From Titan Corporation to the Empire of Man

Chapter 668 "Death may be glorious, but only by living can we witness true redemption."

In a remote, unmarked region of the Koprulu Sector, a colony planet known to the Protoss as "Kares" floats silently in the sea of ​​stars.

From orbit, the entire planet appears in a unique indigo hue, its surface covered by a vast "crystal forest." These naturally formed psionic conductors refract a mesmerizing halo of light under starlight.

Three Protoss motherships stood in a triangular formation guarding the planet's orbit. Ancient purifying runes were engraved on their golden hulls, and the psionic engines at their sterns emitted a soft blue light.

As you pass through Kales' atmosphere, the general outline of a Protoss outpost gradually emerges.

The entire outpost, or rather the entire city, is built on suspended crystal platforms. Psionic antigravity devices make these platforms float like islands thousands of meters in the air.

The architectural style blends elegant curves with a more ancient design language, and the flowing runes on the walls are not the traditional blue, but rather a rare silver-white.

Inside the governing hub in the city center, High Templar Corey Tower is presiding over the daily psychic coordination ritual.

His silver-white armor was engraved with the geometric patterns characteristic of the Kares faction, and tiny Kedarin crystals were inlaid at the ends of his nerve cords.

As the Supreme Governor of Kales, he bears the heavy responsibility of protecting all the outposts, colonies, and research bases on the planet.

"archbishop."

Kress Tower bowed to Artanis in the holographic projection, his nerve cord pulsating rhythmically as he reported, "Kares's psionic suppressor is functioning normally, but the crystal in Sector Seven is exhibiting abnormal resonance."

Artanis's figure in the holographic image was slightly distorted.

The former leader's eyes gleamed with an unnatural light, and the frequency of his nerve cord fluctuations seemed to be much faster than usual when he spoke.

“There’s no need to worry too much, Corey,” Artanis’s voice echoed strangely. “It’s just a natural reaction of the Kedarin crystals. Your research must continue.”

Corey's nerve cords tightened slightly.

He noticed the archbishop's unusual reaction, and even more disturbingly, the faint architectural outlines in the background of the image were clearly not in the style of Aiur or any known Protoss colony.

“Yes, Archbishop,” Corey Tower replied cautiously. “However, recently, Taldarim reconnaissance aircraft have been detected…”

"The Tal'darim's actions are irrelevant!" Artanis's projection suddenly distorted, a metallic crackling in his voice. "Focus on your mission! Protect those crystals!"

This unusual excitement triggered Corey's psionic shield to activate instinctively.

In the instant the archbishop was caught in a whirlwind of emotion, he also keenly noticed an unusual harmonic in the communication frequency—something that was definitely not a normal fluctuation in the Kara network.

Communications suddenly went down, and the governing hub fell into an eerie silence.

Corres Tower's adjutant, a young phase technician, stepped forward uneasily: "Consul, the Archbishop's neural cable fluctuation pattern is abnormal, and this is not the first time."

"Activate the silence protocol." Corey Tah's voice was as cold as crystal. "Send encrypted pulses to all units. Also, activate the emergency plan in case of a Tadarin attack."

"Yes, Consul."

After giving his instructions, Corey Tower walked to the observation platform and looked down at the floating city below.

The great astral scholar was working in the crystal laboratory, completely unaware of the potential danger.

Corey's nerve cords trembled uncontrollably, as some shadow far more insidious than Amon's was eroding their most sacred connection.

But soon after—

Kares' tranquility was shattered.

On the indigo planet's orbit, space suddenly distorted, like a wound torn open by an invisible hand.

From the crimson rift, a massive fleet slowly emerged—the very death fleet of the Taldarim, but its form was now entirely different from what it once was.

The once smooth Protoss ship is now covered with hideous mutations.

Sharp bony spikes grew from the bow, resembling the fangs of some predatory creature.

Deep red veins spread across the armor plating, pulsating like blood vessels. Most unsettling were the eight-pointed star symbols scribbled wantonly on the hull, outlined with blasphemous paint, shimmering ominously on the cold metal.

One of the aircraft carriers even had numerous biological remains embedded in its sidewalls, their skeletons twisted into some kind of ritualistic decoration, their empty eye sockets staring into the void as if still silently wailing.

The Protoss fleet stationed at Kales immediately assumed combat stance.

The psionic shields of the three motherships activated instantly, and rune arrays flowed across the surface of the ships, forming a dazzling blue-gold barrier.

