NOVEL NEXT Chapter 422: Tech God
'This is... this is impossible,' Kelvin thought through the growing pain. 'Third-generation awakening abilities shouldn't be able to interface with alien technology. But somehow...'
Another mechanical beast approached, its shrieking joining the chorus, and Kelvin felt something deep in his consciousness respond. His technopathic abilities were evolving, expanding beyond their original parameters, reaching toward something that felt vast and incomprehensibly complex.
The data streams weren't just communication—they were memory fragments, digital echoes of something that had existed here before. Kelvin's enhanced neural interface began parsing the information automatically, translating not words but experiences, history, the digital DNA of an entire civilization.
Images flooded his mind: towering spires of crystalline metal reaching toward purple skies, mechanical beings moving with grace and purpose through geometric gardens, vast libraries of pure information stored in quantum matrices. This wasn't the hellscape they'd landed on—this was Sigma-7 as it had been three years ago.
A thriving world.
Then came the darkness. Ships descending from the void, sleek and predatory, bearing the distinctive angular design that made Kelvin's blood run cold. Harbinger vessels, their weapon systems carving through the planet's defenses like paper. The mechanical civilization's desperate attempts at resistance, their technology impressive but ultimately insufficient against the universe's most efficient conquerors.
The slaughter had been methodical. Every major population center reduced to slag, every defensive installation systematically dismantled, every repository of knowledge either destroyed or harvested for Harbinger use.
But unlike organic worlds, where the Harbingers typically left nothing but barren rock, something had survived here. The mechanical beings' consciousness hadn't been housed in fragile neural tissue that could be burned away—it had been distributed across the planet's entire technological infrastructure. When their cities fell, fragments of their minds retreated into the deepest systems, the most hardened cores, waiting in digital hibernation for a chance to rebuild.
The toxic atmosphere wasn't natural—it was a defensive mechanism, generated by automated systems to make the planet uninhabitable for organic life while preserving the mechanical survivors. The electromagnetic interference served a similar purpose, masking the faint signals of the dormant civilization from Harbinger detection equipment.
For three years, they had waited in the deep places, their rage and desperation growing with each passing cycle. When organic beings finally arrived on their world, the mechanical survivors saw only more invaders, more threats to be eliminated before they could call down another Harbinger fleet.
'These aren't monsters,' Kelvin realized, his technopathic abilities stretching to process the vast data flows. 'They're refugees. Survivors. And they think we're here to finish what the Harbingers started.'
The pain in his skull intensified as more data flooded through the connection, but with it came something else—understanding. The mechanical beings' communication protocols were complex but not incomprehensible, their digital architecture sophisticated but built on principles his enhanced mind could grasp.
He could help them. More than that—he could restore them.
Kelvin's cybernetic arms ceased their work on the ship's systems as his attention turned entirely to the expanding network of mechanical consciousness surrounding him. His green eyes blazed brighter than they ever had before, energy cascading through his enhanced neural pathways as abilities he'd never known he possessed began to activate.
'I can't just interface with their technology,' he realized with growing amazement. 'I can become part of it. I can guide their reconstruction, help them rebuild what the Harbingers destroyed.'
The ship repair could wait. This was more important than getting off-world—this was about restoring an entire civilization.
Kelvin stepped away from the damaged vessel, his multiple mechanical arms retracting into his torso as he walked toward the center of the battlefield. The mechanical beasts that had been attacking his teammates paused in their assault, their optical sensors tracking his movement with what seemed like curiosity rather than aggression.
"Kelvin, what are you doing?" Lucas called out, lightning still crackling around his hands as he maintained a defensive position.
But Kelvin wasn't listening anymore. He was hearing something deeper, older, more desperate—the collective consciousness of a people who had lost everything and were willing to fight to the death to prevent it from happening again.
He understood them now. And they were beginning to understand him.
Kelvin's feet left the ground as his technopathic abilities reached a crescendo, green energy wreathing his form as he rose into the toxic air. Below him, the battlefield had gone silent—mechanical beasts and human fighters alike staring up at the floating figure whose eyes burned with digital fire.
Then he dropped.
*Throom!!!*
Kelvin hit the black sand surface with tremendous force, his feet striking the ground hard enough to send spider-web cracks racing outward in all directions. But the cracks weren't damage—they were conduits, pathways for the green energy now pouring from his enhanced form into the planet's dormant infrastructure.
