Planet Zais, northern hemisphere wasteland.
The howling wind whipped sand and gravel against the thick armor plating, making a crackling patter.
A massive landship, eight kilometers long and three kilometers wide, named "Fortress Odin," was rolling across the wasteland at a speed of thirty kilometers per hour.
The thing was simply too massive.
Each of its track shoes was as large as half a basketball court. When they turned, the ground trembled, and the rocks along the way were ground directly into powder.
Rather than calling it a ship, it was more like a mobile city, complete with streets and factory chimneys belching black smoke.
At this moment, inside the central command room located on the top tier of the fortress.
Grand Overlord Tanys sat on a chair covered with the hide of an unknown beast, holding a cup of murky synthetic alcohol in his hand.
He was a forty-five-year-old bald, middle-aged man with several crude-looking data interfaces wired into his head.
Tanys was in a very good mood, even humming a little tune.
Over the past month, Zais had not been peaceful.
A new outsider force flying a yellow and blue flag had popped up in the north, occupying the haunted ruins of Castle Horizon.
Logically speaking, as one of the largest local warlords, Tanys should have sent troops to test them out and, at the very least, collect some protection fees.
But he didn't go, didn't even spare them a glance.
Because he didn't have the time.
He had struck gold.
A month ago, a starship fell from the sky, carving a massive trench into the ground. After the entire crew evacuated, they left behind a giant empty hull.
Tanys had rushed to the scene with his men immediately.
Although the ship's main structure had been blown apart and the bridge was stripped down to a bare frame, they dug out two earth-shattering treasures from the engine room.
A fully intact warp engine and a heavy-element reactor that looked mostly unscathed.
These were the core of a starship!
For the people of Zais, who had been trapped on the ground for thousands of years, as long as they fixed these things, mounted them on the landship, and modified them a bit, Fortress Odin would have a starship core!
They could fly out of the atmosphere and raid those legendary agricultural worlds flowing with milk and honey!
For this grand dream of taking to the skies, Tanys ordered the entire city to halt production, throwing all resources and engineers into the repair work of the engine room.
"Overlord! Grand Overlord!"
The Chief Engineer rushed in, his face covered in oil stains, so excited he almost tripped.
"It's done! It's fixed!"
"The physical circuits are completely closed, and the cooling pipes aren't leaking anymore! We just conducted the final pressure test, and that thick main drive shaft is spinning as fast as a windmill!"
"Really?!"
Tanys slammed his wine glass onto the table and jumped up.
"Let's go! Take me to see it right now!"
Several accompanying lords nearby quickly followed, faces breaking into wide grins.
These lords didn't understand technology, but that didn't stop them from dreaming.
One fat lord rubbed his hands in excitement: "Fantastic! Once we fly into the sky, I'm going to blow up that neighboring ship, the 'Dusk,' first! Those bastards stole several of my mining spots!"
The group arrived in a grand procession at the core engine room at the bottom of the fortress.
This place was originally used to house the landship's diesel generator sets, but it had now been hollowed out. Standing right in the center were the two giant machines from the New State.
It had to be said that the engineering capabilities of the Zais people were actually quite impressive.
Although they didn't really understand the principles of starship propulsion, they had at least managed to reconnect the broken pipes and patch up the ruptured casing.
At this moment, the outer shell of the reactor was buffed to a shine and painted with a layer of red anti-rust paint, looking exceedingly festive.
"Not bad, truly not bad."
Tanys walked around the reactor twice, reaching out to pat the thick metal casing, which gave off a dull, heavy echo.
"It's a bit ugly, but as long as it works."
"Come on, start the self-diagnostic program."
Tanys came from an engineering background himself; at such a sacred moment, he had to do it manually.
He walked over to the console.
Click.
Tanys threw the power switch.
A massive surge of current flooded into the equipment. The console screen flickered a few times, and a line of green text lit up.
[System power supply normal.]
[Initializing————]
The lords behind him let out a burst of cheers.
"It's lit! It's lit!"
"We're going to fly! Wahahaha!"
A proud smile appeared on Tanys's face as he clicked "Full Self-Diagnostic."
However.
The next second.
The originally green screen suddenly turned a striking, blood red.
Countless red pop-ups, accompanied by piercing alarm sounds, flashed frantically across the screen.
[CRITICAL WARNING: MISSING HARDWARE!]
[CRITICAL WARNING: LOGIC CIRCUIT DISRUPTED!]
[CRITICAL WARNING: CORE COMPONENTS NOT RESPONDING!]
Tanys's smile froze on his face.
"What's going on? Is something not connected properly?"
He quickly flipped through the detailed error log.
With one look, Tanys felt a chill rush from the soles of his feet straight to the crown of his head, and the blood vessels in his brain felt ready to burst.
[Reactor Ignition Control Array: MISSING.]
[Warp Engine Phase Regulator: MISSING.]
[Geller Field Frequency Resonance Crystal: MISSING.]
[Main Control Servo Chipset: MISSING.]
[Fluid Valve Intelligent Control Board: MISSING.]
