The smell of rust.
This was Wang Shaojing's first thought upon waking. That mix of machine oil, stale ozone, and an indescribable charred smell, like a pair of rough hands, fiercely clutched his stomach.
He abruptly sat up, not feeling the usual aches and pains from an all-nighter at work, but rather an alarming, heavy fatigue. Subconsciously, he reached for his phone on the bedside table, but his fingertips touched not a smooth screen, but a cold, rough, slightly greasy metal plate.
"Where is this..."
His voice was hoarse, as if he had swallowed a handful of gravel.
Wang Shaojing rubbed his stinging eyes, his vision gradually clearing from blurriness.
This wasn't his rental apartment. It wasn't even Earth.
Above him wasn't the familiar ceiling, but an arched metal dome hundreds of meters high, crisscrossed with countless pipes and gears, with rivets each the size of a washbasin. Dim red light flickered in the distance, a warning lamp gasping weakly. The air was thick with visible dust, dancing in the faint light.
He was sitting on a narrow metal walkway, barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast. One side of the walkway had a rusty railing, the other a massive sealed blast door, spray-painted with a worn Gothic numeral and a mechanical double-headed eagle emblem that had long since peeled away.
As a senior programmer and an old otaku well-versed in all kinds of hardcore sci-fi, Wang Shaojing's brain, after its initial crash, quickly began to reboot.
This oppressive industrial wasteland aesthetic, these exaggerated megastructures, and that emblem... Before he could sort out his thoughts, a crisp electronic chime suddenly sounded in his mind, like the Windows startup sound, but more ethereal, more... sacred.
[System initialization complete.]
[Detecting environment... Environment detection complete.]
[Current location: The Galaxy / Milky Way · Segmentum Solar · Forge World "Anvil" · Abandoned Industrial Zone A-42.]
[Current time: The 001st year of the 41st Millennium... Correction, time stream unstable.]
[Host: Wang Shaojing.]
[Occupation: Dungeon Manager (provisional) / planner (self-proclaimed).]
[Warning: High-risk environmental reaction detected. Host's current physical strength: F- (weakling). Recommended to seek shelter immediately.]
Lines of light blue data streamed directly across his retina, overlaying his previously dim vision. This fully immersive holographic experience was more real than any VR game, so real that he didn't feel the slightest dizziness.
"Dungeon Manager? planner?"
Wang Shaojing was stunned. He subconsciously tried to wave his hand to dismiss the somewhat obstructive interface, but found that the data stream was welded to his eyeballs, unmoving.
Just then, a dull roar vibrated up from the metal floor beneath his feet, making his soles tingle. Immediately after, the dim red warning light in the distance suddenly became rapid, accompanied by a piercing siren, like the death throes of some giant beast.
"Warning: Hostile biological signal detected approaching. Quantity: 3. Species: Unknown (extreme vigilance recommended)."
The system's red warning box flashed frantically in the center of his vision.
Wang Shaojing's heart rate instantly soared. Games were games, but this overwhelming sense of oppression was definitely not rendered by a graphics card. The primal fear made his hands and feet turn cold.
If it were a game, he could just reload. But the system had just shown the number of "Revival Coins" as [0].
Once dead, he would be truly dead.
"Damn it, what kind of damn real game is this!"
Wang Shaojing cursed under his breath, his body reacting faster than his brain, quickly crouching and hiding behind a pile of discarded wooden crates next to the massive blast door. The wooden crates here, made of some exotic plant, were hard as stone and covered in strange fungi.
He held his breath, peering out through a gap in the crates.
Not far away, a twisted figure crawled out of the darkness.
The thing looked like a skinned human, but it moved on all fours, its spine grotesquely arched, like a giant centipede attached to its back. Its head had no features, only a vertical mouth split to its ears, filled with sharp teeth. Dark red viscous fluid dripped from its chin onto the metal floor, making a sizzling corrosive sound.
"What is this thing? A Genestealer hybrid mutant? Or Nurgle's little pet?"
Countless monster images from sci-fi horror games flashed through Wang Shaojing's mind, his palms slick with cold sweat. This monster was definitely not an Earth creature; that pure, evil, twisted sensation made his stomach cramp even from dozens of meters away.
The monster seemed to sniff out the scent of a living person, and its terrifying vertical mouth suddenly turned towards Wang Shaojing's hiding place, emitting a shriek like a baby's cry.
"It found you!"
Wang Shaojing's heart sank.
Almost simultaneously, the system interface popped up again:
[Player "Wang Shaojing" detected in extreme danger.]
[Newbie Guidance Quest triggered: Survive!]
[Quest objective: Survive for the next 10 minutes and reach "A-42 Energy Control Room."]
[Quest Reward: Unlock "Player Recruitment" authority, unlock "warhammer ol" closed beta server.]
[Quest Failure: Host death.]
"Recruit players?"
Wang Shaojing's pupils contracted sharply.
He instantly understood. This wasn't just transmigration; it was an opportunity. He was just an ordinary person with no power to fight back. In this murderous 41st Millennium, going it alone was a dead end.
Only those—who treated life as nothing, destruction as fun, and all disasters as game mechanics—the fourth scourge, were his only hope of survival in this world.
And the prerequisite was that he had to survive these damned ten minutes first.
"Hoo... hoo..."
Wang Shaojing forced himself to calm down. A programmer's job was to find a logical loop in a messy pile of bugs. The situation now was no different.
The monster had moved. It scrambled on all fours, racing along the metal wall like a mad dog, its claws sparking against the steel.
