Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End

Alvin's vision was plunged into darkness, as if he were sinking into a cold abyss, his entire body numb and stiff.

In a daze, it felt as if a cold, pale sun was blooming with dazzling radiance, like a brilliant star ring, frozen in the pitch-black void.

His eyelids felt as heavy as if they were locked; his head was dizzy and throbbing, as if from a hangover.

It took him a long time to finally open his eyes.

"Where... am I?" He looked around, bewildered and at a loss.

The dark, damp alley was piled high with foul-smelling trash.

Above his head, a dense web of crisscrossing pipes blocked out all sunlight, and the oppressive air was filled with a pungent, putrid stench!

In the gray, hazy air, a massive amount of dust and smog floated; with every breath, he could feel his lungs coating with mud and ash.

"Cough, cough... cough, cough..."

Alvin, extremely unaccustomed to such a harsh environment, coughed violently.

"I'm talking to you, you son of a bitch, are you playing deaf with me?!"

The brutal voice, like a thunderclap, made his brain buzz and instantly pulled his thoughts back.

He raised his head, and what met his eyes was a terrifying face: a hideous scar slashed diagonally across the entire visage, severing the brow bone and lips. Accompanied by the angry expression on his face, it twisted like a worm, and a scarlet, tyrannical look swirled in his cold, dark eyes.

"Answer me!"

The scarred man raised his foot without warning and kicked him in the chest like a heavy cannon.

Bang!

The immense force nearly knocked the life out of Alvin.

He was kicked backward, flying through the air and slamming heavily into a drainage pipe.

The pipe fractured upon impact, spraying nauseating sewage, and an even more pungent odor permeated the air.

The scarred man stepped forward, planted a foot on Alvin, and took the opportunity to hold a notched knife directly against his throat.

"If you can't hand over three portions of supplies tomorrow, I don't mind slaughtering you!" The scarred man leaned down, his fierce and greedy eyes looking as if he were regarding a beast: "Did you hear me clearly? You little brat, don't make me repeat it a third time!"

He stared at the blade against his throat, its edge chipped and stained with dark brown clots left by dried blood.

Without a doubt, the man was a ruthless character who killed without blinking; there was no telling how many lives he had taken!

Adhering to the philosophy that one must bow when under the eaves, Alvin took a deep breath and decisively spoke: "I'm sorry, I was wrong. I will definitely hand over the supplies on time tomorrow!"

The scarred man put away the knife, his eyes scraping fiercely across him, and spat a glob of thick phlegm to the side: "If it weren't for those bastards from the Tiechui Gang being short on people, I would have chopped you up with one stroke."

After delivering the threat, the scarred man turned and left, leaving Alvin alone in the dark, damp alley.

Having returned from the gates of hell, Alvin's chaotic and stiff thoughts instantly became clear.

Immediately after, fragmented memories flooded into his brain like a tide, completely without any preamble!

The explosive, sharp pain felt as if someone had stabbed a chisel into his pituitary gland and was stirring it violently. Alvin gritted his teeth hard, veins bulging on his temples, struggling to control himself from making a sound.

Deep breath, deep breath... Fortunately, the sharp pain came quickly and vanished just as fast.

After returning to normal, Alvin took off the low-quality gas mask on his face and looked at the dense arrangement of pipes above his head; the last glimmer of hope in his eyes... vanished!

Good news: he had transmigrated, and it was Terra.

Bad news: it was Holy Terra.

This was the Warhammer universe!

A hysterical, deranged universe where every race struggles to survive at all costs!

It was a terrifying universe filled with extreme militarism, lunatics, fanatics, extreme xenophobia, and more—enough to make any army of transmigrators from Qidian shrink back.

War was the eternal theme of this universe.

Every life surviving in this universe was like doing the butterfly stroke in a cesspit; it wasn't about who could swim further, but who would be the first to choke to death.

Although he couldn't see his own face, Alvin was certain.

His current expression, to use the words of netizens, was probably like a Grot that had just had its toe stepped on!

And this body's original name was Alvin, a scavenger in the lower nest of a certain Nestworld within the territory ruled by the Human Empire.

To put it in layman's terms, he was just a bottom-tier trash collector.

"Are you kidding me?"

