Deep Space Scavenging, Hand Over Alien Warships at the Beginning

Chapter 181 A traitor to the Titans? No, a vengeful seed who didn’t receive his wages.The ghost warships that had been biting at Lin Yuan like mad dogs a moment ago now looked as if someone had pressed the pause button.

The edges of the fissures in the tens of thousands of kilometers long steel wall were terrifyingly smooth.

The ”Star Core Furnace” on Lin Yuan’s chest was so hot that his bulletproof plating began to warp, and a smell of something burning wafted up from his collar, but he had no mind to pay attention to it.

The broken frigates surrounding him, their muzzles previously glowing with green light, had all gone silent. A few ships had even slammed into the wreckage nearby because they stopped too abruptly, sending up a shower of sparks.

”Are they... afraid?” a soldier asked, gripping a tether, his voice trembling.

Lin Yuan didn’t speak. He could feel an incredibly complex emotion transmitted through the resonance of the furnace. It wasn’t pure fear, but rather a mixture of anticipation, grievance, and even a touch of madness that wanted to drag him down with them.

”Szz—szzz—”

The ear-piercing grinding sound in the public channel had vanished.

In its place was an aged voice with a heavy, metallic tremor. The pronunciation was extremely bizarre—pure titan language—where every syllable sounded like heavy gears colliding.

”Is that... Commander?”

The voice exploded in everyone’s minds, shaking Alita’s electronic prosthetic eye with a pop, causing a wisp of black smoke to rise from it.

”Commander... we have waited... forty-five million solar hours.”

”The 33rd Legion, heavy mechanized, should have had 170,000 personnel. Actual count... actual count...”

The voice suddenly turned shrill, carrying a teeth-grinding, weeping tone.

”Actual count: zero! Commander! Aside from this pile of scrap metal, we have nothing left!”

Lin Yuan floated in the void, still holding Alita, his brow furrowed into a knot.

”You’ve got the wrong person. I’m just passing through.” Lin Yuan cleared his throat, suppressing the heat from the furnace. ”Look, I inherited some titan legacy. Strictly speaking, I’m your creditor, not your Commander.”

He shouldn’t have said that. The moment the words left his mouth, the previously calm mist began to roil and churn like boiling water.

”Inheritor?” The voice rose sharply, filled with hysterical malice. ”You hold the Core... you hold the authorization... then you are one of them! You are those liars who dumped us in this cesspit, promising to return with reinforcements in three hours, only to leave us guarding it for ten thousand years!”

Lin Yuan’s heart skipped a beat; he cursed silently. It seemed this bunch of scrap metal had been played hard.

Alita gripped Lin Yuan’s arm, her nails digging into the gaps of his mecha. She muttered in a terrified whisper, ”It’s over. They’ve remembered. My great-grandfather’s diary mentioned that the 33rd Legion was treated as cannon fodder by the titan high command. To stop the spread of the ’Rust’, the high command sealed the star gate, leaving them here to hold the line until the end, without even a single screw left for them.”

”And they waited for ten thousand years.”

”They were waiting for support, for reinforcements, but all they got was the mechanical virus that slowly devoured their bodies.”

Lin Yuan’s mouth twitched as he listened. Good grief, these weren’t traitors; they were just poor souls who didn’t get paid and were forced to work ten thousand years of overtime in the office. Who wouldn’t go mad?

”Since they aren’t coming... then let’s drag their most prized sparks... in with us.”

The aged voice turned incomparably cold. Just then, a scarlet electromagnetic wave, countless times more powerful than before, swept out from the top of the tower known as the ”Anvil”.

This red light was like a tangible blood mist. Any warship it touched had its previously azure electronic eyes instantly extinguished, replaced by a violent, crimson glow.

The muzzles that had been lowered were forced back up by some rigid will. Creak—creak—! The ear-piercing sound of metal fatigue echoed through the void.

”System! What’s going on?” Lin Yuan roared in his mind.

[Warning! S-class logic suppression detected! The ”Rust Lord” is forcibly seizing underlying control of the remaining mechanical units!]

[The opponent is deleting the 33rd Legion’s autonomous consciousness, converting them into pure killing puppets!]