The Shadow in the Warp was one manifestation of the Tyranids' psychic power.
Through this ability, the Tyranids sealed off the connection between realspace and the Warp, making any psychic power extremely difficult to use.
For those capable of using psychic powers, being covered by such a region had an extraordinarily severe effect.
However, this ability also had one benefit. The inhabitants of the Warp—in other words, daemons—would be sealed inside their own domain.
If non-psykers were covered by the Shadow in the Warp, they would also be affected. They would have nightmares, suffer sudden and intense unease, and gradually become neurotic.
Any equipment or devices related to psychic power would likewise be disrupted under the Shadow in the Warp and begin to malfunction.
As a result, Warp travel would also become extremely difficult.
In other words, once a star system was covered by the Shadow in the Warp, that system would effectively be screened off and cut off from the outside world.
At the same time, escaping the system would become extremely difficult, because Warp travel would encounter serious problems.
That meant anyone who wanted to leave the star system could only sail through realspace.
The problem was that their escape speed might not be fast enough to outrun the Tyranids' arrival. They might not be able to escape the hunt.
At present, in this abandoned star system, the abnormal behavior of the T'au Empire fleet and the disturbance caused by that strange psychic influence made Kain suspect that the Shadow in the Warp had descended upon them.
And the Shadow in the Warp generally arrived before the Hive Fleet itself. It was like the Hive Fleet firing a spiderweb ahead of itself at its target, ensnaring the prey and making it difficult for the prey to move. After that, it only had to wait for the spider to arrive and begin devouring its meal.
In that case, the T'au Empire's sudden military deployment in this abandoned star system was clearly meant to resist the Tyranids.
After all, the T'au Empire was nearby. If the Hive Fleet crossed through this place, there was no reason it would not begin feeding on the delicious cake sitting right before its eyes.
Hm?
The disturbance was still spreading. In an instant, it seemed to infect the fleet across the entire star system, which meant the Shadow in the Warp had almost covered the whole system as well.
However, the chaos soon began to stabilize. It seemed they had somewhat adapted to the initial shock of being swept by the Shadow in the Warp.
At the same time, the T'au Empire warships fully opened up all kinds of weapons. Some had even entered the charging phase.
And in a certain sense, if the T'au Empire fleet fought the Tyranids under the shroud of the Shadow in the Warp, they would have an easier time than the Imperium.
That was because many things in the Imperium were related to psychic power. Once affected by the Shadow in the Warp, those things would begin to fail.
Void shields in particular used Warp-related technology. Once disrupted, a warship's shields would have difficulty functioning.
Because the T'au were naturally incapable of using psychic powers, their own technology had nothing to do with psychic energy. Their equipment and weapons would almost never be disrupted by the Shadow in the Warp.
In that sense, they held a certain advantage over the Imperium when fighting the Tyranids.
Suddenly, an alarm sounded aboard the ship. It was a warning for abnormal stellar gravity.
It seemed as if a special force from far away had stabbed into the star system like a thread, then begun stirring the system's gravity.
Because of this, the celestial bodies within the system began changing due to the gravitational anomaly.
Planets that had already been on the verge of splitting apart were now truly cracking open.
Some moons were hurled away from their planets under the interference.
The star map displayed by the radar looked like a picture painted on the surface of still water with floating liquid.
Now, because something had suddenly pierced into the water and thrown it into turbulence, the entire painting began to twist and deform.
At first glance, the fluctuations seemed completely irregular. But if one looked closely, they seemed to be gradually forming a vortex, and the center of that vortex was precisely where the unknown force had stabbed in.
So Kain immediately observed that location. The screen displayed the starfield there. It happened to be an asteroid debris belt.
Now, because of the twisted gravity, that asteroid belt had been warped and spun around.
It looked as though all the celestial bodies were forming a vortex and converging toward the center. Yet the sudden explosive increase in gravity caused the objects to be crushed and shattered by abnormal pressure before they could even approach the center, scattering outward instead.
To the naked eye, it was impossible to understand what was happening. However, the gravitational fluctuations detected by the ship described a model. Something like a wormhole was opening there.
In any case, it did not look like an opening into the Warp. If it were an opening into the Warp, obvious Warp power would be pouring out.
As the ship continued its analysis, Kain came to understand it this way: the seemingly opened passage was actually a corridor of compressed space created by using the gravity of the star system itself. That corridor extended to a distant location far beyond the system.
In a certain sense, it could also be called a wormhole created within realspace.
Calling it a wormhole was not wrong. In a way, it was extremely fitting.
This was the Tyranids' wormhole.
He understood what was going on.
This was a Tyranid Narvhal bio-ship using its ability from a location far away from this star system to influence the system's own gravity. Through gravitational compression, it formed a high-speed passage, allowing the Hive Fleet to sail at superluminal speed through realspace.
To put it simply, the Narvhal bio-ship was like a spider firing a strand of silk ahead of itself, then opening that strand into a high-speed road. All the Tyranids would then slide along that strand at high speed toward the point where the silk was anchored.
They were here.
In an instant, vast swarms poured out of the wormhole. From a distance, it looked as if a black hole there was spewing out enormous clouds of black mist.
And those black clouds were moving extremely fast, flying toward the T'au Empire fleet like cannon shells.
A closer look revealed that most of the "mist" consisted of ether-spawning nests—living boarding torpedoes. They would use their sharp horns to ram themselves into enemy ships, then the Tyranid troops inside their bellies would tear their way out.
There were hundreds of thousands, even millions of these things, packed so densely they seemed ready to drown the T'au Empire fleet.
It was truly enough to make one feel that even if every weapon in the T'au Empire fleet fired at once, the combined number of shells, bullets, beams, and other attacks still would not match their sheer quantity.
Aside from these living boarding torpedoes, some larger Tyranid bioships also slid into the star system.
Among them, several bioships made Kain frown slightly. They looked like Narvhal bio-ships, but they were somewhat different from the Narvhals described in the Tyranid records he had seen in the Emperor's library.
More importantly, these ships had turned around and seemed to be doing something to the wormhole.
Very soon, he understood what was happening. They were widening and reinforcing the "spider-silk" passage of that wormhole.
In the Emperor's library, the size of every "wormhole" opened by a Narvhal bio-ship had been recorded.
Given the size of the "wormhole" before him now, then in theory, this Hive Fleet was likely the largest in recorded history.
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]