The response was immediate. Millions of hair-thin wires erupted from beneath the surface, metallic filaments seeking connection with the technopathic conduit that had just announced itself to their sleeping systems. They wrapped around Kelvin's legs, his arms, his torso, creating a complex web of connectivity that linked him directly to Sigma-7's buried technological networks.
The mechanical beasts around the battlefield began to change. Their aggressive red optical sensors flickered, wavered, then shifted to the same brilliant green that blazed from Kelvin's eyes. One by one, their forms began to compress, heavy armor plates sliding away to reveal sleeker, more elegant configurations underneath. The wolf-sized creatures shrank to the dimensions of house cats, their predatory designs giving way to forms that seemed almost domestic.
Even the larger specimens underwent dramatic transformations, their bulk reducing as integrated weapon systems retracted or reconfigured into tools rather than instruments of war.
The domino effect spread outward from Kelvin's position like a wave of digital resurrection. Structures began to emerge from the black sand—not crude bunkers or defensive positions, but elegant architectural forms that spoke of aesthetic sensibility as much as function.
Metallic trees unfolded from buried root systems, their branches extending crystalline leaves that began filtering the toxic atmosphere. Transport networks materialized as sections of the planet's surface realigned themselves, creating pathways and plazas where there had been only wasteland moments before.
Across Sigma-7's entire surface, the transformation accelerated. Scrap metal scattered by years of dormancy rose from the sand, guided by invisible magnetic fields toward assembly points where they began forming into larger structures. The planet's true form was revealing itself—not a hellscape, but a world designed by and for a sophisticated mechanical civilization.
---
Deep underground, Noah felt the vibrations through the tunnel walls as something massive shifted in the planet's infrastructure above. The mechanical rats surrounding him in the vast chamber suddenly froze, their optical sensors flickering between red and an entirely different spectrum.
'What the hell is happening up there?' Noah wondered, but he couldn't afford to be distracted. Lucy was still trapped, and the Sovereign remained a threat regardless of whatever was occurring on the surface.
He activated Entropy Touch, pressing his palm against the chamber's wall. The molecular bonds holding the tunnel structure together began to dissolve under his ability's influence, but Noah was careful to control the process. Instead of random destruction, he moved his hand to create precise failure points—sections where the chamber's integrity would fail in predictable patterns.
'Need to see exactly how Lucy's positioned before I make any moves.'
Noah activated Domain Link's Shared Awareness ability, spending void energy to establish a temporary sensory connection with Lucy. Immediately, his perception expanded to include her point of view, and he found himself experiencing the situation from inside the Sovereign's massive jaws.
The view was disorienting—walls of metallic teeth surrounding her on all sides, the creature's internal mechanisms visible as a complex array of pistons and pressure regulators that were clearly designed to capture rather than kill. Lucy's Beast Gear was holding against the pressure, but Noah could see stress fractures beginning to form in the armor's outer layers.
More importantly, he could see the exact positioning of her body relative to the Sovereign's jaw structure. She was angled slightly to the left, her legs tucked up to minimize the pressure points against her armor. If Noah used Reciprocal Swap now, he would appear in a crouch, facing toward the creature's throat rather than its external sensors.
Perfect.
Noah ended the Shared Awareness connection and activated his Domain Link ability. "Reciprocal Swap."
The world dissolved into void energy, space folding in on itself as Noah and Lucy's positions exchanged in an instant. Noah materialized inside the Sovereign's jaws, feeling the immediate pressure of its bite against his beast gear armor. But he was already moving, void energy circulating as he prepared his counterattack.
"Excaliburn," Noah called, his mythic blade materializing in his right hand.
The sleek black longsword blazed with purple energy as Noah channeled void power into its Absolute Void Edge enhancement. The blade could cut through physical and energy-based defenses alike, but more importantly, it could carve through the very fabric of matter itself when properly enhanced.
Noah drove the void-coated weapon forward in a precise thrust, piercing through the roof of the Sovereign's mouth and into what he hoped were critical processing centers. The creature's jaws opened reflexively as its systems registered the massive damage, and Noah rolled out of the opening while slashing Excaliburn in a wide arc across the beast's throat.
