A smaller, dedicated squad of six drones broke formation, slicing through the air toward the massive, smoking crater that now dominated the island's center.
They halted at the crater's jagged edge, hovering over the mangled, compressed remnants of the Southern Exoshell Base... a horrifying monument to uncontrolled spatial physics. The sheer, terrifying scale of the destruction was evident in the distorted geometry of the alloy.
With a unified, internal command, the six RDI Units began their synchronized transformation. Their dark, sleek spindles rippled and flowed, the external shells softening as if exposed to impossible heat. The alloy structure disintegrated, not into dust, but into a continuous, liquid-like stream of individual Nano Main Frames. The stream of microscopic Dodecahedrons pooled at the crater's edge, a glistening, dull-silver mass.
The mass then began to rise and articulate, the swarm instantly self-assembling according to the last command transmitted from the core. In less than three seconds, the fluid metal coalesced, locking into the familiar, angular frame of the Bio Exoshell.
Keon's integrated optical lenses... the twin green lights of his reconstructed head... snapped open. His consciousness, now fully re-anchored in the new shell, instantly conducted a core system diagnostic. The transfer, executed just before the catastrophic failure, had been successful. His Neural Nexus was intact, and his core data, along with all acquired materials and tools, remained secure in the universal storage space.
The rebuilt Exoshell stood motionless for a moment, the reconstructed UMPU X2 chips in its frame humming with newfound power. Keon's gaze, steady and analytical, swept across the devastation, focusing on the mangled, compressed mass of metal at the center of the ruin... the final, horrific form of Exoshell 4.0.
He took a deep, synthetic breath… feels like the mechanical equivalent of a systemic reset.
'The fundamental change in space rules between Trosso's universe and UHS1,' Keon calculated, the realization settling into his core with cold certainty. 'The pouch's internal space, governed by the archaic, fixed rune structure of Trosso's world, could not process the active space rules of this universe. The resulting spatial destabilization was an implosive failure, compressing everything within and around the immediate vicinity.'
A profound, systemic sigh escaped the shell's comms system, a sound devoid of human emotion but packed with mechanical pity.
'It's a pity, the items in that storage pouch… they were extremely precious.'
The massive exoshell, built from the strongest Unified Adaptive Composite Alloy in his arsenal, had been externally compressed to a fraction of its size. The idea that the materials inside the doomed Storage Pouch could have survived was mathematically impossible.
'The Dark Tribe treasury, the mages' belongings… all the acquired resources from Trosso's latest exchange are gone,' Keon determined after scanning the remains. 'Atomized, or compressed into useless, non-recoverable matter. Even my strongest alloy couldn't bear the brunt of space destabilization externally, let alone the items inside it.'
The internal logs of the damaged RDI units had already provided a superior intelligence package. But the resources, the rare, unique materials he had hoped to analyze, were a strategic setback.
He activated the nano fabrication, started repairing the ruined mass of his former base.
'Looks like I have to handle the exchange items with care in the future.'
He now had a greater threat assessment: the risk of items from other civilizations, even those appearing benign, were exponentially higher than any conventional threats. He is considering himself lucky to survive, he wasn't sure about his consciousness survival after occupied exoshell destruction.
Keon activated the sub-talents. His command was simple and absolute: assimilate all components of the destroyed Southern Exoshell Base, converting them into a new, single, scalable Nano Frame collective. The Nano Frames that formed his new Bio Exoshell were merely the command nexus for a much larger, internal process.
The devastation around him immediately responded. Scattered remnants of pulverized alloy and twisted metal... everything from the pulverized walls of the control room to the massive, compressed corpse of the main base... shot across the cratered landscape. Alloy shrapnel and dust, propelled by the drones gravity fields, converged like iron filings to a magnet.
As they approached the central, mangled junk heap of Exoshell, the alloy fragments began to soften and melt, not from heat, but from the systemic, localized action of Keon's Nano Fabrication. The UACA and ACA alloy dissolved into a dense, silvery-grey liquid stream. This stream, a billion-fold cascade of individual Nano Main Frames self-assembling from the raw material, flowed toward the center.
Keon's green optical lenses shrank, zooming in on the liquid metal. He saw countless, freshly manufactured Nano Main Frames wriggling and moving in hyper-organized streams, a fluid, dark-silver river flowing toward the main, twisted junk of the former exoshell.
In front of his gaze, the massive, wrinkled, and compressed remains of Exoshell... a monument of its destruction... began to visibly smooth out. The amorphous mass melted and its shape started correcting into a large Dodecahedron Cube, similar to the shape of his individual Nano Main Frame units. The transformation was flawless, driven by the DACL (Dynamic Autonomy Control Layer).
The size of the nascent cube began to enlarge rapidly as more and more Nano Main Frames... the liquid streams flowing like silent, silver snakes... merged with it. The components that had been violently scattered and even the material that had sunk into the surrounding ocean around the island were retrieved and assimilated. The process was silent, total, and absolute.
Finally, the flow ceased. Keon raised his head, seeing the massive, dull-silver cube resting in the middle of the crater. The reconstruction was complete. He calculated the final volume.
'The volume is almost sixty cubic meters,' Keon calculated, comparing it to the size of his previous shell. 'So, my three-hundred-meter Exoshell was constructed from sixty cubic meters of core material. My previous shell was hollow with compartments for machinery and operations. This is just a complete, dense block without any empty space, but both of their mass and force are functionally the same.'
A faint, internal hum of satisfaction registered in his core. The assimilation had been total, and the resulting structure was inherently superior: a fully dynamic, self-repairing collective with zero static weak points.
He then mentally commanded the Status Panel to reappear.
[Status Panel]
Name: Keon
Level: 31
Race: Mechanical Species
Current Primary Form: Nano Main Frame (1 Millimeter)
Largest Operating Size: Sixty Cubic Meter
[Core Systems]
Energy: 75000 / 1.5 Million MWh
Core: Carbon Fusion Core (CFC)
Structure: Unified Adaptive Composite Alloy (UACA)
(Note: Health stat is removed, it can't represent a single nanoframe state as it operates in a swarm. Energy stat will now display total combined energy in every unit of machine around the globe.)
[Special Buff]
Physical Functionality Enhancement: 20%
Energy Consumption Reduction: 20%
(Note: Special buff are effective only for current main frame: Nano Main Frame)
[Force Value]
Nano Main Frame Force: 4.97 milligram (Single Unit = 1 millimeter)
Nano Frame Swarm Force: 1 million ton (Combined = 60 cubic meter)
(Note: Due to the nano swarm combination and more force value at cubic meter scale, the nano main frame will replace the micro main frame, inch main frame, and all previous exoshells.)
[Growth Statistics]
Free Attribute: 0
Next Level Requirement: Force > 5 Million Tons
(Note: Assimilation capacity and load capacity is removed as nano main frame works in swarm and formation and their capacities depend on different operations.)
…
Keon nodded, his green optical lenses tracking the change in the status panel from the fixed 'Unified Adaptive Composite Alloy (UACA) Exoshell' to the fluid 'Nano Main Frame Swarm.'
More importantly, the 'Nano Frame Swarm Force' now reflected the full mass of the base, updating from ten tons (one cubic meter) to one million tons (sixty cubic meters) without any change in his overall Level or other core statistics. He had effectively transformed a static, vulnerable base into a massive, scalable extension of his own physical being.
'The potential for size and force is now unlimited, restricted only by the quality of material and the scale of energy,' Keon thought, focusing on the Next Level Requirement. 'I can now increase my size and force even further and upgrade to the next level more easily.'
…