Warhammer: The Time Traveler

Chapter 1 The Time-Traveling Motorbike Guy
A wave of excruciating pain, as if tearing one's soul apart, washed over him.

It wasn't neurological pain, but something deeper, more essential—as if the fibers of the soul had been torn apart and hastily stitched back together.

It felt as if someone had pulled his soul out of his body, thrown it into a warp storm where it churned hundreds of times, and then roughly shoved it back in, making him feel extremely physically uncomfortable.

If I hadn't already transformed my stomach into an energy reactor, I probably would have vomited by now.

Chen Yu's consciousness struggled to rise from the chaos, each thought bringing a fresh wave of dizziness and nausea.

He abruptly activated the optical sensor, but the glaring sunlight made him subconsciously lower the sensitivity.

Before me stretched an endless expanse of golden sand.

"By the Emperor... what kind of hellhole is this?" he muttered under his breath, his voice hoarse and metallic as it came through the mask's filter.

The aftereffects of the time travel made him somewhat irritable; this time, the feeling was even worse than when he had hit the jackpot and traveled to the Warhammer universe.

He tried to sit up, and servo arms and mechanical appendages extended from under his dark red robes, steadily supporting his body, with grains of sand slipping through the gaps in his joints.

"Priority: Status self-check." He habitually started the process, trying to dispel the chaos in his mind with familiar tasks.

"Structural integrity: 93.7%. Power core output: reduced to 41%. Energy level: low. Warning: Non-essential systems have automatically entered low-power mode."

The energy alarm made his heart tighten—it meant that most of his combat power was temporarily sealed.

His hand accidentally touched something cold at his waist—an ancient artifact, a dark gold dodecahedron, with incomprehensible, dizzying patterns on its surface that seemed to be flowing like a living thing, and was faintly radiating energy fluctuations.

"Was this your doing?" he muttered to himself, both helpless and amused.

This thing suddenly activated its teleportation function in some ruins, dumping him in this godforsaken place.

He looked around, trying to find any landmarks.

The sand dunes stretch endlessly to the horizon.

He activated the multispectral scanner, and his field of vision was immediately filled with a stream of data.

“Environmental parameter scan: Gravity…approximately 0.998 standard G. Atmospheric composition: Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 21%, Argon 1%…” He recited the data silently, but his voice suddenly stopped.

This ratio...it's so familiar! So familiar that it almost made his heart stop—if he still had his original heart.

Impossible! How could this be?!
He took a deep breath. Although the air was filtered, he could almost "smell" that familiar scent—so similar to the blue planet he longed for! The gravity was almost identical too!
An absurd, insane idea popped into his head, yet it sent shivers down his spine.

"Could it be... that I'm back? Back to Earth?!" His voice crackled with excitement.

Ecstasy surged through his entire body like an electric current.

Hometown! Cola! Internet! No more chaotic whispers! No more green waaagh!

There are no mechanical cult brothers who are always thinking about dismantling your research or condemning you as a heretic just because you use an extra kilowatt-hour of electricity!
He felt an urge to dance with joy and shout at the sky.

After paying such a high price to barely adapt to that godforsaken place, did we really turn out to be a blessing in disguise and come back?

But his long-standing caution and suspicion quickly suppressed his impulse.

"Calm down, Chen Yu, calm down! The data might just be a coincidence... We need more evidence," he told himself, but his voice still trembled slightly.

His gaze settled on several clumps of thorny, drought-resistant plants growing close to the sandy ground. The scan began rapidly.

"Plant sample analysis: Gene sequences contain a large number of unnatural splicing and mutations, carrying weak β and γ radiation... Characteristics consistent with forced mutations caused by radioactive contamination. Ecological assessment: Abnormal, confirmed as a product of radioactive mutation."

Radiation mutation? His heart sank slightly. Had his hometown become like this? Or... was this not the time he remembered?
"Try connecting to the local data network! Quickly!" he growled almost impatiently, his excitement nearly overflowing.

He raised his hand, and a pale metal artifact the size of a human skull flew out from under his sleeve—a servo skull decorated with an eagle emblem and a data interface, its jaw constantly opening and closing—humming and hovering beside him.

"Scan all available frequency bands, retrieve data signals, attempt to access local network nodes, priority: identify network protocols and civilization status!" He issued a series of binary commands.

A faint light flashed in the servo skull's eye sockets, and the jaw opened and closed faster, emitting a series of soft clicking sounds in response.

It rapidly ascended and began spiraling reconnaissance around Chen Yu, its built-in sensors and communication arrays fully activated, greedily capturing any data stream in the air.

Chen Yu watched intently as the real-time data transmitted back from the servo skull appeared in his field of vision.

At first, there was only blank noise, which made his heart tighten.

But soon, the skull detected something.

however--

What was fed back to the nervous system was not the orderly data packets and numerous signals that one would expect from the bustling and vibrant digital world of one's hometown.

Only the noise becomes more jarring when amplified.

A sharp, chaotic, and meaningless static hiss filled the air. The servo skull barely managed to forward some extremely weak, fragmented data packets, but like wreckage from an explosion, they lacked valid headers and payloads, consisting only of unreadable gibberish and destructive background noise.

The servo skull transmitted a calm analysis: "Warning: Large-scale signal annihilation traces detected. No valid network beacons found. Data fragments cannot be reconstructed. Speculation: The global data network is severely damaged or in an extremely disordered state. Access attempt failed."

Hope deflates quickly, like a balloon punctured by a needle.

The stark contrast left him breathless. The intensity of his earlier elation matched the depth of his current despair.

He could even sense a hint of logical "confusion" emanating from the servo skull—it couldn't comprehend this utter network silence either.

"Retract. Maintain alert mode." He gave the order somewhat dejectedly, his voice lowered.

The servo skull quietly flew back to his shoulder, its jaw gently opening and closing, silently accompanying its master.

This isn't the home he longs for. At least, not entirely.

The gravity was right, the air was right, but the plants mutated, and the network crashed.

What exactly happened in this world? Did he come back?

A sense of isolation, like cold grains of sand, instantly filled every one of his sensors.

He stood in the center of the boundless sea of ​​sand, the unfamiliar blazing sun overhead, sand radiating from beneath his feet, an ancient mystery in his hand, and a broken path home behind him.

Even the technological creations he trusted most could not provide the answers he longed for.

The core protocol updates automatically, but this time, it's driven by more personal, urgent needs for answers.

He chose a direction and began to walk.

The precision machinery left deep marks on the sand, but these marks were quickly erased by the relentless wind and sand.

The dark red robe fluttered in the hot wind, and a heart, raised with hope and weighed down by doubt, beat silently within the mechanical chest.

(End of this chapter)