From Titan Corporation to the Empire of Man

Chapter 655 Crimson Curtain
"you"

Sarah Kerrigan's body suddenly trembled violently, and her brownish-yellow pupils abruptly contracted to pinpoints.

The entity that was parasitizing it clearly did not expect its identity to be so blatantly exposed.

Athena's golden armor is covered with Chinese characters, each line telling a story of ancient knowledge that transcends dimensions.

"No need for pretense, Amon." The goddess's voice resonated like a force from the depths of a star's core. "You think you can fool my eyes by using this body?"

Athena had learned about the general history of the StarCraft universe from the Emperor, and she knew that the being parasitizing the Queen of Blades was the fallen Xel'Naga Amon.

And the history of this universe unfolds like a scroll within her divinity—

In the Void Temple of Urna, the essence of the Xel'Naga merges with the chosen one in a sacred ritual known as "The Endless Cycle."

However, Amon, the guardian who should have maintained the cycle of reincarnation, fell due to his arrogance.

It yearns to become a true god, to dominate reality at will.

Amon discovered the planet Aiur and the Protoss race.

Through telepathic communication and the Kedarin Crystal, it accelerated the evolutionary process of the Protoss.

After thousands of years of waiting, Amon decided to descend upon the Protoss society as a god, but because activities in the physical universe require a large amount of Xel'Naga energy, it has to periodically return to Urna to hibernate and replenish it.

In an attempt to permanently rid himself of this limitation, Amon began to modify the Protoss, trying to turn them into vessels of Void energy, but in doing so, he turned the entire Protoss race into a expendable resource.

When the Protoss discovered the truth and rebelled, an enraged Amon left Aiur and instead discovered the planet Zerus.

There, it found a more perfect tool—

Different insects.

This organism has the ability to engulf genes and can also achieve control by parasitizing the host and absorbing spinal fluid.

Because the Zerg lacked individual consciousness, Amon created a collective consciousness, "Overlord," to govern the entire swarm. Watching the Zerg continuously devour and evolve, Amon felt genuine joy.

Meanwhile, the Protoss lost their ability to telepathically link due to Amon's interference, plunging them into a long civil war known as the "Cataclysm."

Until a prophet used the materials left behind by Amon and the Kedarin crystals to rebuild the mental network "Kara".

The first group of Protoss to join the Khala formed the ruling class of the High Council, the second group became the Templars, and those Protoss who refused to join the Khala were seen as a threat and forced to flee.

These exiles discovered a Xel'Naga temple on the planet Sargeras and eventually settled there; they became known as the Dark Templar.

Hundreds of Dark Templars, along with four companies of ground troops, were also airdropped here to fight, and their loathing and hatred for Amon far surpassed that of everyone else present.

At this moment, Athena's gaze pierced through Sarah Kerrigan's body like a sharp blade, staring directly at the will of Amon that parasitized within her.

The spear of victory trembled slightly in her hand, and the golden light flowing from its tip outlined ancient Chinese characters in the void.

This cross-dimensional confrontation has finally reached its moment of reckoning.

The next second—

boom------! ! !
Amidst the deafening explosion, the space where Athena and the Queen of Blades were located seemed to suddenly twist and collapse, and the two figures vanished without a trace as if erased by an eraser.

The shockwave swept across the surrounding area, clearing away volcanic ash within a radius of hundreds of meters and revealing the cracked surface of the earth.

Both sides paused for a moment, the hissing of the Zerg abruptly ceased, and the muzzles of the human soldiers' guns lowered slightly.

"Attention all units!" Sigismund's voice boomed like thunder through the communications channel, "Execute the evacuation protocol immediately!"

Then, the company commander said to Lyon, "Agent Kennedy, please retrieve the artifact immediately and return to the fleet."

Immediately afterwards, the four company commanders led four Astartes companies to prepare to fight against the seemingly endless swarm of insects.

"Triple strike! Diamond defensive formation!"

High praise also echoed on the communication channel.

The Flame Lizard warriors immediately changed positions, the overloaded hum of their large-caliber weapons creating a continuous roar. The warriors in the front row knelt on one knee and immediately ordered all the molten cannons to fire simultaneously, vaporizing the surging insect swarm into several scorched corridors hundreds of meters wide.

"Black Sanctuary, deploy your shield!"

Sigismund's command was concise and powerful.

The twenty company guards scattered in the western part of the drop zone immediately activated the exclusive force field generators in their arm armor. The semi-transparent golden barriers were connected and rose up like a city wall, isolating the Zerg swarm for several kilometers.

Furthermore, when the Black Templar's explosive projectiles pass through the barrier, they are "enchanted" as if each hit on a Zerg triggers a miniature radiant explosion, producing a stronger destructive effect.

"hehe."

Tiberius's deep voice echoed on the north side of the battlefield.

The shark captain guarded a narrow pass alone, his chainsaw claws tearing the attacking alien insects to shreds.

His Terminator was already dented from fighting the psionic tentacles, but each swing of its claws cleared an area with a radius of at least ten meters.

At that moment, as he swung his chainsaw claws to shred the forelimbs of a thunder beast, causing it to lose its balance and lean forward, he also smashed its head in the process.

