Chapter 408, The Life-Sucking Vampire
Has the establishment of the Skaven Empire brought more and better changes to the Skaven?
No, maybe not.
Time passes rapidly on such a vast scale as the universe.
Two hundred years have passed since the Rat People successfully walked into the starry sky.
Colonial cities fell one after another on the seven planets that formed the subspace corridor, and even the Skaven Empire expanded rapidly.
For two hundred years, many changes have taken place in the Rat Man Empire.
These crazy guys push a lot of stuff.
But a faint sense of decay has entangled the entire Skaven Empire.
A real disconnection was born in the advancement of time, from those blood mushrooms, from the scarlet filtered out by the putrid corpses.
The essence of life has never been able to extend life endlessly, even when paired with the soul gem.
The effect will decay with use. This is not an eternal elixir.
But it is indeed a miraculous thing. Coupled with the life essence of the soul gem, it decays time and time again, but when you use it, it will still be effective.
It is nothing more than a doubling increase in dosage.
From a drop, to a sip, to double, to finally, these rat nobles, big shots, powerful people, greedy monsters, were completely immersed in the extremely bright water.
The rat people have nothing to do with vampires, but at this moment, these guys are more like vampires than vampires.
The Rat Man Empire has entered a state of complete solidification. Sheng Qi is still the Rat Man High Priest to this day, and those greedy guys have also regained their youth one by one.
But Qi was getting old. He abandoned the blood mushrooms and the temple guards on the day the Rat Man Empire was established. I just didn’t know that he would not regret it later.
After the emperor of the empire resolutely resisted the tentacles of the remnants of the Rat Council fifty years ago, he never obtained the life essence that could be used to extend his lifespan.
These remnants, well, maybe it’s right to call them that. After all, the great gods have left. It’s really appropriate to make these guys the remnants. They want to use the scarlet The blood turned into reins and put the reins around Kai's neck.
But I didn't expect Qi to be so decisive.
Even the capital of the Rat Man Empire was moved, leaving the temple in the distance, leaving this small planet, and moving to the end of the miraculous channel, the last of the seventh planet. .
Is it all worth it? After all, what those greedy guys want is not that expensive.
Just those despicable rat people.
Or those lives that can be used for sacrifice.
A drop of life essence requires enough blood mushrooms to fill a room, and enough creatures to be killed to pile up a hill.
A small sip of life essence requires tens of thousands of lives.
The blood pool that was built to maintain these decaying vampires, how exaggerated is the life it requires?
With such terrifying demand, even external plunder is somewhat difficult to maintain.
They can only focus on the other rat people around them, who are becoming more and more prosperous with the exploration of the starry sky.
The curse on Longclaw lasted after all. He did not become a god, and neither could the deformed rat-men who played with his corpse.
These guys who can't live without the essence of life have become like bedbugs that can't live without water, clinging to all the rat men and greedily sucking the blood.
But in fact, even here, the conflict between Qi and these guys is not that difficult to mediate. After all, what these guys want is not excessive. Even if the number is such an exaggeration, the rat people actually You can support them as long as the number of these greedy vampires does not expand indefinitely.
Does Qi take those despicable guys too seriously? I'm afraid not.
In fact, at the bottom of the Rat Man Empire, they have always had a bad life. There have been some changes compared to before, but it seems that nothing has changed.
The roaring factory, the puffs of black smoke, the screaming rat overseers, the rat nobles who run the factory, the unimaginably meager remuneration, and the work that seems to never stop.
The fallen code has indeed changed some things. There is no longer the unreasonable killing, the wanton trading, and even the ratman breeding house has been swept into the garbage dump.
But nothing seems to have changed.
The Big Claw Priest, the Skaven Priest, and that country that is so abnormal that it is unimaginable.
These things seem to appear again just with a different name.
As for why, why nothing has changed.
After the Rat Man Empire has embarked on this stable road of miracles, its exploration of the physical universe has reached a deadlock. The terrifying physical scale between stars is a challenge for everyone who walks on it. Something that the race in the starry sky had to face.
There are not many paths to choose from. Either increase the speed of the spacecraft to the limit of the physical universe, and then use a series of means such as sleeping cabins to carry out this long exploration, or take a shortcut and go through subspace. Exploring the physical universe.
This is not an easy task, especially when the scale of the Skaven's technological advancement is particularly exaggerated.
Positioning, star maps, piloting, and the experience of subspace exploration, all of these are problems, but you expect the rat people to stop patiently and follow the instructions on the seven planets. It is almost impossible to use resources to climb the technology tree.
These impatient guys chose the simplest and crudest way to conduct this expedition to the stars.
Exhaustive list.
While building a large-scale star fleet in large quantities, they are constantly throwing various reconnaissance ships into the subspace, using these rat scouts to carry out exhaustive operations.
This is not without effect. At least in these years, there are really three relatively stable subspace pathways that have been explored by the rat people.
These three passages lead to three star fields, and they have also become the source of suffering for these despicable guys in the Skaven Empire. They are constantly sending targets, and the blast furnaces that never stop are built on the mineral veins and become more and more bloated. cities, and these miserable guys who look free, but live in exhaust fumes and die on steel.
It is still the firewood that is constantly being burned. It seems to be no different than before. Their burning has brought about the prosperity of the Skaven Empire, and in exchange for the ships taking shape in the outer orbit and forming in the star port. The Skaven warship on board.
Achieved the burning fire in the eyes of the rat emperor.
