The steel tide of the Word Bearers swept forward, unstoppable, driving the flood of black constructs back step by step.
Twisted metal wreckage and eerie stains left by vaporization littered the passage. The enemy's offensive seemed utterly broken. The balance of victory was shifting.
But just as the battle line reached a wider junction, something changed!
The surviving fragments of constructs scattered everywhere suddenly ceased all resistance and movement, as though they had received the same silent command.
The next moment, like iron filings drawn to a magnet, they began converging rapidly on a single point in the middle of the passage!
"They're merging again! Concentrate fire! Stop it!" a sergeant roared hoarsely.
The quick-reacting Space Marines immediately aimed every volkite Gun and plasma weapon at the swelling black core.
Searing white beams and blue spheres of plasma poured down like a torrential storm, hammering the enormous body taking shape.
The intense volkite heat instantly melted the black metal it touched!
Plasma bursts detonated, each explosion tearing away great chunks of material that writhed like living flesh and vaporizing them into acrid smoke.
But it was useless.
The speed of its assembly defied imagination, and it displayed astonishing resistance to damage.
Sections melted through or blasted apart were instantly filled and repaired by more Liquid Metal surging in from all around.
Within mere seconds, a vague, unsettling outline of an enormous humanoid stood in the middle of the passage, still growing taller!
Five meters, ten meters, fifteen meters... at last, a monstrosity nearly five stories tall finished taking shape!
Its entire body consisted of that deep black metal that absorbed all light. Its torso was thick, but its limbs were disproportionately long and slender, giving it an eerily discordant appearance.
Its "head" had no features, only a smooth, Helmet-like curve