The Cryptek had not yet realized that he had already fallen into a disadvantageous position.
The Leviathan clusters were closing the distance with the Necron vessels. This proximity made it easier for the Leviathans' attacks to find their marks, while simultaneously forcing the massive biological ships to soak up the brunt of the Necron fleet's firepower, providing cover for the Swarm's other atmospheric and space-faring units.
Because of this, the number of Corruptors quickly reached a critical mass. Their continuous barrage of acid and parasitic spores began to outpace the self-repair capabilities of the Necron ships' Living Metal.
By the time the Cryptek thought to deploy his unmanned interceptors to reclaim air superiority, the window of opportunity had already slammed shut.
"Oh, deploying interceptors now, are we?"
Necron ships and their strike craft are almost entirely automated, a byproduct of their racial characteristics. They operate as a gestalt civilization where only the Necron nobility possesses individual consciousness; lower-ranking Necrons are mindless tools. This makes their operational efficiency exceptionally high, allowing their drone swarms to defeat the elite pilots of other races with minimal casualties.
However, the Zerg Swarm was a different beast entirely.
In a direct ship-to-ship slugfest, the Swarm's current bio-technology might struggle against such high-tier "black tech," but in a dogfight between strike craft? The aerial units of the StarCraft II races were not to be trifled with.
The Cryptek never imagined that after deploying his interceptors, the situation would only deteriorate.
To avoid friendly fire, the Necron fleet had to cease the green lightning storms they had been discharging around their hulls. Unless the Cryptek was willing to sacrifice his own drones, he was forced into a conventional engagement.
By the time he realized that holding nothing back was the only way to deal with these creatures, it was too late. The Scourges had already begun their mass sortie. The Cryptek had never witnessed the horror of a Scourge; he likely mistook them for mere nuisance organisms.
Then...
Boom!
A brilliant bloom of plasma fire erupted from a corner of a Necron ship, sending a jolt through the Cryptek's mechanical core.
"What?!!!"
The sheer explosive yield was terrifying. The impact of a single Scourge was equivalent to a direct hit from a human cruiser's spinal cannon. More importantly: Scourges never traveled alone.
When they appeared, they blotted out the stars. In an instant, dozens of Necron interceptors were consumed by the swirling orange and green plasma fire. Simultaneously, the ten ships of the Necron squadron suffered varying degrees of devastating damage.
A Dirge-class escort was struck by more than thirty Scourges at once. Despite being a massive vessel over a kilometer long, its structural integrity collapsed instantly, and a section of its crescent-shaped hull snapped off.
The ship displayed incredible tenacity; even with a section missing, the Living Metal at the wound began to regenerate frantically.
However, the Overmind did not intend to give it a second to breathe.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit!"
The Cryptek manipulated his controls, trying to force the fleet into a counter-maneuver. But against the terrifying acceleration of the Scourges, a second wave arrived before the smoke from the first had even cleared.
Even the Scythe-class cruiser carrying the Cryptek came under heavy fire. The hull shuddered violently. In mere seconds, over a hundred Scourges detonated against its armor, and the ship's damage readouts spiked past 30% instantly.
Massive Leviathan tentacles slammed into the breaches in the Necron hulls, pumping in swarms of Banelings to trigger even more violent chain explosions from within.
"Scourges in the sky, Banelings on the ground—explode! Explode! Blow them all to hell!"
Now, the Necrons were experiencing the same agony the Protoss once endured when facing the endless tides of the Swarm.
The first Dirge-class escort finally reached its breaking point, shattering into countless fragments under the relentless Scourge assault. Although the largest debris chunks were still dozens of meters wide, the destruction of the core power source meant they had lost the ability to regenerate.
Then came the second ship, and the third.
By the time the Cryptek desperately re-released the lightning storms to clear the surrounding space, only three scarred Scythe-class cruisers remained. The escort screen had been completely annihilated.
"No, no, no! You filthy vermin! You dare destroy my ships?!"
Seeing red warnings indicating Zerg boarders inside his own cruiser, the Cryptek furiously tapped at the rune consoles. Green runes, indecipherable to the uninitiated, flickered across his displays. As he pressed his palm down, teleportation nodes throughout the ship flared with green light, forming swirling vortices.
"Kill them, my warriors!"
Necron Warriors wielding Gauss Flayers stepped out of the portals in perfect formation. These soldiers looked like nothing more than fully mechanized metallic skeletons, cold green light flickering in their empty eye sockets.
They raised their weapons and fired. Green Gauss beams struck the Zerglings that were currently tearing at the ship's internal plating. In the blink of an eye, the Zerglings' powerful bodies were consumed at the atomic level by the green energy, collapsing into piles of gray ash.
Each Gauss beam was precise and lethal. While these mindless Necron Warriors were the most basic combat units, they were far from weak. Being composed of Living Metal, they would continue to repair their wounds until they were completely pulverized.
Furthermore, their weaponry was devastatingly effective against pure biological enemies like the Zerg.
"I really wish I had Protoss shields right now."
The thought was valid. Even the Necrons themselves coveted the energy shields of the Protoss. In other sectors, the personal shield technology of the Protoss often prevented the Necrons from effectively trading casualties, leading to heavy losses.
However, the Swarm cared nothing for casualties. The Zerglings charged over the ashes of their fallen kin. The numerical advantage of spawning two or even three Zerglings from a single egg was fully realized here. Hydralisk clusters took the opportunity to ambush the Necrons, using thick bone spikes to pin the metal warriors against the walls.
The sheer kinetic energy of the spikes was enough to send the heavy Necron Warriors flying, but the piercing damage did little to their mechanical frames. They simply stepped out of the spikes, expressionless, ignoring the holes in their bodies.
The tireless, regenerating Necron Warrior was the most common nightmare encountered when facing the Necrons.
But against the absolute "Zergling Sea," individual combat prowess remained insufficient.
"Cursed things! There are too many of them!"
The firing rate of the Gauss Flayers was limited, preventing them from creating an absolute wall of fire. Soon, the Zerglings pounced onto the front-line Necron Warriors, frantically biting and tearing at the metal limbs.
Every bite and claw-swipe damaged components. Even if a Zergling tore off a Necron Warrior's head, the mechanical body continued to fire based on its pre-programmed directives. Only when its limbs were completely dismantled into loose metal parts did the Necron finally cease all movement.
"Stubborn garbage. If you think you can win a corridor war with these low-level drones, you are dreaming."
The Cryptek saw the tide turning and immediately accessed higher authorization, summoning a new unit.
The thing that arrived was, in essence, another "bug."
The ship's corridor vibrated violently as a gargantuan mechanical centipede burst through a massive teleportation gate. It emitted a piercing metallic screech as it used its massive body to plow a bloody path through the Zergling sea.
"Are you kidding me?!!!"
The Overmind wanted to scream as he saw the mechanical centipede.
"Who the hell uses super-heavy units in an indoor corridor?!"
This Canoptek Tomb Stalker was large enough to easily crush heavy units of the Roach caliber. In the cramped corridors of a Tomb Ship, its massive size acted as a perfect roadblock, creating an invincible bottleneck.
The Tomb Stalker rampaged with impunity, crushing even the Hydralisks in the rear into pulp beneath its heavy mechanical segments.