"How could xenos filth ever hope to comprehend humanity's supreme technology?"
Faced with the digital lifeform's arrogant query, all Rangdan communication channels fell deathly silent. Their scientists and scholars remained mute, completely unable to offer a response.
Compared to humanity, the Rangdan were an emerging species. Within their species' archives, there existed no explanation for such technology—they had not even brushed against the underlying theoretical frameworks.
"I understand now!"
A burst of ecstatic awe shattered the silence as an Adeptus Mechanicus Magus provided the answer.
Aboard a Mechanicus Ark, a red-robed Magus's cybernetic body trembled, his synthesized voice hissing with intense excitement: "This is temporal interception technology!"
"As is universally understood, the material universe is comprised of length, width, and height—the three-dimensional space with which we are familiar. Time within three-dimensional space is a line that moves continuously forward, unable to look back upon the past. That is our familiar timeline."
"Just moments ago, this ancient technology sliced apart the immutable timeline, substituting the current moment with a segment from before any damage occurred!"
"What incomprehensible ancient technology!" The Magus marveled, his voice laden with unhideable fanaticism: "To be precise, those six fleets were already dead a moment ago."
"Temporal interception technology intercepted the space-time of a moment before they sustained any damage, inserting it into the current timeline."
"They are people of the past, leaping across the timeline into the present!"
As the Magus's voice faded, both humans and Rangdan across the battlefield gained a faint, conceptual grasp of the underlying mechanism.
Put simply: it was like slicing a minute into sixty seconds, and using any of the unblemished fifty-nine seconds of the past to replace the sixtieth second in which death had actually occurred!
Once the explanation of the mechanism sank in, an atmosphere of sheer terror blanketed the Rangdan battle lines.
The alien species came to the agonizing realization that humanity currently occupied an unassailable, invincible position.
If this were a game, their own side possessed but a single life—while humanity held the power of infinite trial and error!
Sure enough, Ferrus's movements grew bold, and he commanded the fleet to press forward. The Primarch keenly seized the opportunity, launching an all-out offensive.
"The Aeldari spanning the galaxy, humanity colonizing the stars—the peaks of two empires once overlapped."
The slaughter ring rotated at high speed as countless fleets returned from death to rejoin the fray.
The calm voice of the Disordered Array recounted glorious pasts and unquestionable truths: "Do you truly believe two grand empires coexisted in the galaxy out of a shared love for peace?"
"Aeldari Farseers used prophecy to foresee every outcome, while Iron Man fleets used temporal rewinds to retry countless times."
"After hundreds of billions of inconclusive wars, the two species simply had no choice but to call a truce."
Human remembrancers wrote frantically, their hands trembling as they recorded the distant past—when human civilization burned bright as a sea of stars, exerting supreme dominion over the entire galaxy!
---
"Modifying cosmic logic constant: Speed of light altered."
The ancient weapon launched another attack, using methods beyond mortal imagination to rewrite the fundamental logic of the universe.
Though termed an attack, there were no roaring lance beams or macro-cannon salvos. Beyond the naked eye, even augurs and detection arrays were completely unable to capture what was taking place.
The Magi and technical scholars focused with absolute intensity, attempting to glean the nature of the shift from the sparse telemetry.
Humanity had once touched the pinnacle of physical science; though they had forgotten that magnificent knowledge, they could still comprehend its principles and effects.
There were no spatial ripples, no visible physical changes.
By the time anyone reacted, the incomplete World Engine came to a sudden, absolute halt.
"It's the speed of light!" A Tech-Marine called out, explaining the strike the World Engine had suffered: "A universal constant was modified, triggering a cascade reaction."
Even for a hardened Astartes, his heart could not stop trembling, his voice stuttering slightly as he spoke: "The speed of light was altered. Light speed is the ultimate constant for causality and information transfer. If light speed changes, velocity changes with it."
"The foundational principle of logic circuits is that an input must yield an output after a set duration—this strikes at their very core."
"The World Engine is done for," he marvelled, trembling: "Artificial intelligence thought processes can no longer synchronize; its logic has collapsed entirely."
"Living organisms within its radius are finished as well."
"The speed of light dictates the fine-structure constant, which in turn determines atomic energy levels and the strength of chemical bonds. The moment light speed shifts, electrons within atoms drift from their orbits. They instantly jump energy levels, or are kicked out of the atom altogether."
"Consequently, living entities composed of fundamental particles simply cease to exist."
"This is not even a direct attack—it is merely a trivial side-effect produced by ancient tech vibrating cosmic strings."
As the explanation concluded, the World Engine collapsed inward, its structural integrity shattering completely.
Altering the speed of light struck directly at the physical laws built upon it. Changing one of the universe's core parameters brought consequences far beyond a single vector.
Life, science, consciousness—everything familiar to living beings dissolved into absolute nothingness.
