"Lia! Stabilize your core processes! Erect logical firewalls!" Kael's shout was almost lost amidst the roar of Violent energy Violent energy and the shattering of crystals. His high-frequency combat blade wove a blue curtain of light, severing the sharp crystalline thorns constantly erupting from the floor and walls. Each impact sparked blinding flashes and showers of crystalline shrapnel; the high-frequency vibrations were effective at damaging the crystals, but the enemy's numbers seemed endless.
Rex's blaster roared like an enraged beast, its sustained fire obliterating swathes of the newly formed, more ferocious crystalline aggregates, temporarily holding the encirclement at bay. But his ammunition reserves were visibly plummeting, and his armor's energy shields flickered violently under the dense barrage of energy rays, critically unstable.
"Dammit! How much of this shit is there?!" Rex fought while retreating, trying to form a back-to-back defensive perimeter with Kael.
Yet the deadliest attack was not physical.
The conscious assault emanating from the Suspended "Pandora Stone" hit them like an intangible tsunami, wave after wave crashing against their mental defenses. The whispers implanted directly into their minds were filled with twisted logic and seductive despair:
**"Struggle... is the source of pain... surrender... join the eternal..."**
**"Flesh will decay... machinery will rust... only endless transformation... is ultimate perfection..."**
**"See... your companions... they are beginning to understand... while you... still wander in confusion..."**
Accompanying the whispers, even more terrifying phantoms forcibly invaded their perceptual systems!
Kael's vision shifted violently! No longer the frenzied lab, he found himself standing in a void, surrounded by countless shimmering stars, but the stars were winking out one by one, consumed by a spreading gray-white silence. A figure turned slowly before him—his lieutenant, dead for ten years, but half his body was his familiar comrade, the other half cold, writhing crystal! The lieutenant looked at him sadly with his not-yet-fully-transformed eye, lips moving:
*"Kael... why did only you survive? Join us... here there is no pain, no loss..."*
The phantom was so vivid it nearly stopped Kael's heart (biological or bionic)! A wave of immense grief and guilt threatened to drown him.
"It's an illusion!" he roared at himself, forcing his will to focus, his blade slashing forward savagely! The phantom shattered like glass, and he was back in the hellish lab, a cluster of crystalline thorns seizing his moment of distraction to thrust at his face! He dodged narrowly, his blade severing them in the same motion.
Elsewhere, Rex's phantoms were more direct and violent. He saw his prized heavy blaster melting in his hands into a puddle of useless metal; saw his indestructible armor cracking like fragile glass, revealing the vulnerable biological tissue beneath; saw countless enemies he had destroyed resurrecting from the crystals, lunging at him with grinning! These phantoms targeted his deepest fears—losing his power and purpose.
"Piss off! It's all fake!" Rex bellowed in fury, his blaster firing even more wildly, shredding both phantoms and real crystalline monsters alike. But his movements, fueled by rage and fear, became slightly chaotic, his energy consumption spiking.
And Lia remained frozen in place, bearing the brunt of the assault. For a synthetic consciousness like hers, the crystal's intrusion was even more lethal. It didn't use emotional phantoms, but instead bombarded her core processor with an endless, self-contradicting, chaotic data stream that defied existing mathematical models!