"Quantum ghost mode amplification in progress. Fifteen percent remaining before maximum amplification range is reached."
With Kain's Ghost ship as the center, the quantum ghost field was expanding. It would carry ten warships with it in a jump to the Necron tomb world.
Before he left, he had dropped a quantum beacon at its location.
At present, the ten warships consisted of one Imperial cruiser and nine T'au vessels.
If not for the fact that time did not allow it, he would have brought as much firepower as possible.
But the longer they delayed to gather stronger arms, the faster the Necrons would awaken. That meant more powerful entities waking up, and more weapons being activated.
And he had not expected that after leaving the Necron tomb world and returning outside, there would be a problem with time. The battle outside had already lasted nearly two days.
"Coordinates locked. Hyperspatial quantum engine entering…"
The jump countdown began.
"Jump preparations complete."
"Designated amplification range reached."
Good. Everything was covered.
Jump.
In an instant, time seemed to vanish. Even space itself seemed to become nothingness.
But that was merely how it felt.
In the vision captured by his eyes, the change was like this: everything became transparent, as though he had suddenly been wrapped in endless, boundless clarity.
Then he felt as if his consciousness had been stretched across an endless span of time. For an instant, it was as though he had glimpsed all phenomena in the universe. But when he came back to himself, what appeared in his vision was the Necron tomb world.
The exterior had originally looked like a smooth pyramid, but now it had changed greatly, as though it were forming into a fortress.
Originally, he had thrown the quantum beacon inside, so in theory, they should have teleported in.
This meant the Necron tomb world had shifted position. It likely had not moved under its own power, but had been displaced by the gravity of the star system.
That was also why Kain had been in such a hurry to return. Otherwise, if the displacement became too large, he would have to search for it inside the red giant.
Now, disengage ghost mode.
At the same time, release all the warships.
The next instant, the ten warships, which had been packed closely together, scattered apart. Without hesitation, they projected every attack they had at the metal structure before them.
The Imperial warship's lance batteries and the T'au warships' super-heavy ion cannons struck first at the protrusions on the pyramid.
The instant they hit, before the flames could even spread, the physical shells from the Imperial warship's macro-cannons and the rounds from the T'au warships' railgun arrays—their mass-projection weapons—slammed heavily into the tomb.
At the same time, drop pods from each warship launched out like artillery shells.
Boom!
A Shark assault boat also slammed into the hole Kain had originally blasted open. It had not yet been filled in.
After impact, the melta breaching charges on the assault boat expanded the opening further.
Immediately, fifty Astartes from the Salamanders and the Lamenters, along with four Dreadnoughts, charged inside.
Kain was also among the accompanying personnel, joining the battle in the Mark X power armor that had been brought for him.
Once inside, he looked toward the location of the infinite energy cube. With that place as the center, the light patterns had already spread across half the tomb world.
And this world, which had originally been rather dim, now lit up with countless points of light after being disturbed by the outsiders' second invasion.
The lights looked highly symmetrical.
In reality, they were the densely packed eyes of Necrons.
However, what would "welcome" them first were not those metal skeletons, but the even denser points of light on the ceiling.
Like bats startled awake, they roused themselves and attacked.
Among them, there really were bat-like machines. But most were scarab-like constructs.
They came flying in a tide that filled the sky.
When the distance had closed by half, several thunderous blasts rang out. A number of large holes were punched through, and the battlesuit units outside charged in.
Among them were four KX139s that Kain had previously "acquired for free," twenty XV104 Riptides, and hundreds of other smaller T'au battlesuits pouring in.
Their entry drew away more than half of the mechanical scarabs.
In the blink of an eye, the surroundings were filled only with breathing and the destructive roar of a metal storm.
The Dreadnoughts' close-defense cannon-like weapons spun at high speed, sending dense torrents of metal that tore large numbers of Necron constructs into pieces.
Heavy bolters exploded among the Necron constructs, scattering fragments that punched through their bodies like sieves.
In an instant, the Necrons ahead were cleared away, creating a battlefield foothold.
But they had barely advanced. Before they had even stepped across a third of that cleared ground, more Necrons immediately filled half the position again.
They seemed just like the Tyranids, endless no matter how many were killed. Their numbers were continuously swelling.
So, faced with the Necrons' massed counterattack—beams from gauss weapons capable of atomic-level disintegration—they immediately evaded, using the metal structures inside as cover.
Those metal structures were now riddled with holes, making the place feel like a city of cheese carved from steel.
Boom!
An enormous explosion sent a shockwave rolling all the way to them, the wind powerful enough to sweep a normal person away.
A KX139's shields had failed to withstand the concentrated fire of several gauss cannons, leading to its destruction.
…
The metal skeletons seemed endless.
However, Kōzuki Yuuko, watching the livestream, noticed some details.
The destroyed metal skeletons actually decomposed in a strange way afterward and vanished.
It looked somewhat like when Asuna had livestreamed from her virtual world, SAO, where monsters seemed to turn into data blocks and disappear after being killed.
But the space he was in now was the real world.
As for what these metal skeletons actually were, he did not have time to explain during the livestream. Time was too urgent.
However, based on his conversations with the others, she could tell that this was a special mechanical race called the Necrons, said to have once been the overlords of the galaxy tens of millions of years ago.
Now, these ancient remnants were awakening from one tomb world after another.
Their attacks looked very simple. They were green beam attacks. If there were differences in weapons, those differences mainly came down to caliber.
If there was no energy shield, almost anything struck by beams from these weapons would be directly disintegrated.
It could be said to resemble the effect of a five-dimensional gravity bomb detonation.
Looking carefully at some personnel struck at close range—for example, those T'au—once the beam hit them, their skin, flesh, and other tissues instantly vaporized and decomposed. After the surface layer vanished, the exposed bones would be struck by the weapon's emitted rays.
Furthermore, this vaporizing decomposition happened layer by layer. If the playback speed were slowed, it could be clearly seen.
The outermost skin vaporized first in an instant, making the person look as if they had been skinned in a flash. Then the muscle tissue vaporized, and in the end, only a skeleton remained before that final layer also turned to powder.
Against this kind of weapon, energy shields provided relatively good defense, but even energy shields could not endure much.
For example, on her side, an XV104 Riptide's shield could withstand more than a dozen irradiations from a Heavy Laser-class BETA without seeming to have much trouble. But here, under just a dozen or so shots from what appeared to be the Necrons' most basic rifle beams, it nearly failed.
One larger-caliber attack directly shattered a shield.
And the beam it fired looked roughly as thick as a Laser-class beam.
Most importantly, according to them, these metal skeletons were servants—the lowest-level soldiers among the Necrons.
That meant they were probably cannon fodder.
Yet cannon fodder of this level was already this terrifying, and they seemed endless. Was this the strength of the race that had once ruled the galaxy?
Suddenly, the situation changed.
A portal constructed from light abruptly appeared on the battlefield. A beam fired out of that portal and instantly killed a soldier.
The other T'au Empire soldiers reacted at once, opening dense fire on the portal.
As a result, behind that group of soldiers, another light portal had appeared at some unknown point. The ammunition they fired flew out from the portal behind them and attacked the soldiers themselves.
(End of Chapter)
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