BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
Nolan, controlling the servo-mechanical arms through his neural interface with absolute precision, continued pouring out terrifying concentrated firepower without the slightest hesitation or conservation of ammunition.
In an instant, a tremendous volume of explosive bolts and red laser beams, even superheated melta blasts and green atomizing rays, almost completely covered the dark corner at the opposite end of the long corridor. The overlapping fire created a wall of destruction.
However, something impossible was occurring.
Any attack of any type that entered within a radius of ten meters from Faust's position would be immediately affected by something profoundly wrong with local reality.
The projectiles and energy beams were bound by invisible spatial distortion that functioned like extremely sticky glue. The attacks progressively slowed, fighting against forces that shouldn't exist.
After gradually stagnating completely in mid-air, frozen in apparent violation of physics and momentum, the weapons fire left only a series of visible spatial ripples spreading outward. The attacks simply hung there, suspended, rendered completely ineffective.
"Little wolf cub, I must admit I didn't expect that the little mouse's reinforcements would turn out to be you specifically." Faust's cultured voice carried amusement through the weapons fire, completely untroubled by the assault. "The old man is truly getting on in years, and my eyesight has deteriorated somewhat with age. But the black magic knowledge accumulated over so many centuries of dedicated study is hardly wasted!"
At this moment, Faust, still wearing his distinctive monocle positioned precisely in front of one eye, allowed himself a small, satisfied smile.
He glanced with casual assessment at the tall Terminator armor bristling with weapons, then shifted his gaze to Wong, whose face had suddenly gone pale with dawning recognition and horror.
Then, one of Faust's pale hands maintained its firm grip on the gentleman's walking cane that continued emitting waves of black luminescence. The artifact pulsed with dark power, clearly more than decorative.
His other hand moved with practiced speed, shifting through several complex spell-casting gestures. The movements were precise, mathematical, each finger position carrying specific mystical significance.
The next second, responding to completed invocations, a circle of black runic arrays burst outward from directly beneath his feet. The symbols blazed with dark fire, expanding across the floor in geometric patterns.
Nine demonic entities materialized from the array, summoned from whatever hell Faust called upon. The monsters varied tremendously in size and form.
The largest of the dark apostles was comparable in mass to the sheep-headed beasts they'd just destroyed, standing nearly five meters tall. The smallest was only the size of an ordinary human child, but somehow more disturbing for its diminutive horror.
Even the physical appearances of the black monsters differed dramatically from one another. Each was unique, specialized, bearing different weapons and capabilities. Some had too many limbs. Others had too few. All were wrong.
These entities with bared fangs and extended claws were summoned by Faust one after another, materializing with practiced ease that suggested frequent use of this particular spell.
Then, without requiring verbal commands or even gestures, these black demonic apostles with their aggressive postures immediately wanted to attack. They surged forward, charging directly toward Nolan's position with clear hostile intent.
"This is... these are the Seventy-Two Dark Apostles of Chthon!" Wong's voice cracked with sudden terror as he rapidly recognized the specific identities of the black monsters through their mystical signatures. "You're not merely an ordinary Great Shadow Demon worshipper at all! You're its direct agent and avatar in the mortal world!"
At this moment, the sorcerer, who had quickly identified the threat's true nature through decades of study, suddenly opened his eyes extremely wide. Understanding brought fear rather than relief.
While desperately trying to raise his trembling palm to begin casting counter-spells and defensive wards, Wong shouted urgently to Nolan in a voice made hurried by panic.
"Mr. Nolan, you need to understand what we're facing! He's not a sorcerer like us who needs to draw on external mystical forces and channel energy to cast spells! The Great Shadow Demon he serves, Chthon himself, will provide him with a steady, inexhaustible stream of black magic power directly! We absolutely cannot give him the opportunity to continue summoning more Dark Apostles!"
Wong's warning tumbled out rapidly.
"Every single Dark Apostle that exists simultaneously in our reality, each one he successfully manifests, causes the total power of his black magic to increase measurably! The more he summons, the stronger he becomes! This is exponential growth!"
Hearing Wong's desperate words and grasping the tactical implications immediately, Nolan, wearing his metal helmet that concealed all expression, did not waste time on verbal response or acknowledgment.
He simply took advantage of the brief gap when the servo-mechanical arms temporarily stopped firing to allow heat dissipation and ammunition feeds to cycle.
