War entered a fever pitch the instant contact was made.
All manner of attacks lit up the dim star system.
Every second, tens of thousands of beams streaked across the cold void. Every second, tens of thousands of shells detonated in space.
Every second, countless targets seemed to be destroyed.
Metal warships were either blasted apart by the enemy's bio-plasma cannons or pierced by specialized enemy organisms, which then released swarms of smaller creatures inside the vessels. Firefights erupted within the ships, burning them from within and without, while the Tyranids devoured every usable substance inside until only scrap metal remained.
Large numbers of starfighters tangled with dense swarms of flying organisms. Their cannon fire and lasers vaporized Tyranids one after another or shredded them into bloody fragments.
Boom—boom!
Two enormous explosions flared like newborn suns, swallowing vast swaths of the swarm.
Those were high-speed warships equipped with supernova reactors launching suicide attacks before they were destroyed and overrun by the Tyranids.
And more and more of these suicidal detonations began to occur, constantly pressing closer toward the "wormhole."
They had to destroy the wormhole. They had to destroy those massive Narvhal bio-ships. Otherwise, the situation would only grow worse.
Once the enemy seemed to achieve whatever objective it was working toward, everything would be over.
At that moment, Kain's Ghost ship was gliding by inertia, passing through the battlefield.
His destination was that star which looked as though its life was about to reach its end.
As for the current battlefield, there was little he could do.
Even though he had already obtained G-elements and could activate the ship's dimensional weapon, there was a problem.
To activate that dimensional weapon, energy had to be diverted from the ship's power system into the weapon.
If that happened, the ship would no longer be able to maintain its quantum ghost state. Even the ship's basic flight would have problems. It would be almost equivalent to cutting power to the ship itself.
In other words, once the weapon was activated, the ship would be defenseless. And he could not open the dimensional weapon's field too widely, or the ship itself would be caught in the blast.
Originally, the wing-like dimensional weapon mounted on the craft had its own independent power supply. The Emperor had told him to come here and find the infinite energy cube, clearly because it was meant to power that weapon.
So for now, against the Hive Fleet's invasion, he could not play much of a role.
However, he did send a quantum communication to the Archmagos, informing her of what had happened in this star system and telling her that the Hive Fleet invading this place might be an entirely new Tyranid fleet.
Half an hour later, he reached the edge of the aging star. As for the specific situation near the wormhole, he could no longer tell, because it was on the other side.
In truth, if the Tyranids had not interfered with the star system's gravity, then from his destination here, he should have been able to see the wormhole.
But because the system's gravity had changed, even the star seemed to have shifted slightly.
Because of that, he could only hope the destination had not suffered any interference.
He drew closer and closer. The distance was now less than one kilometer, but he still could not see anything. Only solar flares erupting from the star's surface swept across that region.
Had it been destroyed by the solar flares?
No. He could confirm that the target was right in front of him. Just like in the previous star system, this place had also been hidden through quantum ghost concealment, as if it had entered another dimensional space.
After approaching further, his ship was like a transparent little bubble touching a larger bubble, merging straight into it.
What entered his vision was an artificial structure shaped somewhat like a pyramid, roughly one hundred kilometers in diameter.
From a distance, it really did look like a pyramid-like block of black metal.
Uh, even up close, it was still basically a block of metal.
The reason it resembled a pyramid was because its current form looked like a pyramid divided from top to bottom into three sections, with the middle section removed and the upper and lower sections stacked together.
He circled it and found no entrance at all. Every surface was smooth, as though the entire thing had truly been carved from a single solid piece of metal.
In the end, he stopped on one of the flat surfaces and prepared to forcibly bore a hole through it.
He deployed in his XV104 Riptide and attacked the ground with melta rounds, forcibly melting his way down.
This metal seemed rather impressive. So far, it was the most resistant material he had encountered against melta warheads.
In the end, he almost exhausted all the melta ammunition he had brought from A2's side before successfully punching through.
After entering the interior, he found almost no lighting. Everything was extremely dark.
Under the battlesuit's own illumination, what appeared before him was a metal city.
Only after drawing closer and flying low above it did he notice something was not quite right about the metal buildings.
They looked rusted at first glance, but up close, it seemed more like the metal had decomposed—or melted.
He glanced at the life-sign scanner. There was no response.
This was an empty city.
He landed on the ground and carefully analyzed some strange powder scattered there. It looked almost like salt.
Hm?
Then he saw patterns formed from the salt.
Human-shaped patterns.
That made an image form in Kain's mind: some special weapon had been used in this city, instantly decomposing humans into a salt-like substance.
Suddenly, an anomaly made him look over at once. One of the metal buildings seemed to melt slightly, like a candle.
Was there some special weapon still active inside this space, causing the metal to change?
But the battlesuit he was piloting showed no abnormality in its metal at all.
That meant there was something strange about the metal itself.
He did not keep thinking about it. His purpose here was not to study these metals. Instead, he moved toward the glowing point ahead.
In the end, he stepped onto an enormous plaza. At the far end of the plaza stood a building shaped somewhat like a temple, and the light source came from there.
Kain could also confirm that the light source was the infinite energy cube he was looking for, because it gave him the same feeling as the light emitted by the infinite energy cube.
Boom!
A sudden thunderous sound rang out, and the world began to shake violently.
At the same time, through the monitors he had left outside the metal pyramid, he saw what was happening beyond it. A layer of membrane was disappearing—the quantum ghost mode was vanishing.
At the same time, the star's flames were pouring in.
No. That was not right. The star was expanding. A helium flash was occurring, and it was about to swallow this place.
However, another sudden change followed. A new force field unfolded, blocking the star's devouring flames.
His ship, meanwhile, had disappeared from sight.
The truth was that the metal pyramid had now fallen back into realspace, while his ship remained in ghost mode.
Of course, that did not mean he could not return. At the current distance, he was still within the ship's quantum teleportation range. He could teleport himself back to the ship in an instant.
But now, a serious problem had appeared.
This metal pyramid was restoring its original appearance.
Human modifications, disguises, and seals imposed upon it were now disappearing.
And so, he recognized what it was.
This was the tomb of a special "mechanical" race.
(End of Chapter)
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