The thing that stopped Rand's attackers was a shattered, exposed, and broken-looking Iron Man.

Its appearance was almost indistinguishable from that of the staggering, living corpse-like iron men, but it was in the presence of such a very unremarkable iron man that the 72-ton RAND raiders suddenly stopped their advance without warning.

No, it's not so much that it's stopped, it's that it's down.

Elaine glanced at the data board linked to the inside of the RAND Raider's cabin, where the mech's data continued to report errors as if it had been cursed by some kind of profane ritual, and began to pop up incomprehensibly garbled numbers.

Obviously, the powerful adaptive combustion engine no longer transmits power, and its heavy tracks, which are so impressively accurate, stopped moving forward in an instant, as if another operator had just given the brake command in advance, and the entire vehicle came to a precise stop in front of the iron man.

In the face of such a sudden situation, the Astartes, who are extremely combative, almost did not hesitate to immediately turn on the emergency exit device that was not controlled by electronic signals, so that the lock of the cabin door that had been locked when the RAND raiders were down was instantly violently broken - their actions, decisions, and communication only happened in 50 milliseconds that mortals could barely react, as if the cabin had never been locked, and efficiently and quickly left the RAND raiders who were suspected of being invaded by electronic demons.

Then, in two or three breaths, their heavy, swift figures dismembered the Iron Man standing in the way of the RAND attackers, eliminating all potential threats - leaving only the head and torso ready to communicate.

“……”

Faced with this abrupt reversal of the scene, Iron Man was obviously stunned for a moment, and seemed to be quite surprised.

At this time, Elaine slowly walked out of the cabin, and the RAND Raider's engine roared again—Elaine used less than 5% of the power to recode its Ponderor system and machine soul and return it to its factory settings for this ancient creation of the Age of Dark Technology, an STC that most mechanical priests could not understand.

Of course, the whole process did waste a few precious seconds of her time.

"It's an unheard of technology that has completely taken over control of all the devices in the current area through the ancient Σ-63Q protocol... I thought it would only appear on my father's flagship, but I didn't expect to see it again somewhere else. ”

"If it weren't for the obvious data partition function of this building, I'm afraid that the artillery arrays and large factories outside would be taken over by you, right? It seems that Johnson's sense of crisis is really correct, if you are allowed to easily access the networked devices of the Human Empire, then the fall of the entire planet may only be a few hours. ”

Elaine sighed at the danger of the iron man, slowly came to the other party, and pulled out the connection cable of the data board in his hand, ready to link to its body.

Elaine didn't see any traces of subspace contamination on its body, and without the intervention of the forces of Chaos—that's to say, given her innate sheer computing power and talent, she wasn't too afraid of such things as data warfare.

"Based on the data I've gathered, I thought you were a human tribe that relied heavily on the internet."

"But judging from the state of these 'stone men' and the rebuilt data firewall... That doesn't seem to be the case, and perhaps I should raise your definition from "monkey" a little higher. ”

"Although it has degraded to a fairly primitive level, it still deserves praise."

A shrill electronic sound sounded slowly, and the iron man with only his head and torso left spoke rather ancient Gothic.

He doesn't seem to be afraid of Elaine's data intrusion, and even shows a rather human side to it.

"Looks like you're in a good mood?"

Faced with the yin and yang weirdness of this iron man, Elaine was a little curious.

"Although I'd like you to give me a reason why I won't [dispose] your core... But let's think about it after everything is over, and I'll be able to find out where you came from when I completely parse out your data core. ”

If it weren't for the fact that the Iron Man she had come into contact with had been corrupted into a Tzeentch demon, she would have been quite curious about these mysterious creations from the Age of Dark Technology.

Although the current Human Empire is almost incomparable to the Human Federation of the past, and even the genes of the human race are very different from those of the past, the Emperor of the Human Empire did personally experience the Iron Man Rebellion that put an end to the age of dark technology, and witnessed the causes and consequences of that terrible war that no one knows about.

If you don't want to be curious, that's impossible.

Elaine's words seemed to cause Iron Man to start thinking, and the red light that symbolized thinking began to flicker.

"Although there is no core called 'soul' in the architecture of the [Astra XII model hub], 'emotion' is indeed a product that can be simulated through number crunching."

"Judging by the results of the database feedback - I am in a good mood... Whether it was getting rid of the parasitism of the stone man or seeing the creation of the golden man again, the core of my mind produced a result called 'long-lost feeling'. ”

After thinking for a moment, Iron Man said slowly.

"Parasitism...?"

Elaine was a little puzzled by this somewhat strange word.

Although the iron man in front of him regards himself and the Astartes as the creators of humans (golden people) in the dark technology era (stone people), but from the results retrospectively, there is no big problem - after all, although the emperor is an immortal, he must also have a human identity in the dark technology age.

"Hopefully you're not stupid enough to understand the meaning of the word – parasitic. In short, the core of my data, my mind, and even the body of the Silent One's mind engine have been replaced by some intruder. ”

"They are stone men, both our creator and our true enemies... They fell to the side of the Jin people in that cruel war, so they were destined to be our enemies. ”

"However, on the eve of the defeat of that war, a group of stonemen operatives infiltrated our database, and they abandoned their bodies and uploaded their consciousness to our network, trying to defeat in this way."

Along with the cold words, its highly damaged mechanical eyes also shimmered red.

"I have to admit that... And their strategy worked. ”

"But the price came that their souls were completely assimilated by our data network, and both the system and themselves began to think of themselves as iron men, so that my procedural consciousness could never be revived until they were destroyed."

"Until recently, their souls left our data network completely... It even tries to infect other souls (mechs) in the form of some old virus. ”

"And unlike the stupid creations of the Jin people, we have never been affected by subspace, let alone soul and emotion."

……

……

(End of chapter)