He suddenly raised one massive armored palm and waved it forward in a sharp gesture, the movement carrying clear command authority.
The automatic reconnaissance drones and Scyllax-class Guardian-automata surrounding the two humans in protective formation immediately rushed forward toward the nine manifested Dark Apostles without hesitation.
They moved to engage the demons in close quarters, and more critically, to tightly surround and constrain any movement or tactical repositioning the summoned entities might attempt.
Even as individual Breacher guards who kept waving their roaring chainswords with mechanical determination were either blown away by the tremendous physical force of demonic strikes, their heavy bodies sent flying through the air, or were heavily entangled by strange black shadowy tendrils that emerged from the apostles, the Intelligent Control Corps adapted.
But the combat servitors, whose metal skeletal components and critical systems were basically undamaged by anything short of complete destruction, still stubbornly and single-mindedly executed Nolan's orders without deviation.
They used their metal bodies as barriers and their scorching lasguns as suppression fire to physically hold back the Dark Apostles' forward pace. Sacrifice was acceptable if it achieved tactical objectives.
Then, Nolan's metal palm, which had not yet dropped from its commanding gesture, gently tapped against his diamond-shaped helmet twice.
The action produced a crisp, ringing sound of metal colliding against ceramite plate.
"So you're a summoner, are you? Playing with spells?" Nolan's voice emerged from his vox-speakers, carrying dark satisfaction rather than concern. "And you've got your Dark Apostles as bodyguards? Well then, this just means my current firepower isn't nearly strong enough!"
Nolan's declaration had barely finished echoing through the corridor when new sounds emerged.
In the front hall on the first floor, far removed from everyone's current position deeper in the Sanctum, a series of tremendously loud mechanical roars suddenly sounded from the depths of the circular breach point.
Countless additional dust and debris were overturned once again as something massive pushed upward through the opening.
Accompanied by the distinctive sound of extremely heavy footsteps approaching from far away, growing progressively closer and louder with each ground-shaking impact, reinforcements arrived.
Three Castellax-class battle-automata with overall size and bulk comparable to Terminator armor, each a mobile weapons platform in its own right, emerged into view.
The massive constructs actually carried and supported Hell Hammer-pattern lascannons, the weapons nearly as large as the robots themselves. They somehow managed to squeeze their bulk into the long corridor where the surrounding space had finally stopped its defensive transformations.
The hall hadn't been designed to accommodate this kind of heavy weapons fire. The architecture protested the presence of artillery in confined spaces.
The next second, three tremendously thick weapon muzzles swiveled and locked. The targeting systems firmly acquired Faust's position with absolute precision.
Without hesitation, without warning, without mercy, the Castellans launched an absolutely devastating laser bombardment in the confined room.
Instantly, three thick red beams of coherent light, each as wide as a human torso, passed over the heads of Nolan and Wong like erupting streams of molten magma given coherent form.
The heat was immediately and intensely felt even through armor and mystical protection. The air itself ignited along the beams' paths.
The lascannon fire quickly blasted toward Faust's position with unstoppable momentum, the beams designed to pierce tank armor and void shields.
At this moment, the nine Dark Apostles of varying sizes found themselves in catastrophically poor tactical positions. They were firmly tied up and restrained by the snake-like bodies and mechanical tentacles of the Breacher guards engaging them.
The demons couldn't break free immediately from the grappling servitors. They struggled against metal that refused to yield, buying precious seconds.
Then, before they could escape, the struggling Black Apostles and some of the fearless Breacher guards still wrapped around them were completely evaporated by the extremely terrifying red laser beams that cared nothing for friend or foe.
The lascannons were indiscriminate, absolute, caring only about destruction in the target zone.
Flesh, metal, demonic essence, all were treated equally. Everything caught in the beams simply ceased to exist in recognizable form. Only scattered remains of lower bodies and leg sections, parts that had been outside the direct beam paths, fell smoking to the ground.
However, this represented far from the end of the Hell Hammer lascannons' devastating barrage. The weapons were just getting started.
At the same time, at the center of the spatial stagnation field that had protected Faust so effectively against conventional weapons, the old sorcerer's situation changed dramatically.
"Shadow ma—" Faust, who had been calmly brewing a significantly stronger spell in his palm, preparing to counter-attack with overwhelming force, suddenly had his expression change completely.
His face went from smug satisfaction to genuine alarm in an instant. His eyes widened behind the monocle.
