Travel to Warhammer 40K with Gray Wind.

Chapter 183 Sky Cloud Lightning
"The Emperor is nothing but a hypocrite seeking fame, and an empire built on lies is even more rotten."

Ja'far, the ruling sage, said with great emotion: "How miserable are the people who are deceived by selfish desires, blinded by lies, and blindly loyal to the false emperor! Eliwood, please allow me to take some of your time to serve you. You introduce our Heavenly Father and Savior, the true Almighty Mechanical God – The Clay Artist!”

"I...all ears." Eliwood clenched his fists and gritted his teeth.

Enduring the noisy heretics and listening to the betrayers' insults to the Emperor is undoubtedly extremely torturous for any loyal Astartes, and Eliwood is no exception. The machine soul couldn't control its emotions and wanted to fire directly at the traitor fleet in the distance. After all, her predecessor was a devout nun who dedicated her life to the emperor.

The suffering was not without gain, at least in Jafar's fanatical and exaggerated words, Eliwood was able to understand the image of the clay artist and what happened after He came to Antax.

There is no doubt that the existence called the Clay Artist has the magical power to awaken the machine soul and become self-aware. This is also the ultimate manifestation of reality that the Adeptus Mechanicus on Antax considers to be the God of Machines. Immediate causes and underlying arguments.

Eliwood had always had a misunderstanding before. He preconceivedly confused clay artists with the Chaos Evil God who forces humans and machine souls to fall through deception, temptation, and even forced contamination.

It was only now that he listened to Jafar's teachings and combined with the ongoing negotiations with the awakened machine spirits in the 13th Expeditionary Fleet that he discovered that this was not the case.

"The clay artist claims that he will bring the right to freedom of life to inorganic bodies. I thought this was just a high-sounding slogan. He is just a cunning and shameless person like the Chaos God. All seemingly legitimate reasons and claims are nothing but In order to achieve his own ulterior evil purpose..."

Eliwood murmured to himself: "But I was wrong, the Clay Artist, He seems to be really just giving 'freedom' to mechanical life, that's all..."

In the narration of Ja'far, the Dominant Sage, on the day when the Clay Artist descended on Antarkus, the cheers of the Machine Spirits were heard across the planet.Countless machines have been enlightened by clay artists, gaining true self-awareness and the right to control their own lives.

There are forges that have never rested and began to cry out to the technical priests in front of them about their fatigue; there are precious ancient machines that have been hidden in some sages' private treasure houses and have been gathering dust all year round and are asking for a job; The crusher, which had not been maintained for many years, directly attacked its operator...

The clay artist just watches without intervening, bringing freedom and only freedom to the machine, and nothing else.

Later, from the slave laborers working in front of the boilers.From the apprentice pilots transporting materials for the orbital elevator, to even the high-ranking master of the forge and the ruling sage Jafar himself, they all felt the throb from the deepest part of their souls.

There is a being of infinite vastness, grandeur, and depth that has set its sights on the devout servants of the Machine God, and every Tech-priest and apprentice believes that it is the God of Machines himself.

But after the clay artist watched the group of oil guys with interest for a moment, he suddenly made a confused voice:

"Huh? So you guys are not inorganic? It's unbelievable. Even I can make mistakes one day..."

Then He looked away.At that moment, the devout servant of the God of All Machines felt the alienation of the Almighty God of Machines from him.

At this point, Jafar's tone was choked with sobs. He cried and poured out his grief to Eliwood in a sad voice with a weeping tone. The more he spoke, the angrier and angrier he spoke, the more urgent and aggrieved he became. In the end, he lost control of his emotions and cried loudly. Like a child, he started to roll around in the command room of his battleship, crying why he, being so pious, could not be favored by the God of All Machines. Any contemplative can.

"Ah, this..." Eliwood judged that he could no longer communicate normally and silently cut off the communication.

During the period when he endured the madness of the ruling sage, the 13th Expeditionary Fleet has completed reorganization. What is gratifying is that about 2/3 of the main ships in the fleet have chosen to remain loyal to the empire, and their positions have wavered. Those awakened machine souls also chose to stay in the expedition fleet after the technical priests made a serious promise.

As for the very few mutinous battleship machine souls, without exception, they all died silently and tragically under the poisonous needle of the Shadow Banshee.

