The Warhammer 40k universe—a world often associated with grimdark despair for transmigrators.

However, for Zhang Ge at this moment, it was the best possible news.

A system had detected the high-dimensional information he carried the instant he crossed over to this side.

Now, as long as Zhang Ge died in a "reasonable" manner, the system could use that high-dimensional information to instantly make him invincible.

At that point, punching Chaos cultists and kicking Necron star gods would be child's play.

If he were unlucky enough to transmigrate into one of those idyllic garden worlds, Zhang Ge might have to worry about how to die "reasonably."

But as he looked up at the sky, covered in what seemed like clouds but more closely resembled a smoggy haze, and felt the damp trenches around him, the exhaustion of his comrades, and the laser gun in his hands...

Zhang Ge thought to himself, he had never had such a perfect starting point.

For now, he couldn’t ask outright where he was—otherwise, if they mistook him for someone corrupted by Chaos, things could get messy. Being executed by an Inquisitor or a Commissar might not count as a "normal" death.

But given the Astra Militarum's usual casualty rates, Zhang Ge figured that even if he tried his hardest to survive, the odds of making it were slim. Let alone if he was actively trying to die.

"Ah, hello, may I ask..."

A female voice interrupted Zhang Ge's wandering thoughts, pulling him back to reality. He turned his head, puzzled as to why there would be a woman on the battlefield. Following the direction of the voice, he saw a figure clad in power armor with medical insignias.

A Sister Hospitaller. That explained it.

"Apologies, I mean no harm. It’s just that everyone else seems to be resting, and you appear to be more alert, so..."

The Sister Hospitaller smiled faintly, raising her hands to show she was unarmed.

It was only then that Zhang Ge realized his body had instinctively reacted to the anomaly. His hand had gripped the laser gun beside him, and before his head had even turned, the barrel was already angled toward the Sister.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"Password."

No, something was wrong.

Even as Zhang Ge demanded the password, a deep sense of unease surged within him. Something wasn’t right.

As the thought crossed his mind, the laser gun in his hand suddenly fired a red beam of light before he even pulled the trigger. The scorching beam struck the Sister Hospitaller in the head.

The sound of the shot—or more accurately, the sound of air expanding around the heated barrel—instantly woke the nearby soldiers. Zhang Ge’s slightly sluggish brain finally caught up to what was wrong.

The procedure was off.

If reinforcements from a different unit were arriving, the first step would always be for officers to coordinate in advance and then relay the details to the rank-and-file soldiers. This would include specifics like timing, direction, unit identity, and personnel count.

Even in the worst-case scenario, during a first contact, the initiating party would always provide the password first.

A Sister Hospitaller would undoubtedly know this protocol.

For a Sister Hospitaller to suddenly appear in the trenches like this, and for Zhang Ge to take so long to realize it despite inheriting the instincts and fragmented memories of this body, there was only one explanation.

As the laser beam struck the Sister’s skin, the searing heat tore apart her grotesque disguise. Her face melted and ripped away, revealing dozens of pink tendrils that instantly shredded the "power armor" from within.Torn apart from within.

A recently awakened ally reacted with incredible speed, realizing almost instantly that death was inevitable at such close range. Instead of reaching for his gun, he immediately extended his hand to try and pull out the grenade pin lodged in his chest.

But even so, the tendril was far faster. Its slender, pointed tip, moving at a speed almost imperceptible to the naked eye, pierced through the unarmored area beneath his neck, penetrating his brainstem and causing all his movements to cease instantly on a physiological level.

And the worst part was yet to come. Somehow, through an unknown means of communication, the moment the demon revealed itself, frenzied shouts of zealotry erupted from the heretics in the distance.

On Zhang Ge's side, the very moment the ally was impaled, the tendril—momentarily delayed by the laser—was already closing in on him.

Zhang Ge, however, felt no fear—more accurately, he didn’t even have time to react. In his previous life, the average reaction time for an ordinary person was around 300 milliseconds, while top-tier athletes with professional training could manage about 150 milliseconds. In this life, as a well-trained soldier of the Astra Militarum, his reaction time was likely within the 100-millisecond range. Yet the speed of the tendril far outpaced the body's ability to even process fear.

At such a distance, against even the lowest-tier demon, a mortal could only rely on their body's instincts.

It was a stark reminder of the grim reality of the Warhammer universe, where human lives were as worthless as discarded pennies.

But to his surprise, in that split second, the lasgun, which had autonomously fired once before, suddenly unleashed another burst of blazing red light. Despite being a semi-automatic weapon, the beam shone with the relentless intensity of a hellgun, firing continuously without the slightest pause, as if in a frenzied outpouring of energy.