Watching the rain of Tyranid corpses fall from the sky, Vane had the massive urge to hit them with a smug, “Is that it?
I haven’t even started trying yet, and you’re already dropping?” Dhrost and his men stood there, utterly dumbfounded.
The sheer shock hitting them was like a tidal wave, repeatedly battering their already crumbling worldviews.
If it had been their own forces facing an aerial swarm of this magnitude, the casualties would have been catastrophic, and the defensive line would have broken instantly.
But right now?
The Tyranid corpses were literally piling up into mountains, and they hadn’t even managed to touch the fortress.
Even more terrifying, this guy’s steel army was actually slowly gaining ground, pushing the Tyranid swarm back.
Not only had they not been crushed by the Tyranid zerg rush, but they were actually winning the war of attrition.
Is this the true power of the Golden Age of Technology?
Damn it, just how much priceless technology have we lost over the millennia?
Dhrost’s chest ached.
If humanity hadn’t lost those ancient technologies, the Imperium’s current situation wouldn’t be anywhere near this desperate.
“Synapse creature!
It’s a Synapse creature!” An officer surveying the battlefield spotted a massive Tyranid bio-form lurking behind the swarm and desperately shouted to the others.
It was a Tyranid monster standing over nine meters tall, covered in thick, heavily armored chitin.
Its massive upper torso boasted seven scythe-like limbs, and a vicious, spike-covered tail thrashed behind it.
With a casual flick of its claws, the behemoth tore right through an abandoned Imperial transport vehicle blocking its path.
Its colossal weight shook the very ground with every step it took.
“It’s cunning.
It hasn’t entered the combat zone,” Dhrost noted, observing the creature.
Unlike the other bugs mindlessly charging forward, the beast hung back, acting as a relay node for the Hive Mind to coordinate the swarm.
“If it won’t come to me, I’ll go to it.” Vane pulled out an enchanted broadsword forged entirely of Nihilite.
With a thought, a full suit of high-tech alloy armor materialized over his body.
Finally, he equipped a jetpack onto his back.
With a single massive leap, he shot into the sky like an avenging angel, diving headfirst into the tide of bugs, completely ignoring them to make a beeline straight for the Tyranid behemoth.
“That’s way too reckless!” Dhrost was absolutely flabbergasted.
No tactics, no fire support, just charging in entirely solo?
Not even the Adeptus Astartes would rush a target like that!
“Why is he so impulsive?
We have the advantage right now!
If we just hold the line and fight defensively, we can definitely push the swarm back!” “Ugh, is this guy really our ancestor?
Was everyone from his era this completely unhinged?” “I wonder what specific era of the Golden Age our Forefather is even from?” “…” Dhrost’s inner circle exchanged nervous glances, murmuring in deep concern.
Using a fragile mortal body to solo a Tyranid monstrous creature?
Honestly, it was straight-up suicide.
However, what happened next was beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.
Vane’s aggressive charge immediately triggered the Synapse creature’s threat response.
The psychic Zoanthropes and Termagants guarding it unleashed a barrage of attacks to intercept him, but Vane nimbly dodged every single one mid-air.
As Vane closed the distance, the behemoth immediately swung its razor-sharp limbs, aiming to rip him to shreds.
“Watch this swing, kids.
It’s gonna look incredibly cool.” Hovering mid-air with his jetpack, Vane swung his sword straight into the behemoth’s deadly limbs.
A chilling flash of steel cut through the air.
The massive limb, coated in armor thick enough to casually shrug off bolter rounds and heavy lascannon fire, was cleanly severed in one smooth motion, hitting the ground with a heavy thud.
The sight didn’t just leave Dhrost and his men gaping like stranded fish; even a fleeting glimmer of confusion flashed across the behemoth’s alien eyes.
What the hell is that weapon made of?
How can it possibly be that sharp?!
The razor-sharp blade sank into the Tyranid monstrosity’s torso with zero resistance, carving horrific, gaping wounds across its chest.
Vane had installed the “Apotheosis” mod, which completely removed the level cap on enchantments.
Paired with gear crafted from Nihilite—a material that possessed the “Soul Eater” trait, constantly boosting the weapon’s base damage the more entities it killed—his damage output was downright illegal.
“I didn’t have enough time.
This Nihilite gear isn’t even maxed out on enchantments, and I haven’t stacked any buffs yet.” Vane didn’t just have access to tech mods; his crafting list also heavily featured magic mods containing enchanted books, high-tier spells, and magic scrolls.