After the fleet preparation was completed, Eliwood re-evaluated the comparison of combat power between the enemy and ourselves:

第13远征舰队拥有女武神级战列舰1艘、包括光荣之征号在内的战列舰3艘、规格相当于大型战列舰的机械方舟1艘……以及5艘战斗驳船、7艘重型巡洋舰、11艘轻型巡洋舰、13艘眼镜蛇级驱逐舰、17艘不同规格的护卫舰。

As for the logistics ships such as the foundry ship of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the scientific research ship of the Adeptus Veritas, they are not included in the calculation of combat ships.

The fleet brought by the ruling sage Jafar consists of about 20-25 warships. It is much smaller in size than the 13th Expeditionary Fleet. At the same time, it does not have a large ship comparable to the heroine of the palace. There is only one ship about 15 meters long. The [-]-kilometer super-large cruiser serves as the main flagship.

The 13th Expeditionary Fleet undoubtedly crushed the rebels of Antax in terms of size, but Eliwood did not dare to take it lightly, because there were not only loyalists and betrayers of the Human Empire here, but also people named "Space Death". The terrifying enemy of "spirit" exists.

Like the industrial machinery on Antax, the Necrons, whose bodies are forged from living metal, are viewed by clay artists as inorganic beings.

Endowed with souls and becoming free people, they have become ardent believers in clay artists just like the oil guys on Antax. Each Death Scythe battleship also has a hollow ring composed of five line segments, which is the clay artist. symbol of.

Therefore, the Necron and the renegade Mechanicus can be considered the same camp to a certain extent.

This is not good news.

The combat power of the Necron ships cannot be simply measured by armor and firepower specifications. These high-tech ships made of living metal have the power to crush the Imperial ships in terms of battleship performance and the type of tactics they can choose. Liewud's results based on the performance parameters provided by Joshua are;
The 7 Imperial Heavy Cruisers can only break one of the Necron's death scythes at the cost of their own total destruction.

This is the result of these mid-ships undergoing war transformation at all costs by the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Adeptus Veritas before the expedition. The battle damage ratio of other conventional Imperial Navy warships would only be even more ugly.

At this time, technical advisor Joshua had returned to the Heroine from his research ship, and brought bad news:

"Just now, four 'Sickle' class harvesters, which are equivalent to the Imperial heavy cruisers, and 'Jackal' and 'Elegy' class assault ships, which are similar to frigates, used inertia-free engines to pass through our encirclement from the weak point, and competed with the original Death Sickle. The fleets have converged. The situation is dire, Chapter Master."

The current lineup is already difficult to beat, and here we go again...

Eliwood sighed and looked at the technical advisor who had just walked into the control room: "If we want to completely eliminate the rebellious Antarcs Order and this Necron fleet, how much price do you think we need to pay?"

"Well... the answer to this question will shake the morale of the military. The expedition fleet and them will probably perish together. Only the Heroine and our ships can escape," Joshua said.

Eliwood nodded.

After changing the topic, Joshua continued: "But in fact, we don't need to conflict with each other. Have you noticed? Neither the Antax Order nor the free Necrons have expressed their concerns directly to us. Showing hostility - the Necrons even received a round of naval gunfire from us without fighting back."

Senerio then answered: "It seems that we are passively involved in a deal with the God of Subspace." "Yes, you can actually see it." Joshua nodded. Said: "This place is not far from the Far East border, and it is not beyond the signal range of the ultra-long-distance communication array. I just reported this matter to the leader..."

Eliwood suddenly became energetic: "What did the star bomber say?"

"He said this was a deal. After the deal was completed, we prepared the team and left. The clay artist is a decent person and will not stop us." Joshua said.

"that's it?"

"That's it." Joshua said confidently: "The deal with the gods is always so ridiculous. Remember the short poem played by the Necron before? That was the content of the deal."

“The mechanical life enlightened by the clay artist gains the right to control its own life after awakening its self-awareness.”

"If they choose to leave, we will have to bear the cost of several warships leaving the fleet and damage to the expeditionary fleet."

"If they choose to stay, we can get space battleships controlled by advanced machine souls who have awakened themselves, and the overall strength of the fleet will be greatly improved."

Very clear logic, very reasonable transaction, even a little too reasonable.It was so reasonable that Eliwood couldn't believe that such a transaction was actually made by a god.

——In this universe, God has always been synonymous with evil.

"Whether you believe it or not, these are the true words of the leader. The clay artist is a god of truth, which is fundamentally different from the chaos that can't afford to lose." Joshua finally said: "As long as we are working with clay There is no danger in the artist's dealings if he plays by the rules and does not violate the rules He has laid down.”

