The passage meandered downwards, its rock walls covered in ancient Necron runes that glowed with a chilling green light under the faint illumination of fluorescent moss.
At the fork in the path, the psychic traces left by the Farseer flickered like ghosts, yet they were mingled with an unnatural distortion.
That was a sign of interference from the Blackstone Construct.
Knox 's footsteps echoed in the silence.
Just as he was about to reach the end of the passage, a grating metallic screech suddenly tore through the quiet.
The sound was like the roar of an ancient beast awakening from a ten-thousand-year slumber, imbued with an unnerving mechanical quality.
He flickered, instantly darting out of the passage, and the sight before him caused his gaze to narrow slightly.
A colossal circular chamber, over a hundred meters in diameter, abruptly stood in the darkness, its sheer scale far exceeding expectations.
Thousands of Blackstone Constructs were densely embedded in the chamber walls, and these mysterious devices pulsed in sync at a strange frequency, emitting an ominous, ghostly green light.
Each pulsation was accompanied by a subtle tremor in space, as if the entire chamber was a living entity in the process of awakening.
In the center of the chamber, a geometric construct made of living metal floated, countless metal plates reassembling and deforming as if alive, refracting non-Euclidean light and shadow within the Warp energy.
"Is that the so-called artifact?"
Knox 's index finger rested casually on the trigger guard of his bolter, a faint, dark gleam flashing in his eyes.
His gaze penetrated the geometric construct's surface: tens of thousands of nanometal plates operated in a manner beyond three-dimensional comprehension, and the dodecahedron at its core, as it rotated, carved minute fissures in the veil of reality, seeping out rainbow-colored Warp energy.
Beneath the distorted light and shadow of the geometric construct, Farseer Sal gracefully turned, his movements almost eerily fluid.
His hood slipped back, revealing a perfect face that would dazzle mortals: nebular psychic energy flowed beneath skin like mother-of-pearl, and countless temporal currents were reflected in his crystalline eyes.
"Human, you dare to intrude upon the Necron's sacred ground alone?" The Farseer's voice carried the resonance of the Webway.
Knox 's gaze pierced the Farseer like a blade, and he subtly deepened the penetration of his Soul-Seizing Eye.
In his vision, the psychic field swirling around the Farseer presented a terrifying spectacle, like a raging sea amidst a storm, energy tides surging and roaring along unnatural trajectories, their intensity enough to instantly boil the brains of ordinary psykers.
Even more alarming was that the Farseer's position was clearly not accidental.
Seven streams of ghostly green energy extended from beneath his feet to the Blackstone Constructs on the wall, but there was a noticeable sluggishness in the energy pulsations, as if some ancient system was barely functioning.
A playful glint flashed in Knox 's pupils.
"It seems our objectives...are unexpectedly aligned."
He said unhurriedly, the barrel of his bolter elegantly rising half an inch, reflecting a cold metallic sheen in the dim light.
"How about this—" Knox 's voice suddenly took on a dangerously light tone, "—give me some face and hand over that little toy, shall we?"
Farseer Sal's laughter echoed through the chamber, and the Necron runes on the walls lit up with an eerie glow.
"What a classic statement of barbarism."
He elegantly stroked the surface of the geometric construct, and the living metal immediately coiled around his arm like a pet. "This reality anchor is fifty million years older than your pathetic civilization. It belongs to the Necron Dynasty that forged it, and you humans..." The Farseer's lips curved into a sneer, "...cannot even comprehend its activation protocols."
Knox 's pupils constricted slightly.
In the vision of his eyes, the Blackstone Constructs behind the Farseer were pouring surging psychic energy into the ground.
The entire chamber was, in fact, a gigantic altar, and the dodecahedron core at the top of the geometric construct had begun to emit an ominous hum, its rotation speed increasing rapidly.
"It seems you understand its purpose better than I imagined."
Knox 's voice was low.
"Care to share?"
"Naive!"
The Farseer's staff slammed down, and a brilliant psychic shield abruptly expanded.
However, a spiderweb of cracks immediately appeared on the shield's surface, as the Blackstone Construct's anti-psychic field was mercilessly eroding his power.
The Farseer, however, paid no heed, continuing to frantically urge the ritual forward.
"How dare you short-lived creatures even covet such power..."
His mockery suddenly froze on his lips, that perfect, almost false, Farseer face abruptly twisting, like a silk mask crumpled by an unseen hand.
The psychic crystals in his pupils trembled violently.
The dark light swirling in the human's eyes was tearing through the cracks in the psychic shield, ripping open his carefully constructed memory defenses.
"Presumptuous—!"
The spirit stone at the top of the staff burst forth with a dazzling blue-white light.
This light, carrying the purest spiritual purification power of the Craftworld, cut through the opponent's "prying" like a hot knife through butter.
Dust from the ceiling was shaken down by the psychic shockwave, forming an eerie mist in the ghostly green light.
"Despicable ape!"
The Farseer's roar was mixed with unprecedented fury.
The gem on his staff was still flickering at high frequency.
This was the first time in tens of millions of years that a human had been able to delve so deeply into the Eldar's most secret memory sanctuary.
Knox 's lips curved into a cold arc, the smile of a hunter watching his prey fall into a trap.
Although the Soul-Seizing Eye had been forcefully interrupted, it had already seized the most crucial intelligence.
Several fragments of memory, like poisoned daggers, deeply pierced into the depths of his consciousness.
The first memory revealed the terrifying true nature of the reality anchor: this was not a weapon, but a precise instrument used during the Old Ones era to repair the fabric of reality.
The second memory presented a scene of apocalypse—the Eldar Craftworld's Soul Well was being torn apart by Chaos energy.
And in that last, most shameful memory, countless Eldar souls, like moths stuck in a spiderweb, were slowly being dragged by Slaanesh's tentacles into the Lord of Pleasure's gaping maw.
These images churned in Knox 's mind, making him suddenly understand the essence of this farce.
These long-eared creatures weren't fighting over a weapon; they were desperately searching for a bandage, attempting to plug the leaks in their sinking ship of civilization.
"Pitiful race."
Knox 's voice was as biting as ice, each syllable precisely piercing the Farseer's most fragile nerves.
"Indulging in psychic pleasure, ultimately bringing disaster upon yourselves."
He mocked, "Now you want to use the cold technology of the Necron to mend your riddled soul Craftworld? How...utterly ironic."
The shame of having his memories thoroughly penetrated twisted the Farseer's face.
Psychic energy raged around him, and the star patterns on his robe flickered violently, like the last struggles before a supernova explosion.
"Despicable ape!"
His voice was infused with the shriek of a Webway storm.
The staff swung in a deadly arc, and the floating geometric construct disintegrated in response.
Thousands of living metal plates, like an enraged swarm of bees, reassembled in the air into a dense killing array.
The edge of each metal piece shimmered with the ghostly light of phase-decomposition, ionizing the passing air into purple plasma.
Knox 's figure shifted half a step at the last moment, his movements as precise as if rehearsed a thousand times.
The spot where he had stood was instantly swallowed by the metal storm, the phase-decomposition beams melting a perfect spherical indentation into the adamantium floor, with residual Warp energy at the edges still emitting a teeth-grinding hiss.
The Necron runes etched on the Blackstone walls of the entire chamber lit up one after another, and dozens of energy turrets extended from the walls like venomous snakes, their muzzles flickering with an ominous green light.