The trade city of Calidon, situated at the far end of the Webway stretching throughout the galaxy.
As a place where countless slaves captured and dragged in by the Eldar were gathered, the warehouses used to confine them were enormous as well.
Within the dank slave warehouses housed inside spires that stood like stakes driven throughout the city, various xenos forcibly captured from every corner of the galaxy were imprisoned, their spirits utterly drained.
The special organic shackles fitted by the Eldar made it impossible for the slaves to even conceive of the very idea of "resistance."
The moment they harbored even the slightest rebellious or seditious thought, they would be engulfed by excruciating pain, as though their entire nervous system were being ruthlessly scraped raw.
Sure enough, among the imprisoned aliens, a band of green-skinned Orks, unable to contain their rage at their brutal captivity, rampaged wildly as they tried to tear off their shackles.
But the price was horrific.
Zzzzzzzing—!
"Gwaaaaaaagh!!!!!"
In an instant, the entire group of Orks let out terrible screams and collapsed to the floor as if their brains had been burned out, unconscious.
Inside the vast prison, where nothing but grim silence and despair hung heavily in the air—
Ratatatata-boom! BANG!!!
Without warning, the savage sounds of battle and monstrous explosions, enough to tear their eardrums apart, began to thunder from outside the warehouse.
The imprisoned aliens turned their heads as one, their eyes wide as they tried to understand what was happening.
Then the tightly sealed warehouse doors exploded and flew away entirely.
What emerged through the thick smoke were countless humans—no, countless Noahs with identical faces.
"Hey, this place is practically a space museum."
"Damn, there are even some here I’ve never seen before."
The Noahs, linked by a shared consciousness, felt as though they were looking upon an exhibition of living xenos.
Without hesitation, they smashed the prison controls and flung open the cells.
Then they roughly threw master keys for the shackles and looted Eldar melee weapons onto the floor.
But the slaves, cowed by prolonged and merciless torture, could not readily take up weapons out of fear of the Eldar, and merely watched for signs of what to do.
Noah watched them quietly, then walked over to the Orks lying on the ground.
Deliberately choosing weapons that were crude and heavy enough to suit their tastes, he tossed them beside their heads.
Then, using every channel available, he shouted in a magnificent voice that seemed to resound across a battlefield.
"Waaaaagh!!!!"
That single word became the spark.
The eyes of the Orks, who had lain as if dead, instantly blazed red.
With the switch of instinct thrown, the Orks bellowed Noah’s "Waaagh!" right back at him. Confirming that their shackles had come loose, they grabbed the weapons Noah had given them.
Then, turning toward the sounds of fighting outside—sounds overflowing with a glorious "Waaaaagh!"—they raised their weapons and charged through the wide-open doors like madmen.
Once the Orks began rampaging with weapons in hand, the tens of thousands of imprisoned slaves also seized weapons all at once, screaming as they poured out of the warehouse to avenge their long-standing hatred.
Under ordinary circumstances, they would have fought each other to the death like bitter enemies upon meeting.
But with Eldar standing right before them who needed to be fucked up first, the galaxy’s first multi-species alliance was hastily formed.
It was nothing short of a historic and miraculous moment.
When the Orks came roaring out of the building, a veritable "paradise" unfolded magnificently before their eyes.
Already, several million Noahs blanketed the whole of Calidon like a sea, waging a brutal, endless full-scale battle against Calidon’s armies.
To the Orks, it was an intoxicating forest of meat and wine.
"Smash those pointy-ears!!!"
"WAAAAAAAAGH!!!!"
The Orks charged the Eldar defensive lines with cries of joy. With Noah’s overwhelming numbers compounded by the countless liberated xenos slaves launching rebellions and swarming in from every direction,
the trade city of Calidon was swallowed in uncontrollable, utter chaos in the blink of an eye.
Pshiiiiing!
Thud!
Noah, the architect of this entire hellscape, coldly approached a high-ranking Eldar he had personally brought down with a molecular weapon.
His legs literally disintegrated, the Eldar glared at Noah and spat blood while hurling curses in his own language.
Before him stood Noah, the flesh blown off his left flank in the preceding battle writhing as it regenerated at superhuman speed in real time.
He raised the molecular disintegration ray gun in his hand, the [Vulgata Gun], and aimed it at the Eldar’s head.
Pshiiiiiiing!
The instant the vivid blue beam flashed, the Eldar’s head disintegrated at the molecular level and evaporated into the air.
The tactical drone floating beside Noah recorded all the results, gathering real-time data on the weapon’s firepower and calculated area of destruction.
"Did you record it?"
(Yes, recording complete. Next, please test the new volkite weapon.)
Following the guidance of Veronica’s sub-AI built into the drone,
I opened a spatial aperture and took a weapon with a new grip in hand.
"Then here I go again!"