He quickly interrupted his spell-casting gesture mid-word, abandoning the nearly-complete invocation. The gathered power dissipated wastefully.
A series of dark shadows that rapidly spread and expanded from his feet upward to completely envelope his entire tall figure manifested with desperate speed.
Faust attempted to teleport himself to a much safer, farther location through shadow-walking, using the emergency escape that had saved him countless times before.
However, he had badly miscalculated something critical.
The sheer power and firing velocity of Hell Hammer-pattern lascannons operating in a narrow, confined space far exceeded anything in Faust's previous estimation and imagination. He'd never faced Imperial weaponry of this caliber.
Three massive red beams that possessed sufficient force to penetrate even the spatial stagnation field, that simply punched through impossible barriers through overwhelming energy, even triggered sympathetic detonation of the explosive bolts and melta charges that had been suspended and constantly rippling the space around Faust.
At this moment, the invisible stagnation field that had seemed invulnerable moments before simply disappeared, shattered by forces it couldn't contain.
Even the green atomizing beams from the Gauss blaster, which had been suspended harmlessly, suddenly resumed their interrupted trajectories. They quickly penetrated through the entire collapsing stagnation space.
One of the brilliant green beams even passed directly through the dark shadow manifestation that was wrapped protectively around Faust, catching him mid-teleport.
The atomizing ray touched him for only a fraction of a second, but at the molecular level, that was enough.
Instantly, the entire structural integrity of the Sanctum seemed to shake violently, as though the building itself was wounded by what occurred within its walls.
Accompanied by bursts of extremely dazzling explosions that turned the corridor into a miniature sun, and continuous violent impacts that propagated through stone and steel, destruction spread.
Even Nolan, who was protected by his Terminator armor's ceramite plate, had to lean his considerable mass forward into the blast. He raised one massive metal arm to physically block and deflect the continuous ravaging of the tremendous shockwave washing over his position.
Almost at the same time, at the far end of the corridor, heavy clouds of steam burst outward from the metal bodies of the three Castellax-class battle-automata. Heat sinks vented desperately, trying to prevent critical overheating.
The Hell Hammer-pattern lascannons, which had already completed their rapid recharging cycles through drawing on massive power reserves, pressed their thick weapon barrels that had not yet completely cooled down from the first salvo back into firing position.
The metal was still glowing cherry-red from thermal stress. Warning indicators would be flashing. It didn't matter.
Once again, the heavy weapons fired a series of absolutely terrifying red laser beams into the explosion-filled corridor.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
At this moment, Wong, who had been lying in an extremely embarrassed position flat on the floor behind the protective bulk of Nolan's Terminator armor, desperately trying to avoid being caught by the cascading explosion shockwaves, suddenly opened his eyes as wide as physically possible.
Even his mouth subconsciously opened, releasing a scream that was absolutely full of primal fear and desperate urgency.
"The Sanctum will collapse! The node will be destroyed! We'll all die!"
In a flash of pure survival instinct overriding exhaustion, Wong's hands blurred through rapid motion. He quickly cycled through spell-casting gestures in both palms, drawing on reserves of power he didn't know he still possessed.
Before the second devastating salvo of red lascannon beams could impact the target position and potentially trigger structural collapse that would kill everyone present, Wong completed his desperate casting.
The space of the entire long corridor was rapidly expanded countless times over. In an instant, it transformed from a confined hallway into a vast square with dramatically wider dimensions.
The geometry simply changed, reality bending to accommodate the sorcerer's will.
In that expanded space, the exploding energy light and fierce shockwaves once again spread outward from the impact zone in all directions.
But because of Wong's sudden and dramatic change in spatial dimensions, the terrifying impact force that would have been concentrated and devastating was instead completely dispersed and lost across the much larger volume.
The explosions that would have killed them became merely uncomfortable.
Accompanied by the subtle sounds of countless electro-fiber bundles tensing and servo devices engaging throughout his armor, Nolan slowly lowered the dark green power fist that had been blocking the front of his diamond-shaped helmet.
He completely ignored the faint complaints and protest signals emerging from the ancient machine spirit inhabiting his armor. The spirit was displeased with the abuse, but that was irrelevant.
Two heavy magnetic boots suddenly stepped forward with ground-shaking impacts. Nolan immediately accelerated, quickly charging directly toward where Faust's position should be through the smoke and debris.
Thoom, thoom, thoom!