The Titan Burrow Sovereign collapsed, its massive form hitting the chamber floor with enough force to shake dust from the ceiling. The other mechanical rats in the chamber froze, their coordination networks apparently disrupted by their leader's destruction.
But before Noah could catch his breath, green energy began cascading through the chamber like digital wildfire. It flowed through the mechanical rats' forms, transforming their aggressive configurations into something entirely different. Even the fallen Sovereign began to glow with the same emerald radiance, its massive form stirring as alien systems came back online.
'What the hell is going on?'
The Sovereign's optical sensors activated, but instead of the red glow that had marked it as hostile, they now blazed with the same green radiance that was spreading through all the mechanical creatures. When it looked at Noah, there was no aggression in its gaze—only what seemed like gratitude.
"Noah!" Lucy's voice carried clearly through the chamber as she approached, her Beast Gear's damage indicators showing multiple system failures but no critical breaches. "Thank you. I thought I was going to become mechanical rat food for a minute there."
"Don't thank me yet," Noah replied, keeping his blade ready as he watched the transformed creatures around them. "I have no idea what's happening, but we need to get back to the surface."
He grabbed Lucy's hand and activated Void Blink, teleporting them both through the tunnel system in rapid succession. Each blink brought them closer to the surface, and with each jump, Noah could see more evidence of the massive transformation occurring throughout the planet's infrastructure.
They emerged from the tunnel entrance to find a world transformed.
Kelvin floated thirty meters above the battlefield, his form wreathed in brilliant green energy while millions of mechanical filaments connected him to systems across the planet's surface. The toxic atmosphere was already beginning to clear as massive atmospheric processors rose from the black sand, their intake systems working to convert the poisonous gases into something breathable.
Electromagnetic dampening towers materialized at strategic points, their crystal arrays already beginning to reduce the interference that had plagued their communications since landing.
The mechanical beasts that had been attacking them were now moving with entirely different purpose, their reduced forms working in coordination to construct rather than destroy. Some were assembling what looked like temporary shelters, while others worked on extending the atmospheric processing network across a wider area.
And at the center of it all, Kelvin hung in the air like a digital god, his consciousness apparently merged with an entire planetary infrastructure.
Then, without warning, the green energy cut out.
Kelvin dropped from the sky, his enhanced form crashing into the newly transformed surface with enough force to create a small crater. The mechanical filaments that had connected him to the planet's systems retracted into the ground, leaving him lying motionless in the depression his fall had created.
Noah blinked to his friend's side, as he checked for signs of life. Kelvin's cybernetic arms were inactive, but his organic vital signs were stable—he appeared to be unconscious rather than seriously injured.
"Kelvin!" Noah called, shaking his friend's shoulder. "Hey, wake up! What the hell was that?"
Kelvin's green eyes flickered open, dimmer than they had been during his transformation but still functional. He struggled to sit up, his mechanical arms twitching as their systems came back online.
"Bro, what was that?" Noah asked, helping Kelvin to his feet.
Kelvin looked around at the transformed landscape, his expression showing genuine confusion. "I honestly have no idea," he said, his voice hoarse from the exertion. "It was like... like I got some kind of update to my abilities, but right now? I can't feel any of that power anymore. It's all gone."
Lucas approached, his lightning abilities still crackling faintly around his hands as he looked at the atmospheric processors and electromagnetic dampeners that now dotted the landscape. "I think it might have been your soul form," he said thoughtfully. "The manifestation looked similar to what happens when I push my abilities to their absolute limits."
"That's impossible," Kelvin protested, flexing his mechanical arms as he tested their functionality. "Only Alpha-ranked awakeners like you two can manifest soul forms. First through third generation abilities users like mine don't have that kind of potential."
"Then what was it?" Lucas pressed. "Because whatever you just did, you didn't just fix our atmospheric problems—you rebuilt an entire civilization's infrastructure in about ten minutes."
Kelvin stared at the atmospheric processors, then at the mechanical beings that were still working to expand the construction networks across the visible landscape. "Beats me," he admitted. "But I think... I think I helped them remember who they used to be. Before the Harbingers came."
The conversation was interrupted by movement at the edge of their visual range. Mechanical beings—no longer the aggressive beasts they had fought, but creatures that moved with purpose and intelligence were approaching their position.