The sky gradually darkened. Night was coming.
Dance knelt on the ground, fiddling with a device.
Zeke saw that it was something Dance had scavenged from a soldier's corpse—it looked like a vox-caster (radio).
"Please respond if received. Please respond if received. This is Dance, Identity Code..."
Dance knelt on one knee, holding the vox-caster's receiver in one hand while carefully adjusting the knob with the other.
Intermittent static crackled from the radio. Zzzzt... Zzzzt...
Under Dance's adjustment, a distorted voice finally came through:
"Zzzzt... This is... 101st Regiment."
A response! Dance stopped turning the dial, carefully moving it back to the position where he had just caught the signal.
Zeke was also drawn in, crouching beside him.
The fuzzy voice cut in and out.
"I am stationed at... Colonel Benedict... heading to Tyrok Fields. Soldier, why are you..."
The radio died at the most critical moment. Except for the noisy static, there was no sound.
"Damn it!" Dance punched the ground hard. Zeke was greatly disappointed.
"What kind of place is the Tyrok Fields exactly?" Zeke asked. He had heard this name several times now.
Dance straightened up, recalling. "It's a miracle. An impregnable fortress."
He paused. "In Tyrok, you won't see ordinary streets. Instead, there are maze-like passages."
"Flanking the passages are the houses where residents live. I say 'houses,' but... well, they are actually small bunkers. Rectangular slit windows, machine gun emplacements on the balconies."
"If war breaks out, Kasrkin can be stationed there, using the favorable terrain to kill any enemy attempting to approach."
Zeke imagined the scene. His focus was a bit different; he was concerned about the residents' living conditions.
A whole family squeezed into a dark, damp room, constantly guarding against everything... Isn't that just a "caveman"?
Zeke knew the feeling well. When he was a Minecraft newbie, he would usually find a hill, hollow it out, and use it as his home.
Ugly and uncomfortable. Suffocating, really... Even a "matchbox" house is better.
"Living inside must be pretty tough, right?" Zeke said.
Dance was clearly stunned. He fell silent for a long while before whispering, "Just some necessary sacrifices."
He didn't continue the topic, choosing instead to wipe the lasgun in his hands.
Ripples of interest stirred in Zeke's heart. He had long been curious about this iconic standard-issue weapon of the Warhammer world.
"Can I try it?" he asked.
A clear hesitation crossed Dance's face. The gun was a soldier's second life.
But the person in front of him had literally given him a second life.
He looked at the lasgun in his hand, then up at Zeke. Solemnly, he lifted the lasgun with both hands and handed it over.
"Its name is 'Peak's Cry'. It's been with me for four years."
The gun showed obvious signs of use. The grip was wrapped in cloth, and there were clear traces of manual modification.
"My father taught me some forging knowledge. From casting iron swords to modifying firearms, he covered it all," Dance said.
No wonder your profession is Weaponsmith. Zeke took the weapon.
Regrettably, no text popped up in the chat box.
Having achieved his goal, Zeke played with it for a moment before returning the lasgun to Dance.
Dance took the gun, slung it over his back, glanced at the sky, and warned:
"We need to find a safe place to spend the night before dark. Cadia has many native nocturnal predators. Plus, with Chaos forces infiltrating everywhere, the night is much more dangerous than usual."
Night? A safe place?
Zeke immediately switched to a Stone Shovel.
"Leave it to me." The shovel flew in Zeke's hands.
Dance, gradually getting used to Zeke's endless tricks, stood aside.
The stone shovel cut into the ground. As the digging went deeper, Zeke sank underground, soon leaving only a square hole on the surface.
Dance peered down into the hole.
Zeke dug down to about seven or eight meters. The depth was sufficient, so he began to expand the space horizontally to the sides.
Breaking and placing... I've never seen a psyker like this, Dance muttered to himself. Also... no matter how I look at it, this looks like a coffin.
"Done!"
Zeke's voice came from below.
Zeke planted torches on the ground, looked at this underground matchbox he had built, and clapped his hands in satisfaction.
Then he made some Ladders out of wood to connect to the surface, and incidentally brought the cow underground as well.
"Where I'm from, at night, we usually just 'dig three down and plug one up'. This counts as the deluxe edition."
Dance looked around. As a native Cadian born and raised on a Fortress World, his professional instincts made him speak up.
He squatted down, rubbing the dirt on the wall with his fingers. "The wall structure is too loose; it lacks reinforcement. We usually use a mixture of plasticine clay and limestone powder to coat it. After drying, it's very hard and moisture-proof."
He stood up and tapped the ground with his foot. "Drainage ditches are also essential. They can guard against poison gas or corrosive liquids the enemy might use."
As Dance spoke about these things, the look in his eyes changed.
As the most important Fortress World on the Imperium's front lines, Cadia was in a state of perpetual war. For the locals, building fortifications was survival knowledge carved into their bones.
Zeke listened, stunned. New text floated up in the chat box at the bottom left of his vision.
[Dance is teaching you basic fortification construction experience.]
[Blueprint: Cadian Underground Bunker, Recorded.]
Create Mod architectural blueprints! As long as you provide all the necessary materials, you can generate a specific building in an instant. A must-have artifact for lazy people.
The crafting method was also simple: a piece of Paper plus Blue Dye. A veritable "Blue-print."
Actually, the biggest use of this blueprint was to popularize automation.
Usually, when Redstone or Tech experts built a complex device, they could upload the device directly to a blueprint. When building it again, it would save most of the effort.
In front of him, Dance had finished explaining all the key points of the underground bunker.
Zeke sat on the ground, sitting up straight. "Um, Master Dance, can you be a bit more detailed?"
"Master?" Dance was startled by the sudden title, a trace of embarrassment crossing his face.
"I'm no master. This is just the most basic knowledge from the Cadian Whiteshield boot camps."
Dance coughed lightly, squatted down, picked up a piece of gravel, and began to draw on the dirt floor.
"Regarding underground bunkers..."
Outside the hole, the Cadian night had fallen.
No stars, no moonlight. Occasionally, one or two flashes swept through the darkness—the pupils of some predator.
Later on, Dance's voice became lower and lower until his head leaned against the wall, and he fell into a deep sleep.
Zeke quietly digested the new blueprint information unlocked in his mind.
[Blueprint: Cadian Surface Bunker, Recorded.]
[Blueprint: Standard Trench, Recorded.]
The former was a surface firing point constructed using terrain and materials, while the latter was a defensive fortification utilizing the earth itself.