He couldn't outrun it.
Wang Shaojing glanced around. Besides the wooden crates, there was only the bottomless industrial abyss and the tightly sealed blast door.
"System! Do you have a weapon? Even a stick!" he screamed in his mind.
[System store not yet open. However, host can utilize surrounding environmental resources.]
This broken system!
Seeing the monster less than ten meters away, its nauseating stench already assailing him, Wang Shaojing gritted his teeth and fixed his gaze on a rusty fire valve box next to the blast door.
The box appeared locked, but half of its glass was shattered, and inside hung a heavy... fire axe? No, it looked more like Insulated Shears used to cut high-voltage cables.
"It's now or never!"
The moment the monster lunged, Wang Shaojing suddenly rolled out from behind the wooden crates. His movements were clumsy but decisive. He grabbed into the broken box, and the moment his fingers touched the heavy Insulated Shears, the cold sensation gave him a slight sense of security.
"Roar!"
The monster crashed down exactly where he had been hiding, the wooden crates exploding instantly, sending splinters flying everywhere.
Wang Shaojing had no time to consider the monster's anatomy. He snatched up the Insulated Shears, which weighed over ten jin, and with all his might, brought them down hard on the monster's head!
"Die, you bastard!"
For an ordinary person, fear might have made them hesitate. But Wang Shaojing's body had been strengthened by the system to fit the Warhammer world's physique after his transmigration, and his daily overtime on Earth, where deadlifting became his only outlet, had accumulated a resentment that now transformed into pure strength.
"Splat!"
The sound of a blade cutting into decaying flesh was sickening. The monster's carapace was harder than expected, and the Insulated Shears got stuck in its neck. Blackish-green blood gushed out, splattering all over Wang Shaojing's face.
"Aaaah!"
Wang Shaojing screamed, but he didn't stop. Instead, using the leverage of the stuck shears, he kicked the monster hard in the abdomen, pushing it away, then pounced on it, straddling its body, wildly swinging the "weapon" in his hand like a madman.
Once, twice, thrice.
Until the monster stopped twitching, until its strange head became a pulpy mess.
Until the system's notification sounded.
[Killed unknown Warp creature (juvenile). Gained experience points: 10.]
[Time remaining until quest end: 08 minutes 12 seconds.]
Wang Shaojing collapsed on the ground, gasping for breath. Covered in grime, clutching the weapon, his eyes held a ruthless intensity, as if he had crawled out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
This was warhammer 40k.
No magic, no miracles, only iron and blood.
But he smiled. A somewhat savage, somewhat deranged smile.
"Heh heh... interesting."
He wiped the blood from his face, looking at the countdown on his retina.
As long as he survived, as long as he could open that server... he would let the entire The Galaxy / Milky Way know what a true "Scourge" was... Five minutes later.
Wang Shaojing stumbled and pushed open the heavy blast door, revealing a control room filled with retro-futuristic technology. Countless holographic projection terminals flickered, and a massive Gothic control console stood in the center.
He dragged his heavy steps to the console and slammed the bloody Insulated Shears onto the tabletop.
[Target reached. Quest complete.]
[Awarding rewards... Congratulations, Host, you have obtained the core authority of the "the fourth scourge System."]
[Generating virtual server... Building Earth network access channel... Generating promotional copy...]
The world before Wang Shaojing changed. The dilapidated control room in his vision began to load layers of magnificent data streams. He could see the underground energy network connected to this console, the dormant defensive turrets, and even all the unexplored resource points on this level.
But most importantly, there was the familiar Earth internet interface dialogue box, floating in the center of his vision.
It was the backend management system for a game's official website.
[Welcome to the "Warhammer OL: Eternal Crusade" planner Backend.]
[Current status: Eve of closed beta.]
[Please enter your server name:]
Wang Shaojing took a deep breath, extended a trembling finger, and typed those words on the holographic keyboard.
[New Hope].
This was not just a name; it was his first defiance of this desperate world.
[Server name set. Generating download link...]
[Please set the number of closed beta qualification slots (recommended maximum: 1000 people):]
Wang Shaojing looked at the blank input box, a strange smile playing on his lips.
In this godless age, if the Imperium couldn't save them, then these "players" from Earth would.
Since you like memes, like making a scene, like not taking anything seriously... then I'll give you the biggest stage.
"Give me... ten thousand copies!"
His finger hit the Enter key hard.
The next second, on Earth. On some unknown dark web forum, or on the computer screen of a gamer browsing Steam's New Releases.
A pop-up appeared abruptly, without any advertising effects, only a line of blood-red Gothic text and an extremely hardcore-looking download button:
[Do you want to become a hero in this dark future? Or, with a death-seeking constitution, become a villain?]
[warhammer ol, 100% immersive real experience, now offering ten thousand closed beta registration slots.]
[Warning: This game may cause sanity to decrease, and even unpredictable physical consequences.]
[Click download, and it is a contract.]
...Wang Shaojing leaned back in the control chair, watching the "connection request" data on the backend interface instantly begin to surge, the red numbers refreshing like a waterfall.
[Current queue: 3,402...]
[Current queue: 12,890...]
[System prompt: The first "Scourge" is about to descend.]
Wang Shaojing closed his eyes, feeling the faint tremor from the ground beneath his feet. He knew that in this cold, dark, despairing universe, an unprecedented storm was about to brew.
"Welcome to the Era of the fourth scourge."
He said softly, his voice weary but firm.