During this period, Andy's daily path had been extremely rigid, essentially a straight back-and-forth between his workshop and the East Sub-Level.
The haul brought back from the Canoptek Research Institute by the vanguard raid team was far larger than what met the naked eye.
The situation at the time had been chaotic. The soldiers were in a state of high-octane "free-for-all looting," essentially grabbing whatever caught their eye.
Though their magnetic storage pouches looked no larger than standard heavy rucksacks, their actual internal capacity was ludicrously vast.
This tied into a matter of technological re-use.
When Andy previously reverse-engineered the Jokaero technology, he had mainly focused on back-engineering their micro high-energy battery tech.
However, after ascending to an "Imperator-class" Iron Man and experiencing a massive leap in processing power, Andy revisited that energy circuit and discovered a fascinating quirk.
The algorithmic framework used by the Jokaero to fold energy shared a remarkably high degree of foundational logic with spatial folding technology.
Under extreme physical conditions, energy and mass were interchangeable. Storing ultra-dense energy was, at its core, simultaneously folding space.
Once Andy grasped this principle, he installed a simplified spatial extension unit into those storage pouches. While nowhere near as absurd as Doraemon's pocket, stuffing the component inventory of an entire laboratory into them was no trouble at all.
Consequently, the piles of "condensate salvage" currently stacked in the East Sub-Level warehouse were vast enough to give Andy a headache just looking at them.
Thus, Andy had spent the last few days virtually glued to the analysis station.
As his analysis deepened, Andy noticed a striking technological rift.
Among the myriad xenos races, technological trees diverged in wildly erratic directions.
Based on the samples Andy had encountered so far, the T'au's technological framework was the closest to humanity's.
They also used plasma and physical projectiles (albeit railgun-accelerated), and they likewise built battlesuits and AI assistants.
Aside from aesthetic differences, their underlying physical logic aligned closely with humanity's—which was why Andy had easily reverse-engineered the T'au anti-gravity modules and shield generators.
The Necrons, however, were an entirely different story.
The Necron tech tree branched into a completely different dimension.
Andy tossed a squirming fragment of black metal onto the analysis stage.
It was a sample stripped from a destroyed Canoptek Wraith.
A swarm of nanites surged forward, commencing decomposition.
Data streams scrolled across the display:
[Material Analysis: Nanoscabab Swarm.]
There was a common misconception here.
The vast majority of Necron dark technology was actually not built on living metal itself.
Although living metal possessed self-repair capabilities and made up nearly 99% of Necron physical forms, Necrons possessed a far more universal medium at the construct level: the Nanoscabab Swarm.
This was not a collection of miniaturized mechanical insects, but a programmable, semi-liquid intelligent fluid.
When a Necron unit fell in battle and triggered its Reanimation Protocols, it was not the metal growing on its own.
Rather, it was countlessly minute, invisible nano-beetles frantically moving atoms at the microscopic scale.
They broke down surrounding matter, extracted the required metallic atoms, filled in the damaged zones, and reconstructed the crystalline lattice.
Sounds impressive on paper, Andy thought.
Yet as Andy examined the analyzed data, he felt thoroughly speechless.
"This stuff... is way too rigid."
Andy used tweezers to pick up a globule of greyish-black nanoscabab fluid that had been isolated by the station.
The mass still attempted to wriggle on the tweezers, trying to flow back toward the original fragment.
Andy had initially assumed Necron dark-tech materials would possess performance on par with—or even superior to—his Mimetic Multi-Alloy.
After all, the Necrons were old-timers who had been playing the cosmic game for tens of millions of years!
Yet upon comparison, Andy realized he had over-estimated them.
The nanoscabab swarms completely lacked mimetic capabilities.
They were hard-locked.
At the moment of creation, these nano-beetles were encoded with immutable form protocols.
Furthermore, the materials used for each beetle differed.
If a beetle was made to build a Scarab, it could only ever assemble a Scarab for the rest of its existence. If it was created for a Gauss projector, then even if it were shattered ten thousand times, it could only reform into a Gauss projector.
It couldn't function like Mimetic Multi-Alloy—acting as a shield one second, turning into a data probe the next, and melting away as a liquid a moment later.
In terms of flexibility and plasticity, this Necron tech was thoroughly outclassed by the Golden Age's Mimetic Multi-Alloy.
"No wonder these metal skeletons haven't changed a bit in tens of millions of years. Zero progress."
Andy flicked the fluid back onto the pedestal.
Of course, that wasn't even Andy's biggest headache.
What truly infuriated him was the "Multidimensional Geometric Lock" hardwired into the material.
To verify this hypothesis, Andy had conducted an experiment yesterday.
He had thrown a fairly intact Canoptek Scarab into the analysis station, used nanites to forcibly disassemble it, and restructured it into a standardized, multi-purpose Canoptek structural plate.
