Warhammer Fanfic: Starting with a Core Cabin

To Duanmu Huai, this was truly a pleasant surprise.

Although he had already guessed that being teleported to Alisa's side meant she was connected to the main quest and clues about the sacred relics, he hadn't expected things to move so quickly. He had already obtained the first sacred relic.

After acquiring the relic, Duanmu Huai temporarily separated from Alisa and the others, heading to the topmost floor of the castle. There, he activated the system. Soon, a line of system prompts appeared before him.

[Sacred relic signal detected. Activate teleport beacon?]

"Activate."

As soon as Duanmu Huai gave the command, six skulls silently appeared beneath his feet. A beam of light emerged from their center, and with a flash, Duanmu Huai was instantly transported back to the core pod floating in space. Beside him, Olgis looked around curiously, clearly intrigued by this strange place.

At this moment, the core pod was no different from when Duanmu Huai had last left it. Aside from a terminal and a cryo-chamber, it was still completely empty. Duanmu Huai walked over to the terminal, stretched out his hand, and placed the Water God's Gift on the platform above it. Immediately, the terminal lit up and lines of data appeared.

[Sacred relic signal detected]

[Sacred relic recovered]

At the same time, Duanmu Huai watched as the white pearl shattered and dissolved into particles of light, disappearing without a trace.

[+1 Construction Point]

[Construction function unlocked]

With the system notification, Duanmu Huai saw the terminal expand again. One by one, new options appeared on the interface.

[Core Pod (Completed)][Reactor (Locked)][Enhancement Room (Locked)]

[Judiciary Library (Locked)][Strategic Command Room (Locked)]

[Power System (Locked)][Defense Module (Locked)][Weapon Module (Locked)]

[Extermination Protocol (Locked)][Void Barracks (Locked)][Void Shipyard (Locked)]

[Special Buildings (Locked)]

"Excellent."

Gazing at the construction blueprint before him, Duanmu Huai couldn't help but rub his hands in excitement. These were the foundational components of an Inquisitor's space fortress.

[Core Pod] needed no explanation—it was the place Duanmu Huai had climbed out of earlier.

The [Strategic Command Room] was mainly used for intuitive scanning and reconnaissance of the entire planetary map.

The [Power Reactor] was a fundamental component that supplied energy to the fortress.

The [Enhancement Room] had a somewhat misleading name. At first glance, it sounded like a facility used to enhance the player's own abilities, but that wasn't the case. In fact, the [Enhancement Room] was used to manufacture mech-servants.

These so-called mech-servants were technological creations from the ancient empire. Simply put, they were created by cloning a person, then fusing them with mechanical components to transform them into biomechanical cyborgs. These mech-servants had no self-awareness and could carry out simple tasks via internal program logic.

Of course, if players found that too troublesome, they could also just capture a few criminals and throw them into a brainwashing device for conversion—it worked just the same.

On a side note, there were once players who captured a group of beautiful women and tried to turn them into mech-servants for their own twisted desires... Unfortunately, a game was just a game. As for what would happen in reality… well, that's a different story.

That said, players who had such thoughts were usually already corrupted by the God of Desire, and were promptly added to the Inquisition's execution list and purged.

The [Judiciary Library] was a massive archive, but it wasn't just a simple library. It also functioned as an analysis and modification facility. Players could hand over items acquired during their adventures in other worlds to the [Judiciary Library] for analysis, thereby unlocking new skills, magic, or knowledge from those worlds to enhance and modify their fortress.

The [Defense Module] was the fortress station's protective barrier, while the [Weapon Module] was used to build all sorts of defense weapons—not particularly special.

Next came the [Extermination Protocol]... As its name implied, the [Extermination Protocol] was a planetary annihilation directive—essentially a devastating weapon capable of destroying an entire planet. If an Inquisitor deemed that a world's corruption by Chaos had reached an irredeemable level, they could use their authority to activate the Extermination Protocol. With a single strike—the entire planet would be blasted into dust.

The [Void Barracks] was where an Inquisitor could train a personal army, while the [Void Shipyard] was primarily used to construct warships. For Duanmu Huai, the former wasn't particularly useful, since high-level Soulwalkers were practically one-man armies... In fact, even now, if he wanted to, Duanmu Huai could flood the battlefield with hundreds or even thousands of puppets.

It was just that their attack power was a bit too low.

