t think it was amazing at all!!!
Chaos.
Heresy.
The Warp.
Chaos entities.
Ahhhhhhh, it’s fking Warhammer——!!!!!!!
Usually, just making memes is enough, but when actually crossing over into Warhammer, who wouldn’t let out a tragic scream?
Run.
Run fast.
He could not be caught; being caught meant death.
He turned a corner, and three diverging paths appeared ahead.
With no time to hesitate, he chose the narrowest one and squeezed in sideways.
The stone wall scraped his shoulders and back.
His jacket was torn, but he couldn’t care less, squeezing inward with all his might.
At the bottom of the stone wall was a crevice; it was not large, but it was just enough for a person to squeeze into sideways.
Without a word, Lynn threw himself over and squeezed in, crouching down.
The stone wall got stuck on his butt; he twisted forcefully twice and finally squeezed through.
Inside was a tiny cave, enough for him to hide in.
The footsteps behind grew closer and closer, along with that scalp-tingling murmuring whisper.
He leaned against the stone wall, covering his own mouth, desperately suppressing his panting.
The footsteps approached the outside of the crevice.
Someone was speaking: “Gone…” “There is a hole here——” “Cannot squeeze in; it’s too narrow.” “He couldn’t have run far.
Search.” Something came toward the crevice.
Lynn stuffed himself into the back of the rock wall, covering his mouth and nose even tighter with trembling hands.
Footsteps came from outside.
The sound was like wet hooves stepping on stone.
There were rotten and sticky muffled thuds.
One, two, three times, stopping at the opening of the crevice where he hid, bringing up a gust of wind with a decaying smell.
He held his breath.
That thing seemed to have stuck its nose in.
It stopped right in front of him, separated by a stone gap less than half a meter thick.
Lynn smelled the rotting meat, scorched hair, and an indescribable sweet, bloody scent seeping in from the gap, like stinking meat left out for a long time in summer.
He closed his eyes.
Don’t move, don’t make a sound, don’t breathe.
Then he heard an inhaling sound.
It was very slow, very long, and wet.
It sounded like liquid surging in a windpipe.
That thing was sniffing.
Lynn heard his heartbeat thumping.
It was too loud, too noisy; he tried his best to hold it in, leaving only one thought in his mind: Don’t move don’t move don’t move don’t move don’t move don’t move don’t move don’t move don’t move don’t move—— That thing paused for a few seconds, or maybe a few minutes—Lynn couldn’t tell.
In short, after an unknown amount of time, the thing’s head pulled away.
Then that hoof lifted again, one, two, three times, gradually fading away.
Lynn waited for the sound to completely disappear and waited a long time before he dared to lower the hand covering his mouth.
He collapsed to the ground, pressing his back tightly against the cold stone wall.
His head, face, and body were covered in sweat, soaking his clothes through.
He really wanted to cry.
As an ordinary college student who had played a few Warhammer games, he still knew the basic settings of the Warhammer universe.
The 41st Millennium.
The galaxy.
There is only war.
There is no hope.
The Imperium of Man is on its last legs, Chaos daemons are looking on covetously from the Warp, aliens are everywhere, and every single one wants to kill you, yet you only hold a flashlight in your hand.
The flashlight is a meme among players, meaning the lasguns of the Imperial Guard are too weak, practically like flashlights.
Yesterday, he was still playing games in his dorm.
At that time, his biggest worry was having three subjects left to review for finals, and the hotpot planned with his roommates kept getting delayed because someone was working overtime.
He remembered lying in bed scrolling through short videos, coming across a gender-bent Warhammer recruitment video underneath, with everyone making memes.
Some were loyal, and some were calling the Inquisition.
Offering loyalty to the Emperor.
Whenever mentioned, everyone is loyal; whenever asked, no one goes.
He had even laughed at the time.
Now he couldn’t laugh, because he came without being asked.
Are you there?
You could at least ask if someone is willing to come, right?
Forced buying and selling, is it?????
Lynn slowly sat up.
The crevice was very narrow; fortunately, these monsters in Warhammer, which were easily two and a half meters tall, couldn’t get in.
The sharp edges on the rock wall dug into him, causing sharp pain.
