48: Chapter 48 The Devour of Titans

Eight hundred meters beneath the Metallis Forge Temple, a void-class blackstone core rotated slowly within an adamantium-Chitin nutrient solution. Its diameter was equivalent to the torso of a Knight-class Titan, and its surface was densely engraved with the Necron Dynasty's most ancient Quantum Resonance Runes. Every rune pulsed slightly in a cold green light, maintaining the nutrient solution's temperature precisely within the peak activity range of Chitin synthase. Drones pumped nanoscale-screened metal particles into the culture pond from four adamantium veins simultaneously along creep conduits; as these particles touched the core's surface, they were instantly captured by quantum resonance and embedded layer by layer into the forming skeletal carapace of the behemoth.

The Brood Queen crouched at the edge of the culture pond, the lattice structure on her grey-purple carapace flickering in synchronization with the core's resonance frequency. Her Hive Mind node monitored every cell division cycle of the Titan-Eater throughout the process—this was the first void-class war unit hatched by The Swarm in the Warhammer universe. All previous genetic templates—from Ultralisks, Brood Lords, and leviathan motherships to Hive Lords—had been dismantled, reorganized, and rewritten during its embryonic stage, fully merging with the blackstone prototype technology that the Necron Dynasty had sealed away for tens of millions of years.

The Titan-Eater's complete body reached the initial shaping of its carapace layer as embryonic development entered a critical stage. Its limb extremities were not the monomolecular bone blades of an Ultralisk, but four extremely long adamantium-Chitin composite piercing limbs. Each limb contained an independent set of blackstone quantum resonance chambers, allowing for autonomous adjustment of penetration angles—in simulation tests, this chamber array's resonance frequency could already synchronously cover all known charging windows of Imperial Warlord-class Titan Void Shields. Seven sets of void-class blackstone resonance chambers were arranged vertically along the chest and abdomen; each set could operate independently or collaborate, capable of collapsing a Knight-class Titan's Ion Shield in fractions of a second or reflecting a Grey Knight's psionic backlash into the caster's own neural center. The cold green runes on the surface of the void-class core in the center of the head carapace continued to update; as each new rune was recorded, its master control link sent a synchronization pulse back to the Void Gate of the Talasta Tomb—not as a simple weapon system, but as the ultimate terminal extension of the entire Blackstone Defense Line.

The Sovereign reviewed all design parameters of the Titan-Eater within the Hive Mind, including joint torque, core output limits, and synchronization test data with the Void Gate energy circuits. He then bundled all the data and sent it to the Eternal Echo with a note: "The first Titan-Eater will hatch in several standard cycles. The Blackstone Defense Line is now fully closed-loop. All Brood Queen nodes will enter a state of combat readiness during the incubation. Nephilak, your protocol list didn't mention this was behind the Void Gate. I've used it. Let Marcus see clearly."

When this data was projected by Canoptek-7 onto the holographic display in the briefing room of the Wrath of the Emperor, a long, heavy silence filled the room. Marcus Aurelian stared at the behemoth embryo pulsing slowly in the adamantium-Chitin nutrient solution in the projection, his right arm twitching beneath his shoulder strap. His mechanical eye quickly scanned every piece of data—void-class core, adamantium-Chitin composite carapace, independent blackstone resonance chambers in the limbs, seven collaborative resonance sets in the chest and abdomen, incubation countdown—then he turned to the communications officer, hoarsely ordering him to synchronize and forward this data to Ortron on Griffin IV and all standing members of the War Council, and to order the orbital fleet not to initiate an attack.

Bern stepped forward from the flank of the briefing room, his psionic talisman still a dull grey. He glanced at the energy signature of the void-class core and spoke: "Its resonance chambers can cover the entire orbital defense line. If we don't destroy it now, once it completes its first round of testing, every Void Shield in orbit around Griffin IV will be cracked open piece by piece like an eggshell. But if we attack the culture pond now, the Blackstone Defense Line will identify any munitions we fire as an active attack—with the entire line's engines closed and under full monitoring by The Swarm, the cost would be equally uncontrollable. We cannot win this fight."

"It's not targeting Griffin IV," Marcus's voice dropped to a near-hoarse whisper. "The power of the Titan-Eater's void-class core has already exceeded the threshold required to destroy any single planetary orbital defense line. It placed the behemoth in the dead center of the Blackstone Defense Line because the Titan-Eater's true target has only just begun to be remotely scanned by the blackstone network—and it's not the Ultima Segmentum, nor even us."

Nephilak's quantum-state communication patched into the holographic projection. The Necron Overlord's living metal cloak flowed with cold, dark green flames in the projection light; he dispensed with pleasantries. "When your Astropath communications were interrupted not long ago, the final Warp signal captured was not Chaos. The Empire categorized this signal as 'unidentifiable,' but the Necron Dynasty's database has its complete profile." Beside the Titan-Eater's blueprints, he pulled up a deep-space scan image magnified to its limit—at the edge of the Galaxy, between the Orion Arm and the boundary of the void, a massive expanse of Warp energy was distorting starlight, its scope already exceeding the current maximum projection distance of The Swarm's Blackstone Defense Line.

"Tyranid Hive Fleet—Leviathan." Nephilak magnified the image to its maximum, revealing countless writhing dark purple tentacles and silhouettes of biomass clusters larger than star systems at the edge of the Warp distortion. "This is not the branch scout fleet you encountered before; it is the entirety of the Tyranids' main force in this galaxy. A few months ago, your Swarm just tore apart and devoured their vanguard scout fleet on the fringes of the Ultima Segmentum. Now, the Tyranid Hive Mind has marked you as a primary threat. The Titan-Eater was prototype-designed specifically to deal with such things. The night your Swarm Sovereign unlocked the Void Gate, he used the master key to remotely unseal the 'Titan-Eater' blueprints—I asked him why he didn't inform you in advance, and he said he feared you humans would attack him first in your terror." He paused, the cold green light in his eye sockets refocusing on Marcus. "So now, I am the one informing you—he didn't build it to conquer you; he is racing against time."