Chapter 1 concerns Ragnar's search and retreat activities in Warhammer 40k.
On the agri-world 496-B, a planet of endless grain seas and nutrient vats orbiting the equator of a sprawling hive city, the Planetary Defence Force (PDF) was locked in a grinding war against armed insurgents across the Great Plains.
The cause of the conflict lay beyond the planet itself.
A neighboring forge and industrial world had fallen into chaos after repeated greenskin incursions. Ork warbands infested its manufactoria and void docks, forcing the Departmento Munitorum to divert enormous quantities of food, manpower, and matériel to sustain the front. To meet Imperial quotas, the planetary governor of 496-B, acting under pressure from the Ministry of Military Affairs, imposed yet another round of punitive tithes.
For the farmers of 496-B, this was the final straw.
The agri-world was already bled dry. Mechanized serfs labored under crushing schedules, malnutrition was widespread, and entire communes survived on ration substitutes barely fit for human consumption. When the new taxes were announced, nearly half the farming population erupted in open rebellion.
At first, the insurgents were little more than starving peasants with tools.
They stormed farmsteads, tore apart agri-machines, and reforged harvest engines into crude weapons. PDF outposts were overrun one by one. Arms lockers were cracked open, ammunition seized, and deserters swelled the rebel ranks. Within months, the rebellion metastasized into a full-scale insurrection—and then, emboldened by numbers, the rebels marched on the hive city itself.
Millions charged across the open plains.
They were met by entrenched PDF artillery, armored columns, and interlocking kill zones. The land between the fields and the hive became a charnel ground of trenches, shell craters, and razor wire, scoured again and again by bombardment. The war dragged on for years. Neither side could annihilate the other, and the conflict sank into a deadlock that devoured lives without advancing a single kilometer.
Where wars stagnated, scavengers thrived.
Eighty kilometers north of the hive capital, a shallow trench lay half-collapsed beneath the weight of churned earth. A dozen rebel fighters were resting inside when a large-caliber artillery shell screamed down from the sky.
There was no warning.
The explosion erased the trench in an instant.
When the dust settled, nothing recognizable remained of the men inside.
A battered, modified automatic rifle was flung free by the blast. It tumbled through the air and landed crookedly in the mud—where it caught the eye of Ragnar, who had been crawling through the fields for some time.
"This thing looks solid…" Ragnar muttered under his breath.
"Level-two ammo, maybe. I could sell it on the black market for at least fifteen hundred fertilizer coupons."
Suppressing his excitement, he dragged himself forward, inch by inch.
Ragnar was not a native of the Imperium.
He came from the Third Millennium Era—a time of games and screens. Back then, he had been sitting comfortably at home, playing Escape from Tarkov, only to be killed by an AI opponent boasting about one-shot kills with a turbocharged Sukakan and a homemade cannon firing buckshot at two hundred meters.
Furious, Ragnar uninstalled the game.
He switched to the Dark Zone, attempted to break out north toward the hotel, and was promptly riddled with ten consecutive bursts from HK416 rifles, each round tearing through him with absurd precision.
Even more enraged, he deleted that too and turned to Delta Force—only to be blindsided by a brutal shared-prison mechanic and a laughably small number of evacuation points.
In a fit of pique, he shut down his computer and scrolled through his phone.
That was when he saw it.
A stylized image of a female Emperor of Mankind, accompanied by a single line of text:
"Whoever gazes upon this image shall willingly serve the Emperor."
Then the world went black.
When Ragnar opened his eyes again, he had been unceremoniously dumped onto an Imperial agri-world.
The cruelty of human existence in the 41st Millennium was infamous—but Ragnar was not entirely without mercy.
Along with him had arrived the Search, Attack, and Evacuation System.
The system digitized his physical form, allowing him to gain experience, increase attributes, and—most importantly—access a secure hideout located in an absolutely safe subspace beneath the hive city.
And he could resurrect.
Infinitely.
