Chapter 443: Small Gretchin, Great Wisdom
In the days that followed, Reform Old Fart's life settled into a steady routine.
He spent most of his time embedded inside Three-Arm's war-forge, watching the Big Mek piece the two Gorkamorka Walkers together bit by bit.
He soaked up Three-Arm's construction know-how with a hunger bordering on obsession, working steadily toward becoming a Gretchin Big Mek in his own right.
Three-Arm had grown genuinely fond of this oversized Gretchin, because every single time, Reform Old Fart came back loaded with an absurd haul of parts, and always the good stuff, exactly what he needed.
What pleased him most of all was that Reform Old Fart had already brought back several thousand parts total, and never once demanded that promised Gretchin killa-can in return.
A Gretchin with that kind of restraint was a rare thing, and Three-Arm's fondness for him kept growing.
Of course, Reform Old Fart wasn't doing all this labor for nothing. Whenever Three-Arm took a break, Reform Old Fart would casually work in a few questions about weapon construction.
"The heart of it is bold ideas and precision!"
One day, having just bolted a heavy engine assembly onto one of the Gorkamorka Walkers, drenched in sweat, Three-Arm offered that up unprompted.
Reform Old Fart handed him an oversized jug of mushroom brew and several dozen skewers of roasted mushroom, wearing an expression of pure worshipful attention, listening intently.
Three-Arm lifted the jug and downed half of it in one go, then blinked, surprised to find it had been chilled. His expression toward Reform Old Fart softened even further.
"First, ya gotta have da bold ideas, none of dat stiff thinkin' like you shrimp-tin-cans, especially dose red-robe shrimp-tin-cans, thick as bricks, da lot of 'em.
You think somethin' can be built, you just go build it. Gork and Mork are watchin' over ya, and it'll come together, guaranteed!
Once you've built somethin', if you wanna build it again, you gotta remember exactly how you built it da first time.
Use da same exact parts if ya can, copy da whole build down to da letter!"
What the Ork Big Mek was describing was, at its core, the fundamental logic of Ork warfare.
Orks didn't need blueprints to build tanks and war-machines. All they needed was an idea.
The Old Ones had woven everything related to warfare, construction included, straight into their genetic bloodline.
Whenever an Ork Big Mek wanted to build something, that dormant war-construction instinct in his genes would activate, guiding him to produce a functioning weapon of war.
Orks had no concept of tolerances. A pistol thrown together from a pile of mismatched parts would simply fire, because it did.
Force a 70mm shell violently into a 60mm barrel, and as long as it physically fit, it would fire, because it did.
This was WAAAGH energy at work.
This psychic power unique to the Orks papered over gaps in engineering tolerance, made impossible weapons fire, made engines that shouldn't run, run anyway.
But true Big Meks had come to understand the actual relationship between WAAAGH energy and tolerance.
If the parts making up a pistol had only a small tolerance gap, WAAAGH energy could compensate for that gap easily, and the pistol would function normally.
If the tolerance gap was moderate, WAAAGH energy might not always be enough. The pistol would sometimes fire, and sometimes jam.
But if the tolerance gap was absurdly, wildly large, WAAAGH energy simply couldn't bridge it at all.
Most of the weapons churned out by rank-and-file Mekboys landed somewhere around that moderate tolerance range, which was exactly why Ork weapons had a habit of exploding for no apparent reason.
The real difference between a common Mekboy and a true Big Mek was that a Big Mek made his weapons more precise, closer to what actual engineering physics demanded.
And having done that, he'd spend his WAAAGH energy far more carefully, not squandering it papering over sloppy tolerances, but channeling it somewhere far more valuable.
Like, say, feeding it into a Gorkamorka Walker's engine, coaxing out a surplus of raw power to drive a chassis that shouldn't be movable at all.
Using WAAAGH energy efficiently instead of wasting it patching over bad tolerances, that was what separated a true Big Mek from the rest.
By the time Three-Arm finished laying all that out for Reform Old Fart, the mushroom brew and skewers were long gone.
He gave his own backside a slap and shot Reform Old Fart a pointed look.