This spot was the deepest hiding place he could find; the passage outside happened to have a corner, making it a blind spot when looking in from the outside.
He raised his right hand and fumbled through his pockets in the darkness.
No phone; it might have been dropped while running, or it might have just disappeared during the transmigration.
The pocket only had a crumpled wad of tissues and half a pack of unfinished Skittles left—— Fuck, it’s a physical transmigration.
Tell a story more terrifying than crossing over into Warhammer.
It’s a physical transmigration.
A complete mortal body, physically transmigrated.
He felt he might be the unluckiest person in the world.
He woke up in a cave.
He was not given any transition time, no white light, no system notification sound, and no transmigration gift pack; one second he was rolling over in bed, and the next second, cold stones were digging into his face.
He opened his eyes and saw complete darkness.
His first reaction was that he was dreaming.
He rolled over, his head hit the rock wall, and it hurt so much he saw stars.
He turned pale with fright and was immediately scared awake.
Dreams usually don’t hurt this much.
Reaching out, he felt rough, cool stone.
Stone wall.
He started to panic.
He stood up, but his head hit the rock overhead, and he squatted down in pain again.
Squatting on the ground, his hands fumbled blindly in the dark.
His phone was gone, and he touched nothing but stone; the air held an underground musty smell and an indescribable scent of minerals.
?????
What was going on?
“Is anyone there?” he shouted.
The sound bounced back and forth in the cave several times, finally turning into a string of muffled echoes, and then disappeared.
No one answered.
Judging from the echo, he should be in a massive underground cavern.
Staying like this wasn’t a solution; he began to walk forward in the dark.
The cave floor was very low; he squatted and inched his way out little by little, one hand feeling the rock wall beside him, until he finally exited that narrow cavern.
Outside the cavern was an even larger cavern.
But it didn’t matter; he knew that the best method in this kind of invisible maze was to always stick to one wall, and no matter how long he wandered, he would eventually find a way out.
He didn’t know how long he had walked.
It was about the third time he stopped to rest when he noticed a light ahead.
A jumping red color, like the light of a torch or a lamp.
Lynn’s heart gave a violent leap, followed by pure ecstasy.
There were people.
There are people in this damned place!!!
Simply fantastic!!!
He instinctively quickened his pace toward the direction of the people, his mind already organizing his words: Hello, I’m lost, could you tell me where this is, am I still on Earth—— As a result, when he reached the cave entrance, before he even opened his mouth to speak, he first clearly saw the scene inside.
The light did indeed come from torches.
The torch was held in a person’s hand.
That person wore dark red robes and a hood obscuring most of their face, and their exposed chin was etched with black patterns, like tattoos, yet also like scorched flame scars.
He held a knife in his hand; the blade had dark red, semi-congealed liquid slowly dripping down it.
It wasn’t just him; there were several others around, wearing similar robes, standing in a circle around something.
Lynn’s gaze shifted to the thing they were circling.
Then he saw it clearly.
It was a corpse.
It looked like a short man, pinned to the ground, limbs spread wide, his chest cavity ripped open, and the insides scooped out and arranged into a pattern on a stone altar.
The pattern squirmed in the torchlight.
It was moving; it was indeed moving; it had to be moving.
Around it were some grotesque, twisted, human-yet-inhuman things constantly vanishing and appearing.
Lynn’s brain rapidly processed the information, and the first thing that appeared was their name: Chaos entities.
Lynn’s stomach sharply churned.
His hands began to tremble.
Then, one of the robed individuals raised his head.
Beneath the hood, those eyes looked at him.
Very strange, exceedingly strange.
The pupils were vertical, like a snake’s, and the whites of the eyes were covered in blood vessels that moved like living things.
“There is another one,” that person said.
“…” The word “Cultist of Chaos” suddenly flashed into his mind.
Cultists, Warhammer, followers of the Chaos Gods.
“——!!!!!!!” Lynn’s expression drastically changed; without hesitation, he turned and ran, having never run this fast in his entire life.
For the 1000-meter PE exam, he had run it in five minutes and was scolded by the PE teacher for half the class; right now, he felt he could probably break a world record.
Screams came from behind, sounds that humans absolutely could not produce, making one’s scalp tingle.
What the hell?
