Warhammer: The Time Traveler

Chapter 5 The First Workshop

The heavy, oil-stained, and rust-covered metal workbench has been thoroughly cleaned, revealing its cold, raw steel color.

The piles of scrap metal on the platform—metal remnants and parts salvaged from the ruins—are undergoing a transformation.

Under Chen Yu's skillful hands, the laser cutter emitted a subtle and efficient hum, shooting out a dazzling beam of light to precisely etch and separate the metal; several mechanical tentacles emerged from the auxiliary support behind him, like self-aware metal vines, working together to complete the precise operations of pressing, calibrating, and welding.

These discarded materials were reshaped, refined, and polished, eventually becoming a set of practical and handy tools: various wrenches, pliers, hammers, and a set of clearly marked measuring instruments.

They have a simple appearance, but the center of gravity, grip and structural strength of each piece have been rigorously optimized to perfectly match his usage habits.

On the other side, several broken displays salvaged from abandoned billboards and old terminals underwent a complex rebirth.

He carefully cleaned each glass substrate, scraping away accumulated dirt and burn marks, and then pieced them together in a mosaic pattern to form an irregular multi-screen display array.

Still functional chips, capacitors, and circuit boards collected from various corners of the abandoned town were cleverly connected and integrated, then stuffed into a crude chassis riveted together from metal plates.

After the last data cable was connected, he turned on the power.

After a series of flickering and noise, all the screens lit up one after another, displaying a segmented yet coherent interface—thus a bizarre but functional temporary terminal was born.

The hum of the fan and the hiss of the electricity became its breath for survival.

He took a deep breath and gripped the data interface cable in his hand.

The other end of the line is connected to a physical cable that extends from inside the wall, leads underground, and may connect to a surviving network node.

His movements were extremely cautious; the interface was slowly inserted, making a "click" sound.

“Alright,” he muttered to himself, “let’s see what this crazy world is up to.” His fingers flew across the keyboard, typing out his self-written access commands: “Establishing a stable connection… weak signal strength, but protocol recognized… commencing receiving and parsing data streams…”

Information flowed into the screen intermittently, like a slow trickle. The speed was very slow, with occasional stutters and data packet loss, and snow-like noise and garbled characters occasionally popping up on the screen.

But this is no longer the chaotic electronic screeching of the past; it is now structured information that can be analyzed, albeit incomplete.

He greedily absorbed everything.

Twisted news headlines and clips scrolled across the screen: "Arasaka questions test data for new military weapons...", "Government contract review stalled..."

Several blurry, shaky surveillance clips flashed by: on neon-lit streets, wildly decorated members of the "Vortex Gang" and "Tiger Claw Gang" warriors with ukiyo-e style tattoos engaged in a fierce firefight from cover, with beams of energy weapons and flashes of live ammunition tearing through the night sky.

Immediately afterwards, the screen was flooded with pop-up ads for holographic prosthetics—"Krenzikov" neural accelerator, "gorilla arm," "smart connection cable"... These ads were flashy yet cheap, filled with the fervor of over-promising.

Companies, gangs, cybernetic bodies... These familiar yet unfamiliar concepts, aided by fragmented but real information, gradually pieced together the outline of this world before his eyes: a world with a brilliant yet distorted technological tree, dominated and fragmented by giant corporate oligarchs, where street violence is commonplace, yet human modification is regarded as the direction of evolution, a world of crazy and morbid vitality.

"Interesting...truly interesting." Chen Yu exclaimed softly, slightly adjusting the focus of the optical sensor, with flowing data points reflecting off the lens.

The technology in this world, especially in biomechanical interaction, direct neural interface connections, and prosthetic miniaturization, exhibits unique and bold ideas. Some solutions are crude and effective, while others are ingeniously amazing, quite different from the Omnisaiyan doctrine and Martian technological traditions he was familiar with, yet they take a different approach.

This intrigued and inspired him, the mechanical priest, as if he were opening a beautifully illustrated technical encyclopedia written in an unknown language.

His first workshop, though simple and crude—with rough concrete walls, exposed wires, and air filled with machine oil and ozone—was already in operation.

Electricity flows steadily through the wires, powering the tools and terminals; wastewater drips slowly through homemade filters, becoming clear; and most importantly, data is intermittently flowing into the terminal screen, nourishing his thirsty cognitive framework with the nutrients of a new world.

He stood at his workbench, looking around at everything—tools pieced together from scrap but entirely his own, a self-repairing and power-generating system, a cleaned-up space—a long-lost sense of satisfaction and control belonging to the creator welled up within him, washing away the last trace of unfamiliarity and unease of being in a foreign land.

It's terrible, chaotic, dangerous, and resource-poor here.

But just as he expected, this was indeed a place where he could start over and even make a name for himself.

He gently tapped the cold, metallic frontal bone of the servo skull, and the skull's sensors flickered as if in response.

“See, old buddy? What did I tell you?” he said jokingly. “It may be chaotic here, but at least most of the ‘trouble’ here can be solved with technology, logic, and a good wrench.”

He weighed the newly forged wrench in his hand; its weight was just right. "I'd rather deal with a hundred of these malfunctioning cleaning robots than the whispers of a Chaos God or the cleavers of a greenskin orc."

The fleeting sense of satisfaction fades, and the pressing needs of reality return to mind.

Next, he needs to develop a plan.

The immediate priority is to find high-quality energy sources in the wasteland surrounding this "city of night".

The insatiable ancient artifacts and the miniature fusion reactor on his body are veritable "energy black holes".

Scavenging can sustain survival, but to truly establish oneself, one must find a more powerful energy source.

His gaze fell on the terminal screen, where he brought up map data and energy network information.

Perhaps we should start with abandoned power supply nodes, old transmission lines, or the rumored "dangerous creatures" roaming the wasteland carrying high-energy batteries.
His mind raced as he tried to sketch out the first roadmap for resource hunting.

At this moment, in this forgotten corner, accompanied by the low hum of the terminal and the dripping of the water filter, he still wanted to savor a few more moments of the sense of accomplishment of rebuilding everything.

Night fell through the broken window, and distant, indistinct threats echoed from the wasteland outside. But this small workshop, protected by technology and will, had become a gradually solidifying fulcrum in the chaotic world.

He activated the miniature laser calibrator, and a thin beam of red light swept across the joints of the repair arm, performing nanometer-level adjustments.

His gaze, however, was already fixed on the next project awaiting modification on the workbench—which might be the first truly meaningful weapon he would forge in this world.

(End of this chapter)