The acid broke down organic polymers at a remarkable clip. Chimali watched the lining of the fallen bio-dreadnought ripple around him as his rubberized hazmat suit melted into a sticky, bubbling film. *Potent enzymatic breakdown. pH levels must sit near one. High potential for closed-loop soil enrichment.* He hummed an upbeat, off-key tune while the synthetic sleeve liquefied, leaving bare skin untouched. The green-grey bile licked his forearm with a harmless hiss. [INITIATING TERRAFORM PROTOCOL: RECALLING CORE SYNAPTIC DATA…] He blinked. A ghostly emerald interface flickered into existence before his eyes, superimposed over the pulsating organic walls. [CORE DATA RECALIBRATED. WELCOME, ARCHIVIST CHIMALI. IDENTIFYING LOCAL FEEDSTOCK FOR YIELD AUGMENTATION.] “Archivist?” Chimali mumbled, feeling a faint fizzing sensation in his mind, like carbonated water. “Oh, right. Botany. Guess that makes sense.” He grinned, a wide, slightly unnerving expression given his current predicament. “Alright, Genesis Mandate, what’s the first step to building a self-sustaining utopia inside a giant dead alien?” [RECOMMENDATION: ESTABLISH PRIMARY RESOURCE EXTRACTION. SIGNATURE DETECTED: PRISTINE ARCHAIC CARBON-BASED SCAFFOLDING. BALANCING FOR MAXIMAL YIELD.] Before Chimali could dissect that phrasing, a rift split the air beside him, dumping thick black fluid across the visceral floor. A skeletal hand, gleaming with impossible ivory purity, burst forth. It grasped the edge of the portal, and with a grunt that seemed to echo from beyond the grave, an entire, impeccably preserved skeleton pulled itself free. The warrior reached seven feet in height, his frame intact beneath a dented bronze helm, a moth-eaten scarlet mantle dragging over the cartilage below. “By the Sun and all its fires…” a voice rasped like grinding gravel. “Have I been torn from the grave to stand inside… whatever rot this is?” The skeletal warrior pivoted his cranium toward Chimali. “And who is this scrawny, half-eaten sprout?” Chimali clapped his hands together, a wet, squelching sound. “Ollin! Perfect timing! Welcome to the Verdant Necropolis, future site of the greatest agricultural empire this world has ever seen! I’m Chimali, your new… well, your new everything, I suppose.” Ollin slowly turned his skull back to survey the dissolving organic walls, then back to Chimali. “An empire. Inside entrails. You mean… plowing dirt? You summoned Ollin the Unbroken, hammer of the Ghoul-Kings, vanguard of the Solar Guard… to till earth?” “Precisely!” Chimali beamed. “Think of it as advanced nutrient cycling! We’re going to revolutionize post-apocalyptic permaculture! Starting with… cabbage. I’ve always been fond of a good fermented cabbage.” Ollin tilted his head back in pure vexation. “My legend… reduced to minding dead brassicas.” Jawbones ground together. “Fine. But if a pest crawls near, I impale it.” [NEW UNIT ACQUIRED: OLLIN THE UNBROKEN. RARE-TIER SKELETAL GENERAL. ASSIGNING PRIMARY FUNCTION: CULTIVATION OVERSEER. CURRENT HARVEST SCALING: 0.1%] A guttural shriek split the fleshy bulkheads. The opposite wall ruptured inward, showering caustic mucus and shattered carapace. An organism framed in black chitin and segmented crystal limbs wrenched through the tear, snapping mandibles wet with stinging foam. A predatory Vlaxari bio-form, drawn straight to the impact signature. “Oh, marvelous!” Chimali cheered, clapping his palms. “Compost! Right on schedule!” Ollin, for all his complaints, snapped to attention, pulling a spectral bone-spear from thin air. “Sprout, get behind me! This is no cabbage patch monster!” [INCOMING THREAT: CORROSIVE CARAPACE-STALKER. ENERGETIC RATING: APEX SPECIMEN. PROCESSING TO COMPOST WILL YIELD EXPONENTIAL ACCELERATION.] Chimali's grin tightened into a flat, icy focus. He clocked the beast’s leg joints, the timing of its pressurized venom sacs, the fault lines along its pleural plates. He saw raw matter waiting for redistribution. “Ollin, spear the sternum the instant it vents fluid,” Chimali directed, voice suddenly clipped and flat. “Emptying the glands softens the thoracic seam. Strike straight through. I’ll draw its focus.” Chimali seized a jagged rib fragment from the deck and whipped it into the beast’s open gullet just as the throat pulsed. The monster choked, coughing its acid load across the floor ribs instead. Ollin lunged, bones rattling in a tight sprint, crimson cloak snapping. His conjured bone-lance drove cleanly into the softened thorax, crunching through cartilage. The stalker screeched, thrashing as caustic fluids hissed against the floor flesh. Chimali watched, a faint, almost predatory light in his eyes, adjusting Ollin’s attack vectors mentally. “Now, the joint where the foreleg meets the carapace! It’s overcompensating for the ventral damage!” The general drove the spear deeper, levering upward through the thoracic nexus. With a wet, shuddering spasm, the predator folded onto its side, leaking steam across the pool of its own fluids. Chimali’s sunlit grin snapped back into place. “Magnificent harvest, Ollin! Top-grade organic matter!” Ollin cleaned his lance with a flick of his wrist. “And now? This foul puddle will burn through the floor.” [NUTRIENT REPURPOSING PROTOCOL: ENGAGED. CONVERTING APEX SPECIMEN INTO HEAVY TILLAGE APPARATUS.] Chimali clapped his hands. “Oh, right! My favorite part!” He approached the grotesque corpse, a strange energy humming around him. He laid a hand on the steaming chitin. “By the power vested in me by… botany… I declare you the newest member of the Verdant Necropolis! And you’re going to be a *fantastic* tractor.” The stalker’s carcass jerked. Broken legs melted back together, fusing into heavy, ribbed tracks along its flanks. The spitting snout fused shut, extending into a serrated trenching blade forged of blackened bone. Emerald sigils flared across the dark shell as the monstrosity rumbled into an obedient, six-ton tractor. Ollin’s skull remained frozen. “You fashioned a war-beast into… a plow? This borders on madness, sprout.” “Pragmatism!” Chimali slapped the machine's armored fender. “Why discard salvage when it can haul loads? We turn this entire carcass into a rolling metropolis, plant our cabbages in its ribs, and roll across the wasteland with an army of converted monsters.” The converted terror hummed, its segmented rollers grinding against the gristle floor. It chugged forward, blade leveling broken bone shards into orderly furrows. [SETTLEMENT CORE SECURED: THE VERDANT NECROPOLIS. LEVEL 1. YIELDING: +10% REANIMATION EFFICIENCY. +5% CROP GROWTH VELOCITY. +1% BULWARK DURABILITY.] Chimali leaned against the plow. “First upgrade logged! Up next, clearing more acreage. Maybe the upper stomach tract?” A shockwave slammed into the carcass from the trench outside. Stone ground against stone as a vast shadow choked out the sickly yellow sky above the tear in the hull. Rising from the impact trench, a Makara Behemoth clutched the crater rim, its bronze-plated hide scraping against boulders as its roar shuddered through the marrow of Chimali's shins.

Welcome to the Farm