With the annihilation of the Seventh Overlord, every terminal directly linked to his subordinate server was forced offline as well.
The vast army of deathly warriors, kneeling upon the ground, lost their target for data feedback and exchange all at once.
The mid-tier intelligences housed within their biomechanical shells had no commands to execute, nor any place to transmit the constant stream of incoming external data. Their memories quickly overloaded, and they crashed completely.
As for the Necron Guards—those equipped with an extra "hard drive" capable of independently storing and processing data—after a brief assessment, they determined that there was no possibility of breaking free. Without hesitation, they initiated their secrecy protocols, radiating self-detonation commands.
But with Roya present, how could he allow them to succeed?
With a single sweep of his spiritual perception, he intercepted every signal they attempted to transmit. At the same time, he shut down and reformatted the entire army of the dead in one strike, reverting them back into the purest form of biomechanical metal.
Now that he had grasped the techniques of utilizing the Warp, such maneuvers were nothing for Roya.
Those who have yet to step through the gates of the Warp—are nothing but ants.
Without the control of the Seventh Overlord, the pyramid warship in orbit had also lost all power. Under the pull of the pirate star's gravity, it plummeted downward.
That massive vessel—nearly a quarter the size of the pirate star itself—would utterly obliterate the planet if it collided with its surface!
"Star Spirit, take control of the pyramid warship!" Roya commanded.
At once, the Star Spirit responded, propelling her biomechanical body toward the descending pyramid warship, already blazing through the atmosphere.
In truth, the Star Spirit had no idea how to seize control of something so vast.
Instinctively, she released her consciousness energy, just as she had done with the Hades, spreading her will throughout the warship.
By coincidence, this method mirrored how the Seventh Overlord had once commanded the vessel from the throne of its control chamber—through psionic force.
Yet the Star Spirit's consciousness energy was far from the refined essence of true psionics.
The pyramid warship barely managed to restart its anti-gravity systems. No longer dragged earthward by the pirate star's pull, it now hovered within the atmosphere, its hull tilted and embedded into the skies at an angle.
The Star Spirit sent a message:
"Lord Roya, I can't handle this thing!"
"It's too large—I can only barely keep it afloat. I can't move it at all!"
At that, Vegapunk interjected with a laugh:
"That's just fine. Better still if it can be lowered further, until it's resting on the ground."
"My clone researchers have been dying to get their hands on it!"
"Lord Roya, let me dismantle it! I promise you—I'll turn every scrap of alien technology aboard this ship into my own!"
"Give me a single year, and I can absolutely recreate a vessel just like it!"
Of course, this was pure bluster.
If the pyramid warship were so easily replicated, the Seventh Overlord would not have possessed just one of them, but an entire fleet.
The star-metal required for its construction alone could not be amassed within mere millennia.
And most critically—Roya had no time to wait a year.
For at the very moment Roya had discovered the Silent King's tomb, the Silent King had also discovered him.
No longer was it the passive, automated defense of a system in sleep mode. This was genuine awareness. The Silent King had perceived Roya's existence, and understood his terrifying strength and potential.
Within the Silent King's data-vault—a repository containing every fragment of history across the galaxy that could be verified—there was but one figure capable of shattering the glass barrier: Roya.
For that fact alone, the Silent King even suspected that Roya's potential placed him on the same tier as the Four Gods of Chaos themselves.
Infinite possibility.
The Silent King knew—this future god already regarded him as an enemy.
What he could, and must, do was strike first. He had to strangle Roya in the cradle, before Roya's strength surpassed his own.
Roya understood this just as clearly. Which meant he had to leave the pirate star—leave the entire star system—without delay.
If the Silent King came hunting for his aura, the whole system would be doomed.
A duel against such an opponent—an equal of his own rank—would demand Roya's full strength. He would have no spare focus to contain the collateral devastation of their Warp-driven clash.
Once they fought, the pirate star system would be obliterated in the aftermath.
Only by leaving—by luring the battle into a dead system devoid of life—could such collateral destruction be avoided.
"First, replicate the pyramid warship's core astronavigation technologies onto the Hades," Roya decided.
Returning to the Throne of Void among the blossoms, he extended his spiritual perception through it, linking himself to the pyramid warship.
As he had expected, this method of linkage was far less draining than directly occupying the warship with his perception alone.
Roya immediately discerned that the warship's control system was designed precisely around psionics—communicating with the ship's soul, and through that soul, driving the entire vessel.
Exactly the same as the Star Spirit's crude mimicry when she forged her replica pyramid and the Hades.
The one captured its form.
The other captured its essence.
Together, they became a complete warship.
And now, without the psionic blessing of the Seventh Overlord, the pyramid warship's ship-soul mistook the Star Spirit's imitation pyramid for a true comrade. With no resistance, it opened itself fully.
It even regarded Roya as it would another Overlord.
Such auxiliary, collective intelligences—made to assist in controlling vast warships—truly lacked in wisdom.
Unable to distinguish friend from foe…
Still, that spared Roya considerable trouble. Working in tandem with the Star Spirit, he quickly scanned the warship's anti-gravity system, beacon-fold transmission array, warp-drive engine, and other core modules, then reproduced them in scaled-down form aboard the Hades.
Roya's perception handled the scans—down to atomic arrangements—while the Star Spirit supplied the immense planetary-origin energy needed to assemble the matter.
Together, they worked like a colossal 3D printer. In less than half a day, every component had been fabricated.
Whether they would function or not—remained to be tested.
If not, their only option would be to bleed the Star Spirit's origin energy further, expanding the Hades until it could house the original, full-sized components.
For though Roya now commanded the pyramid warship, and could already wield it, that vessel's purpose extended beyond merely ferrying him into the void.
More crucially, it had to become the cornerstone—the foundation stone—of the pirate star's entry into astronavigation.
The current technological base of the pirate star was far too low. Without leaving Vegapunk a physical model to study, no matter how monstrous his research ability, he could never conjure a true interstellar warship out of nothing.
Fortunately, once the scaled-down modules were installed, the Hades' ship-soul fused smoothly with them all—activating flawlessly on its very first attempt.
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