Ch.123123. Necro-Kist

Even as the Locist pirates, their bodies frozen but minds still clear, were screaming internally, the disguised bio-ship continued to move diligently.

The ship inserted tubes into the Locists’ bodies to provide nutrition, and whenever they seemed about to move, it immediately paralyzed them with psychic power. After about a month of voyaging and spatial jumps—with the pirates fully conscious—they finally arrived somewhere.

‘(Kill… me…)’

‘(Please forgive me please forgive me please forgive me please forgive me please forgive me…)’

Naturally, after a month of complete physical paralysis with full consciousness, unable to sleep or lose consciousness, most of the Locists’ minds had collapsed. Only a few barely maintained awareness, blankly passing time—but at that moment.

Click, click, click, click.

The sound of metal machinery reached the Locists’ ears, and suddenly their bodies were lifted and began moving somewhere.

Though still completely paralyzed and unable to twitch even a finger, their elevated position allowed them to see the beings carrying them.

They were bipedal machines—robots—with silver metallic bodies and purple light sources, resembling Locists.

‘(What are these things?)’

Kirish and the other Locists were understandably confused at encountering these machines when they had expected to be captured by monsters. Regardless, the machines carried the Locists onto another vessel connected to the bio-ship.

After being transferred to a mechanical ship with a silver base and purple accents—clearly related to these machines in design—they were positioned right in front of windows with a good view of space as the journey continued.

Whether this was a kindness to show them their destination in advance, or something else, Kirish trembled with instinctive anxiety.

‘(What… what is that…!)’

Kirish’s eyes fell upon what appeared to be their destination planet.

The planet had an obviously alien appearance at first glance.

Artificially constructed rings of various sizes rotated along orbital paths, and the planet’s surface was completely covered with machinery. The surface wasn’t even visible beneath the strange purple light emanating from the planet itself, creating an unsettling feeling.

Up to this point, it somewhat resembled human residential planets—those completely plastered with skyscrapers—but there was a decisive difference from other planets.

Unlike human planets that looked cluttered and haphazardly built up, this planet was cleanly divided into several sections, as if it were one giant machine.

The surface maintained an impossibly pristine white color across its vast area, and most strikingly, the rings orbiting the planet moved at speeds that made one wonder how such massive objects could move so quickly.

As Kirish wondered what purpose this place served, the view outside suddenly distorted, and through spatial jump technology, they found themselves in a space where they could feel the planet’s gravity—in other words, inside the planet.

The interior of the silver and purple-themed planetary shell had a futuristic and sophisticated atmosphere, but it also exuded something alien and desolate. Kirish remained vigilant, never letting go of his tension.

But… what could they possibly do when their bodies were completely paralyzed and their physical condition was terrible from depending on tube feeding?

Like cargo, these Locist pirates were carried by the machines, eventually placed on carts and moved along a long corridor. They were brought to a room where other similarly paralyzed Locists were stacked neatly on carts.

‘(What is… this…)’

The way they were treated—not even as sentient beings or living creatures—was shocking enough to disturb even these infamous pirates.

It was comparable to the Aztecs meeting the Reconquista. Just as slave-trading pirates would be shocked by a culture that practiced cannibalism, the Locists trembled with uncertainty about their treatment (as mere objects) and their future.

And as Kirish trembled like the other Locists…

Whirrrr.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

Many of the machines that had transported them to this room entered, each grabbing one cart, and began moving the Locists somewhere else along another long corridor.

With tension and anxiety burning in Kirish’s heart, they were moved through complex, long corridors until they finally reached what appeared to be their destination—something resembling a factory.

‘(What… is this place?)’

Complex pipes covering the walls, mysterious mechanical devices placed between the pipes, and in the center, an enormous machine resembling a drum washing machine.

As Kirish’s brain was becoming overwhelmed trying to understand what everything was, he was lifted from the cart by a machine’s hand and moved toward the drum-like machine—

‘(W-wait—)!!’

Before he could react, he was thrown into an opening in the machine and submerged in a substance that was neither solid nor liquid, and the “transformation” began.

A searing pain like his body was boiling from the inside coincided with his insect-like flesh turning to powder and seeping through the small gaps in his exoskeleton.

Strangely, only the flesh dissolved and turned to powder, while the internal organs, endoskeleton, exoskeleton, and even blood vessels remained intact.

However, these organs transformed from biological tissue to mechanical components.

Blood vessels became wires, the heart became a battery, lungs became pollution filters, and nerves transformed into electrical signal transmitters—essentially electronic circuits engraved into the bones.

The skeleton changed from sturdy chitin to a frame structure similar to those used in animatronics, and the overall appearance changed as well.

The strange compound eyes were replaced with purple LED cameras, the antennae protruding from the head became antennas for receiving external information, the now-unnecessary mouth contained a speaker, and the ears were replaced with sound transmission devices.

Finally, the exoskeleton became similar to tank armor plating, making him resemble a robot, and the brain was replaced with mechanical association devices.

He had taken on a form not much different from the robots working on this planet.

And perhaps predictably, as the body mutated, neither the soul nor the mind remained intact.

His memories, consciousness, and personality became mere data recorded in mechanical devices.

But because transferring organic memories is such a complex process, about 40% of the recorded memories were lost, and even these were significantly distorted during the transfer due to differences in storage methods between the two recording systems.

The soul also experienced distortion.

The soul, almost exclusively the property of organic beings, gradually escaped from the mechanizing body, leaving only fragments trapped in the mechanical body.

Yet these escaped soul fragments did not meet a good end—these psychic dimension souls were immediately captured by waiting milky-white tentacles and dragged away.

Thus, the Locist pirate crew member Kirish no longer existed; only the 89716th A-type Nec-Locist Kirish remained in his place.

※ ※ ※

Several months later, an invasion by an alien species occurred in the Bauti system of the Human Federation.

An alien legion consisting of mechanical insects resembling mechanized beetles and mechanized Locists conquered the Bauti system—which had been among the top systems in the Federation for defense capabilities—in just one week, using various nanomachine weapons based on their transcendent nanomachine technology and leveraging their all-mechanical nature.

As the Human Federation’s stock market fluctuated and the economy shook from the aftermath, this mechanical species that had occupied the Bauti system introduced themselves:

The Nec-Locists. Descendants and legitimate heirs of the ancient Locist Empire, the true Locists composed of mechanized Locists.