Adam's eye twitched. He never imagined he would be this unlucky. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
"It's actually 5K era. Truly bad luck..."
He looked down at his hands, confirming that his Level 3 reality-warping abilities could still be used normally in this universe and that the Hume levels of the baseline reality were stable. That was a bit of good news.
Just as Adam began to analyze his situation, a slight vibration came from his jacket pocket. A tiny, delicate chip floated out on its own and expanded rapidly in the air. Metallic frameworks extended layer by layer, miniature gears meshed and turned, and energy conduits surfaced like veins. Within two seconds, it formed a device resembling a servo-skull.
It had a dark bronze metallic shell engraved with binary prayer runes, and a mechanical eye rotated in its socket, flickering with a crimson light.
Inferior Cawl.
It hovered beside Adam, its mechanical eye focusing on his face, emitting Cawl's signature deep electronic voice. "How is it, Lord Adam? It seems you have some understanding of this world."
Adam was silent for a second. "...You saw everything?"
"Of course," Inferior Cawl said matter-of-factly. "I have been monitoring all information input around you. Based on the changes in your expression and body language regarding that notification, I judge that you possess a considerable degree of knowledge about this world."
Adam's mouth twitched. Why was this thing even more talkative than the original Cawl?
"So, is this 'Foundation' organization something similar to our Inquisition?" Inferior Cawl continued. "Why do they want to destroy all of humanity? It sounds like an extreme form of Exterminatus."
Adam calmed his mind and organized his thoughts. "You could understand it that way," he began slowly. "However, the situation here is much more troublesome than many problems the Inquisition faces. Now, let's do a thought experiment."
"Please proceed."
"Suppose an Inquisitor discovers that on a certain planet, a Warp creature is residing within the collective consciousness of all humans."
Inferior Cawl's mechanical eye rotated, indicating it was listening intently.
"This creature feeds on human pain. Not only that, but all human suffering nourishes its power. It can even influence the consciousness of every human, making them act according to its will." Adam paused, adding weight to his tone. "And at this moment, what the Inquisitor discovers is that this external mental entity has been residing in human souls for countless years. The long passage of time has brought forth the pain of countless humans, making its power unimaginably strong."
"So," Adam looked at Inferior Cawl. "What decision do you think the Inquisitor would make?"
Inferior Cawl fell silent, its voice dropping low. "...Exterminatus."
Adam nodded. "The 'origin' of this world is worse than what I described. This organization successfully discovered such an entity in the human collective unconscious—or, in technical terms, the Noosphere. They realized that all humans are its hosts. Even every human pain is a product of its presence, and every human thought nourishes its existence."
"No, that's not even the worst part. The worst thing is... the longer the entity exists, the more pain it requires. Not just the pain experienced by the living, but the pain experienced by the dead."
"Imagine that the dead throughout history have not truly died, but have been experiencing transcended pain all along. Their bodies turned to fragments, but the pain and torment never stop."
"So, you can understand a battle-hardened containment organization, one whose mission was to contain and protect humanity," Adam's tone became complex. "They finally reached the conclusion that killing all humans—dying alongside this entity to end all suffering—was an acceptable outcome."
"How... nauseating." Inferior Cawl fell into a complete silence. Clearly, even by Warhammer standards, this extreme scenario was an eye-opener.
"I understand. Now, do you need me to continue monitoring the networks for you?" The mechanical skull rotated its crimson eye, looking at the phones of passing pedestrians, roadside electronic screens, and high-altitude signal towers. "The network structure of this world is extremely primitive; I can easily hack into all nodes. In three minutes, I can master all information on this planet."
"Absolutely not." Adam interrupted him almost instantly.
"Stop what you are doing immediately. From now on, you must establish an internal network—a completely closed, independent system that does not connect to any external networks." His tone was more serious than ever. "The Foundation might upload anything to the web. Cognitohazards, informational pollution, memetic triggers—if we get hit, it's over."
"In this world, we must remain extremely cautious."
Inferior Cawl's eye flickered, processing this information. "Understood. Then, Lord Adam, what is our next objective?"
Adam's gaze was deep as he thought. "I'm not sure yet. I need to make contact and confirm a few things..." He stopped and began to listen. "...Wait, do you hear something?"
Inferior Cawl's mechanical pupil snapped to the north. Three optical sensors lit up with crimson light simultaneously, running at full power.
"To your north, approximately seven kilometers away, massive surge fluctuations have appeared," Cawl's electronic voice became urgent. "The scale is immense, and it is approaching rapidly!"
Adam was stunned for a moment. What was going on? But he reacted instantly, snapping his head toward the college student he had stopped—the poor guy was still standing there blankly, clearly not having processed everything yet.
Adam's voice was urgent: "I have a question for you. Is this city a coastal city?"
The student looked bewildered and answered subconsciously, "Of course it is. How can you be here and not know? What else would Yongcheng be near if not the sea?"
Adam: "Crap, why didn't you say so earlier?"
Student: "You didn't ask!"
Just then.
Rumble—
A dull roar began to drift in from the distant horizon. At first, it sounded like distant thunder, low and far away, but in an instant, it became clear—a world-shaking, terrifying sound that made the entire earth tremble.
Pedestrians on the sidewalk stopped. They stood frozen, as if their souls had been snatched away by an invisible force. Phones slipped from fingers, shopping bags dropped, and fruit rolled across the ground. They were like lambs to the slaughter, devoid of any resistance.
Adam looked up toward the north. On the horizon, a black shadow was rising. It wasn't a cloud. It was a tsunami.
A tsunami at least a hundred meters high. The seawater was a bizarre, inky black, as if the abyss itself were surging upward. Skyscrapers looked like building blocks before it. Those massive structures of steel and concrete, the office buildings with glass walls reflecting the sun, looked tiny and fragile in the shadow of the water.
Then, everything was swallowed. Countless fragments tumbled in the seawater like scraps between a giant beast's teeth. The roar of the water was deafening.
Adam stood his ground, watching the overwhelming wave. He shook his head helplessly.
One minute and twenty-two seconds after entering this world, it had given him a little "containment" shock.