The crash of a fortress, creating a scene that seemed to shatter heaven and earth, did not stop the white-hot war.
On the contrary, it became even more intense.
The remaining forces from both sides that hadn't been destroyed in this earth-shattering impact fought even more frantically.
In the aerial warfare, when fighter aircraft ran out of ammunition, they turned themselves into large bullets, overloading their engines and launching death charges, ramming into the enemy.
In such a killing-mad battlefield, a modified Thunderhawk gunship that appeared not to participate in the war between both sides was considered an enemy.
So it not only had to dodge attacks from the Tyranid swarm, but also evade gunfire from Imperial fighter aircraft.
Initially, it was very dissatisfied with this evasive behavior.
Although it had no fire support systems, that didn't mean it truly couldn't fight—for example, it could lure enemy shells to attack their own forces.
But gradually, it found this quite interesting too.
Being chased and shot at by both sides, dodging gunfire in such a perilous situation was also quite a thrilling and exciting challenge.
Moreover, escaping again and again, acting like they couldn't hit it at all, making the pursuers frantic with rage, was also very amusing.
Let it dance with its pilot in such gunfire.
Come on, use even more gunfire to force its aerial trajectory dance to become more beautiful.
"Boom—"
The explosion of a warhead, its resulting impact also made the aircraft emit sounds that seemed rather ominous, feeling like it might come apart.
However, Ejie had the strange feeling that the fighter seemed to be in a state of joy.
According to the current screen reports of the aircraft's condition, some maneuvers that should have been difficult to perform were accomplished.
Additionally, sometimes when it could clearly avoid denser gunfire zones, suddenly it seemed like the steering wheel was locked, unable to change course, diving headfirst in.
Then it would return to normal, making him desperately weave through various beam lasers and missiles—one slight lapse in attention would mean destruction.
So if this Thunderhawk gunship truly had a machine soul influencing it, this thing was definitely the type that pursued extreme sports.
It was frantically testing the edge of death, madly walking a tightrope, wandering on the boundary between life and death, enjoying the thrill it brought.
Fortunately, it was generally heading toward the destination he wanted to reach.
As for what a machine soul was, there were many explanations.
In the Imperium's official explanation, machine souls were the Imperium's term for the automatic systems and operating mechanisms within their technology.
However, machine souls were different from the forbidden Abominable Intelligence because they lacked the ability to self-upgrade.
The so-called Abominable Intelligence was actually AI—artificial intelligence with self-thinking capability.
Because humanity's Golden Age ended with AI rebellion, pulling them down from their divine throne, AI now had this designation and was taboo, forbidden to develop.
Returning to the machine soul issue, the Adeptus Mechanicus believed machine souls could be influenced by cult rituals, and their nature was close to beasts, capable of expressing emotions like hatred and stubbornness.
So through rituals, machine souls could be better controlled, cooperate better with users, and sometimes even unleash extraordinary power.
For example, clearly out of ammunition, but because the machine soul was greatly pleased, the weapon in hand could continue firing—that's how mystical it was.
So if such phenomena appeared here, regarding the existing machine soul, Ejie didn't think it was purely a term for automatic systems and operating mechanisms.
Regarding the machine soul here, he had once seen such an explanation that he felt was more appropriate.
A simple example would be the concept of "all things have spirits" from mythology.
An object, because of what it experienced or over time, gave birth to a bit of spiritual intelligence.
Or machine souls could be understood as something like "elemental life" or "spirit body" or "host spirit body"—they would inhabit objects, thereby gaining self-will through the object.
So objects truly gave birth to machine souls with self-will. In such cases, if users made the machine soul dissatisfied, they would suffer for it.
Suddenly, his vision captured something outside the atmosphere, making Ejie's face change slightly.
The next moment, that fortress that seemed to be skipping on the atmosphere suddenly caused intense agitation in the atmosphere.
The originally high-temperature zone from atmospheric friction instantly magnified a hundredfold, as if the fortress had suddenly sunk halfway.
The cause of this result was clearly the impact of large weapons.
It should be macro cannons—what specific type of macro cannon, he naturally didn't know.
He only knew that if it took a few more hits, it would probably crash directly, and he would likely be caught in the explosion range.
The next moment, that zone burning red from atmospheric friction suddenly bloomed like a flower, seeming to explode from internal breach. But it looked more like the rhythm of being penetrated by macro cannons.
Then an abnormal light explosion burst forth, forming a small sun.
After several seconds, he saw the sky truly begin to burn.
The naked eye could identify that the atmosphere had been blown open, most obviously like a piece of paper with its center ignited, the burning hole continuously expanding through combustion.
Could this fortress have that kind of special weapon—one that could ignite the atmosphere?
But it seemed the burning was weakening, though it had expanded too much. It should be purely caused by some massive energy source in the fortress detonating.
Besides the atmosphere being ignited, the exploding fortress created countless fragments forming dense meteorite clusters that were crashing toward the ground.
Boom—Boom—
More macro cannon attacks, further shattering the large mass fragments.
One macro cannon shot missed its target and made intimate contact with the surface.
The explosion's brilliance excavated the crust, and earth vaporized into red mist mixed with large amounts of superheated sand and soil was instantly sent thousands of meters into the sky.
The scene was like a heavy object falling onto a calm water surface, splashing up large amounts of water mist and spray, but here it was earth's spray.
That area would definitely need its map updated.
The original terrain of mountain ranges extending hundreds of kilometers was pulverized by this strike, becoming a horrifying circular crater.
This strike also seemed to hit exactly at the junction of continental plates, causing the earth to begin cracking, with a shocking, bottomless great rift valley appearing.
A hive city built nearby happened to be located at the edge of this rift valley and began sliding toward the abyss.
If this planet continued to be hit like this, if the scene became extremely dire, it really worried him about possibly facing the most terrible situation.
That would be the Imperium's—Exterminatus!
...
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