The carrier-based interceptor aircraft poured out of the hangar and swarmed around the mother ship like bees, the buzzing of guns charging echoing in the communication channels.

? !
Corey Tower's nerve cords trembled violently, and he did not hesitate to activate holographic communication in an attempt to establish a dialogue with the Taldarim fleet.

However, the moment the projected image stabilized, even this high-ranking Templar Knight, who had endured two hundred years of war, couldn't help but feel a chill run down his spine.

The bridge of the Taldarim is no longer the sacred temple that the Protoss should have, but a slaughterhouse forged from flesh and blood.

The walls were splattered with dried blood, and the floor was littered with broken bones and entrails. There were even several skinned corpses nailed to the wall behind the command post, their postures contorted, like some kind of sacrificial totem.

And standing at the very center of all this was the High Lord of Taldarim—

Alarnak.

But at this moment, Alarak was no longer the arrogant yet rational warrior leader he once was.

Alarak's body was more robust and muscular than ever before, as if it had been forcibly expanded by some force.

His nerve cords were no longer pure blue, but stained with a murky black and red, writhing like rotten blood vessels.

Even more horrifying was "his" armor. The once finely crafted armor was now inlaid with fragments of bones, some of which belonged to Protoss, some to humans, and even some to Zerg.

A hollowed-out skull hung from "his" shoulder armor, and eerie dark red psionic flames burned in the empty eye sockets.

When Alarak spoke, "his" or its voice no longer possessed the ethereal and rhythmic quality characteristic of the Protoss; instead, it was a hoarse, raspy roar, as if its vocal cords had been brutally torn apart and then reassembled.
"Kressa, are you still clinging to that ridiculous 'purification'?"

As he spoke, the lower part of Alarak's helmet twisted into a ferocious arc, revealing sharp, almost beast-like teeth.

The Protoss shouldn't have such fangs, or even the organ of a "mouth".

Corey Tower's psionic shield flickered slightly, but he remained calm and responded in a deep voice:
“Alarak, your fleet and your actions have crossed the line; you are desecrating the glory of the Protoss.”

"Glory?" Alarak laughed maniacally, his laughter accompanied by a harsh, metallic scraping sound. "That's nothing but shackles used by the weak to bind themselves! True power is devouring! It's destruction! It's slaughter!!"

As it spoke, several Taldarim warriors crawled out of the shadows of the bridge, their forms equally distorted—

Some soldiers' arms had mutated into sharp bone blades, others' backs had developed deformed tumors, and one soldier's head was even encased in some kind of writhing flesh, with only a bloodshot eye visible. Corey Tower's adjutant exclaimed in a low voice over the communication channel, "The Archons' psionic readings... are completely messed up! This isn't a normal psionic response, and it's not Kara Resonance!"

Alarak seemed to hear these words; the light in his eyes dimmed for a moment, then he erupted in a frenzied roar:

"Kara? That was nothing but a lie told by the Old Gods! Now, we have heard the true 'guidance'!"

Its nerve cords suddenly sprang to life, and dark red psionic energy coiled around its body like venomous snakes. At the same time, the muzzles of the Taldarim fleet flashed in unison—

It wasn't the blue-white psionic glow commonly seen by Protoss, but rather some kind of murky, deep red energy.

"Kares's crystal will belong to us! Your flesh and blood will be offered as a sacrifice to my Lord!"

The next second, a crimson beam of destruction tore through space and hurtled toward the Cares fleet.

Kares's near-Earth orbit instantly transformed into a living hell.

The crimson beams of destruction rained down like a storm, tearing apart the psionic barrier hastily erected by the Kares fleet.

The Tal'darim fleet's artillery fire was no longer pure psionic shocks, but some kind of corrupted energy. After hitting the target, it did not penetrate immediately, but clung to the shield like a living thing, greedily gnawing at the energy veins of the defense matrix.

Three beams of light struck the side of a Caris mothership simultaneously, and the blue-gold shield crumbled into fragmented psionic debris, much like metal corroded by acid.

"Shield overload! Interceptor platforms 7 through 9 damaged!"

The adjutant's warning rang through Corey Tower's nerve cords.

The Carles fleet did not sit idly by and wait for its doom.

The bows of the three motherships simultaneously deployed massive Keldarin crystal arrays, their blinding blue-white beams piercing the Taldarim vanguard fleet like spears of judgment.

A Taldarim carrier, directly hit, exploded in space, but the scattered debris strangely wriggled and reassembled as if it were alive, forming a twisted metallic tumor that continued to float on the battlefield.

The battle on the tracks was one-sided.