Andy intended to use it as raw material to craft a few experimental pieces.
When the plate was first formed, it genuinely looked like a standard plate—smooth surface, extreme hardness, modular structure.
Andy laid it on the workbench and turned away to attend to other tasks.
About an hour passed.
When Andy returned to look, the plate... had changed.
It had failed to maintain its flat shape.
It had begun warping, folding, and stretching on the workbench all by itself.
The edges of the plate curled upward, the center bulged, and slowly, it was assembling itself back into the shape of a Scarab beetle!
Although it couldn't move without a power core, its physical geometry had reverted!
This was the insidiousness of the Multidimensional Geometric Lock.
Necron materials possessed a cross-dimensional "shape memory."
This memory wasn't stored in a microchip; it was locked into the geometric logic of every single nano-beetle.
No matter how you physically deformed or even melted it, given enough time, it would stubbornly revert to its originally locked geometric coordinates.
This meant Andy couldn't directly use these spoils as universal raw materials.
If he used this living metal to patch up a starship hull, the ship might sprout a bunch of scarab legs mid-flight, or the hull might suddenly form a massive Necron head.
The sheer absurdity of that visual was more than Andy cared to imagine.
"How am I supposed to work with this?"
Andy stared at the metal lump that had reverted to a beetle shape, feeling a massive headache coming on.
His original plan had been to utilize the raided materials to rapidly churn out a batch of high-tier gear via the analysis station, then push through to conquer the Launch Well.
Now, that plan was dead in the water.
Unless Andy could crack this Multidimensional Geometric Lock and wipe out the shape memory embedded within...
Or...
Should he just haul the analysis station onto the battlefield and convert materials on the fly?
That was obviously impractical.
"If I want to use this stuff, I need to master Necron geometry first."
Andy sighed, searching the database for records on multidimensional geometry.
However, the Golden Age had left behind very few technical paradigms regarding this field, as humanity had taken an entirely different technological path from the Necrons.
Andy had no choice but to brute-force his way through those obscure xenos runes and waveform charts.
Over the past two days, aside from eating (recharging), this had been his sole occupation.
Progress was slow—excruciatingly slow.
Beep.
His communicator chimed.
It was an encrypted report from Tech-Priest Zohl.
"Excellency, regarding the individual designated Hulie Campbell, I have a new situation to report."
Zohl's voice sounded complex—a mixture of irritation and an undeniable, reluctant admiration.
To focus entirely on research over the last two days, Andy had stuffed Hulie into the communal barracks and assigned her to assist Zohl.
Ostensible "punishment" for her prior arrogance, but in truth, Andy wanted to gauge her capabilities.
Later on, Andy had quietly slipped a few Necron components to Zohl to test her further.
"Speak," Andy replied, continuing to analyze the waveform charts.
"This female... though her demeanor is atrocious, showing not an ounce of reverence for the Machine Spirit, and though she even attempted to disassemble a sacred prayer emitter..."
"She possesses an... unbelievable talent when it comes to mechanical repair and calibration."
"Just moments ago, she repaired a locked phase-conversion node with her bare hands."
"She merely drew a few rough sketches, placed her hands on it, and the node restructured itself."
"Furthermore, she appears capable of directly perceiving the logic locks embedded within the multidimensional geometry."
"She casually wiped the locking protocol, and the node is now fully compatible with our interfaces."
Andy raised his head and looked at the comms monitor.
On screen, Hulie sat amidst a pile of parts, tinkering with a complex Necron component.
Her glowing green eyes revealed no emotion, only pure focus.
Here he was, sweating blood over geometry until he was nearly pulling his hair out.
And over there, she was walking around with a built-in decryption cheat?
Wasn't she a ready-made decoder right in front of him?!
If she could wipe the protocol on a phase node, she could certainly unlock the geometric locks on the Nanoscabab Swarms.
As long as he let her handle it, this pile of scrap metal could instantly be converted into invaluable dark-tech raw materials!
However...
Andy hesitated again.
Though Hulie looked obedient enough for now, she was ultimately a Necron construct who harbored a deep-seated grudge against that Cryptek.
What if an emotional lapse or operational error caused her to ruin these precious, non-renewable Necron samples?
Or worse—what if she committed deliberate sabotage, turning these treasures into uncontrollable killing machines?
While the probability was slim, it wasn't zero.
Andy's current stock of samples was finite—once used, they were gone.
Especially those two genuine sheets of living metal; if she ruined those, he would be heartbroken!
Should he trust her skill and delegate the authority to her?
Or should he keep grinding it out himself, taking the safe but agonizingly slow route?
"Trial and error... isn't out of the question," Andy muttered to himself.
"Maybe I should give her a few leftover scraps to test the waters first?"
"What if she actually pulls it off?"