Footage from each streamer’s playthrough of the Lost DLC had been clipped and uploaded across every major gaming platform and short video site.
The sheer scale of what they had witnessed sent viewers into a frenzy.
One game cutscene, visual effects that bordered on indistinguishable from reality, and an immersive experience that pulled you in completely.
Over a million players were talking about nothing else.
“Am I the only one who feels like this actually happened?”
“I had my 3D glasses on the whole time.
Felt something wet in my pocket afterward.
Reached in, and well, turns out it wasn’t sweat.”
Every player in the beta had gone viral without exception.
Every streamer among them was pulling fifty thousand viewers or more per stream.
Which made the beta slots look even more precious to everyone watching from the outside.
“Brother, I swear on my life there’s no back channel.
I, Drool, swear it.
I genuinely don’t have a way in either.” That was the eighteenth call Drool had taken, every single one from someone trying to beg or buy their way into the beta.
“Can’t it just be because I’m good-looking?
Is that so much to ask?”
The next day’s update arrived on schedule.
Over a million beta applications, all of them trying to squeeze through the same narrow opening.
The total number of available clone bodies was only a hundred.
If Aldric could get the spatial anchor running, the clone count would stop being a constraint entirely.
And if the anchor actually fired, he could call in a warship and clean the whole planet up properly.
The Imperium of Man?
Heresy?
Heresy didn’t need a trial.
Heresy only needed to be purged.
He wanted to see for himself what this Imperium was really up to.
Players were aggressive by nature.
If there was a wall to climb, they would never take the door.
Every single one of them had that problem.
The squad ratio would stay at one-plus-two.
One player, two clone soldiers.
The command interface was being added as well.
Players could now direct their soldiers freely.
Formation tactics would come in a later update.
Give the players a soldier development system and see how reckless they stayed after that.
Player recruitment was still capped for now, of course, to keep resources from piling up on one side.
There were only a few dozen miners to go around.
Once they reached a location with a larger human population, the recruitment limit would be lifted.
The miners had already started clearing the rubble on their own initiative.
Small debris throughout the camp was being worked through methodically with whatever tools they had.
Going underground was dangerous.
The geological structure had been almost completely reshaped, and weak points could collapse again without warning.
Every miner who had made it out of the tunnels was alive.
Not one had been buried.
That was a miracle, and every single one of them knew it.
They all understood, privately, that they should have died.
The PDF 33rd Company had gone completely dark.
Unlike the miners, those soldiers had a defensive line to hold.
They were still down there.
The clones were maintaining order in the camp.
The players had all returned to their stasis pods.
Eight hours had passed in the real world.
Any longer and their physical bodies back home would start going hungry.
“Brother, what are you doing?”
In the workshop, Antor was working on something.
Annie’s sudden appearance startled him and the object slipped from his hands.
It was a stone, about a foot tall, faintly golden in color.
The texture was pure and dense.
It looked like a gemstone.
A large, uncut gemstone of unusual clarity.
Annie caught it before it hit the floor.
She looked at what she was holding.
Something about it felt familiar.
A few seconds passed, and her expression shifted into something she couldn’t quite name.
“Brother, you…”
Antor didn’t know where to put his hands.
It was the rough beginnings of a statue.
Carved from a pale yellow raw stone.
He had found the stone in the rubble left behind by the disaster, directly beneath the spot where Aldric had split that first boulder.
The stone was beautiful.
Annie’s bewilderment slowly gave way to a smile.
She leaned in close behind him and whispered in his ear.
“Brother, I’m guessing you’d rather the Commander didn’t find out about this?”
“Annie!” Antor’s foot hit the floor.
“I’m your older brother!”
Annie laughed, clearly delighted, then settled her expression into something serious.
“I’ll help you, brother.”
Antor was carving a statue of a person.
His engineering aptitude was already making itself known.
It had taken him barely an hour to master standard ammunition production.
But engineering wasn’t his only talent.
He had always known how to carve.
The figure in front of them already had a recognizable outline.
You couldn’t tell exactly who it was yet, but the silhouette lined up almost perfectly with Aldric’s.
Over seventy miners had made it to the camp.
All of them were lost.
The mine pit and the fleet were both buried somewhere below them now.
By any reasonable measure, this was a dead end.
Surviving the unsurvivable wasn’t enough to fill the hollow place the despair had carved out.
Where were they?
How deep?
Was there any way out?
The camp itself had held, though.
Thanks to the Federation’s shield technology, the ecological command ship, already a wreck before the disaster, had avoided total destruction.
Aldric’s plan for the miners was to hand them over to the players to manage.
Train them, more accurately.
Let the players develop their NPCs according to their preferences.
These miners had nothing but their wretched lives.
But as long as they were human, as long as they were willing to join the Federation and stand behind the principle of humanity above all, they were Federation citizens.
“Antor, go distribute some food to them.
And clothing.”
Aldric straightened the stack of clothing the clones had just brought in.
Instead it was unexpectedly cold.
“A full stomach is a human being’s most basic need.
The Federation does not let its people go hungry.
And a clean set of clothes is the minimum dignity any person deserves.”
“One more thing.
My soldiers are each Captains in their own right.
When they return, any miner who is willing to fight for the Federation can choose whichever Captain they want to follow.”
Some of the miners had already made their position clear.
They wanted to join the Federation.
But how many, Aldric couldn’t say yet.
“You can also look for anyone with a natural aptitude and start teaching them engineering.
We are going to need a lot of engineers.”
Antor’s eyes glistened.
“Commander, Me and Annie can do it.
We can handle it.”
He didn’t want to share.
The work Aldric had given him felt sacred, and the thought of someone else touching it made him want to hold on tighter.
“We will work hard.”
“You two are the only ones with engineering implants.
You have more important things to focus on.
I don’t want small tasks eating up your time.”
The tension in Antor’s eyes slowly gave way to something brighter.
More important?
Was he actually needed here?
Did he matter?
A flush of feeling crept into his face before he could stop it.
“I’ll teach them!”
Aldric pulled up the screen and brought up a terrain map of the surrounding area.
“I’m planning to explore the mine district.
I’ll need the miners’ help for that as well.”
“This is for us, for them, and for humanity.”
“Your orders will be followed, Commander.”
The clothing was a byproduct of the greenskin processing system, produced from plant fiber and animal hide, cut into standardized work uniforms.
Basic, but functional.
Warmth, wind resistance, and cut resistance at a low grade.
For something made from greenskin materials, the quality was actually decent.
Antor was put in charge of distributing it all for now.
He would manage the miners first.
They shared the same background, all of them from Pit Three.
The clone soldiers were too rigid.
Their answer to every problem was the barrel of a gun pointed at someone’s head.
The players were too aggressive.
Antor led a small detail of clone soldiers out with the supplies, cutting a surprisingly authoritative figure.
His appearance drew confused looks from the miners.
Because Antor looked like them, not like the Federation people.
Visibly thin, bones showing where flesh should be.
“Fellow humans of Pit Three, my name is Antor!”
He repeated it.
“Miner Antor.”
“Antor, is that you?” One of the miners peered at the unfamiliar face in front of him.
“You?” Thaniel_a_goodchild much appreciated