The explosion of the automated defense turrets quickly triggered a chain reaction, and a succession of energy-fueled flames instantly filled the entire sealed-off underground space.
The searing heat was extremely destructive to the Nanomachines' bodies.
Fortunately, metal was everywhere here. Once the energy storage system above the structure had drained completely, the flames soon died out.
Amid the half-melted ruins, one of the two Adaptive Combat Cores chose to sacrifice itself.
It wrapped its entire body around the other Machine Body amid the flames, only to have more than 80% of its own body melted and vaporized.
Spacetime solidification worked by infusing a Machine Body with Temporal Energy and recording its material information.
But after losing so much matter in an instant, the Adaptive Core was utterly incapable of reactivating its spacetime rewind protocol.
The high-energy flames generated by the surging energy completely wiped out the data stored within it. Just as steel lost its magnetism at high temperatures, the Nanomachines lost their stored records under extreme heat.
The energy surge itself also produced an impact exceeding the limit of the Temporal Energy it contained, forcibly breaking its spacetime-solidified state and completely destroying one Adaptive Combat Core.
The remaining Adaptive Core shook off all the molten metal clinging to it.
It devoured the remaining Nanomachines' wreckage.
The Adaptive Combat Core formed a pair of ion cannons and blasted straight through the metal protective wall, two-thirds of which had already melted.
Then it passed directly through the breach.
In the glow of the orange-red molten metal, the enormous cognitive core had ceased operating.
The energy supply here had been completely cut off.
The Nanomachines tried making contact with the enormous cognitive core, then steadily penetrated its interior.
They soon located a movable mechanism at the center of the enormous mechanical sphere.