Deep within the frozen rock strata, even the noise had a different flavor.
Ronan stared at the Virtual Work Area for a while, watching the complex symbols evolve across it. Feeling somewhat tired, he leaned back against the cold metal wall and closed his eyes. Vibrations and noise pressed in from all sides, rocking his body. He made no deliberate effort to sense or distinguish them, yet his surroundings automatically took shape in his mind:
The Soil Layer Voyager had just excavated the work face. Its six articulated alloy limbs were embedded within it, braced against the slowly flowing Frozen Nitrogen as they salvaged and repaired node equipment inside the underground cavity.
Fifty meters above, on the surface, a vast number of Iron-Eating Beetles relentlessly gnawed and corroded the ground, sucking at the solid ice and frozen soil as they searched for every metal element within their coverage—including artificial creations made of such materials. The Electric Spine Serpents that coexisted with them swayed their enormous bodies, winding through the Insect Swarm as they continuously absorbed the waste the beetles had consumed, digested, and excreted, steadily growing larger.
It was also these Electric Spine Serpents whose hammer-like tails struck the ground at irregular intervals, creating detection waves that could travel through the thick frozen soil and ice, locating targets and guiding the beetles.
Higher in the sky, the battle for air superiority continued. Space-time turbulence caused by intense interference in outer space, along with Light Beam Cannons densely fired by Space-based Weapons, indiscriminately blanketed the surrounding area. Vast quantities of condensing slurry bubbles were also deployed, using temperatures that instantaneously approached absolute zero to suppress these monsters' biological activity as much as possible.
At the same time, however, at least four or five medium- to large-sized weapons platforms had crashed in