Magna's cold declaration echoed across the dead iron plains.
"The rest of the homework."
As these words reached the distance, the Iron Warriors had barely recovered from their previous shock when their programs glitched again.
What... do they take my lord's defense matrix for?
These war machines had not yet reacted to this humiliation.
Magna raised her slender right hand.
A cold, precise psychic pulse spread from Magna, an invisible web woven of countless data streams that instantly covered the entire battlefield.
This power swept through the battlefield and spread to the surface of Medrengard. It seeped into every iron fortress, every energy conduit, and every logic core.
At Perturabo's command core, at the very top of the "hatred" fortress.
Piercing alarms once again filled the space.
"Warning! Large-scale psychic scan detected! High intensity!"
"Scan pattern determined: Full-spectrum information analysis in progress... Comparing with known psychic attack models..."
"Comparison failed. Scan is non-aggressive and cannot cause damage or mental pollution."
"Threat level assessment in progress... Assessment failed... Logic paradox detected... System cannot determine target intent..."
"Requesting my lord... to make final judgment..."
For the first time, the cold electronic voice carried static that sounded like confusion.
Perturabo ignored the system's report.
His holographic projection stared fixedly at the woman in the crimson robes at the center of the battlefield.
He could feel it clearly.
The defense network he had spent years of effort designing—from energy distribution to screw torque, from physical structure to logic firewalls, all of his life's work, the creation he used to prove his worth...
Was being subjected to a cold analysis by an entity he could not understand.
On the battlefield.
Magna's Authority of [Knowledge] was fully activated.
In her crimson eyes, data streams cascaded like waterfalls.
She did not attack, nor did she even move.
She simply completed billions of simulations within her Mind Palace in a few seconds, then projected the results directly into reality using psychic power.
In the next second, a scene occurred that fried the Iron Warriors' programs.
Under the oppressive grey sky of Medrengard, the remaining dozens of iron fortresses still maintained their combat stances.
Suddenly, countless crimson light dots appeared out of thin air, falling onto these fortresses.
They were incredibly dense, like a snowfall of crimson.
Some light dots were precisely marked on the seam of a Terminator's breastplate, where material fatigue had caused a structural weakness of only 0.001 millimeters.
Some light dots flickered on the heavy hydraulic pivot of a turret, where an energy supply issue caused the rotation speed to be 0.03 seconds slower than the theoretical value.
Some light dots were even marked on empty ground—a half-meter square firepower blind spot between two fortresses caused by a minor flaw in ballistic calculations.
There was a redundant energy circuit here.
There, a logic firewall could be easily bypassed.
A certain observation post would experience brief blindness due to light refraction at a specific angle.
Another design sacrificed internal space for sturdiness, resulting in a three percent drop in ammunition resupply efficiency.
...
Thousands of crimson light dots, perhaps even millions!
These dots were like red pens, turning Perturabo's supposedly perfect masterpiece into a failing exam paper covered in red crosses.
This silent humiliation on an intellectual level was more vicious and cruel than direct destruction or violence.
It destroyed no steel, but it destroyed all of Perturabo's pride as a craftsman and master of logic at its very source.
Everything he took pride in was his only spiritual pillar throughout years of loneliness.
But in the eyes of his opponent, these things were like a child's ridiculous graffiti full of elementary mistakes.
On the throne of the "hatred" fortress, Perturabo's holographic projection flickered violently, on the verge of collapse.
The color drained from his twisted face, leaving it deathly pale.
He watched his life's work being marked by those crimson light dots as a joke full of holes.
In his ears, he seemed to hear the laughter of the nobles at his ingenious creations in the Olympian arena many years ago.
"Look, the blacksmith's son is playing with his mud again."
No.
No!
"Aaaaaaaah——!"
A roar filled with pain and humiliation exploded from the depths of Perturabo's soul!
In the next second, the grey sky of Medrengard was torn open!
A massive holographic bust of Perturabo took shape above the Central Fortress!
His eyes burned with blood-red light, staring fixedly at the tiny figures below.
With a roar that shook the entire plain, he voiced a question suppressed for years.
"You..."
"...who exactly are you?"
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