Translator: Sean88888 Editor: Elkassar1
The Queen of Blades pressed her palm to the giant rhombus crystal.
The crystal suddenly turned transparent. Natural grains could be seen in it, extending deeper towards the inside in an orderly manner. The way the grains extended inwards was intriguing, like rivers that were destined to flow into the ocean no matter how they curved and bent.
The interior of the crystal seemed to have formed a world of its own, with its own thunderstorm, hazy rain and dew, as well as its own circulation system.
When the Queen of Blades’ hand came into contact with the rhombus crystal, she suddenly vanished from the Mutalisk’s back. A black silhouette emerged in the crystal, and by its outline, it was apparently the Queen of Blades!
Then, like a snake wriggling in water, she swam towards the top of the crystal. There was a place at the top that looked like a crown pedestal, but it had a pendulum-like object on it. It had the colour of something that had just been excavated after being buried in rock for millions of years. It was very simple and very old, looking as if it had been engraved with the mark of time. Anyone who so much as laid eyes on it would feel a pure sense of awe with no other distracting thoughts, as if they were looking up at the vast starry sky!
This was a most powerful object left behind by the gods in the legends, the fallen Xel’Naga race!
It was the Keystone!
The five fingers of the Queen of Blades finally rested on the object, and an indescribable sense of satisfaction spread all over her body. Every cell of hers was exuding thrill and pleasure at the moment. The Queen of Blades could not help letting out a cry of excitement!
The cry was wild, but it inexplicably carried a strange temptation for all the male creatures that heard it, because her cry sounded very much like…moaning.
***
It was common knowledge that both the Zerg and the Protoss were created by the powerful and mysterious Xel’Naga race. However, the end of the Xel’Naga race was tragic. As if they had accidentally opened the Pandora’s box, they ended up being destroyed by the Zerg race that had completely gone out of control.
(https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Xel%27naga)
Presently, it was not the Keystone that was tempting the Queen of Blades, but a thin layer of substance smeared on it. This substance was a precious treasure that the Protoss found in an ancient Xel’Naga ruin. To explain it in simple terms, it was the first generation Zerg created by the Xel’Naga race!
Back then, the Zerg were still in the experimental stage. They did not reproduce asexually like they did now, but had different genders similar to bees and ants. The substance smeared on the Keystone was the secretion extracted from the sex gland of a male Zerg, found in the laboratory of the ancient Xel’Naga ruin!
(TL: A gonad, sex gland, or reproductive gland is a mixed gland that produces the gametes (sex cells) and sex hormones of an organism.)
The reason why the Xel’Naga race ended up being exterminated by the Zerg was that the Zerg had very strong evolutionary ability, which caused them to finally go out of control. However, the Zerg had never been troubled by problems of reproduction desire and sexual lust, so the gene fragments related to this aspect had never evolved. They naturally had zero resistance to the temptation of mating.
Furthermore, the Protoss who set up this trap for the Queen of Blades also had another thing in mind: the Queen had evolved from a human.
Humans were strange creatures when it came to sex. Among the known creatures that reproduce through mating, most have mating seasons. Their sexual behaviours would only occur during the mating seasons.
But after a human becomes sexually mature, they can mate anytime and anywhere they want. Therefore, human actually has a terrifying sex drive by comparison. The Protoss believed that there was still a trace of this human weakness left in the Queen’s body. With the combination of both the Zerg and the human factors, the chances of the poor Queen falling for the trap were very high!
And their scheme was indeed successful.
The moment the Queen of Blades’ fingers came into contact with the “Keystone”, she immediately found that the “Keystone” was falling off with a mere touch! She instantly had an ominous premonition.
At the same time, inside the Monster of Calamity, numerous warnings popped up on the main screen!
“Warning! Abnormal increase in temperature detected! The temperature is 5844.87 times higher than the normal value!”
“Warning! Abnormal increase in spatial fluctuation coefficient detected! The coefficient is 189.3 times higher than the normal value!”
“Warning! Energy fluctuation detected! The fluctuation has exceeded 389.4 Eugenes!”
“Warning! Dimensional rifts may appear!”