Qi did not give preferential treatment to these guys in the Skaven Empire. He did not love these despicable guys. In essence, he burned these guys in the Skaven Empire and turned them into blood floating in the pool of blood. Corpses, there is no essential difference between these.
But Qi burst out with unspeakable disgust towards those vampires. Not even the slightest bit unwilling to make any compromise with these rotten guys.
Indeed, he didn't care about those despicable guys, but he did not allow these greedy blood-sucking insects to snatch anything from his clenched hands.
Even the passage of life and the aging of his body failed to move him in any way.
He is the rat-man emperor!
This is very Ratman, very Ratman, very much like the Ratman under Du Yuan, a crazy guy who is really ignited with the fire of desire, extreme and paranoid.
The truly ruthless characters among the Skaven are never afraid of death.
But this also triggered the conflict that was difficult to bridge.
The contradiction between life and death.
There is no doubt that those guys want to survive, those greedy vampires, and Qi Zai gradually becomes an obstacle to their survival.
Now, the conflict has not completely erupted.
Because of the mutual fear.
These greedy vampires still have too much influence on the Rat People. Even though Qi separated them from the Rat People Empire, their influence is still spread throughout the Rat People Empire by virtue of their faith.
Even if it is really a matter of life and death, the best time has not yet been reached.
We can only wait for now.
On the other side, those guys who transformed into vampires are also waiting, and they are less anxious than Qi Lao.
Time is on their side after all.
Even if he is so stubborn, and how long has he been able to be stubborn, if he dies, everything will still go according to their wishes.
Ever since, a strange balance emerged.
The two sides maintained such a strange balance while entangled and peeping at each other.
Obviously the rat people are still young, but the rat people empire is inexplicably decayed and rigid. Today, nothing happened, everything is the same as before.
………….
The third planet colonized by the Skaven was a high-quality mining planet named Steam and Steel, but the Big Claw Priests preferred to call it another name, Black Iron Star.
This is the source of raw materials for the first, second, and third fleets that the Skaven Empire is building, these three interstellar fleets, and even many fleets in the future.
This is a dusty planet, a relatively young planet. The core of the planet is still in a state of agitation that has not subsided. There are a large number of volcanoes, rift valleys, and exaggerated Drilling a deeper hole into the rock crust is where geothermal resources will gush out.
The movement of volcanoes and the core of the planet bring a large amount of rare minerals to the surface. The huge rift valleys can be used as natural mines, and the surging geothermal heat is simply natural and cheap energy.
This is an extremely high-quality planet suitable for mining. If the building damage and earthquakes caused by too frequent geological activities can be solved, then this planet can also become a planet extremely suitable for industrial activities. Industrial planet.
Can the Rat People solve this problem?
Of course, although with the progress of the times, the rat people's increasingly larger cities have to spread towards the surface and the sky, in order to avoid the damage to the city caused by geological activities, and to avoid the damage caused by the rat people's city to the geological structure. of damage.
Well, this is a situation that is difficult to describe. It can only be said that when the Rats dug the city deeper and deeper underground, they finally encountered the insurmountable marginal effect.
The exaggerated mouse holes made by these super-evolved rats are not unbearable for the planet, but they have reached a level that is unbearable for themselves.
Magma that may spew out and fill the entire city, unstable crustal structure, frequent earthquakes, collapsed urban areas, toxic gases buried in underground caves, and of course, underground water, these messy things It was becoming increasingly unbearable for the rat people.
As a result, they had to relocate most of the city's structures to the surface.
But this does not mean that the Skaven learned nothing from their struggle with the insurmountable marginal effects of the underground city.
They have already mastered structure and architecture. In short, they have no problem coping with the restlessness of this young Black Iron Star.
Of course, the Black Iron Star became the industrial center of the Ratman Empire, attracting most of the Big Claw Priests who were walking on the path of machinery. No, it seems to call them Big Claw Priests now. It is no longer appropriate. These new generation of rat engineers still have faith, and even believe in the great god who is somewhat mysterious in legends and epics.
Although they may not know this themselves.
Because now, the symbol representing the rat engineer is the technician's badge derived from the Church of the Gears, which is a badge with an embossed metal gear with huge claw marks.
The spirit of gears, the spirit of machinery and metal.
This is the object of their faith.
Undoubtedly, this also comes from that great god, but with the passage of time, this connection is gradually being forgotten.
Now, these rat-man engineers no longer have the iconic big claws. These large claws that appear due to work have gradually become the symbol of the wild rat-men.
But some things have not changed much, that is, these guys are still a little nervous. At the same time, the aesthetics of being big and strong, and the design concept that does not pay attention to user experience, these messy things have been Inherited.
It can be said that the good ones cannot be learned, but the bad ones will be passed down for thousands of years.
The gathering of these guys on Black Iron Star naturally makes Black Iron City an extremely important technological node in the Skaven Empire.
Under the coverage of such multiple rings, a star port was officially set down in the outer orbit of this black iron star thirty years ago.
Today, the Rat Man Empire controls a total of eight planets, including the original planet transformed from the corpse of the small plane.
Among these eight planets, apart from the original star, Shenqi, which is the starting point of the Miracle Bridge, and the fortress at the end of the Miracle Bridge, only the Black Iron Star has a star port.
However, it is not surprising that Shenqi and the fortress, which is the capital of the Rat Empire at this time, have a star port. The symbols and meanings of these two planets are extremely important.
Compared with the two planets above, Black Iron Star is incomparable in most aspects, but it can have a star port only for a very simple reason.
Value.
It is of great value!
(End of this chapter)