Traveling through time, I'm making pancakes in Warhammer

"You work here?" Howard looked around. It looked like a long-abandoned factory. Huge machines were rusting and collapsed, thick dust was piled on the ground, and weeds with yellow leaves and thorns grew in the corners.

"If outsiders can see the problem here at a glance, that would be our failure," said Arabel.

Then Arabelle led Howard into an abandoned factory. The steel frame supporting it was rusted and twisted, and it seemed as if the entire factory would collapse at any moment. Finally, Arabelle stopped in front of an elevator shaft. The entrance to the elevator shaft had no guardrails. Looking down was a bottomless darkness, and looking up was a dark place. Through the limited light that shone through the entrance, Howard could only make out a few thick, rusty cables.

Arabelle reached out and ripped away a loose sheet of metal from the wall. It was a disguise, concealing the control panel below. She entered a few numbers and pressed Enter. Howard saw the cable inside the elevator shaft begin to spin, an optical illusion created by the cable rising. Then Howard heard the clanking of metal coming from below the elevator shaft, rapidly approaching. Finally, a crude metal cage made of discarded iron bars stopped before Howard and Arabelle.

Arabelle walked into the iron cage, and Howard followed her in. Then Arabelle pulled down the gate, and the iron cage began to descend rapidly.

"Don't be surprised at anything you see down there, and don't tell anyone else." In the darkness, Arabelle told Howard the necessary things.

Howard nodded.

It took him a moment to remember that it was completely dark. He nodded so Arabelle probably couldn't see him, and then he replied, "I know."

"I can see it," said Arable.

Howard looked in Arabelle's direction and saw that her mechanical right eye was glowing faintly red.

With a violent vibration, the elevator arrived at its destination. As the door of the elevator shaft on the ground floor slowly opened, light and noise poured in like mercury.

Howard hadn't imagined that this desolate, old factory from the outside actually contained such a large space. Steel bars and iron sheets formed a vaulted dome, and beneath it, buildings stretched out on either side, extending beyond Howard's reach. These structures served as both housing and support for the space. A wide path between the buildings ensured ample lighting, so even though the environment here was completely enclosed, it was brighter than outside.

The number of people here was a hundred times greater than the number Howard had seen since he came to the middle level of the hive. Countless people were walking on the streets, and not just humans. Howard watched a "person" with a bald head, gray skin and fangs walk past him.

When the "person" noticed that Howard was looking at him, he turned around and looked at Howard with dissatisfaction. Seeing this, Arabelle stood in front of Howard, locked the other person with her mechanical eyes, and began to charge her mechanical arms.

After two seconds of confrontation, the other party looked away and hurried away.

"Don't make eye contact with others." After forcing the man back, Arabelle turned back and said to Howard, "Unless you think you can beat them."

Howard: "This is..."

"This is Jotun, the city within a city in Kalimdor, the most prosperous place in Middlenest." Arabelle led Howard into Jotun and explained, "There is only one rule here, and that is making money. Anyone who can bring wealth is welcomed, and anyone who hinders making money will be punished."

Howard walked and looked at the buildings on both sides, which had some Italian style and were all full of people. There were shops selling all kinds of smuggled goods, taverns filled with oak barrels, and nightclubs with scantily clad women standing at the door.

Arabel's industry here is a mechanical workshop. Human-modified organs such as robotic arms and mechanical lungs are hung on the walls of the workshop. There is a glass cabinet in front of the workshop door, which contains some smaller but more sophisticated things. There is also a huge refrigerator at the innermost part of the workshop to store important parts that need to be stored at low temperatures. It also serves as a refrigerator to store drinks and snacks.

"Do you want me to install one of these for you?" Arabelle said to Howard, who was wearing a gas mask, pointing to the modified lung on the wall.

Mechanical lungs are the most common artificial organs in the middle and lower nests because the smells in these two areas are usually indescribable and contain toxins. If you don't want to run around with a gas mask like Howard, then transplanting a mechanical lung that can help you filter toxins in the air is the best option.

Similar modifications include mechanical stomachs and mechanical kidneys. These mechanically enhanced modified organs can help mortals digest and utilize food more efficiently, or excrete toxins accumulated in the body.

Howard shook his head and refused. The fact that the Oil Man had performed surgery on Arabelle without anesthesia had deeply shocked Howard. Although the pain of surgery without anesthesia was probably not as great as the torture of Slaanesh, it did not mean that he was willing to suffer again.

Furthermore, after living in Zhongchao for almost a month, Howard found that the smell here was not as bad as he expected, and he did not plan to live here forever.

"Okay then." After Howard refused, Arabelle didn't insist. Instead, she said to Howard, "This is where I used to work alone, but lately, we've been getting a lot of orders and business, and I'm almost overwhelmed. Your task is to familiarize yourself with the layout here within the next few days, and then help me find parts and tools when I need them for work. Is that okay?"

Howard nodded that it was okay.

"Oh, and if you're free, I'll leave the cleaning up here to you," Arabelle added. "As a reward, I won't charge you rent anymore, and I'll give you an extra 100 Throne Coins every Terran month."

In the Warhammer world, one hundred throne coins is roughly the normal salary of a skilled worker, and the status of skilled workers in the hive city is similar to that of the middle class in the real world.

In this way, Howard began to help in Arabelle's workshop. As she said, she had a lot of customers during this period. Most of the people who came to Arabelle asked her to help repair damaged machinery, ranging from mining drills to illegally modified guns. Howard even saw something that looked like a grenade launcher once.

In addition to helping Arabelle get tools and clean, Howard's job also included helping Arabelle get frozen drinks from the refrigerator. Often, in order to repair a part, Arabelle needed to work continuously for several hours, and Howard, who had nothing to do, could only serve her tea and water.

Arabelle works here for nearly twelve hours every day, and her lunch is mostly packaged food from the workshop's refrigerator.

Then one day during lunch break, Arabelle opened the cooler and found that it was empty because it had not been restocked during this period, with only a few bottles of alcoholic beverages left.

After standing in front of the empty cooler for a moment, Arabelle turned back to Howard and said, "Want to go out and get something to eat?"