"What? Right next to the Express?"
Hearing this, the members of the Astral Express crew became frantic.
Although the Express wasn't completely defenseless, Pom-Pom was still inside! They couldn't just let their own home base fall into enemy hands.
"This is bad! We have to go back and help!"
On impulse, March 7th immediately turned to head back. Dan Heng and Welt were even faster.
To the crew, the Astral Express was like their home. They absolutely could not let anything happen to it.
But just then, Su Mo suddenly spoke up.
"No need to rush. We're already there."
When he first spoke, they wanted to explain the urgency of the situation, but as a wave of spatial energy swept over them, before Su Mo had even finished his sentence, they found themselves standing right next to the Astral Express, looking up at the massive Doomsday Beast soaring above.
"Spatial transfer of this range?"
Welt gave Su Mo a startled look, once again shaken by his seemingly endless array of powers.
The Ex-Machina represented the strength of the forces under Su Mo's command, but the power he himself was displaying now was certainly worthy of the forces he commanded.
"If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Su, you just used Aether Editing, didn't you?" Himeko asked, her vast knowledge allowing her to identify the technique.
"That's right. It's a skill I just learned from the Stellaron Hunters. I was just trying it out," Su Mo replied with a nod.
It was nothing more than programming a divine authority into a universal application and releasing it through Aether Editing. For him, it wasn't difficult at all, though the response time was a little slower than he was used to.
However, the advantage of Aether Editing wasn't its deployment speed but its iterative and optimizable nature. That trade-off was acceptable.
"A skill you just learned..."
Hearing this, even the usually stoic Dan Heng couldn't help but be stunned.
To grasp the signature skill of a Stellaron Hunter after a single encounter… such an aptitude for learning was rare even on the Xianzhou.
As expected of the man known as the One True God. His true power might not be inferior to that of a full-fledged Imbibitor Lunae.
While the crew was still reeling in shock, the Doomsday Beast spotted the few life forms that had appeared on the platform.
It immediately dove toward them.
This was a colossal war beast, hundreds of meters in size. Forged from the remnants of an ancient Leviathan Beast and guided by the wails of ten thousand corpses from a war forge, it was a doomsday-level weapon. A single one was capable of destroying an entire planet.
Legend had it that its right hand could unleash calamity, and its left could tear apart the dawn. Ordinary Pathstriders were no match for it.
Its current dive was a clear sign of its intent to destroy both the people on the platform and the space station itself.
"Watch out!" Himeko shouted a warning. "The Doomsday Beast's core is a dark matter engine, and its arm cores are antimatter engines! Don't underestimate it!"
An antimatter engine could generate immense energy through matter-antimatter annihilation. A dark matter engine could do even more, achieving stellar-scale energy output through dark matter-antimatter annihilation.
The sheer scale of its energy output was a testament to the Doomsday Beast's power. It was far beyond what an ordinary Pathstrider could handle.
Faced with this monster…
"Father, be careful!"
The newly awakened gray-haired girl, seemingly without fear, charged forward with her baseball bat and stood in front of Su Mo.
Although she certainly enjoyed seeing her "dad" cough up cash, she did genuinely see Su Mo as a father. At the very least, she had some filial piety.
"Stelle, be careful!"
Unlike her, March 7th, while also wanting to protect Su Mo, knew very well that he didn't need her protection.
So she immediately cast a shield on Stelle to prevent her from being injured by the Doomsday Beast if she rushed too far ahead.
Welt activated his cane, conjuring a quasi-black hole, while Dan Heng gripped his spear, aiming for the Doomsday Beast's antimatter engine.
Just as they were all preparing to attack and focus their fire on the Doomsday Beast, a torrent of steel teleported in front of them. More than ten thousand Ex-Machina blotted out the sky.
Then, Su Mo's voice rang out.
"Don't worry. Leave it to them."
As he spoke, a thousand Ex-Machina landed on the ground and collectively extended their hands, deploying a formation.
"Apocrypha: Avalon, the Ever-Distant Utopia!"
By replicating Artoria's Noble Phantasm, they created a barrier that enveloped the entire space station and the Astral Express.
With the defensive measures in place, the remaining Ex-Machina began a series of probing attacks against the Doomsday Beast.
"What a powerful shield! It can even block the Doomsday Beast's attacks?"
The battle was happening right before their eyes, yet it felt like it was in another dimension. They felt no pressure at all.
Himeko stared in amazement at the formation the Ex-Machina had deployed. If she didn't know they were from another world, she would have thought they were followers of Qlipoth the Preservation.
"These Ex-Machina... it seems they aren't fighting to win, but rather to analyze data?"
As the former Herrscher of Reason, Welt keenly observed that the Ex-Machina seemed more focused on testing the Doomsday Beast's combat functions and capabilities than on actually fighting it.
Normally, such probing would be extremely dangerous. But these Ex-Machina were protected by multiple layers of shields. Even an overwhelming energy attack would only force them into a phase shift rather than destroying them.
