Salas the Illuminator's core processor was like a furnace cast into a supernova; every logic circuit shrieked with alarms and overloaded wails.
"Error! Threat level reassessment! Beyond database threshold! Logical paradox! Cannot comprehend!" The cold synthetic voice frantically flooded his internal core communication channels.
His hollow eye sockets locked tightly onto the little girl crouching on the ground, poking at Canoptek Scarabs as if they were cheap toys.
A moment ago, she had been more than ten meters away, flicking a Scarab into a metallic decal on the wall with one finger.
The next moment, when Salas instinctively turned his "gaze" toward the portal behind him, which glimmered with an eerie green light, out of "tactical analysis" and a search for an escape route...
"Hehehe..."
Clear as silver bells yet carrying an endless, uncanny chill, the laughter rang almost directly against his auditory sensors!
The core of Salas, built from precision gears and living metal, gave a violent "shudder"—if a Necron overlord could even have such a physiological reaction.
He abruptly swung his "gaze" back to the front!
The spot where Pandora had been standing was empty!
A freezing chill born of the instinct to survive, of being locked onto by an apex predator, instantly froze all his computational processes! Almost rigidly, he shifted his "gaze" back toward the portal.
There she was!
The petite figure floated half a meter above the ground, head tilted as she studied him with interest through eyes as crystalline as gemstones yet unfathomably deep.
That gaze was so pure, as if she were examining a mechanical doll with an unusual design that was nevertheless destined to be taken apart.
"Spatial... coordinates... displacement... zero time delay... no energy fluctuations... no dimensional disturbance..." Salas's logic core completely crashed.
The spatial technology he took pride in, the