With an excited look on my face, I opened space and leapt into the battlefield still raging at this very moment.
Appearing in the middle of the battlefield, I sprayed vivid red beams at the Eldar.
The Eldar struck by the beams were cut apart along with the armor they wore.
"Hahahahaha! Yes, this is the stuff."
At this very moment, the pointy-ears’ glorious slave city of Calidon was the site of a desperate urban battle on a planetary scale.
...Honestly, this hadn’t been the original plan.
Originally, our plan had been very simple and peaceful.
We were going to pose as captured slaves, naturally get sold into the slave market, then obtain the hidden coordinates scattered throughout the Webway passages one by one to complete a map.
But this plan had gone thoroughly wrong from the very start.
It seemed these pointy-ears were not all style and no substance. During an inspection, a high-ranking Eldar psyker who faced me looked into my mind, glimpsed the vast consciousness network beyond it, and began vomiting blood.
Horrified, the psyker screamed like he was drawing his last breath for them to kill that monster immediately. With my identity exposed, I had no choice but to completely open the spatial passages, summon a grand legion of "me" to the site, and wage war.
Honestly, at first I thought we would easily ravage the Eldar with bottomless numbers and endless tactical supplies.
But their counterattacks and defensive systems were far more vicious than expected, and the pace of occupying the city and slaughtering its inhabitants was much slower than anticipated.
As expected of the Eldar Empire at its height, before its fall.
Though this was merely an outlying trade city rather than a core world of the Aeldari Empire, the psychic weapons and energy weapons they deployed struck with bone-chilling ferocity.
At the front, there were even repeated cases of some of "me" having their entire bodies erased and dying before they could regenerate.
Yet amid the blasting fire of the battlefield, a clever thought suddenly made my eyes shine.
Wait. If I think about this intense battlefield differently... couldn’t it be the best possible live training ground and test site?
I immediately gathered Veronica’s sub-AIs and held a short, sharp tactical conference.
(An engagement with the Eldar will provide optimal simulation data for preparing for the great calamity to come.)
Once the AIs reached that affirmative conclusion, I resolved to make this opportunity the finest "war rehearsal" for preparing against disaster.
At the same time as testing and confirming the practical combat data and power of the weapons currently adopted by Gateway Corporation,
I opened spatial passages and deployed the elite legion Immortals and the anti-psyker unit Eclipse to the front lines on a massive scale.
It was not as though we had never fought wars before, but a war this fierce was rare.
That was why I wanted to help the kids gain real combat experience this time.
As expected, once Immortals and Eclipse entered the battlefield, the tide of war gradually swung in our favor.
Immortals, who possessed overwhelming martial strength and destructive power, raided the enemy’s key positions throughout the city and thoroughly butchered every Eldar inside.
Most importantly, Eclipse, the centerpiece of this battlefield, wielded anti-psychic weaponry as befitted Pariahs and literally crushed the magic-wielding pointy-ears in a one-sided massacre.
While directly withstanding the Aeldari’s absurd psychic sorcery and advanced technology, Gateway Corporation began steadily accumulating bloody, real-combat tactical data in its most perfect form.
*
Approximately fifty days after starting the war in the Webway.
Our forces had swallowed half the city and continued the war.
Most of the various xenos slaves who had joined the war with us had died, and only the Orks continued to fight in meaningful numbers, multiplying through spores.
Perhaps they liked the way "we" fought, because the Orks even gave us the highest praise: "You lot fight zoggin’ brilliantly!"
Honestly, I had remained wary of those Orks because they were crafty bastards when it came to using their heads.
But unexpectedly, they merely looted Eldar weapons and equipment and focused on fighting, treating us like a temporary alliance.
Well, since it was all good, I enjoyed the war alongside the Orks too.
While the other kids seriously engaged in the rehearsal war, putting tactics and strategy to practical use on the battlefield,
we Noahs, on the other hand, began to cut loose once we had adapted perfectly to the front lines.
Simply put, we started acting like battle-hardened veterans in the middle of the battlefield.
Charging at Eldar while dressed as clowns, riding unicycles and wielding chainswords as we carved them apart.
Rushing in with bare fists, smashing Eldar Falcon grav-tanks in half, then beating their pilots to death inside.
Grabbing Eldar children and throwing them as snacks to hungry Orks in front of their parents.
Putting on blindfolds and charging with ordinary swords in the style of blind swordsmen, claiming we wanted to properly experience our sixth sense.
We enjoyed every kind of amusement the battlefield had to offer, and the Eldar, aghast, honored me with the title "abomination of madness."
Just as the pleasure of ravaging the pointy-ears’ city in return was reaching its peak—
Wooooooom—!
At last, the Eldar Empire’s regular army—the main force, having recognized the gravity of the situation—tore open the dimensions and deployed onto the front.
The tide of battle changed in an instant, and we began to be pushed back.
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