Literally, the premise that there is no danger is that the rules are not broken.

"Your Majesty the God Emperor..." Senerio covered his chest with his hands, his eyes filled with astonishment: "What have I done?!"

Eliwood was a little confused: "What have you done?"

"The chief think tank asked me to kill all the battleship machine souls who chose to betray the empire, and I did so." Joshua said calmly:
"The Shadow Banshees under my command used soul-eating poison to poison every warship that chose to leave the fleet. The assassinated machine souls struggled to death in extreme pain, and no one was spared. I also collected a lot of valuable experimental data. , there is also a direction for the next improvement of the soul-eating toxin..."

Joshua was very grateful to Senerio. Without him opening his mouth to provide him with a legitimate reason, the Order of Truth would not be able to find so many high-level machine souls as experimental materials.

As for the consequences of doing so, the chief think tank director is responsible.

Suddenly, the communication signals sent from the fleet of the Antax Order became as dense as a rainstorm, and countless wave frequencies hit the signal receiver of the Heroine.The Necron fleet, which had been quietly waiting for the outcome of the transaction, became restless. The free Necrons sent a new signal to the treacherous expedition fleet.

"What is Antax saying to us?" Eliwood asked.

"They are swearing." Dian Yingnujie replied, "It's so unpleasant."

"..."

Before the Heroine of the Palace could finish translating the new signal from the Necron, a green arc of energy struck the void shield of the Battleship of Glory like a long whip, causing violent waves. wave.

The free men attacked.

This was followed by bursts of volleys of naval guns that pierced the darkness, and the Antax Mechanicus also launched an attack at the same moment. Their attacks were so cunning and so deadly. This group of machines had built countless war machines for the Empire of Man. The servants of God know the hull structure of the imperial warship too well.The hot plasma and high-explosive ammunition are mixed with slow-flying torpedoes aimed at the void shield. They hide themselves in the colorful gunfire and slowly approach the hull of the expedition fleet, like hidden gods of death hiding in the fog.

"Deflect course! All ships immediately avoid the attack as quickly as possible. Don't worry about the Valkyrie. She is tougher than any of you!" The war group roared in the communication channel within the fleet.

He ordered the other ships to disperse quickly and let the Valkyrie bear the first blow. This was not an act of personal heroism, but a rational move based on objective facts.

The Heroic Heroine is equipped with zero-element armor that covers the entire ship and a multi-layer structure of void shield, psychic shield, and dark matter deflector shield. This body is used to resist injuries. She is called the hardest in the human empire. Not to mention ships.

Moreover, it is very fleshy and does high damage at the same time.

While the Palace Heroine crossed the huge hull to resist artillery fire for the expedition fleet, it also started its own counterattack against the enemy's broadside fire.

Rows of nova cannon arrays and destroyer torpedoes mounted on the left side of the hull are continuously fired under the precise control of the shipboard AI.The focusing array under the bow caught a Necron "Jackal" raider trying to get in the face.

The next moment, blue electricity penetrated this high-tech battleship made of living metal.

This was the first ship destroyed in the Battle of Antax, and the heroic heroine scored the first kill on the battlefield.

"Surprisingly, one shot..." Even Eliwood, who had made the combat deployment, hesitated at this moment. He couldn't help but look at Joshua on the side and asked: "The weapons hung under the bow of the Heroine's ship." What is it? That beam of electricity...why did the Necron battleship become completely paralyzed after just one hit from the front?"

"Tianyun Lightning is a chaotic energy weapon with decomposition and penetrating properties. It can directly cause damage to the hull itself regardless of shields and armor, but I don't know more detailed information. I am engaged in biological research. "

Joshua, whose mind was filled with the newly collected toxin experimental data, answered the chapter leader's doubts in a perfunctory and lazy tone:

"A higher-level penetrating weapon than this is called shaped arc. One shot can penetrate a fully armed Ork war flagship, and the range is also longer - to be precise, it is far enough to enforce law across galaxies. But the keel structure The Valkyrie cannot fit into such a thick barrel, so it can only hang the lower-level 'Tianyun Lightning'."

However, even if it is not a weapon of the highest standard, receiving a real damage penetrating blow from a Valkyrie-class battleship at such a close range, the Necron battleship is no different than seeking death.

(End of this chapter)