Warhammer: I don't want to become a stinky can!

Page 824

Saint Gilles answered without hesitation, without the slightest doubt, that in this respect there was indeed no need for comparison.

Now it was the ghoul's turn to be astonished, while Saint Gilles remained calm; perhaps his other self could hardly imagine such a being—

Being powerful and possessing conscience and humanity are generally incompatible; very few people can reach the pinnacle in both aspects simultaneously.

[If your strategy hadn't consistently shown a corresponding inclination,]

The ghoul laughed.

[I would definitely believe that such a thing is a figment of your imagination.]

You need to confront him directly.

Saint Gillespie stated that,

Once you've seen him with your own eyes... you'll understand that what I'm saying is true. Of course, I don't recommend going to him when he's hungry.

Actually, you can go there when you're hungry; it can give you relief.

This unspoken sentence remained stuck in Saint Gilles' throat.

The ghoul shook his head.

[never mind.]

He spoke calmly, his expression serene.

[I have already made my choice, and I no longer need to hope for any external miracles. I only hope to witness a glimmer of humanity before everything collapses, to see light triumph over darkness, and to see that humanity can still be saved.]

His choice was Horus.

Saint Gilles immediately understood the unfinished words of his other self—even with another great miracle before him, the ghoul still chose to return to his own dark, muddy world and complete the path he had initially decided to take.

【…】

Saint Gilles wanted to say something comforting, but those powerless words vanished before they could be uttered, as ephemeral as snowflakes suddenly falling in the height of summer.

He could hardly imagine the suffering in another world. Even though his own world was already painful, hope still remained, and the hope for survival and progress still shone brightly for him.

But for another world, hope has long been shattered, and everyone walks blindfolded in a dark and desolate desert, where even the faintest light is so fragile.

The original bodies there can only choose to rot away after a long wait.

[Hopefully everything is alright in Horus...]

Chapter 834 [276] On Technology, Typhons is a Professional

"Tsk tsk tsk, look what strange thing I've found?"

The space necromancer, clad in the red robes of the Mechanicus, swung the Staff of Omnipotence in its hand, shoving aside the Tyranid corpse blocking its path on the ground.

Amidst the lush green slime mold, the limp corpse of the neural axe worm was kicked aside by the space necromancer, its soft, slimy substance, like rotten mud, oozing out from the hole drilled into the worm by the drill gun.

The clone of the Endless Tarasin looked up and stepped onto the thick, carpet-like green fungal mat. The slime mat, composed of green skin, terrestrials, and warp, felt soft underfoot, provided one ignored the biomass soup constantly bubbling out of these green things.

"Who are you?"

A muffled murmur came from in front of the half-collapsed Colossus, a green Space Marine who had been modified beyond recognition. In front of the green junkyard, a green Space Marine who had almost blended into his surroundings was slumped over.

Of course, it wasn't his wish to collapse to the ground, but rather because Taraxin wanted to render him incapable of fighting—and so the unfortunate Chaos Space Marine was rendered incapable of fighting.

This is the power of the Endless One, Tarasin! Even though this body is only a part of Tarasin (the main body is still in the rear with Hades' strategic retreat), the "Pray to Hades Automatic Activation of Black Stone System" installed in this body still has great war benefits.

Isn't this just a casual way of pinning down a chaotic kid?

"Foolish beings fallen into chaos—I am the Endless Emperor! The last warrior to try and save those who fear death! The eternally shining king of the human empire! And Talazin, Hades' most loyal and devoted friend!!!"

The word "Pluto" clearly caused the fat man in front of Tarachin to fall into a brief coma, but a moment later, Typhons awoke again, filled with extreme astonishment.

"Tar...Tarrasin?"

"It's down!"

The Endless One suddenly stretched out a hand.

"Alright! There's no need to tell me your name—for the Great Endless One has already seen through everything—I think you are Karas from another world! Isn't that right?!"

The similar aura of this Chaos Warrior immediately reminded Talathin of Karas Typhon, a Death Guard veteran who served under Mortalion.

Talassin also failed to display the admirable virtue of immediately killing Chaos upon seeing that the opponent was Chaos. After all, he was already a Deathbringer with extreme affinity for alien races. In the eyes of the Necromancer, the heresy of alien races and Chaos was actually not much different.

Humans are the ones who care a lot about these things.

As expected, Typhon hesitated for a moment after hearing the name "Karas," then nodded, seemingly approving of the name.

"Because of the green skin, I got separated from my squad."

[Typhons] reluctantly stated the truth, saying that he had no hostility toward the suddenly appearing Tarachin, especially after this inexplicable space necromancer announced "His" name.

