"The last time, the Silent King escaped by detonating his soul and being reborn from a soul seed. This time, I cannot let him slip away so easily again!"
"I must make a show of protecting the supplies to distract him—while secretly infiltrating and sealing his soul, cutting off his escape through self-detonation!"
"As long as I can seize control of his soul, I can backtrace the seeds he left behind. From there, utterly annihilating the Silent King is nothing more than a matter of time…"
Roya's thoughts raced like lightning, crafting a new strategy to fit the changing battlefield.
At once, he unleashed a powerful psychic shockwave, surging with unstoppable momentum straight at the brain-bug squad that had just seized control of a critical node in the psionic web.
He played the role of one determined to fight the Silent King for control of the network itself.
Through the vast psionic mesh, the Silent King sensed Roya's move and sneered:
"Roya, how reckless you are!"
"If not for those three decrepit Star Gods meddling last time, I'd have already crushed you into dust with my psionic might! And now you dare to pit your spirit against mine?!"
"Compared to the Hive Will's greatness, your power is nothing!"
Unaware of his own abnormality, the Silent King laughed hideously, unconsciously flexing his four massive scythe-arms.
From within his body, psionic energy as boundless as the void itself flooded outward. Through the hive's network, it surged almost instantaneously into the brain-bug squad.
The torrent was so immense that the three brain-bug units immediately entered an overload state.
The Mind-Beast, its massive beetle-like body bloated with excess power, became so saturated that even its heavy carapace turned almost transparent, exposing its fragile core within—an organ eerily resembling a human brain.
The overwhelming energy coursed through its neural grooves, discharging streams of sickly yellow-green electricity that wove themselves into a shield of living bio-current.
In an instant, the shield expanded to a fifty-meter radius, enveloping all three brain-bugs within.
At the very last moment, it blocked Roya's psychic assault outside the crackling barrier.
The instant his threads touched the field, Roya could feel its immense power—defensive and offensive at once.
This so-called bioelectric shield, which looked like nothing more than overflowing brainwaves, could withstand psionic impacts on a gas giant scale!
Worse still, beneath its outward guise, it radiated insidious energy. Microscopic strands of bio-current seeped invisibly into the surrounding kilometer of space, probing ceaselessly into the minds and soul-cores of sentient beings.
Those struck would rarely notice the silent intrusion. Only at the critical instant, when their spirit overloaded, would they realize the sudden surge of energy was not a breakthrough of their own—but an enemy's overcharge.
And by then, it would be far too late.
Even Roya was forced to admire, with a chill, the vicious cunning of the Mind-Beast's attack. But he immediately tuned his psionic vibrations to the same frequency, allowing his threads to slip through the currents unnoticed, moving freely within their field.
"With such extreme overclocking, the heat buildup must be catastrophic. If it isn't expelled quickly, won't this Mind-Beast cook its own tissues alive?"
But just as that thought arose, Roya's senses caught a shocking sight.
The second unit—a brain-bug shaped like a monstrous seahorse—began to pulse rhythmically, its swollen body inflating and contracting.
With each contraction, it exhaled clouds of yellow-green vapor, which soon enveloped all three brain-bugs.
Fortunately, psychic sight was unhindered by the mist's veil.
Within it, Roya saw the truth: the Mind-Beast's neural tissues were indeed decaying and necrotizing under the strain. Yet bathed in the mist, the dying tissue was dissolved away, immediately replaced by fresh growth.
"This fog… it devours the dead tissue, then converts it into regenerative energy?"
Roya's expression hardened. These hive organisms possessed a greater regenerative endurance than even the Necrons.
With equal numbers and equipment, such hive units could crush Necron legions outright.
So-called "biometal"… would it serve only as food for these horrors?
"No matter. First, I must deal with the Silent King!"
Casting aside his unease at this unknown foe, Roya slipped part of his spirit into the subspace, silently weaving a trap around the Silent King's soul.
"Step one: locate the link between the Silent King and his new soul projection. Synchronize with its frequency. That way, I can sever the bond at any time—cutting off his escape into the projection."
Even as his presence in the material plane hammered relentlessly at the swarm's psionic web—forcing one unit after another offline—his true focus worked cautiously in subspace.
After more than ten minutes, he found it: the Silent King's soul-thread.
"Now—spin the net. Enclose the Silent King's soul. At the right moment, drag it into the overlap between the material and the subspace. Strip away his control and prevent him from self-detonating when the tide turns!"
With a thought, Roya visualized the great net upon the wall of his mind. With only a final weave of psionic threads, the trap would be complete.
To conceal his intent, he pressed his outward assault even harder, flooding the hive network with sudden surges and crashes, throwing its nodes into turmoil.
Amid this chaos, every single network node he struck was silently seeded with part of his web.
The Silent King, fully absorbed in the tug-of-war, felt only triumph.
Through the swarm's psionic feedback, he sensed it clearly: Roya's psychic shocks were weakening in both frequency and intensity.
Where once he'd been forced to constantly reconnect severed nodes, now he could meet Roa's attacks head-on—and even begin to press him back.
All signs pointed to one conclusion: Roya's spirit was nearly exhausted.
The Silent King's arrogance swelled.
"Roya—you're finished!"
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