The psychic shock caused minor damage to the highly sensitive, wide-area energy detectors throughout the Mechanicus Ship fleet, but that was all. Nanomachines repaired them as quickly as they were damaged.
The Energy Compression Device remained completely unaffected, its output slowly climbing.
The vast mass of dispersed psychic power gradually shrank in volume, its immense density sending psychic lightning crackling wildly through the air.
The pale blue psychic power, which had spread like sheer gauze, seemed to be slowly squeezed by a pair of invisible hands.
Tiny, inconspicuous black flecks mingled with its pale blue hue, like impurities scattered through a clear sky.
The psychic power gradually drew inward. Its once-expansive form kept changing, its volume steadily decreasing, yet the tremendous power contained within did not diminish in the slightest. It still radiated an intimidating pressure.
No one had ever attempted to extract the power of over a million psykers at once.
Even to the Aeldari, such an act was unimaginable.
By burning a thousand psykers every day, the Imperium could sustain the Astronomican, which had once been powerful enough to illuminate the entire Milky Way.
But this was a million psykers.
Even though their psychic power had not been ignited, gathering such a vast amount of it would still stir enormous psychic waves in the Warp.
As the Confinement Field generated by the compression equipment intensified further, the ethereal psychic power shifted from gas to liquid.
At that moment, however, the black portions suddenly grew more numerous.
Iax did not know what this was. To the Men of Iron, psychic power was merely a form of energy that seemed somewhat unusual. Iax had performed no additional operations to alter its properties, either, merely compressing it continuously.
Small amounts of energy could be compressed into solid crystals.
There was no