[Typhons] did indeed know that a space necromancer was part of the human empire's reinforcements, and now he was 100% certain that the space necromancer was this unreliable fellow before him—

Because only this force of the cosmic necromancers would openly use the power from Hades.

At the same time, after joining the loving father's family, [Typhons] rarely got angry about anything, as if everything was his deserved retribution.

Tarasin stroked his chin. He couldn't quite say what this Nurgle warrior was doing here, completely detached from the main force's actions, but judging from his behavior, he didn't seem like a scout placed on the front lines.

His clone was the frontline intelligence team, and as a result, Tarasin discovered an extremely strange battlefield on the front line. All the greenskins and terrestrials tacitly avoided this oily green area, and in this area, countless terrestrial and greenskin corpses were being eroded by fungi and turned into a thick soup.

So the Endless One came here to scout out an escape route for Hades and his gang. Then he saw Typhons, who had been brought here by mistake by the Greenskins.

Instinctively, Taracin would have taken the guy in immediately, but now that Taracin was on a path to something greater and more real, he decided to take him in later.

"So what are you doing here?"

[Typhons] helplessly spread his hands. Could he say that he wanted to find that being... but had been hesitant to act for various reasons?

He could only repeatedly console himself that he was waiting for Vox and his group to arrive so they could go to their deaths together.

For someone like him, who's just drifting along in another world, war has long lost its purpose. War is just war, like going to work every day. Who wins or loses doesn't matter, since his life is already as bad as it can get.

The resistance that Typhon could muster was completed ten thousand years ago. He placed his bet on Mortarion, hoping that Mortarion could carry out one last rebellion.

But these are things that are not suitable to talk about. The sensitive little Nurgles in the Father's Garden cannot speak frankly. At the same time, too many Chaos creatures live in a daze, especially the children of the Father's Garden. If you don't plan to compete for favor in the garden, then there is indeed nothing to do in the garden.

[Typhons] usually go to Barbarossa to tend to the "garden".

Finally, [Typhons] paused, then opened his outstretched hand even further.

“I’m… researching the evolution of the Tyranids. This race is very interesting. There are no such creatures in my world. In certain situations, I think this race is very threatening. Their evolution rate is just too fast, so I’m studying how to… get rid of them.”

[Typhons] continued, there was nothing to hide, he was already a dead man, he just wanted to see his old friend one last time, and preferably leave with some dignity.

If he had been more polite, perhaps this "most sincere crony of Hades" would have lent him a hand and sent him to see Hades.

"My design direction is to try to drive a group similar to the Tyranids to fight against them, but the premise is to separate the new swarm from the original population, while ensuring that they will never split again or evolve out of the intended purpose."

The green light in Tarasin's eyes flickered. It had discussed a similar topic with Hades before, but due to the urgency of the war and the fact that neither of them was particularly proficient in biotechnology, such ideas had to be temporarily shelved.

"The core of the Terran Zerg lies in the underlying genetic code that drives them, but the Terran's underlying logic allows for internal division and escape within the same race so that they can re-expand their population in the future. If we want to use them as a stable weapon, I initially thought that we need to curb this aspect of the Terran's instinct."

Taracin nodded, agreeing with the green Space Marine's point of view and eager to hear what followed. But to the Endless's surprise, Typhons shrugged and looked at the Endless with a helpless expression.

"But all the research in this area failed."

"Typhons said with some frustration,"

"First of all, removing these genes is very difficult. Gene fragments with similar functional expressions are mixed in many different groups of genes, making complete removal impossible unless I have the computing power of an entire planet. Secondly, even if I manage to suppress the expression of these genes, the newly edited Tyrannosaurus will be weakened as a result—"

The swarm's dispersal and flight in the event of defeat is just one expression of these specific genomes, which are also responsible for the individual's war escape response during combat.

In other words, these genomes are too numerous and intertwined with many other genes, making complete deletion impossible. Furthermore, even if they were completely deleted, these genomes wouldn't only be responsible for expressing swarm collapse behavior, but also for other behavioral patterns of the Terran.

Just like a word in the genome that starts with "ab", under different conditions, it can be spelled as either "abandon" or "ability".

If you simply delete "ab" to try to prevent Tyron from spelling "abandon", then "ability" will also be unable to be spelled again.

The reality is a million times more complex than that. [Typhons] was merely giving a simple example—genetics is far more complex than programming. This is why genes generally generate souls more naturally, while programming usually requires the physical body generated by genes to pray in order to generate a soul in the subspace.

After hearing Typhons' explanation, Taracin shook his head. The Necromancers seemed to have realized that they could no longer directly use the Tyranids as weapons—a fact that would likely greatly frustrate Hades, the mastermind behind all ideas.

