As the Forge Fiend was taken down, two people widened their eyes at the exact same time. Gao Yi stared in blank astonishment at the sudden influx of 10,000 psionic crystals, and it was only when Norris reported to him that he finally figured out the situation.
"A Forge Fiend? Isn't this thing a demonic machine? Canto this guy hooked up with the Dark Mechanicus?"
Meanwhile, Zesta on the bridge of the Tyrant was also frozen in place.
One of the Forge Fiends bestowed by the great master of the Soul Furnace, Vashtor, had died? Just what kind of people were the enemy?
"Damon! Some machine creations corrupted by Chaos have appeared inside this warship, and their armor is very hard! Your weapons might not successfully pierce the armor! Where are you? I'll come support you!"
"You're saying it late! We've already run into this bunch! What is this thing, a living machine? Don't come over, we can still hold our own for now! Go finish the mission the captain gave you!"
Damon and the others had just wanted to retreat when they ran into the corrupted mechanics and Forge Fiends looking for them.
There were even a dozen Rangers trapped in the adjoining compartment.
The combat effectiveness of this bunch was far beyond what the ordinary soldiers of this warship could compare to.
Damon had just stepped out when he took a barrage from a Forge Fiend.
Good grief, if he hadn't switched to this suit of adamantium combat suit, he really might not have been able to withstand it.
Yet even so, the shock transmitted inward made Damon feel as though his internal organs had all shifted out of place.
Compared to Space Marines, the mortal flesh of Ranger users ultimately still had a gap.
"Hold them down! The other teams have already received the signal and rushed over to support us! By then, they will be the ones surrounded, so there's no need to make a meaningless sacrifice."
Damon hurriedly stopped these Rangers who were rushing out. The losses this time were already big enough, and every veteran was precious.
He admired the fearlessness of humanity in this world, yet when facing the enemy, could they not always shout that sacrifice was the cornerstone of humanity, charging forward for the God-Emperor and returning their souls to the Golden Throne?
It was as if sacrifice and death were inconsequential matters in this world.
"Zesta, is this the truth you spoke of?"
Canto looked at Zesta angrily. All that grand talk yielded absolutely zero battle results?
Didn't he take the risk of sheltering this guy, who had been designated as a heretic by the Adeptus Mechanicus, precisely so that he could eliminate those enemies for him at a critical moment?
So what about now? One Forge Fiend was killed by an unknown entity, while the other was held back by the enemy.
Zesta, who had previously had victory firmly in his grasp, was no longer calm either.
He remained utterly silent. He was waiting—waiting for the piece of corrupted code he had crafted to play its part.
At this moment, the corrupted code did not display any anomalies.
Ever since the corrupted code had caused severe destruction in several major campaigns of the Empire.
The Thinker systems now possessed specialized auditing code to review those abnormal codes. Once discovered, a program named the Hunter Killer Code would activate.
Corrupted codes also had varying levels of strength, all depending on the skill of the creator.
Clearly, Zesta's level had not reached the point where he could instantly paralyze an entire warship; otherwise, he would not have needed to rely on Canto to conceal his whereabouts.
Moreover, the corrupted code Zesta produced was of a corrupting nature.
This corrupted code had excellent concealment, but once it entered beings such as tech-priests and mechanics, it would spread its corruption to them. Originally, the priests on the Tyrant had not been corrupted, and Zesta was relying precisely on these corrupted codes to make them abandon their faith in the Omnissiah.
Once the priests on the Golden Ram were corrupted and controlled, this group of people who were most familiar with this warship would bring fatal destruction to it.
Also because of this battle, almost all the priests were at their posts. They operated the Thinkers, maintained the damaged equipment, and appeased the machine spirits, while their links with these mechanical creations also became the medium for the corrupted code's intrusion.
The corrupted code seemed to have found a breakthrough. They split and proliferated, and under the enhancement of Warp dark arts, countless segments of code that had no business existing within the sacred circuits exposed their true appearance.
The hunter programs within the Thinker also discovered them, but the corrupted code proliferated far too quickly. The hunter programs cleared out a considerable portion, but the remaining part of the corrupted code still infiltrated the processing components of the priests.
Priest after priest began to halt the work at hand, and their bodies constructed of machinery even emitted uninterrupted sparks.
Their bodies began to twitch, as if enduring unbearable pain.
Pavian, who was supervising the STC production in the barracks, also discovered the abnormality.
He was not directly operating the Thinker, and the barracks' system network, completely isolated from the warship, also protected them from the intrusion of the corrupted code. It was precisely for this reason that Pavian did not suffer from the intrusion of the corrupted code in the first instance.
Yet the other mechanics and priests in the forge workshop were not so lucky.
The voice-processing components on their bodies continuously emitted harsh noises.
"What on earth is going on?!" He hurriedly went to his colleagues' side to check.
However, when he touched the body of this priest who had fallen to his knees, the corrupted code also began to initiate its infiltration toward him.
"Praise the Omnissiah! The sacred circuits have been intruded upon and polluted! It's those apostates!!!"
Feeling his voice becoming increasingly disobedient, Pavian also realized what on earth was going on.
The corrupted code was attacking his processing components, and pieces of blasphemous knowledge and imagery were forcibly shoved into his brain.
The corrupted code was tempting these priests who worshipped the Omnissiah to fall; it was preaching the beauty of forbidden knowledge, and the false imagery was attempting to destroy the faith of these priests.
The fallen Mars, the monopoly of knowledge, the oppression of seekers of truth—it told the priests that as long as they threw themselves into the embrace of the great Vashtor, they would possess the right to research all knowledge, and countless technologies would be shared with them. To the priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, what kind of temptation was this?
False, these are all false! I have already seen the true Omnissiah with my own eyes, I have already witnessed the birth of the holy machines. They are the maintainers and protectors of all machinery in the universe, and they have completely transcended this world.
The faith in Pavian's heart began to help him combat these corrupted codes.
The holy machines in Pavian's mouth were precisely those SCVs.
The abnormalities of the priests were also immediately reported to Gao Yi, who was on the bridge. Gao Yi knew what was happening below even without listening to the report. While the warped-in units shared their field of view with Gao Yi, Gao Yi's Warp projection was also undergoing changes.
A power he had never sensed before was strengthening his Warp projection, although this power was still pitifully weak, seeing as the priests worshipping the SCVs currently only existed within his warship.
"Is this faith?"
As this faith entered his Warp projection, his Xel'Naga projection was actually responding to these priests?
"Huh? Dare the faith of the Adeptus Mechanicus get any more mixed?"
Originally, the faith of the Adeptus Mechanicus was a trinity: the Omnissiah represented the God-Emperor, the Machine God represented the Void Dragon fragment buried within Mars, and a portion of the members of the order worshipped the source energy representing power sources like electricity. These three existences split the faith of the members of the order.
With the appearance of Vashtor, whom the Dark Mechanicus worshipped, the faith generated by the physical universe because of mechanical technology had another share taken from it. Now, good grief, Gao Yi had also joined this grand banquet table.
Before you continue