No matter how he died—artillery, gunfire, blades—he would reappear in the hideout at full health. The only price was the total loss of whatever equipment he carried at the time of death.
Freed from fear, Ragnar adopted a simple philosophy:
Search. Fight. Withdraw.
Each day, he ventured onto the battlefield, scavenged anything of value, and returned to sell it through underworld intermediaries. The proceeds were exchanged for upgrades to his hideout and system functions.
Back in the present, armed only with a combat dagger, Ragnar finally reached the fallen rifle.
He lifted it carefully.
The weapon was a rectangular, brutally utilitarian automatic rifle, crudely assembled from scavenged parts. Its ergonomics were atrocious, and it weighed over seven kilograms—far heavier than any firearm from his original era.
But when Ragnar checked the barrel, his eyes lit up.
Rifling.
Rifled barrels were rare among rebel weapons and always fetched a higher price.
He ejected the magazine.
Twenty rounds.
The ammunition was hand-forged, oversized, and savage—approximately 9×65 mm, a caliber utterly impractical for unaugmented humans from the Third Millennium.
But this was the Imperium.
Between mutants, xenos, and abhumans, small calibers like 5.56 or 7.62 were laughably insufficient.
After confirming the weapon wasn't damaged, Ragnar mentally activated the system.
Search · Strike · Withdraw
Name: Rebel-Made Automatic Rifle
Estimated Value: ~2000 Fertilizer Coupons
Weight: 7.2 kg
Vertical Recoil Control: 54
Horizontal Recoil Control: 42
Ergonomics: 41
Holding Stability: 42
Accuracy: 50
Hip-Fire Stability: 61
Effective Range: 500 m
Muzzle Velocity: 950 m/s
Fire Mode: Fully Automatic
Rate of Fire: 550 rounds/min
Ammunition: 9×65 mm
Power Rating: Medium
Ragnar was deeply satisfied.
Two thousand coupons.
On 496-B, a low-tier farm laborer earned barely 150 fertilizer coupons a month. This rifle alone was worth more than a year of survival.
He slung it across his back and lay motionless in the mud for ten minutes. Only after confirming the area was clear did he slip into the shattered trench where the shell had struck.
The rebels inside had been pulverized.
Body parts were scattered across the earth, the air thick with blood and burned flesh. Ragnar spat, suppressed his nausea, and began looting.
The haul was modest:
One spare 20-round magazine
Sixty rounds of 9×65 mm ammunition
A dagger
An axe
A wrench
Four packs of hard biscuits
One full water flask
Total value: 120 fertilizer coupons.
He stuffed everything into his faux-leather backpack and scanned the trench network.
These positions had originally been dug by the PDF. When the rebels broke through, the defenders had withdrawn to secondary lines. It was only a matter of time before the PDF counterattacked and reclaimed the area.
Ragnar intended to profit before that happened.
The trench turned out to be a small skirmish line, barely large enough for ten men. All of them were dead. There was nothing left to guard.
After a thorough search, his total haul barely exceeded 2300 coupons—the rifle accounting for most of it.
"Damn it," Ragnar muttered.
"Pure junk."
No rare items. No blue- or purple-grade equipment. Just food and scrap.
He decided it was time to withdraw.
Then he heard footsteps.
His heart tightened instantly. His hand flew to the rifle.
The sound came from the direction of the hive city.
Ragnar peeked out—and immediately pulled his head back in.
"Emperor damn it… PDF."
A Planetary Defence Force squad, ten men strong, advanced cautiously. They wore flak armor and helmets, wielding standard-issue autoguns. Their squad leader carried a las-pistol and fragmentation grenades—the most basic armed unit of the Imperium.
Ragnar turned and sprinted the other way.
He wasn't a rebel—but anyone found in a rebel trench would be shot without hesitation.
His plan was simple: exit the trench, take a wide detour, and return to his hideout beneath the hive.
But the moment he peeked out the opposite side—
He froze.
More than fifty rebels were crawling forward through the fields.
Ragnar cursed under his breath.
"…Damn it. We're surrounded."