Warhammer 40K!!!!!!!!
Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!
Lynn screamed even louder than those monsters behind him.
Heavens and earth, how could he be in Warhammer and even spawn surrounded by a bunch of Chaos cultists?
Ahhhhhhh, Emperor, save me!
Ah, where is my cheat code——!!!
Background Introduction Warhammer vets don’t need to read this; I’ll give a rough rundown of Warhammer’s background for pals who don’t know it.
Interstellar background, ‘k’ means millennium.
We are in the 3nd millennium, and Warhammer 40k is in the 40th millennium.
Over thirty thousand years, humanity experienced highly advanced technology – Men of Iron rebellion – re-fragmentation – civilizational regression – Warp incursions into reality, and so on and so forth.
After all this chaos, the Emperor reunited humanity, constructed the Astronomican, and brought the Imperium of Man back together.
The Warp can be seen as an Underworld, or the inside of a wormhole.
Interstellar travel is possible through the Warp, but it is very dangerous; the Warp is filled with Chaos daemons and Warp storms.
Biological beings’ unknown emotions, feelings, souls, and such flow into the Warp, and four inherent vices gathered in Chaos to form four Chaos Gods: Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle, and Slaanesh.
The four Chaos Gods and Chaos Undivided are collectively known as the Chaos faction.
The Emperor used his own genetics and mysterious technology to create 20 Primarchs, who can be seen as 20 superhuman leaders commanding 20 superhuman legions.
In 30k, the Chaos faction incited the rebellion of the human commander at the time, Primarch Horus.
Nine Primarchs and their legions defected to the Chaos faction.
At that time, the Emperor was working on the Webway Project.
The Webway is another type of hyperspace network built outside the Warp.
If the Webway Project succeeded, humanity would no longer need to travel through the Warp, distancing themselves from Chaos and Warp storms, and humanity would be safe.
The Primarch Magnus wanted to report Horus’s betrayal to the Emperor but was manipulated by Tzeentch, accidentally breaching the Emperor’s Golden Throne and causing a rift to tear open into the Warp and Webway beneath the throne.
If left alone, the Warp would swallow Terra, so the Emperor had to sit upon it to suppress it, trapped on the throne and unable to rise.
The traitor forces laid siege to the Imperial Palace on Terra.
The Primarch Great Angel Sanguinius was killed by the traitor Horus.
The Emperor’s right-hand man Malcador temporarily took the Emperor’s place and sat on the Golden Throne to suppress the rift, but he was never the Emperor and was drained dry.
Enduring his grief, the Emperor teleported to Horus’s flagship to face Horus, the avatar of the four Gods.
Horus possessed power imbued by the four Gods at the time.
The Emperor won and obliterated him, but the Emperor was also mortally wounded and near death.
The Emperor returned to the Palace, sitting back on the Golden Throne as a skeletal husk, half-dead but continuing to suppress the rift and burn the Astronomican.
The Webway Project failed.
The Imperium of Man shifted into extreme authoritarian rule.
By 40k, the Emperor’s consciousness, having stayed in the Warp for ten thousand years, was close to ascending to godhood, leaving him unable to rise from the Golden Throne.
He now relies on the Golden Throne to maintain his humanity, suppress the rift, and burn the Astronomican.
Once he rises, the Imperium of Man would shatter, and with divinity overpowering humanity, the one standing up might no longer be the Emperor, but a fifth Chaos God, a God of Order, or a Tyrant.
So the current situation is: The Imperium of Man relies on the Space Marines (Adeptus Astartes Chapters), the Guard (Astra Militarum mortal regiments), the Inquisition (Ecclesiarchy), and the Sisters of Battle (Ecclesiarchy, all-female militant orders) to resist the Chaos faction / other xenos races (Aeldari / Necrons / T’au / Orks) / Tyranids.
Everyone says the Imperium of Man in Warhammer is a dark and corrupt regime, but I actually think it’s fine.
Removing the people who are genuinely evil, it’s just an Imperium of Man burning their boats to guarantee human survival.
Clarifying in advance, this fic is hardcore loyalist; those who are disloyal can exit here.
Once the Emperor stands up, a thunderous slap will shatter your rebellious dreams.
LOK’TAR OGAR!!!!!