Chapter 79-3: Mechanical Overlord (3) |
Before Qi Sheng appeared a room that looked extremely crude, completely unlike the technological aesthetic outside.
In the corner of the room, beside a metal workbench, lay a humanoid skeleton clad in a black robe. It appeared to have been dead for many years, the flesh long since dissolved, leaving only a faintly glowing skeleton.
After surveying the room, Qi Sheng approached the corpse and asked Guide curiously.
“Guide, can you extract any useful information from this skeleton?”
[Yes. If I expend sacrificial power, I can piece together fragmented memory images left in this world before its death.]
“How much sacrificial power is required?”
[Its life strength was not high. One hundred thousand sacrificial power will suffice.]
“Use it.”
Guide’s water sphere nodded upon hearing the command. Its analysis ability activated, pulling countless illusory fragments from the World Information Database, reconstructing a phantom body of flesh and blood for the deceased humanoid.
Looking around, the scene within the memory projection did not change much.
As his gaze turned toward the light screen floating on the wall, he saw a world entangled in countless black, decaying tendrils displayed before him.
It was a projection of the outside world.
Wherever the formless power swept, the outlines of stars grew indistinct. Brilliant suns dimmed rapidly like candles burning out, gradually extinguishing into endless darkness. Formerly radiant nebulae looked like polluted watercolor paintings, chaotic and disordered.
Qi Sheng found this scene all too familiar.
He had witnessed similar sights countless times while accompanying Yan Ming in search of living worlds.
This was exactly what it looked like when a world was completely devoured by the terrifying Black Tide.
Looking into the distant void, Qi Sheng saw Black Tide rifts opening like gigantic abyssal maws, devouring everything in their path, including light and matter. The number of these rifts continued to multiply.
Throughout this process, all color drained from the world, leaving behind only black.
Turning around, Qi Sheng saw a face twisted nearly to madness. It had a humanoid structure, but unlike humans, it possessed a slender horn protruding from its forehead, with a dark red orb hanging from the tip.
“We have lost. But the war is not over.”
As it spoke, the humanoid figure turned toward the dark golden light screen behind it and let out a hoarse roar.
“Mechanical Overlord, you are the culmination of my race’s every last resource. Though we have fallen, your journey has only begun. The final rule of this world has already been fused into your body. Follow the Black Tide to their world. It is a higher-tier world, filled with endless matter and energy for you to seize. There, you will have space for even greater growth. Devour. Create endless Iron Soul warriors. Destroy everything in that world until the Black Tide is completely eradicated.”
As the humanoid figure roared hysterically, the massive Mechanical Overlord slowly advanced toward the spatial vortex at the end of the darkness.
“Slaughter, growth, destruction… Mechanical Overlord, carry our race’s final fury and annihilate everything there. Avenge us.”
Amidst the designer’s hysterical screams, the Mechanical Overlord pierced through the black mist and slowly merged into the Black Tide vortex.
The fragmented images continued to flicker.
Qi Sheng watched as the Mechanical Overlord crossed through the dark barrier and descended upon the Earthquake Continent of Monster World.
At this time, the Mechanical Overlord was only the size of two football fields, far from its current moon-like scale, but its insane growth began from here.
Countless Iron Soul engineers rained down like a downpour. Everywhere they passed, spiritual ore resources were shattered and devoured, transported to the Mechanical Overlord to fuel its growth.
At this stage, the Iron Souls’ hunt level was not high, but their growth speed was terrifying.
Under the Mechanical Overlord’s control, the Iron Souls rapidly seized Monster World’s resources to develop.
During this process, the Mechanical Overlord’s body continuously expanded and evolved, iterating its technology every three days at the beginning. Except for the designer’s core chamber, the evolution of the Mechanical Overlord could only be described as advancing at a breathtaking pace until it reached its current scale.
Countless lifeforms on Earthquake Continent were slaughtered, including Black Tide forces that had spread into the continent.
In the eyes of the Mechanical Overlord, there were no allies. All energy and matter were enemies.
Because its ultimate goal was to completely destroy the entire world.
At the end of the memory projection, the Mechanical Overlord had become one of the dominant forces on Earthquake Continent. Throughout countless battles up to the present, while it faced setbacks, it had never truly been defeated, not even by the powerful Black Tide legions.
The image cut off there. Qi Sheng lowered his gaze to the skeletal remains, his expression helpless.
Through the memory projection, he had finally uncovered the origin of the Mechanical Overlord.
It was the ultimate creation of a race on the brink of extinction, built to carry out vengeance by completely annihilating the Black Tide.
But things had not unfolded according to the designer’s script.
Because… they had gone to the wrong place.
The designer envisioned the Mechanical Overlord entering the Black Tide World, where it would rapidly devour and grow.
But the problem was that after passing through the Black Tide vortex, the Mechanical Overlord had not descended into the Black Tide World. Instead, it arrived in the Monster World created by the Emperor’s Sign.
Thus, the final order left behind by the designer, ‘destroy everything in that world’, was now being carried out against Monster World.
At this stage, the Black Tide was also part of Monster World, but only one part.
The Mechanical Overlord’s ultimate goal was to destroy everything, and Qi Sheng had already classified it as a hostile force.
[This opponent cannot be underestimated. It carries a Rule from the Stellar Mirage World, and theoretically has the potential to become a god… Of course, compared to us Four Gods, it’s still far inferior. After all, we control the Rule Powers of Monster World, which are far beyond any rule from a minor world like Stellar Mirage. The strength of worlds is simply not on the same level.]
Hearing this, Qi Sheng chuckled and nodded.
“Alright, let’s head home.”
[Got it. Heading home.]
The view quickly pulled away from the designer’s chamber, with precise mechanical structures sweeping past, shrinking in Qi Sheng’s field of vision.
As the moon-sized Mechanical Overlord once again came into full view, a faint smile appeared on Qi Sheng’s lips.
“Guide, it seems the situation in Monster World is far more complicated than we expected. In addition to the terrifying Black Tide as our ultimate target, there are clearly other potential challenges awaiting us, including vengeful forces like the Mechanical Overlord that have descended from other worlds… Countless powerful races gathering in one place. The future will be very interesting.”
[Boss, none of them can compare to you! Lead the player army and crush them all!]