The [Special Buildings] were additional enhancement modules. If a player received a high enough main quest evaluation or accumulated enough planetary reputation after completing an adventure, there was a chance to unlock bonus building modules, allowing the construction of structures with special abilities.

However, that was still far off for Duanmu Huai at the moment.

As for what order these buildings should be unlocked in—there was definitely a strategy to consider.

In Starsea Online, there were several types of civilization paths. One was the default Imperial Tech Route of the Inquisitor Empire, which didn't require much thought—players could just click through and follow the default path. But beyond that, there were several other civilization routes, developed over time by scattered galactic civilizations after the "Black Hole Project." These included magical civilizations, technological civilizations, and hybrid civilization routes.

Basically, only newbie players would foolishly stick with the default Imperial Tech Route. While it did seem quite strong and effective in the early game, thinking it through would make it obvious—if such a powerful empire still got wiped out by the Chaos Gods of the Warp, wouldn't choosing that path just lead to another failure?

Instead, the smarter play was to research the technologies of other civilizations and integrate their strengths to improve your own.

That was why Duanmu Huai didn't immediately unlock the [Power Reactor]. If he did so now, he'd be stuck with the default Imperial Tech Tree, and it would automatically construct the [Plasma Reactor], the Empire's core power unit. Sure, the upside was that it could power the fortress's built-in weapons system and give the player some orbital firepower early on. But after that, players would quickly discover that different power systems required matching compatible modules. In other words, once a player built the [Plasma Reactor], many of the modules obtained from other planetary adventures would be incompatible—leaving them locked into the Empire's tech route.

Classic case of picking up a sesame seed and dropping a watermelon.

Hmm… Duanmu Huai even suspected the game devs designed it this way on purpose. After all, being able to unleash orbital strikes early game to show off was pretty tempting…

But later on, they'd realize the cost was enormous.

After all, building a module only cost 1 construction point.

But dismantling it? That cost 10 points…

Yeah, that was definitely intentional.

"Unlock [Strategic Command Room]."

After thinking it through, Duanmu Huai decided to construct the [Strategic Command Room] first. He didn't need orbital weapons at the moment. Though the [Judiciary Library] was also very important, for now, map exploration took top priority.

"—————————!!"

The moment Duanmu Huai finished speaking, a flash of white light suddenly streaked across the Core Pod. Immediately afterward, the entire pod began to tremble. After a short while, everything returned to silence. At the same time, Duanmu Huai noticed that at the far end of the Core Pod—where there had previously been a solid wall—there was now a heavy blast door. He walked over, and as the door lifted, a massive chamber appeared before him.

It didn't resemble the core of a space station. On the contrary, judging by the lavish decorations and architectural details all around, it looked more like part of a cathedral. The nearly ten-meter-tall panoramic viewport was edged with ornate gilded trim, and the arched dome above was painted with magnificent patterns.

Scarlet banners hung high from the walls, and through the windows, one could clearly see the nearby azure planet and the surrounding starry sky.The light of a nearby star streamed through the viewport, casting a dazzling golden glow on the emblem of the double-headed eagle.

If not for the holographic projection console at the center platform, this place would look more like a cathedral hall than part of a space station or battleship.

Well, that wasn't surprising. After all, players had long joked that Imperial warships and stations were basically just churches with engines slapped on the bottom...

But regardless, for Duanmu Huai at this moment, this was already more than enough.

He stepped up to the holographic projection console and reached out his hand. Soon, in response to Duanmu Huai's movement, the full view of the planet beneath him unfolded before his eyes.

Alright then, time to move out.

When Duanmu Huai and Olgis used the teleport beacon to return to Silver City, the others had already been waiting for quite a while.

"Where the heck did you run off to?"

Seeing Duanmu Huai's figure appear, the elf scout asked irritably.

"We couldn't find you anywhere. I thought you'd taken the holy artifact and run off."

"I just went to take care of some preparations, that's all."

Duanmu Huai didn't explain further and instead looked at the others.

"What about you guys?"

"We also made some preparations. We're just waiting to set out."

The elf scout replied with a slightly sarcastic tone.

"But route planning is a bit of a headache. After all, we have no idea what the situation is like outside…"

"If that's what you're worried about, then no need."

As he spoke, Duanmu Huai extended his right hand, and soon, with a flicker of light, a projection of a planet appeared in front of him.

"Eh?!"

Everyone's eyes widened in shock at the sight.

(End of this chapter)