The Tadarin's fleet outnumbered Kares's by several times, and what was even more frightening was the tactics they displayed.

Those mutated ships would deliberately ram the Caris interceptors, stringing them together like bloody beads with bone spikes growing from their hulls. Some would release swarms of corrupted drones, these mechanical and flesh-and-machine monsters would burrow into the Protoss warship's pipelines and detonate the reactor from the inside.

"Governor! The orbital defense node is 80% destroyed!" The adjutant's psionic energy trembled unusually. "We must get the survivors back to the surface!"

"Approved! All remaining ships shall withdraw into the atmosphere."

As the last Careth mothership, trailing its burning hull, plummeted into the Careth atmosphere, the Taldarim fleet began an even more terrifying operation—

Hundreds of blood-red phase-transmission beams pierced the clouds, connecting heaven and earth like an inverted river of blood.

The battle on the ground was far more intense than the battle on the tracks.

In the central square of the floating city, thirty Kares warriors formed a circular defensive line.

Their psionic blades drew azure arcs through the air, cleaving the first wave of Taldarim berserkers who had teleported to the ground in two. But the enemies cut in half crawled on their hands and continued to attack, their flesh and blood regenerating at a visible speed from their severed limbs.

"For the glory of Kares!"

A Templar charged into the enemy ranks with a shout, his psionic storm exploding within the Tal'darim formation, electrocuting five mutated warriors to a crisp.

But the next second, his chest was pierced by three bone spikes at the same time. They were weapons mutated from the arm of a Taldarim Ascended, and the tips of the spikes were dripping corrosive pus.

Corey Tower visited the Crystal Spire, which was at the forefront of the operation.

His silver-white armor was stained with black and red blood, and every swing of the governor's scepter released a psionic shockwave that shattered the charging mutants into pieces.

But there are too many enemies.

He saw a Taldarim killer pierce his adjutant's skull with a jawbone spike, and he saw the chain of explosions triggered by the crash of the Cares interceptor onto the antigravity platform.

Further away, the edge platform of the floating city was collapsing, and thousands of crystal fragments, carrying the corpses of both sides, plummeted into the abyss.

"Governor! The Western District defenses have collapsed!"

A wounded Templar knelt on the ground. "They...they are using some blasphemous psychic energy to corrupt the Kedarin crystals!"

As if to confirm this statement, the entire city suddenly trembled violently.

One after another, the generators supporting the suspended platform exploded, and the crystals embedded in them became murky at an alarming rate, eventually bursting into black fragments with a shriek.

Corey Tower felt an unprecedented psionic backlash; it wasn't just defeat, but something more fundamental was being desecrated.

When the seventh wave of teleportation beams illuminated the night sky, fewer than a thousand Kares warriors remained.

They stood back to back on the precarious final platform, with a bottomless abyss below and distorted figures surging around them like a tide.

The Taldarim warriors let out inhuman howls; some of them had their nerve cords mutated into tentacles, while others were covered in bleeding bone spurs.

These twisted warriors advanced over the broken bones of their comrades, and rotting psionic energy seeped from the cracks in their shells like miasma.

Corey Tower's silver armor was covered in dents, and the crystal at the top of the Archon's Scepter had bloodshot cracks from overload.

He looked around and saw that the remaining warriors were all wounded. Their psionic blades were flickering due to depleted energy, but they still held firm to their last formation.

"With the indigo crystal of Cares as our witness," Corey Tower's psionic energy reverberated on the public channel, "we will never allow blasphemers to defile the last inch of the sacred ground."

The scepter began to emit a piercing shriek, and its internal energy circuits disintegrated layer by layer, clearly a prelude to an archon initiating a self-destruct protocol.

The warriors tacitly tightened their defenses, their nerve cords intertwining to form a psionic resonance network, preparing to infuse all their life force into this final purifying fire.

Just as the energy was about to reach a critical point of explosion, the shadows at the edge of the battlefield suddenly boiled like liquid.

Hundreds of eerie green psionic blades pierced the darkness, accompanied by the hissing of void energy, precisely penetrating the spines of the front-row Tal'darim mutants.

Those twisted bodies instantly stiffened, and black blood gushed out from their seven orifices.

"Old friend."

Zeratul's figure emerged from the shadows, his eerie green eyes still sharp as stars. "Death may be glorious, but only the living can witness true redemption."

As he appeared, more Dark Templar emerged from the shadows, silent as death itself, each flash of their blades accompanied by the flying head of a mutant.
(End of this chapter)