The earth had been reduced to scorched wasteland. The ridges and hills had all been flattened, while raging fires gradually devoured the forests and vegetation along the edges. In the worst-hit areas, the world looked like the apocalypse itself—rocks melted by the intense heat had become rivers of lava, flowing wantonly across the cracked ground, while thick smoke gushed from crater after crater and stained the sky a withered black. The enormous wreckage of the scattered fortresses could be seen everywhere across this newly formed "Disaster Plain," like an enraged steel jungle that had sprouted and mutated, pointing straight at the sky.
The fissure that cut across the earth lay surrounded by these apocalyptic scenes. Along its jagged edges, one could still see the charred remains of tentacles. Rocks and clods of earth kept falling from the ravine's edge into the abyss below, while two rivers of lava that had yet to cool hung down the cliffs, resembling the sulfur rivers said in myth to connect hell and the mortal world. At the bottom of the Great Rift, a dim red glow could vaguely be seen flickering in the darkness.
Those were the Firstborn's nerve ganglia, flickering with a faint light in the darkness.
The drone swarm had established a temporary base around the Great Rift. Large devices originally used for space engineering had been dropped directly from orbit to the surface. Once assembled on-site, they became the decomposition-beam emitters hanging over the edge of the fissure and aimed at the bottom of the abyss. Three groups of decomposition-beam emitters were currently operating, using powerful high-energy rays to break down all solid matter in their path. The obstacles deep within the fissure were being cleared away.
Some engineering-model drones flew busily back and forth among the large devices, while even