“Warning! There is a 38.44% probability of a large-scale Protoss warping-in. Outdoor combat troops, please seek shelter in a metal fortress ASAP to avoid Psionic Storm damage. If this is not possible, please spread out and lie down, or enter a metallic vehicle ASAP. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.”
While the warning sounds were still echoing in the air, an unbelievable spectacle was happening outside. A gigantic pitch-black shadow slowly approached from the side and overlapped with the plane they were in like a solar eclipse.
The huge black shadow had a diameter of at least 10 kilometers. Its shape seemed irregular, but upon closer inspection, it looked a little like an island that had been pulled up from the ground by an invisible giant hand. Dark red magma dripped down below it, sizzling when they fell on the metallic ground…
A piercing chill rose in Sheyan’s heart when he saw the huge dark shadow, because he thought this thing looked very familiar. He turned to Ronnie for confirmation.
Ronnie, too, inhaled sharply in shock when he saw the shadow. He slowly said, “They’ve even brought the holy trial ground out of the core of the planet. Looks like this whole thing really is one big trap. Look, the Keystone is activating.”
A fierce and solemn illusion could be seen hovering above the holy trial ground. It looked like half a piece of something, but also like some kind of blade. The “Keystone” unraveled by the Queen of Blades glowed with a strange illumination. Then, something with a curvy outline flew out of it. It could not be clearly identified, but its shape looked like a hook.
The Queen of Blades had obviously realised that something was amiss by now. She dashed left and right in the rhombus crystal, seemingly trying to find a way out, but whenever she collided into the crystal barrier, she would be bounced back. All the Zerg outside also madly crashed into the crystal, but to no avail.
Everyone there could only watch on as the events unfolded. The Keystone shard in the holy trial ground slowly drifted closer to the shard that was shaped like a hook and merged together with it. It was then that everyone saw, when these two objects combined, they took on the shape of a half broken scythe which looked shockingly similar to the shadow scythe used by the Dark Templars!
What’s more, after the two shard pieces combined, the terrifying power contained in them grew stronger at an alarming rate despite still being an incomplete, broken weapon!
By themselves, the two shard pieces, despite possessing some threat, were at most like two pieces of uranium-235 that were placed separately; it would take them half a month to a year to kill someone with radiation. But when the shards merged, they were like two pieces of uranium-235 that were put together, creating a supercritical and efficient explosion born from terrifying nuclear fission chain reactions!
The combined Keystone shards swung down like a real scythe.The combined Keystone did not move very fast, but as if it had resonated with the heaven and the earth, it was impossible to hide or escape from. It was just like death itself; no matter how or where you flee, you could not escape from that fate!
A flash of light between heaven and earth! The body of the Queen of Blades instantly turned transparent, making her bones clearly visible. This attack seemed to have caused great damage directly to her every cell, her every gene fragment! Her body, which had already stabilised before this, was once again unravelling with a violent howl from the deepest level of her cells!
The giant rhombus crystal too shattered following the slash. The Queen of Blades fell down from the air like a meteor with her eyes tightly closed. Numerous Zerg instantly swarmed around their Queen and protected her with their bodies.
After the rhombus crystal shattered, it poured down from the sky like glittering dewdrops, making for a tragic and desolate scene. Then…there was a terrifying explosion!
It was almost impossible to describe the horror of the explosion with words. The only thing Sheyan could remember was that when the explosion happened, the huge Monster of Calamity that must have weighed more than a thousand tons could put up no resistance at all to the shock wave. The war machine was blown away like a feather in the wind!
Its emergency protection system was instantly triggered. Because Monster of Calamity was built with highly-advanced Protoss technology, a large number of anti-gravity devices had been incorporated into it. The anti-gravity devices were quickly activated to protect all the crew on the war machine. Unfortunately, the external impact was simply too strong. Before Sheyan fell unconscious, he heard a synthetic voice coming from the control system.
“The final emergency measure has been activated… I repeat, the final emergency measure has been activated.”
“If the intensity of the turbulence outside remains at the current level for ten more seconds, the war machine will automatically disintegrate. All energy supply modules will be switched to survival mode to prioritise the safety of the crew.”
