Alex, whose consciousness had been withdrawn, quickly returned to reality.
He took a deep breath, his gaze like a torch as he looked at the Emperor's military chest before him.
The double-headed eagle emblem on the chest's surface glinted with a cold metallic sheen under the lights, as if responding to his gaze.
He unhesitatingly lifted the lid, and golden energy flowed like water within the chest, reflecting the neatly arranged chess pieces on the board.
These pieces were divided into three main categories, each representing different strategic values.
The first category was naturally the Astartes, represented by the Ash Knights, who constituted the majority of the pieces in his hand.
The second category consisted of Battle Sisterss, Inquisitors, and a squad of Kasrkin, whose numbers were small but were crucial for Alex to control the other Battle Sisterss on Rostov.
As for the third category, there was only one piece, yet it accounted for all the points Alex had gained from upgrading his authorization from Level III to Level V, and that single piece was the Warlord-class Psy-Titan.
Alex's gaze rapidly swept over the pieces, and a daring plan formed in his mind.
He reached out and precisely picked up an Ash Knights piece.
The piece trembled slightly in his fingertips, as if it could sense the life force contained within it.
This was an Ash Knights stationed at the Rostov IV base, and he would now become the key to his experiment.
He gently picked up the piece, then quickly placed it back on the military chest's platform, simultaneously adjusting the deployment coordinates to the location of the three Commanders at the Kharkov front line.
The moment the piece touched the platform, a golden light flashed.
In just an instant, this Astartes piece crossed the star sea, traveling from one star system to another.
The only price Alex paid was the redeployment cost of this piece, which was equivalent to one-tenth of its initial deployment cost in points.
This discovery meant he could flexibly deploy elite forces across different battlefields without being limited by traditional troop transport methods.
"Does the Emperor allow this? This is great!" Seeing his idea come to fruition, Alex was overjoyed, and after paying another redeployment fee, he sent the piece back to Rostov IV.
After confirming the system was running correctly, his gaze turned to the Warlord-class Psy-Titan piece, his eyes gleaming with determination.
—
Inside the forge factory on Rostov III, the busy figures of the Adeptus Mechanicus Sages appeared exceptionally devout under the dim lights.
32 stood beside the massive foot armor of the Warlord-class Psy-Titan, gazing up at the towering war machine.
Archmagos Cawl's mechanical tendrils glided rapidly across the data-slate, recording every sacred data set transmitted from the Titan's external scanners.
"Truly an astonishing construct," 32 whispered, her gaze sweeping over the psychic runes on the Titan's armor.
Although she clearly knew the Titan's origin, the shock of witnessing this behemoth standing in reality was far beyond what a model piece could convey.
The surrounding Priests were performing routine maintenance with the utmost reverence, their servitor skulls flying around the Titan's joint areas, chanting binary hymns praising the divine machine.
Several Low-ranking Priests knelt at the Titan's feet, reciting binary prayers while using the most precise scanners to record every detail of the armor.
Because this psyker titan was so rare that it was the only one in the entire galaxy, the Sages dared not perform any disassembly or in-depth research, fearing that they might inadvertently displease the divine machine's machine spirit.
Not to mention breaking it, even if a piece of the Titan's paint was scratched, these Tech-Priest would be as distraught as if their parents had died.
The Sages could only satisfy their thirst for knowledge through non-invasive scanning; besides that, they could only prostrate themselves around the Titan.
"Praise the omnissiah," Cawl's mechanical tendril gently stroked the casing of the psychic combustion chamber, data streams rapidly scrolling across his visual interface.
"This energy conduction method has a 92.7% similarity to the ominous cult technology recorded in the Martian Holy Scripture, but the psychic conversion efficiency has increased by at least..."
Before he could finish, the entire Titan suddenly vibrated violently.
32 stumbled, almost hitting the combustion chamber's protective shield.
Inside the repair passage, all lighting systems instantly switched to a blinding blood-red, and alarm bells immediately blared through every corner of the entire Titan.
servitor skulls flew around in a panic, two even colliding with each other.
The Skitarii instinctively raised their weapons, then put them down in horror when they realized who the target was.
The most devout Tech-Priest had already fallen to their knees, beginning to recite scriptures in binary code to appease the machine spirit.
The entire research station instantly descended into chaos, as if someone had thrown a cyclone torpedo into the Tech-Priest' holy sanctuary.
"Warning! Divine Machine activating! All personnel evacuate immediately!" The machine spirit's electronic voice boomed in every Tech-Priest's auditory receiver, and their data-slates were simultaneously flooded with emergency evacuation orders.
"This is impossible! We clearly didn't activate any startup procedures!" Cawl's mechanical eye flickered wildly, but his body had already instinctively begun to retreat.
The data cables connected to the Titan's surface twisted violently like living things, and several restraining steel cables snapped with a teeth-grinding metallic tearing sound.
Cawl's processor ran at high speed, his logic core instantly arriving at the optimal solution: "Evacuate immediately! Prioritize the preservation of research data!"
With that, he activated the thrusters on his back, his mechanical tendrils coiling up the nearest data storage units and rushing out.
The assembled Tech-Priest immediately fell into disarray, stumbling and surging towards the exit.
Several Low-ranking Priests even activated emergency detachment protocols, directly severing their mechanical arms connected to the Titan.
The pneumatic doors in the repair passage automatically closed one after another, terrifying the Priests who were lagging behind.
When the last Tech-Priest scrambled out of the Titan, the hatch behind him slammed shut with a thud.
Immediately after, all inspection ports and maintenance passages on the entire Titan's surface lit up with red indicator lights, signifying complete lockdown.
"omnissiah be praised," Kristen and Cawl, along with the other Sages, fell to the ground, their mechanical vocal cords distorted from overload.
Under his horrified gaze, every rune on the Warlord-class Psy-Titan's surface began to glow with dazzling blue light.
The intricate psychic circuits lit up like blood vessels, and the air in the entire forge hall twisted due to psychic overload.
With a deafening explosion, a blinding flash of light engulfed the entire forge factory.
When the Tech-Priest' visual sensors resumed operation, the forty-meter-tall steel giant had vanished without a trace, leaving only a few traces of high-temperature melted metal on the ground, and a group of dumbfounded Adeptus Mechanicus believers.
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