Within a few seconds, the World Engine collapsed into a floating mass of slurry, its matter completely incapable of re-assembling into atomic structures.
It was no longer accommodated by the physical laws of reality.
---
"Dismantling spatial structure."
The Disordered Array's assault continued unabated. The digital lifeform's mind cycled trillions of calculations per second, constructing endless combat protocols.
The slaughtering AI held a singular, absolute mandate: eliminate the Rangdan xenos.
Beside Planet VI, the weapons of a battle moon fell silent, its glaring lights dimming into shadow.
Before the human fleet could even register what was happening, the spherical moon cracked along its longitudinal axis, instantly separating into dozens of cross-sectional slices.
Its spatial structure collapsed—a flawless anatomical dissection stripping away the war machine.
"Erasing terminal vectors."
The serene voice sounded like a death sentence, announcing attack methods that defied standard logic.
No! These could not even be considered pure offensive weaponry. The slaughter ring was heavily damaged and incapable of using its primary weapons. What it demonstrated now was merely using science to perform minor "trimmings" upon the fabric of reality itself.
The resulting side-effects produced the catastrophic scenes before them.
The battle moon's structure ceased to exist; stripped of the concept of "lines," its geometry collapsed inward, curling into a zero-thickness Möbius strip.
"Dimensional reduction."
Height was stripped away from three-dimensional space-time, turning the battle moon into a sheet of paper with no physical thickness, its atoms unable to sustain a three-dimensional layout.
A paper-thin sheet containing no depth—yet clearly engraving every single constituent atom—expanded outward at the speed of light.
In the very next instant beyond cognitive comprehension, length and width vanished as well, leaving behind only a zero-dimensional point of light.
---
Total collapse!
The Rangdan fleet could no longer maintain morale; their battle lines disintegrated completely. Warships ceased firing on the human fleet, turning to flee this nightmare domain.
Those incomprehensible weapons were simply impossible to defeat.
The fundamental laws of the cosmos held absolute dominance; macro-cannon shells and lance beams were like primitive wooden clubs in comparison—how could they ever hope to touch a god that rewrote the rules?
Morale within the Imperium surged to a fanatical high as warships pressed the advantage, pursuing the shattered Rangdan fleet.
"Locking system down; isolating Warp space."
Beyond despair lay only deeper despair.
Warp engines roared furiously, yet they could not pierce the fabric of physical reality to guide ships into Warp channels.
Trapped like rats in a barrel, the door of the Veil had been locked shut by human technology—the Rangdan fleet possessed no path of escape.
Driven mad by sheer desperation, they steered their ships toward the center of the battlefield, charging the faintly glowing artificial ring.
Lances and macro-cannons unleashed a combined barrage, while the colossal lances of the remaining World Engine flared across the void, seeking to shatter the ring and break the Warp interdiction.
Lance beams a hundred kilometers thick roared toward the ring's most brilliant outer band. Traversing a distance of five light-minutes without a shred of energy decay, they were on a guaranteed trajectory to strike the ten-thousand-kilometer-tall outer wall.
Yet an even more hopeless sight unfolded.
The lance beams bent, curving along a graceful arc to bypass the ring entirely, shooting off into the depths of the cosmos as their star-shattering energy dissipated along the edges of the system.
The Wise One fell silent.
The progression of this war had surpassed anything it could comprehend. The ring had not even deployed forcefields—it had simply used bizarre, inexplicable mechanisms to dissolve the World Engine's attack into nothingness.
The Rangdan Overlord had no choice but to admit that human technology represented a one-sided, absolute crushing force.
The World Engines were the pride of the Rangdan, built with the full might of their empire, converging their most advanced science to manipulate cosmic laws via neutron star cores.
Yet humanity's ancient relic housed innumerable tiers of lost science, modifying and wielding physical laws at whim.
The two sides did not even exist on the same plane of power.
Humanity still possessed genetic memories capable of grasping the basic principles, whereas the Rangdan could not even touch such knowledge, their minds drawing a complete blank when trying to parse it.
It watched as warships lunged at the ring, only to pass straight through it as if it were a phantom. Strike craft swarmed everywhere, yet the bombs they dropped fell uselessly into open space.
The Wise One let out a bitter chuckle, shaking its head as it finally understood where the AI's supreme arrogance originated.
Before the battle had even begun, the Rangdan had already lost!
The annular ring resided in a completely different dimension—what was visible in the physical universe was nothing more than a projected shadow.
Visible, yet intangible.
It could launch strikes at will from another dimension to obliterate the Rangdan forces, yet neither Rangdan pride nor Rangdan terror could physically touch the ring itself.
Watching equations light up endlessly across the inner and outer walls of the ring, the Wise One abandoned all thought.
Before absolute, incomprehensible power, any brilliant scheme was as fragile as a moon reflected in water—shattering at the faintest touch.