The Emperor’s Angel of Death

Just as Illyrian was awestruck by Gellan's grandeur, a small, streamlined aircraft glided over and stopped in front of him. Sorshyan invited Illyrian to board the hovercraft and take a tour of this creation from the pinnacle of humanity's Golden Age.

They traveled between the massive metal tracks, and wherever the hovercraft went, all the lights lit up, presenting every unique sight of the magnificent mechanical city to Illyrian.

During the journey, the hovercraft passed through a series of huge, hanging pipes. Sorshyan told Illyrian that these were collection devices. After the mining ships collected fragments of celestial bodies, they would first perform precise laser beam cutting internally and use magnetic disks to automatically refine and purify the materials. These semi-finished metal materials would then be transported to the transfer stations on the outer shell, and the transfer stations would use pipelines to directly send them to the factories in the manufacturing layer.

[I hope readers remember our domain name here: Taiwan Novel Network → 𝕥𝕨𝕜𝕒𝕟.𝕔𝕠𝕞]

Illyrian was curious, were these mining ships also manufactured by Gellan?

And what about the crew?

Sorshyan stopped the hovercraft on a platform, then summoned a mining ship and had it open its cargo hold for Illyrian to see.

It was then that Illyrian realized that these mining ships, which were over fifty meters long, were completely unmanned!

No pilots, no operators, no servitors...

Immediately, he thought of something.

Abominable intelligence!

“This thing.”

Sorshyan stood at the edge of the platform, gently tapped its dull yellow shell, and shook his head with a smile.

“It’s not quite abominable intelligence. It just follows existing programs, about the same level as the Adeptus Mechanicus's automata, only with slightly faster calculation speed and reaction ability. One of the Imperium's problems now is that it's too sensitive.”

Afterward, he took him to a factory.

It consisted of five huge buildings arranged in the shape of a cross. They were all designed the same, each with a transparent glass dome supported by dozens of dark pillars, forming a slightly elongated oval.

The walls between the pillars were made of alternating clear and frosted glass panels. The hovercraft stopped in front of the central building, which was also the largest. Illyrian measured it with his eyes and estimated that the gate was about one hundred meters wide and one hundred and fifty meters high, filling the entire space between the two pillars. The ceiling of the first floor intersected with the gate in the middle, and several pairs of railings crossed the gate, disappearing into the interior of the building.

Sorshyan didn't offer much explanation, only kept walking. Illyrian could only try his best to keep up with him. They took a levator up to the upper half of the gate and flew directly to the second floor amidst the faint roar of machinery.

Illyrian noticed at this point that anti-gravity technology seemed to be very prevalent here, or rather, common?

At first, he thought this factory might be similar to the advanced workshops of the Adeptus Mechanicus he had seen before, but after truly seeing its full scope, Illyrian realized how wrong he was.

The floors of this factory were not what he understood them to be. Each floor had huge machines with structures that Illyrian was unfamiliar with, or rather, very alien. The surroundings were composed of a network of suspended glass panel skywalks bound by lattice steel beams. These networks were interconnected by numerous stairs and elevators, gradually climbing to the top of the factory in five layers.

There was no smoke, dust, odor, or fine particles in the factory. All the machines were submerged in light that illuminated everything but was never glaring, operating steadily and methodically in clean, fresh air, cutting, sawing, planing, and drilling huge blocks of metal.

Levers rose and fell smoothly like giant steel hands, and huge platforms moved back and forth automatically and precisely. The wheels and belts seemed motionless. The soul of this powerful mechanism was not the crude force of fire and steam, but the refined but more powerful force of electricity. When the ears had gotten a little used to it, the noise of the machines began to sound almost melodious, except when hammers weighing several thousand tons fell, everything would tremble from the thunderous blow.

However, what shocked Illyrian even more were the hundreds of small machines with double-digit tentacles, like some kind of aquatic animal, moving between the various machines. They moved gracefully, as if swimming in water, with agile and swift movements, and many small bright spots on their bodies, like eyes.

“Incredible...”

Illyrian took a step forward, his face almost pressed against the glass, without a trace of tension or anxiety. His only expression was quiet concentration. He seemed to be just a curious observer at this moment.

Illyrian experienced a different kind of industrial charm for the first time. The factories of the Adeptus Mechanicus he had seen in the past were only noisy and chaotic. Perhaps only the Tech-Priests themselves could appreciate the chanting of the Tech-Priests and the noise of the gears, but this visible efficiency, the precision unique to machinery, the movements that were accurate to the second, possessed a unique ultra-rational scientific aesthetic. Illyrian even realized for the first time that it was interesting to watch huge blocks of metal slide out of the transparent dome on moving platforms and fall into the firm embrace of huge mechanical monsters.

There, they were bitten open by powerful jaws, held by hard, heavy claws, and planed and drilled by sharp, shiny claws. Small electric railcars carried them away from the other side of the building, forming elegant and exquisite machine parts.

It all seemed completely natural.

This was another industrial civilization, one that once belonged to humanity but had long been forgotten.

Similarly, he didn't see a single person here.

Sorshyan then took him to another factory. They walked along the glass walkway to a circular space with a rotating conveyor belt. One by one, slender mechanical arms assembled various parts onto suspended metal skeletons. They did not use spark-spraying welding, nor did they use smoke-filled furnaces to combine them. The metal parts seemed to fuse together as soon as they touched, becoming a whole.

As they moved continuously on the conveyor belt, they eventually took the shape of those tentacle machines. Illyrian's eyes widened, and he turned around.

“Machines are manufacturing machines.”

“Maintaining Gellan requires many of these machine workers.”

“No one controls them, no one programs them, or rather, their programs and instructions come from a higher-level intelligence.”

“Yes.”

Illyrian was silent for a moment, then exhaled a trembling breath.

“Sorshyan, Chapter Master, are you really not going to kill me to silence me?”

Sorshyan smiled and spread his hands.

“Why would I do that?”

“I’m scared.”

“Haha, haven’t I been behaving quite brutally?”

“It’s not you, it’s everything I’ve seen. My heart is warning me that you might be doing something very dangerous, but I have no ability or reason to stop you. In principle, I am your subordinate.”

“Things aren’t as scary as you think. You’ve seen the Necrons too. Even with Gellan’s power, we can’t guarantee that we can gain an advantage over them. There are too many things in the galaxy that are more dangerous than this. The Imperium has made even more compromises in order to survive. Although I don’t think it’s commendable for the bottom line to keep slipping, there’s no choice.”

Illyrian pondered for a moment and nodded.

“I admit your point. There are many things in the galaxy that are more dangerous than this. Perhaps we do need to borrow some forbidden power. I hope you can always control it.”

“Of course.”