"Big Gretchin! Break time's over. I got my super-duper unstoppable amazin' walker to build. Go find me more parts, now, or I'll smack you silly!"
With that, Three-Arm went back to work on the Gorkamorka Walkers.
Reform Old Fart, meanwhile, made his way out of the ruined human hive to go meet up with the rest of the Gretchin.
Three-Arm assumed Reform Old Fart was hauling in all these parts by scavenging tirelessly out in the field on his own time.
But that wasn't it at all. Every single part Reform Old Fart brought back had been handed to him by other Gretchin. His actual time away from the war-forge went entirely into directing the growth of the Gretchin Council.
That's right, this band of Great Gretchin-ists had gone and founded a Gretchin Council.
The Council's ultimate goal was the realization of Great Gretchin-ism. Their spiritual guide was Grot Marjack. Their leader bore the title of Great Revolutionary.
And the first Great Revolutionary was, of course, Reform Old Fart himself.
Leaving Three-Arm's war-forge, Reform Old Fart headed straight out to inspect the mushroom fields.
It was a stretch of farmland several hundred acres wide, blanketed in fungal growths of every size, the largest mushrooms as big as tanks.
These mushroom caps absorbed sunlight and airborne particulate matter, converting it, together with their root systems, into nutrients fed down into the spore embryos beneath each mushroom.
Those spore embryos randomly gestated Gretchin, Snotlings, or Ork Boyz, and there was no telling which one would come crawling out until the soil actually split open.
The moment Reform Old Fart arrived, several of the farming Gretchin rushed over, chattering excitedly with their reports.
"Reform Old Fart, Reform Old Fart! Right now, every day, 100 Gretchin, 150 Snotlings, and 10 Ork Boyz crawl out of the mushroom fields.
Every Gretchin and Snotling has been absorbed straight into our ranks. Every Ork Boy has been put down and replanted in the soil!"
Another Gretchin added:
"Reform Old Fart, Reform Old Fart! We've sent our cleverest, most cunning Gretchin out to the other mushroom fields to spread Great Gretchin-ism.
Five hundred mushroom fields have already joined the cause, and more will keep joining every day!"
A final Gretchin summed things up.
"Reform Old Fart, Reform Old Fart! We're already past two hundred thousand Gretchin, and over a million Snotlings!
And that number keeps climbing every single day. More Gretchin and Snotlings keep crawling out of the fields nonstop. Our numbers are only growing!"
Reform Old Fart was pleased with their progress, and said:
"Good. But it's not enough.
Keep growing. Keep hiding. Keep building our strength.
Realizing the first stage of Great Gretchin-ism is still a long fight ahead of us."
Just then, a burst of noisy commotion rose up from somewhere in the mushroom field. Reform Old Fart turned toward the sound.
There, from a patch of freshly turned soil, an Ork Boy was clawing his way out.
The newborn Ork Boy had barely broken the surface, had just managed his first gasp of fresh air, hadn't a clue what was happening yet, when a dozen or so Gretchin swarmed him, jabbing him relentlessly with farm tools and makeshift spears.
The Ork Boy howled and thrashed, still half-buried, his mind still a fog.
A newly hatched Ork Boy wasn't especially powerful either, standing somewhere around 1.7 to 1.8 meters, built roughly like a dedicated human gym-goer, nothing outlandish.
So against a storm of steel pipes, farm tools, and spears raining down from every direction, the Ork Boy let out a string of pained screams and dropped dead on the spot.
Having just been reborn out of Gork and Mork's cycle, he went right back to them at record speed.
The Gretchin immediately set to work with their assorted tools, hacking the Ork Boy apart and planting him back into the soil, quite literally.
Say what you will about their methods, but the mushroom field's nutrient levels were thriving because of it, and the mushrooms were growing plump and rich as a result.
Watching the scene, Reform Old Fart said:
"We can't replant every single Ork Boy that comes out, or their numbers will drop too low and someone will get suspicious.
Here's the arrangement: for every ten Ork Boyz that crawl out of the field, replant nine and let one go free."
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you