Unfortunately, the window between his transmigration and the invasion kicking off was incredibly tight.
He didn’t just have to build a massive, fully automated factory complex from scratch; he also had to carve out time to build libraries, enchanting tables, mana pools, and other magic-tier infrastructure.
Frankly, he was burnt out.
If it weren’t for Steve—his absolute workhorse of a Stand who never suffered from mental fatigue or physical exhaustion—he never could have managed this brutal grind.
If Vane had to do it all himself, he probably would have just thrown his hands up, laid down, and let the Tyranids eat the planet.
The enchanted sword he was wielding, forged from Nihilite, permanently stacked damage based on the maximum health of whatever monster it killed, and had no cap on how many enchantments it could hold.
The only downside was that applying those high-tier enchantments took a ridiculous amount of time.
Relying on his overpowered sword and agile mid-air maneuvers, Vane effortlessly chopped off every single one of the heavily armored limbs on the Tyranid behemoth.
Finally, with a single, brutal swing, he decapitated the beast, permanently ending the monster’s life.
“He just…
he actually just killed a Synapse creature?” “He made it look so easy.
I’m suddenly feeling super confident.
I feel like I could probably do that, too.” “Spencer, did a Zoanthrope fry your brain?
How could you even say that out loud?!” “If Spencer fought a Tyranid beast of that caliber, the odds would definitely be one to nine.” “Wait, do you mean one Tyranid swipe and Spencer gets chopped into nine separate pieces?” “You guys are absolute bastards for setting me up like that…” Dhrost and his subordinates couldn’t help but crack jokes, the suffocating tension that had gripped them for days finally loosening just a little.
Vane’s effortless slaughter of the Tyranid bio-forms gave them the completely false illusion that the terrifying monsters were nothing more than squishy target practice.
Maybe I could do that too?
Of course, deep down, they all knew it was completely delusional.
Anyone who had ever stood on a frontline against the Tyranids knew exactly how horrifying they were.
Standard-issue lasguns couldn’t even scratch their chitin plating, and a single swing of their bladed limbs would easily chop a normal human into three neat pieces.
With the Synapse creature dead, the Hive Mind’s connection to the ground forces abruptly severed.
Countless Tyranid bio-forms instantly fell into complete disarray and were systematically slaughtered by the Iron Golem army.
While the Iron Golems’ weapons weren’t anywhere near as utterly broken as Vane’s enchanted sword, their damage output was still ridiculously high.
Every swing of their blocky swords cleanly split a Tyranid bio-form in half.
The Hive Mind quickly routed its psychic connection through backup Synapse nodes, rapidly regaining control of the swarm.
But the momentum had already completely shifted.
Even though the Tyranids still held no fear of death, turning the tide back in their favor was now completely impossible.
The Tyranid frontline rapidly collapsed.
Horrendous casualties mounted, the swarm was broken, and they were forced into a full retreat.
The aerial battle was suffering the exact same fate.
A torrential downpour of bullets and a dense grid of energy beams saturated the sky.
The bodies of Tyranid flyers rained down like a monsoon, rapidly piling up into a thick, horrific layer across the ground.
Meanwhile, Vane’s colossal mobile fortress was still aggressively devouring the city, indiscriminately swallowing up concrete, rebar, and Tyranid corpses alike.
Everything was dumped into the massive industrial crushers, pulverized, and routed through sorting systems.
Metals and concrete were sent to the decomposition chambers to be broken down into base elements and reformed into usable building materials.
Biological matter was dumped straight into the composters to generate Bone Meal.
Because of this industrial-scale recycling, the Hive Mind couldn’t even reclaim its own fallen bio-forms to recoup its biomass losses.
Even if, by some miracle, the Hive Mind won this battle, it would be operating at a massive, unrecoverable deficit.
When an Iron Golem died, it only dropped a few Iron Ingots and a Poppy.
The Hive Mind absolutely could not use a flower to recover its lost biomass.
The Hive Mind quickly realized that fighting this battle was somehow even less profitable than fighting the Necrons.
At least the metal skeletons didn’t actively eat the Tyranid corpses, meaning the Hive Mind could still reclaim some of its biomass to cut its losses.
This war was literally a black hole for its resources.
But to secure the biomass of the Cryptus System, the Hive Mind had no choice but to bite the bullet and deploy even more heavy bio-forms into the meat grinder.