[Shroud Array: MISSING.]
[Geller Array: MISSING.]
Missing.
Missing.
It was all fucking missing!
Tanys refused to believe it, suspecting the sensors were broken.
You see, the reason the engineering department had spent the entire month just patching up the outer pipes and wiring without ever thinking to open the core and look inside wasn't because they were lazy or stupid.
Common sense dictated that starship core components of this tier underwent the strictest industrial encapsulation. The outer shell was made of solid adamantium composite armor, designed specifically to survive as an independent black box even if the main ship hull exploded.
When they first dug these two treasures out of the dirt, even though the New State's keel was snapped, these two things appeared completely intact.
Reasoning by common sense, since the outer shell was fine, the core components protected deep inside could absolutely not be damaged!
Moreover, with this level of encapsulation, trying to open it without a dedicated key encryption was harder than climbing to heaven—brute-forcing it would highly likely destroy the delicate internal structures instead.
Who would risk ruining the treasure just to crack it open for an inspection?
But now, the screen full of red error messages completely shattered Tanys's rationality.
He had to see with his own eyes what was going on inside!
Tanys turned around and roared at his subordinates, "Bring me a melta! Right now!"
The surrounding engineering chief and lords turned pale with fright, desperately trying to hold him back, saying it was a desecration of the machine spirit, and that if the delicate parts inside were blown apart, this past month of effort would be entirely wasted—this was their hope of flying to the sky!
But by now, Tanys could not listen to any deterrents.
He snatched the directional melta detonator from the demolition team's hands and slammed the explosives hard against one of the sealed doors.
With a muffled boom and a flash of blinding white light, the high-temperature metal jet instantly burned through the defenses. Yet even so, it couldn't destroy it completely, leaving only a billowing, hot hole exposed before everyone.
Ignoring the dripping molten iron, Tanys leaned his face in closely, even as his eyebrows singed.
And then, he witnessed that suffocating sight.
The inside was completely empty.
The slots that should have been packed with precision circuit boards, transistors, and coils were now so clean there wasn't even a scrap left, leaving only dark, gaping interfaces mocking his ignorance.
All the core components were entirely gone.
It was exactly like spending all your effort fixing up a Ferrari, painting the body, pumping the tires, and wiping the seats clean.
Only to sit inside, turn the key, and find that the engine bay held nothing but a giant rock—the actual engine had been stolen by someone!
"Holy fucking shit————"
Anger and anxiety rushed to Tanys' heart. Unable to catch his breath, his vision went black, and he stumbled back several steps.
"Grand Overlord! Grand Overlord, what's wrong?!"
The lords nearby panicked, rushing to support him.
"Is he too excited?"
"He must be overwhelmed with joy. It's fine, he just needs a moment to recover."
"Joy your grandmas!!"
Tanys shoved away the people supporting him, pointing at the giant reactor, his fingers trembling violently.
His lips quivered, unable to form a complete sentence for a long time.
"Empty————it's empty!"
"This is a fucking empty shell!!"
Tanys finally roared out, "The captain of that ship is an absolute psychopath!"
"He scooped out all the guts inside! He didn't even leave me a single screw!"
"That absolute bastard deserves a thousand cuts!"
The surrounding lords looked at one another, completely bewildered.
"What do you mean? Scooped out?" The fat lord still hadn't processed it. "Can it still fly then?"
"Fly my ass! Fly with what? Fly with your belly?!"
Furious, Tanys grabbed the screwdriver in his hand and slammed it hard against the floor.
"This thing is just an oversized boiler now! It can't do anything except boil water!"
"I don't get it————I really don't get it!"
Tanys clutched his bald head, pacing in circles, looking entirely neurotic.
"They were evacuating back then! They were running for their lives!"
"Outside, our landships were firing cannons, and inside was probably a total mess."
"Under those circumstances, how did that captain pry away over ninety percent of the core components in such a short amount of time?!"
"Is he sick in the head?!"
"Are his crew members a bunch of locusts?! Leaving not even a blade of grass behind?!"
Even the most avaricious scavengers would dump heavy cargo when running for their lives.
But that person didn't.
He pried away all the good stuff, leaving them with nothing but a pile of scrap metal that looked intimidating but was utterly useless even when repaired!
This wasn't just a robbery.
This was a humiliation! A slap to the intellect of anyone who came after!
"Oh my god————"
The fat lord, who had been dreaming of becoming a starship captain, finally understood.
His dream of taking to the skies was shattered.
Not only shattered, but ground thoroughly into the dirt beneath someone's boot.
This month of hard work was entirely in vain.
All the resources invested this month had gone down the drain.
The fat lord felt a sharp pain in his chest, and his eyes rolled back.
Thud.
With a strange gasp, he fell straight backward.
Clang!
His heavy body slammed hard onto the metal floor, making a loud thud that sent the surrounding dust flying.
No one went to prop him up this time.
Everyone was staring blankly at the empty machine cabinet, while Tanys looked ready to cry: "I don't accept this! I don't fucking accept this!!"