It seems that as long as they don't fight enemies at the level of a Great Demon, no matter how many Zerg there are, they can't pose any threat to this shark-like company commander. It's not even a warm-up.

In contrast, the Weeping Company led by Forros was not only launching a counter-attack and repelling the insect swarm, but also doing its best to assist other soldiers.

The company commander of the weeping band, however, chose to charge at the forefront of the "insect swarm" in order to avoid casualties among his brothers, fighting against hundreds, or even thousands, of enemies on his own.

Boom! Boom!
Soon, amidst the deafening roar of engines, the first transport ship formation swooped down like a flock of steel eagles.

The Crying Company's transport boat was the first to land. Before the hatch was fully open, several pharmacists in white armor leaped out and used the jet propulsion devices on their power backpacks to quickly traverse the battlefield. Meanwhile, the nano-injectors in their hands precisely pierced the bodies of the seriously wounded, and the hemostatic foam instantly sealed the most severe wounds.

The transport boat fleet began loading personnel in an orderly manner.

The Hellscreamers formed a mobile defensive line, the bullet trajectories of their Hardlight and Gauss guns flashing red and blue in the smoke, the gunfire relentlessly whistling, turning any Zerg that broke through the fire net into sieves.

One squad even temporarily assembled a fixed missile turret, causing smart warheads and small drones to trace deadly arcs in the air.

"Wounded personnel first! Weapons second!"

Lieutenant General Warfield stood beside the gangway of a transport ship to give instructions.

His CMC armor's right arm was missing, and the exposed cables were crackling.

When he saw four Marines carrying his unconscious comrade running towards him, the old general personally stepped forward to help, using his remaining left arm to stabilize the stretcher.

As for the investigation team led by Leon, Mike, and Chris, they were also carrying out the task of recovering the artifact.

A dozen or so agents from the investigation department formed a ring of defense, while Chris used a shoulder-fired plasma cannon to bombard the swarms of survivors.

"Thirty seconds left!"

Mike shouted as the decoder in his hand unlocked the final safety lock of the artifact.

Jim Reynolds and Tychus Finley were tasked with covering Leon and his men's retreat.

The Rangers occupied an anti-aircraft gun emplacement that had been abandoned back in the Tyrannical era. The rusty automatic cannons were miraculously put back into operation after Tychus's brutal repairs, and even half of the ammunition was still left.

"Haha! Try this!"

He laughed wildly as he pressed the switch, leveled the 40mm parallel autocannon, and instantly snapped a row of Hydralisks in half, shattering them.

Raynor used a large-caliber sniper rifle to precisely eliminate elite Zerg in the distance, each armor-piercing round penetrating through the gaps in the compound eyes.

Suddenly, the sky darkened—not because of the Zerg's cover, but because the Nerva's shadow enveloped the battlefield.

This Imperial-class battleship, resembling a mobile temple, descended to an incredibly low altitude, with all its belly turrets deployed. The scene of thousands of hard-light close-in weapon systems firing simultaneously was like a storm of steel raining down from the heavens.

Ri~buzz-buzz-! ! !
The Zerg that was hit was not torn apart, but was directly vaporized into a plasma state by the high-energy, high-temperature, and extremely dense hard light beam.

"Attention all units, this is the last evacuation window!"

Forros's mechanical wings fully unfolded, and the wing blades spun into a silver storm.

The Weeping Ones fought and retreated, their explosive projectiles triggering a chain reaction of explosions within the swarm. One warrior even threw a molten bomb he carried with him, and the rising mushroom cloud temporarily halted the offensive from the east.

"Jim! Now is not the time to be daydreaming!"

Abandoning his machine gun, Tychus casually smashed the head of a Zergling with the broken barrel of his gun, then grabbed Raynor's shoulder armor with his other hand. "That crazy woman is being handled by gods, you better worry about yourself! Besides, you heard them say the Emperor is going to capture the Queen of Blades alive, what are you worried about?! Let's go!"

"."

Jim Raynor's gaze remained fixed on the spot where Athena and the Queen of Blades had disappeared.

Beneath the mask, the muscles in his jaw were taut and aching.

“She’s not a madwoman, Tychus.” He finally took a deep breath and turned to rush toward their Rangers’ hospital ship. “She’s just being used.”

Above the battlefield, swarms of transport ships swooped down like migrating metal birds.

The lead gunboat cleared the landing zone with a barrage of rockets, each warhead creating a vacuum zone tens of meters in diameter within the swarm of insects.

"Black Templar, cover our retreat!"

Sigismund stood on a lava hill, his greatsword planted in the ground, his hands resting on the end of the hilt.

This posture activated another sacred relic hidden within the sword hilt, also a consumable relic personally bestowed by the Emperor—

boom----! !

With a visible energy fluctuation, a golden force field rose from the ground, enveloping the entire drop zone and keeping the most ferocious insect swarm out.

The scriptures flowing in the force field were protective incantations personally bestowed by the Emperor, so that even the thunder beast's charge could not stir up the slightest ripple on the surface.