On top of that, half of their forces weren't even participating in the siege, instead standing by to record data and provide support. This greatly increased the Ex-Machina legion's survivability.
Su Mo made no attempt to hide his intentions.
"I'm a little interested in the Doomsday Beast's antimatter and dark matter engines. If we can fully analyze them, we might be able to equip them on my forces as well."
This was why Su Mo had chosen to let the Ex-Machina handle it instead of simply destroying the beast himself.
In the world of Honkai: Star Rail, the potential enhancements for the Ex-Machina were very direct.
Unlike the power of the Aeons, which required studying the mechanics of Paths and such, the greatest advantage of technology was its universality and potential for mass production.
Once he had unraveled the secrets of the antimatter and dark matter engines, Su Mo could upgrade the Ex-Machina to version 2.0, just as he had before, retrofitting their cores with these more powerful engines.
If he did so, the Ex-Machina's energy output would leap to a stellar level, and their individual strength might even reach the fifth tier.
Besides, everyone hated the Antimatter Legion. Using their technology wouldn't be a copyright infringement.
Hearing this, Dan Heng suddenly felt a chill.
If Su Mo really intended to do this, then the more than ten thousand Ex-Machina under his command would all evolve into beings with power comparable to a Doomsday Beast.
More than ten thousand Doomsday Beasts…
Good heavens. Even the Xianzhou Luofu, not counting its Emanators, didn't have that kind of power.
Perhaps only the entire Xianzhou Alliance combined could muster a force of that scale.
The others had clearly realized this as well. Welt couldn't help but offer a reminder.
"Mr. Su, the structure of the Doomsday Beast includes fragments of an ancient Leviathan Beast. These are non-renewable resources. Even if you understand the principles, mass production will be extremely difficult."
He was being diplomatic. It wasn't just difficult; it was practically impossible.
He believed that with the computational power the Ex-Machina had displayed, they could replicate the engines under laboratory conditions. But he also knew that there was an insurmountable gap between lab production and industrial-scale mass production.
Otherwise, gold wouldn't still be a hard currency, and the IPC would have no reason not to replicate this weapon.
"Thank you for the advice, but I have my own ways of dealing with that," Su Mo said with a mysterious smile.
This might be difficult for others, but for him, it could be done without any cost.
Because he was the One True God of the world of No Game No Life, the holder of that world's sovereignty.
With the authority of the Suniaster, he could arbitrarily rewrite the reality of his world. He could turn a planet into a star of gold or create any material he could comprehend.
So, no matter how special the materials for the dark matter engine were, as long as he could understand them, he could mass-produce them.
"Is that so? It seems I was worrying for nothing."
Hearing Su Mo's words, Welt paused for a moment and stopped trying to persuade him.
At this point, the battle above them was finally coming to an end.
"Analysis complete. Commencing extermination."
As the supreme commander, Schwi issued the order to the Ex-Machina legion.
The entire legion ascended into the sky. They were no longer observing and analyzing data. They deployed their weapons in unison, aiming their cannons at the Doomsday Beast.
A massive stream of data flowed through the eyes of the Ex-Machina.
"Analysis and judgment complete. Executing final protocol!"
The central units reached a consensus, and the Ex-Machina simultaneously deployed one of the strongest formations they currently possessed.
A massive amount of energy converged into an extremely fine line.
Although the scale of the energy couldn't compare to the Doomsday Beast's, its lethality per unit area was more than enough to pierce the beast's core defenses.
Faced with this threat, the Doomsday Beast's engines began to spin at high speed, trying to destroy these machines before they could attack.
The next second.
"Divine Core Overclock deployed. Lösen: Stalemartyr!" [T/N: German for "Star Destroyer."]
A light like that of creation itself appeared. Intense heat and a brilliance rivaling a supernova explosion enveloped the entire expanse of space.
The aftershock of the explosion could even be felt on the surface of the Blue Planet below. The blinding light briefly outshone the sun.
After several minutes, the aftershocks finally subsided, leaving only the ashen remains of the Doomsday Beast and a completely unharmed space station.
The Doomsday Beast had officially been subjugated.
"Yay!"
Just as March 7th cheered for their victory, she suddenly felt an indescribable ripple in the fabric of reality.
Everyone looked up, sensing that something unusual was about to happen.
Even Su Mo raised his head, looking toward the battlefield above.
Just then, the light and fire from the explosion's aftermath seemed to be drawn by some invisible force, rising into space and forming a blurry, mechanical phantom, like an aurora.
To those who didn't understand the meaning of this phantom, it was nothing more than a giant mechanical eyeball.
But for those who did, this phenomenon was enough to shake the cosmos.
Even the well-traveled Himeko and Asta, the wealthy young lady, couldn't help but tremble when they saw this phantom.
They instantly understood the identity of this being.
"The Aeon of Erudition... Nous?!"