Alvin, having digested the memories, slumped on the ground like mud, his eyes lifeless: "I just went to get a wisdom tooth pulled, how did I end up in this hellhole when I woke up!"

Had he done something heinous or unforgivable in his past life?

What kind of bullshit tooth extraction could send him to the Warhammer universe?

But complaints were just complaints; after venting and his emotions stabilized slightly, Alvin ultimately had no choice but to face reality.

The scarred man from just now was a member of a lower-nest gang called the 'Xuefu Gang', responsible for collecting 'protection fees' from them.

In the Warhammer universe, even if you were a bottom-tier trash collector, you still had to pay 'protection fees'.

But lately, it was said that for some reason, the Xuefu Gang and the Tiechui Gang had been beating each other's brains out.

The Xuefu Gang had suffered heavy losses, which was why they had tripled the protection fee on top of the original amount!

Was there anyone who resisted?

Naturally, there were, but the outcome was without exception: they all had their heads chopped off by the Xuefu Gang as a warning to others.

But, it was obvious that Alvin, as a bottom-tier scavenger, often went nine meals hungry every three days and couldn't even afford to eat; where would he get extra 'supplies' to hand over?

But if he couldn't pay, the fate awaiting Alvin would be either being dragged off to feed the genetic hounds raised by the Xuefu Gang, or... becoming the next warning.

Driven to a dead end, Alvin finally decided to take a risk and go to the scrapyard in the southeast of the lower nest, which belonged to the Tiechui Gang's sphere of influence, intending to steal something.

Unfortunately, his luck was terrible. Just as he picked up something that seemed very valuable, Alvin ran into people from the Tiechui Gang talking to someone draped in black robes. Because he was too far away, he couldn't hear clearly, but he vaguely heard words like 'skull' and 'sacrifice'.

Then, Alvin was discovered!

With just one look from the person in black robes, he felt a splitting headache, as if there were twisted, evil, chaotic whispers.

It felt as if thousands of red-hot steel needles had been stabbed into his brain and were stirring violently.

Alvin, in unbearable pain, clung to a shred of sanity and escaped that scrapyard, only to arrive in this alley, where his soul was completely crushed.

By the time Alvin woke up again, his soul had already been swapped with that of a young man from the 2K era.

"From now on, I am Alvin."

Alvin whispered, the memories of the two merging, no longer distinguishing between them.

He lowered his head and looked at the tattered bag at his waist.

Inside, it hid the 'thing' his predecessor had traded his life for. He opened the dirty, tattered bag and saw a wristwatch.

Due to the corrosion of the external environment, the metal strap was covered in rust, the connection was almost broken, and the watch face was smeared with a layer of dirty black grime.

"Can this thing... pay the protection fee?"

Several black lines crossed Alvin's forehead; if he threw this thing on the ground, nobody would want it. If he really tried to use it as collateral, he'd probably be chopped up and fed to the dogs on the spot.

On the principle that it was something his predecessor had traded his life for, it would be too unfair to the other person to throw it away.

"Heaven bless me... no, it should be Emperor bless me!"

Alvin held onto the last shred of hope, used his sleeve to dampen it with sewage, and then carefully and gently wiped the grime off the watch face.

After the black grime was wiped away, an exquisite watch face was revealed.

Alvin looked at the watch face and was instantly shocked by its precise and complex internal structure; countless gears of various sizes were nested together, and the machinery was filled with artistic beauty. The outer bezel didn't have time numerals, but rather some inscriptions he couldn't understand at all.

"What on earth is this thing?"

As he stared at the precise watch face in a daze, the watch face suddenly underwent a transformation!

Click, click...

The originally stationary watch face suddenly began to rotate.

Amidst the crisp and sluggish sound of mechanical operation, the countless gears in the center of the watch face rotated one after another, and then suddenly flipped to the other side.

The central watch face was pitch-black and deep, as if engraved with some kind of text, which lit up in sequence.

A voice full of mechanical sensation echoed in Alvin's mind.

【Respected Navigator, would you like to travel to... a new world?】

【Beep, beep, beep, warning! Insufficient energy!】

【Current stock... 0.1 standard units】

【Cross-dimensional device activation requires 100 standard units of energy!】