"So you mean Tyrion will ultimately be useless to us, right, Green Boy?"

The playful nickname "Green Boy" did not anger Typhons, because Typhons was no longer easily angered by trivial matters. The Nurgle warrior didn't even care about it, and instead shook his head at the previous issue.

"That's what I was thinking too."

He spoke slowly, but out of the corner of his eye he glanced at the green-skinned corpses rotting on the green fungal carpet around him.

"But then I realized I could think of something else—the Ork gave me an idea. Since we can’t avoid the swarm’s autonomous splitting and fleeing behavior, we can make them a race that will autonomously decay, like the Greenskins."

"The greens need war to reproduce, and only war can stimulate their spore division. Therefore, we can set up expressions that these terrestrials need a certain environment to stimulate their reproductive behavior."

"I initially envisioned using 'Terren' as this setting—"

If this newly edited population becomes aware of the presence of more than 50 old Tyranid individuals around them, the newly edited Tyranids will immediately become active and exhibit normal Tyranid behavior—except that they will prioritize attacking the old individuals and seizing the old species' habitat. Subsequently, when the old population number drops to zero, the genes within the newly edited Tyranids will show a significant decrease in expression, and finally the entire population will enter a dormant state until it is reactivated.

"That sounds great."

Taracin nodded, sensing that this Karas from another destiny line was clearly a man of action, unlike the technocrats it kept under its command—

Those bastards are practically the physical manifestation of embezzlement and kickbacks.

It even began to feel that this Nurgle warrior with several pairs of insignificant little wings on his back was kind and approachable, for he had developed so many achievements simply out of a passion for his profession.

The Endless One couldn't help but take a step forward, wanting to hear more insightful opinions.

Typhons, however, shook his head at the praise of the Endless One.

"But then I realized that this wasn't a safe bet,"

He said that a pang of sadness welled up in his heart. If Killieman suddenly approached Typhon and asked him to provide a similar solution, then Typhon would definitely stop at this version.

But now he is not facing the [Guilliman], but another galaxy, a better one, the galaxy that they should have been able to live in and build.

Typhons knew perfectly well that he would most likely not, and would not have the opportunity to, provide patch versions of these solutions again—because he himself was about to face utter destruction.

Therefore, he hoped, and only out of selfishness, that he could come up with a relatively complete solution himself.

[Typhons] wanted to do something, just to make up for his previous silence and inaction.

"Terrens are evolving quite rapidly. It is very likely that the older individuals will try to decipher the behavior of these newly edited Terrens and then rebel. They may disguise their appearance so that the new edited individuals cannot recognize them as enemies, or they may genetically contaminate the new edited Terrens."

"In other words, after solving the problem of the Tyranids' rapid reproduction, the most important issue is how to enable them to clearly identify hostile creatures."

[Typhons] stopped, took a deep breath, and knew that what he was about to say might be shocking and offend the death-fearing man before him.

His inspiration still comes from these green-skinned animals.

After all... the Greenskins, as a tool race from some ancient era, were designed to be exceptionally well-rounded.

[Typhons] swallowed hard.

"If I were to design something in this area, I would face one of the most challenging problems I've encountered in millennia, because Terrence's biological evolutionary mechanism is simply too perfect. It is almost unparalleled in its ability to counteract and oppose other systems, and the differentiation between new and old individuals would evolve to an extent that is unimaginable to us—"

But what I'm certain of is that survival of the fittest will eventually cause the newly edited individuals to reintegrate into the Tyranid population due to evolutionary trends, so this method won't work.

"therefore……"

[Typhons] paused, his hesitation almost making the Endless One anxious. The Endless One took another step forward, signaling [Typhons] to speak quickly.

“I’m wondering if there’s a possibility… to bypass Tyron’s internal mechanisms and control him in the simplest and most direct way.”

Perhaps this method doesn't exist in other universes, but in this damn universe they inhabit, [Typhons] wants to say, "Yes, it does."

There are rules that can bypass Tyrannosaurus Rex's internal mechanisms and are powerful enough to directly counter its physical laws.

That is subspace.

"The Ork have inspired me once again."

"Typhons" said slowly.

“We can directly label newly edited individuals as believing in the existence of a certain subspace, and then they will indiscriminately attack similar individuals who do not believe in the existence of this subspace.”

In other words, they make the insects convert to a religion, and then the converts indiscriminately slaughter the non-converts.

If a religious insect stops believing in religion, then let the god they believe in simply eliminate this traitor.

It's hellish, but it works.

Is that right? Yes, that's right.

This is Warhammer 40K.

The answer is that talking about theology is worse than talking about science.