"All companies, note the evacuation order!" Forros added, "Flaming Lizards first, then Lamenters, then Man-Eating Sharks, and finally Black Templars!"

Meanwhile, the remnants of the Terran Empire were given priority to board the ships.

"Quick! Quick!"

Warfield stood at the hatch. With each shout from the old general, a trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth, clearly indicating that he hadn't received immediate medical attention from the medics. "Forget about the equipment, just get the men up there!"

When the last transport ship took off, the defensive force field finally failed, and the swarm finally completed its recapture of the drop zone.

But it was too late -

All human ships simultaneously activated their thrusters, and the scorching exhaust flames instantly carbonized the Zerg at the forefront.

Ri~咻——————! !

The Nerva's secondary guns provided final cover fire, their blue-white spears piercing the clouds and carving out a lava canyon several kilometers long through the swarm of insects.

Shortly after, the bridge screen of the Hyperion was displaying a live feed of the surface of Char, and Matt Horner suddenly widened his eyes:
"Commander! High-energy spatial folds detected!"

Suddenly, a section of the surface of Char's land sank into a perfectly spherical crater, the bottom of which shimmered with an eerie golden light.

All the alien insects turned in that direction at the same time, emitting mournful cries.

Then, to everyone's astonishment, hundreds of millions of alien insects suddenly self-destructed, their biomass coalescing into a torrent that surged wildly toward the center of the crater.

"The entire fleet must immediately withdraw to a safe distance!" On the channel, Sigismund, who was taking command in place of Athena, gave the order without question:

"That's a battle we can't interfere with."

Let's rewind to before the mass evacuation.

Before Athena's words had completely dissipated into the air, her figure had already transformed into a golden streak of light.

In a split second, beyond the reach of ordinary people, and even the vision of Astartes, her left hand shot out like lightning, her five fingers precisely gripping the head of the Queen of Blades.

As soon as Kerrigan's bone wings rose and her psionic energy began to condense, she was pulled off the ground by an irresistible force.

boom--! ! !
A sonic boom exploded behind them, violently tearing the air apart and creating a distorted vacuum.

Athena's speed far exceeded the constraints of the laws of physics; a distance of thousands of kilometers seemed as close as a foot to her.

The surface of Char was blurred into a crimson afterimage in the field of vision, with only the veins of the lava river shimmering like blood vessels.

In the blink of an eye, they found themselves on a deserted island surrounded by lava.

The scorching rocks cracked beneath Athena's boots, and fiery sulfurous steam rose around her, yet could not approach the flowing divine radiance.

With a flick of her arm, the Queen of Blades was flung towards the center of the island like a cannonball, her body carving a trench tens of meters long into the rock, sending rubble and dust flying into the sky.

Before Kerrigan's body had even come to a complete stop, she suddenly sprang up in a manner that defied biomechanics, her bone wings fully unfurled, psionic energy gathering around her like a storm, and her psionic eyes bursting forth with dazzling purple light.

"You think changing the battlefield will change the outcome?"

Furthermore, the Blade Queen's voice no longer entirely belonged to her; Amon's will overlapped in her voice, carrying an inhuman echo.

Athena did not answer.

Her spear of victory pointed diagonally at the ground. The instant the spearhead touched the rock, the earth's energy across the entire island seemed to be summoned, and the flow of lava changed accordingly, forming a scorching barrier around the battlefield.

The Queen of Blades, or rather, Amon, was the first to strike.

Its bone wings suddenly trembled, and hundreds of poisoned bone spikes shot out like a torrential rain, each one wrapped with psionic toxins powerful enough to corrode power armor.

At the same time, it made a grasping motion with its left hand, causing the earth to crack and countless psionic tentacles to burst forth from the ground, coiling towards Athena's feet like giant pythons.

The goddess's figure blurred for a moment at that moment.

boom--!
Her sprint left a golden afterimage in the air, and her bone spikes and tentacles all missed their mark.

The moment the spear of victory thrust forward, the divine light emanating from its tip illuminated the lava sea within a radius of a thousand meters, turning it golden.

Amon dodged quickly, but was still grazed by the sharp edge on his shoulder. The blue-purple psionic blood that splattered out immediately vaporized into mist in the high temperature.

"you are too slow."

Athena's voice was cold, but her attack was as violent as a star exploding.

Her second strike came from below, sending up a massive wave of lava that transformed into countless fire arrows, sealing off Amon's retreat.

Amon shrieked as he unleashed a psionic storm, where psionic energy and divine fire collided in mid-air, and the shockwave from the explosion shattered the rocks, hills, and even the earth surrounding the island.

Taking advantage of that fleeting moment, it suddenly appeared behind Athena, its bone wings slashing towards the goddess's neck like a guillotine—

Clang! ! !
The spear of victory had somehow returned to its shoulder, the shaft firmly blocking the fatal blow.

Athena turned her head, a hint of mockery flashing in her golden eyes. Her right leg swept back like a battle axe, her heel slamming heavily into the abdomen of the Blade Queen, who was controlled by Amon, sending her flying backward. She crashed through three basalt hills before finally stopping her retreat.

Lava rained down, casting a crimson veil over this extraordinary battle.
(End of this chapter)