Back then, as long as he had a patch of ground, he could create a loyal death-sworn soldier.
So what was this now?
A difficulty spike?
Or were the underlying laws of the Warhammer universe simply so brutally rigid that they had crushed the system's conversion efficiency down to this outrageous level?
One gretchin kill only gave 1 Life Point.
That meant that in this deathtrap of a space hulk, crawling with danger at every turn, he would have to rip apart a hundred greenskins just to exchange for the most basic expendable soldier.
And then there was that adamant steel reserve.
Lawson lowered his head and looked at the Fang of Catachan in his hand.
The moment his gaze settled on the blade, a tiny prompt window popped up on the system interface, just as expected:
[Detected high-strength carbon-based metal construct (plasteel/adamant steel composite).]
[Absorb and convert into adamant steel reserves?]
[Estimated yield: 0.00024 cubic meters of adamant steel.]
Lawson chose [No] without a second thought.
What kind of galaxy-brained joke was that?
He was stranded behind enemy lines, and this blade was the only thing keeping him alive. If he let the system "eat" his only weapon for that pathetic 0.00024 cubic meters, he might as well just slash his own throat and die cleanly.
Still, he needed to understand the logic behind how this adamant steel was acquired.
This was a space hulk.
If there was one thing this place wasn't short on, it was metal.
He strode over to a massive steel load-bearing pillar nearby and pressed his palm against it.
Nothing happened.
Then he picked up a chunk of scrap iron from the ground, no bigger than a man's hand.
[Detected ordinary scrap iron / low-carbon steel.]
[Absorb and refine into adamant steel reserves?]
[Estimated yield: 0.003 cubic meters of adamant steel.]
The rules became clear instantly.
Only objects he could physically lift with his own strength were judged by the system to be his "property," and only then could they be absorbed.
To confirm it, he hoisted up a solid iron lump weighing well over two hundred jin.
The system recognized it as absorbable, but the actual yield was only 0.007 cubic meters. During refinement, scrap metal suffered massive compression losses.
"Absorb."
In the next instant, the two-hundred-jin iron block dissolved into a cloud of fine gray motes and vanished.
The rules were clear now, and the efficiency had been figured out. This was no time to keep doing arithmetic.
The danger was far from over.
This was the wreck zone of Deck Seventy-Seven.
When the Eighty-Eighth Assault Detachment had launched its charge, the company he belonged to had been fighting in this exact area.
Back then, he had been surrounded by comrades.
Now, every last one of them was gone.
At that moment, Lawson raised his ears to the silence.
From deep within the shadows, he caught an approaching cluster of discordant sounds.
"Waaagh... humies... smash..."
"At least several dozen gretchin and Ork boyz are roaming this deck."
Lawson made the judgment, then moved with extreme speed to inventory everything he still had on him.
One Fang of Catachan.
Two fragmentation booby traps cleverly hooked inside his combat webbing.
One twenty-meter spool of monofilament rope.
A military ration bar hard as a brick.
A canteen holding half a flask of murky filtered water.
A tactical waist pouch containing several meters of concealed det-cord.
He had no idea what was happening in the void outside.
Were those three Imperial cruisers still there?
Were there any other survivors left from the Eighty-Eighth Assault Detachment?
The chaotic footsteps were getting closer.
The orks had apparently caught the scent of fresh blood in the air and were moving this way fast.
He couldn't stay where he was.
Lawson quickly retreated and locked onto a ventilation duct above him at an angle.
The grate covering it had long since disappeared, leaving only a black, open maw.
In the jungle, when faced with a beast-pack you could not defeat, a hunter had to learn how to hide better than his prey.
Without a sound, he slipped into the dark duct.
Darkness was the oldest ally in the void.
It was also the deadliest enemy.
Lawson, Cole "Iron Serpent" Lawson, peered down through the gaps at the bottom of the duct, looking over the wreck zone of Deck Seventy-Seven below.
The first things to emerge were more than thirty gretchin, packed together in a jittering cluster.
They dragged all kinds of loot they had scavenged from human corpses and the rubble.
Rusty gears, snapped lasgun barrels, blood-smeared helmets, even a severed, gore-dripping thigh that had probably belonged to some unlucky Guardsman.
"Move it, you worthless worm-nosed snotlings! Faster!"
Behind the mass of gretchin, two hulking figures lumbered into view, cursing as they came.
They were two fully grown Ork boyz.
Both stood over two-point-two meters tall, their dark green skin crisscrossed with old scars.
They wore ramshackle armor cobbled together from old tires and the shells of some unknown xenos beast, all riveted into place in rough patches. Each carried a massive choppa.
One of the Ork boyz also had a huge shoota hanging at his waist, with a barrel thick enough to swallow an adult man's fist.
Lawson narrowed his eyes inside the duct.
He was waiting for a variable.
Suddenly, a wave of commotion broke out among the gretchin below.
The two dead gretchin had been found.
"Boss! Boss! Over here!"
"Dead humie-trash! Got killed!"
This one was clearly a bit smarter than the two idiots from earlier.
It crouched beside the gretchin corpse Lawson had stabbed through the throat and twitched its sharp nose twice.
"Dis is a big humie blade! Dere's a live one nearby, a fighty humie! A really fighty humie!"
Greenskin genes let them smell the oil of an Astartes bolter from hundreds of meters away, and they could judge an enemy's viciousness from the wound on a corpse.
"WAAAGH! You noisy little snotling!"
The Ork boy at the front lashed out with a savage kick at the clever gretchin that had been trying to sound the warning.
The gretchin only got out half a scream before it smashed into a metal bulkhead more than ten meters away and burst into a green-red mess of flesh with no recognizable shape left.
The surrounding gretchin all began trembling as one.
"Two useless runts!"
The Ork boy dug at his nose. "I came lookin' fer a scrap with dem big lads in metal armor, not fer a game o' hide-an'-seek!"
"I heard more gunfire up ahead! Means them cowards are nickin' the best loot! Move! WAAAGH!"
"WAAAGH!"
The two Ork boyz stomped off toward the far end of the corridor.
The utter illogic of the ork mind had just handed Lawson his chance.
The gretchin began scavenging through the wreckage zone again.
The formation spread out wide, breaking into twos and threes across the area.
Three gretchin, shoving and snarling over a damaged shoulder plate marked with the Imperial Aquila, happened to wander directly beneath the ventilation opening Lawson was hiding in.
Now.
Lawson dropped from the duct.
The Fang of Catachan was held in a reverse grip.
Thk.
In the instant before he hit the ground, the blade plunged with absolute precision into the crown of the leftmost gretchin's skull.
Green blood and brain matter did not even have time to spray.
Lawson flowed straight into a smooth forward roll, shedding most of the impact.
The second gretchin only managed a warped little "Skrk...!"
Before it could do more, Lawson's knife hilt smashed into the side of its face.
Half its skull caved in, and one eyeball bulged out of its socket under the sheer force.
Only then did the third gretchin finally react.
Lawson flipped his wrist, and the Fang of Catachan came up in a vicious rising slash.
The broad serrated blade drove up from between the creature's legs, ripping it open all the way into the chest cavity.
From the instant he dropped out of the vent to the moment he completed the triple kill, less than three seconds had passed.
[Life Point +1]
[Life Point +1]
[Life Point +1]