The Necrons had once been the overlords of the galaxy tens of millions of years ago.
Before becoming that race, they had been known as the Necrontyr, born billions of years before humanity.
Back then, the Necrontyr still possessed bodies of flesh and blood, but because of some defect in their physiology, their lives were short and unstable. They might suddenly die in the next instant.
And even as the species' technology continued to advance, they had never been able to solve that problem.
As they expanded their territory, they encountered a species that seemed to possess eternal life—the Old Ones.
The Old Ones were the oldest and most powerful intelligent beings in the galaxy. Combined with their near-immortality, this filled the Necrontyr with bitter envy.
Thus, as the Necrontyr expanded their territory, conflict broke out between the two sides. In the end, the Necrontyr launched a war against them, and that war came to be known as the War in Heaven.
However, even after a war that lasted more than a hundred generations, the Necrontyr still failed to gain any advantage over the Old Ones. Instead, the fighting only became more brutal, and the Necrontyr sank deeper and deeper into despair.
Because the Old Ones' technological power was simply not something the Necrontyr could compare with.
But just as they were approaching despair, another power found the Necrontyr. They called themselves the C'tan, beings said to be the earliest intelligences born from the stars at the dawn of the universe.
The C'tan and the Old Ones appeared to be enemies, so they came to help the Necrontyr defeat the Old Ones. The first problem to solve was the Necrontyr's physical condition, that uncertain flaw that could make them suddenly die at any moment.
Thus, the C'tan built new bodies for the Necrontyr out of living metal, resolving the defects of their flesh.
The C'tan also promised that as long as the Necrontyr defeated the Old Ones, they would grant them eternal life.
Having received that promise, the Necrontyr were swallowed by their desperate desire. They allied with the C'tan and once again launched war against the Old Ones.
However, when the Necrontyr began abandoning their bodies of flesh and transforming into bodies of metal, they realized they had been deceived. They watched as the C'tan feasted greedily on the life energy stripped from the Necrontyr.
The Necrontyr had gained eternal life, but the price was the loss of their souls and their freedom. They became subjects ruled by the C'tan.
The Necrontyr as a race disappeared, becoming the cursed mechanical species known as the Necrons.
With the Necrons and the C'tan joining hands against the Old Ones, the Old Ones were eventually defeated and destroyed.
And in the final stage of the War in Heaven, after the C'tan had exhausted themselves battling the Old Ones, the Necrons launched their counterattack.
The bodies of the C'tan were destroyed, shattered, and imprisoned.
Yet the Necrons had also been weakened by that final war to the point that they could no longer contend with the other races of the galaxy. They had no choice but to hide, entering slumber within enormous tomb complexes formed from cities converted into clustered tomb chambers.
They would sleep for sixty million years, then awaken to rebuild all they had lost and reclaim their position as overlords of the galaxy.
The current era was almost exactly sixty million years later. Across every corner of the galaxy, the tomb worlds of the Necrons were beginning to awaken, little by little.
The pyramid-like world Kain had entered was clearly a Necron tomb that humanity in the Golden Age had discovered. They had modified it, sealed it, and studied it.
As for what the infinite energy cube actually was, Kain roughly understood that as well.
He now understood why, when he brought the ship to other worlds and tried to place it into storage space, he had been warned that life existed within it.
Because the energy body inside the infinite cube was itself a living being. It should have been a shard of a C'tan shattered by the Necrons.
Because it could not be killed, it had been bound and made into a battery.
And that battery would likely be difficult to obtain now.
The metal around him seemed to liquefy in an instant, as though the surrounding area had become a metallic swamp.
At the same time, from that metallic swamp, bodies that looked somewhat like skeletons forged from metal began floating upward. However, they did not seem to have booted up yet.
At that moment, Kain had already pushed the XV104 Riptide's thrusters to maximum, closing in on the C'tan-brand battery at high speed.
In the blink of an eye, he reached the entrance of the temple-like building and unleashed every weapon he had toward it.
Boom!
The shockwave from the explosion almost shoved the unit backward despite its thrusters being at full power. The energy shield he had activated nearly collapsed as well.
As the flames and light scattered, the entrance he had blasted open revealed the C'tan-brand battery.
He made the thrusters surge as if they had detonated, releasing a pulse-like burst that almost brought him in front of the object in an instant.
Grab it, then teleport straight back to the ship.
But when he was less than twenty centimeters away, the metal arm twisted instantly. At the same time, the whole suit seemed to be struck by an enormous hammer and was sent flying backward.
That attack seemed to have been caused by a pure burst of released energy.
It appeared that the battery pack was releasing energy, supplying power to this tomb world and activating all of its functions.
With the battery pack as the center, rippling light patterns spread outward. They looked like electrical current flowing along a circuit, extending toward the entire tomb world.
At that rate of spread, it felt as though it would still take some time for the energy to reach the entire world.
The metal skeletons that had just floated up from the swamp-like ground, at least the ones closest to the circuits, seemed to be charged by the energy—or rather, awakened by it. Their bodies began to glow.
The instant they awoke, they locked onto the intruder without hesitation. The weapons in their hands released beams of energy that struck toward him.
Evade. Counterattack.
The particle beam weapons under Kain's control took down one with each shot.
At first glance, the Necrons did not look like much. But Kain understood that they had only just booted up. They were like computers that had only just been turned on; their programs and functions had not fully started, and their performance could not yet be fully brought out.
That was why the Necrons' movements currently seemed sluggish.
But each of their attacks was sharper and faster than the last.
Moreover, these Necrons should only be the lowest-level units. The higher-level ones might take longer to awaken and were likely still in the process of activation.
He had to reach the C'tan-brand battery again, pull it out, and take it away before the Necrons fully reacted.
Boom!
A thunderous blast roared.
A much larger energy beam exploded across his path. A gun turret had been activated.
But that single shot denied him any chance to get close.
The blast also caught the XV104 unit, leaving him unable to avoid the next shot—or the dense fire from the other metal skeletons.
Without hesitation, he had the ship teleport him away.
In an instant, the scene produced by spatial transition flashed past, almost like an illusion. But his field of vision had already changed.
He was back aboard the ship.
However, it was not as though he had completely lost his chance to obtain it.
As long as he used sufficient force to charge in and seize it before this tomb fully booted up, it could still be done.
Now, he needed to find external assistance and cooperate with someone.
(End of Chapter)
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