"Roya, you're finished!"
Through the swarm's feedback, the Silent King was overjoyed to discover that he had predicted Roya's next strike in advance—and that it was aimed right as a Hive Tyrant was about to breach Roya's ship's defenses.
"A Hive Tyrant is nothing, true. Though evolving one consumes immense time and energy, if it becomes your soul's final resting place, then the cost is more than worth it!"
In the blink of an eye, the Silent King had devised a venomous scheme to ensnare Roya's spirit.
He trembled his foreclaws, withdrawing most of the psionic energy from the Hive Tyrant's body, leaving it a hollow shell starved of power.
Because of the Tyrant's unique physiology, the sudden withdrawal naturally formed within it a ravenous psionic black hole, desperate to devour energy.
No matter the source or nature of the psionic power—once it entered that body, it would be dragged inexorably into the void, compelled first and foremost to fill the black hole.
In that instant, Roya's psychic strike arrived!
But now, the Hive Tyrant's body was like a barren, death-scorched desert, ready to drain dry every drop of psionic power that entered it.
"Roya! Your strength is already more than half spent. You can't possibly fill this Tyrant's void before it swallows you whole!
"Before you can react and withdraw, I'll trace your spirit-thread back to its core and bind you forever inside this beast's shell!
"Then you too will become part of the great Hive Will!"
Yet Roya's psychic presence twirled lightly, slipping countless circuits in and out of the Tyrant's body in less than a millionth of a second, entirely unnoticed.
Such a crude trap could never escape the touch of his refined spirit-sense.
He frowned slightly.
"What's happened to the Silent King? Even drawing directly from subspace, I could flood this monster in an instant—bursting it apart would be trivial.
"To use such a weak anchor to try to bind me? Even his former overlord-servants were stronger anchors than this…"
"Then is this truly the trap he wants me to fall into? Or does he have some other hand hidden still?"
For a moment, even Roya was puzzled by the Silent King's inept display.
"Could it be that this resurrection technique, rebirth from a soul seed, has permanently crippled his intellect?"
As he pondered, he feigned struggle, letting his spirit appear tangled and ensnared within the Tyrant's void.
Sure enough, the Silent King gathered vast reserves of power, pouring torrents of psionic energy from every direction and every node in the swarm network, to unleash his so-called "final extermination."
Roya matched his performance, thrashing like an insect trapped in a spider's web. Secretly, though, his threads wove with utmost care, lacing the remaining critical nodes into his psychic net.
His physical self even acted the part—reckless, desperate, hurtling headlong toward the Hive Tyrant before him.
Seeing this, the Silent King was swept with a long-lost sense of certainty and triumph.
He burst into wild laughter and launched himself personally from his command ship, intercepting Roya in open void.
"Roya! Submit! No one can resist assimilation into the great Hive Will! Yield, and become one with its glory!"
Roya narrowed his eyes. The grotesque carapaced beast before him radiated faint traces of the Silent King's unique aura—yet mingled, diluted, corrupted.
At last, he understood the truth.
The Silent King had already, without realizing it, been assimilated into the Hive Will itself. He had become nothing more than a fragment of it—and still believed himself free.
For the Hive Will to consume him silently… its level of existence must be truly beyond reckoning. To snatch prey from such a being's grasp would be folly.
But that did not change Roa's resolve.
"The Silent King and his Necron legions have already inflicted irreparable horrors upon all living flesh. To let him go now is unthinkable!
"Worse, he has seeded the stars with who knows how many soul-seeds. I must seize his soul and tear from him their locations, to eradicate him root and branch!
"A centipede can writhe long after its death—who can say he will not one day break free from the Hive Will's control? If he revives again through some hidden seed, it will mean endless catastrophe!
"Such a scourge must be destroyed at the source.
"Even if it means standing against powers far greater still—I will not waver!"
At that thought, his web was complete. Roya no longer held back.
His voice cut cold across the void:
"Silent King—your death has come."
He drove his fist forward, straight at the Silent King's face.
From subspace itself, power surged into him—energy equal to nearly two full stars condensed into a single strike.
The blow tore a howling gale through the cosmic void, a storm-dragon of pure force, roaring as it hurled itself toward the Silent King's brow.
But the Silent King did not flinch. He only laughed louder.
"Roya! You're at the end of your rope, yet you still posture before me?!
"Don't worry—I won't kill you. I'll keep this feeble mortal shell of yours alive… so I can savor the taste of your flesh!"
Cackling, he slashed with his four massive foreclaws, carving a mesh of razor-thin scars into the void.
What looked like harmless scratches were in fact rifts in space itself. Any matter that entered them would be shredded apart by spatial distortion, crushed into fragments.
A deadly strike, perhaps—but compared to his former might, when every casual gesture could strike across both material and subspace at once, it was a pitiful shadow.
Roya sneered.
"Only a few months, and you've fallen this low, Silent King?"
With a cold snort, the storm-dragon dissipated.
For that blow had never been meant to land—it had only been the motion of Roya's hand, gathering every thread of his psychic web into his grasp.
"Ensnare!"
With a thunderous shout, the net contracted, binding the Silent King completely.
At the same instant, the spirit-thread he had coiled around the King's projection-link snapped tight—and severed it in one stroke.