Ch.178178. The Peak of the Great Uprising

As mentioned several times before, Walkers are outdated weapons that have long been obsolete on modern (10,000 CE) battlefields.

To put it in terms that people living in the modern era (21st century) might understand, they’re comparable to multi-turreted tanks from World War II, or perhaps the M14 rifle from the Vietnam War era.

They’re not completely useless or utterly worthless weapons, but they’re clearly outdated by modern standards—the kind of weapon used as a stopgap measure or modified for limited applications.

To elaborate, that’s roughly the impression one gets from these Psychic Shield-less Walkers, which are treated like walking punching bags… but…

The moment Hive Cult psykers possess them with psychic entities offered as sacrifices to the Great Father, these outdated weapons are reborn as devastating War-Machines that dominate the battlefield.

The reverse-jointed mechanical legs, once criticized for being too thin and fragile, transform into legs resembling those of a warhorse charging across the ground. The exposed joints become protected by metal-like psychic structures that grow around them.

The soles of the feet, originally divided into several components for shock absorption, change into biological forms reminiscent of bird talons. Machine-fiber grows over the skeleton, covering it like real muscle.

Between and behind the legs grows a hideous lizard-like tail made of metal and wires. Cables that protrude and hang from various places can move like tentacles, ready to slash enemies with the blades at their tips.

And these changes don’t stop at just the lower body.

The cockpit, which resembles a tiny two-seater electric vehicle with one person in front and one in back, transforms into something like a completely sealed coffin. Inside, wires and machine-fibers rise up to envelop and dominate the crew.

Along with these changes, the main gun fixed to the side of the chassis (usually the right side) becomes slightly more mobile, and on the opposite side, depending on the possessing entity, different appendages grow—usually an arm or pincer integrated with a melee weapon.

Other minor mutations also occur, such as horns or eyeballs sprouting from the chassis, but surprisingly, the mutations to the main body aren’t as dramatic as those to the lower body.

But one shouldn’t be complacent.

The most powerful weapons of these psychic entity-possessed Walkers are their main weapons and machine guns, which, despite looking the same externally, have fundamentally changed due to the chassis mutations.

Normally, they would use autocannons, multi-barreled machine guns (miniguns), multiple rocket launchers, or plasma cannons as their main weapons, but once possessed by psychic entities, such classifications become completely meaningless.

Psychic entities made of psychic flame might shoot fire from rocket launchers as if they were flamethrowers, while psychic entities based on psychic frost might launch chunks of ice from plasma cannons.

There are also bizarre autocannons that fire mental shockwaves from psychic entities formed from condensed emotions, or psychic entities that shoot telekinetic force.

Depending on the possessing psychic entity, the attack form of the weapons varies, and even within the same category, attack patterns can differ drastically.

Just looking at psychic lightning-based entities, there are types that simply shoot electricity directly, types that use modified conventional ballistic weapons as quasi-railguns, types that fire concentrated balls of electricity or electric whips, and even types specialized for close combat.

These entities can even regenerate when damaged, going beyond mere regeneration to absorb corpses or scrap metal to grow, and sometimes they can even withstand direct hits from the main guns of the Planetary Defense Force’s main battle tanks.

Despite being highly unstable and irregular war machines, these psychic entity-possessed Walkers are powerful enough to surpass even mid-tier monsters.

Even the drawback of needing to consume about 100 souls per day to maintain combat effectiveness and summoning state is considered a reasonable cost for maintaining such a weapon.

In any case, these completed War-Machine Walkers, when deployed to the battlefield, demonstrated performance that truly deserved the expression “worth a hundred men.”

They dismember anti-gravity hover tanks with their blade arms, shred infantry with their tails and tentacles, and collapse buildings with their main gun fire to bury dozens of tanks alive.

Despite many Planetary Defense Force regiments having defected en masse, the influence of these Walkers was tremendous in the current situation where most forces consisted of regular infantry.

Most of the Planetary Defense Force infected by the Hive Cult were regiment-sized units, and the majority of these infected regiments were infantry regiments where genetic testing was poorly implemented, making the situation even worse.

Would it make sense if I said that even though only about 200 of these special Walkers were produced, there was no way to stop them, and even a single one could hold off division-scale enemy forces in the short term?

In this city where the battlefield was the interior of massive buildings—the pinnacle of urban warfare—the might of these psychic entity-possessed Walkers, which were close to asymmetric forces, was beyond imagination.

Who could stop a war machine that could single-handedly destroy a battalion of IK (Iron Knight) tanks—outdated but still officially used by the Federal Army—and grind down tens of thousands of soldiers?

Moreover, the Hive Cult not only always accompanied these special Walkers with a few elite regiments but also sent tens of thousands of cult rioters with them, making the conquest of Calisman 77-8 merely a matter of time.

Exactly 8 days and 3 hours after the first riot broke out, the Hive Cult of Calisman 77-8 succeeded in completely dismantling the remaining Planetary Defense Force on the planet.

And from this point, exactly 13 days and 7 hours later.

All 800 billion humans residing on planet Calisman 77-8, whether willingly or not, became members of the Hive Cult.

※ ※ ※

After successfully occupying the entire planet of Calisman 77-8.

The actions of the Hive Cult became even more bold.

Still controlling the corpse of the planetary governor, they impersonated him and brazenly sent in troop transport ships disguised as cargo vessels.

They neutralized (hacked) communication facilities, deployed large numbers of special Walkers created by sacrificing the planet’s entire workforce, and utilized weapons made by possessing the Planetary Defense Force’s broken armored vehicles with psychic entities.

Additionally, the infected workers, who were previously just rioters, were now supplied with proper weapons produced in planetary factories, bringing them up to the level of the Planetary Defense Force.

The Hive Cult’s conquest was proceeding smoothly.

The communication facilities installed on the Calisman 77 planets were terrible and shoddy, with all functions concentrated in a single building because the stupid governor had cut corners to line his own pockets.

Therefore, after easily cutting off external communications with a few preliminary operations, they poured in forces that the inadequate Planetary Defense Force couldn’t even hope to match, continuing their conquest.

Conquering all 21 Engineer Worlds in the 77th planetary system of the Calisman sector was just a matter of time from the cult’s perspective, and indeed it was.

They mass-produced and supplied powered suits that, while crude, were quite sturdy and functionally excellent due to the generous use of planetary resources. They also began mass-producing older model IK (Iron Knight) tanks, which they knew how to make but couldn’t produce due to copyright issues.

For productivity, they used continuous tracks instead of anti-gravity hover systems, and due to lack of technical expertise, they equipped them with unstable psychic shields. The main gun was limited to a laser cannon due to parts shortages, despite plasma cannons—a superior option for tank-level weaponry—being available.

But at the point where they could continuously supply large numbers of these tanks, such minor issues became completely irrelevant, and the Hive Cult’s conquest of the planetary system was essentially in its final stages.

However—there was one thing the cult didn’t know, because the Minor Father was drunk on victory and the Great Father, with other intentions, didn’t inform them.

“Observation complete. A planetary system conquered by the cult. ……..It’s been 13 years since we’ve seen this.”

“Yes, indeed. —Report this to the higher-ups, Barkman.”

“Yes, Team Leader.”

At the Eye of Mankind, which observes the entire galaxy from the Psychic User University on Venus, humanity’s second capital, the Hive Cult had been discovered—something they never would have expected.