73: Chapter 73 Elena's Genetic Ascension

He raised his fingertip, and the transport of the Universe Matrix on the conveyor belt suddenly accelerated. Within the virtual world, the energy field began to gather and reorganize, finally compressing into a tiny, life-filled speck of light.

With a slight flick of his fingertip, that tiny speck of light detached from The Main Brain's fingertip, vanished from the virtual space, and drifted toward Elena's soul in the Warhammer Universe.

The moment the speck of light touched Elena's soul, it quietly merged into it.

Then, a blue electromagnetic arc unfolded around her soul, slowly spreading along the contours of her soul. Wherever the arc passed, the genetic fragments carrying Elena's life were read one by one, synthesized segment by segment, and spliced together, eventually forming a small, silver-blue embryo suspended in the void.

Encased in the electromagnetic arc, that tiny genetic core stretched and evolved at a speed visible to the naked eye, gradually growing into a complete embryo. Matter is naturally repelled by the Warp, so the embryo was subsequently exiled back to the physical universe. Genetic sequences circled her, transforming into flowing images—from ancient plankton to colossal star-beasts—constantly shifting and radiating the elegance of vitality.

The shaping of the skeleton was a revolution that started from the very bottom.

The electromagnetic arc collapsed inward, turning into countless invisible nanoloom machines, weaving a brand-new support structure deep within the embryo.

It was a crystalline lattice skeleton woven from chirality-controlled carbon nanotubes.

Carbon is, by nature, one of the most common elements in the universe; there is nothing rare about it.

It is not like the Grey Knights or the Custodians, which require materials so scarce they cannot even be mass-produced.

To The Main Brain, Elena had merely undergone the most basic genetic ascension—a standard feature available to everyone in a Level 3 civilization.

These carbon nanotube bundles were arranged in a perfect hexagonal ring structure, with each one undergoing chirality control precise down to the picometer level.

Its tensile strength was six hundred times that of adamantium, yet its density was only one-sixth that of calcium-based bone.

The skeleton first grew from the spine, extending outward like an inverted crystal tree, clearly outlining the contours of Elena's torso.

The most ingenious part was that these carbon nanotube bundles were not static; they had been designed by The Main Brain as active piezoelectric bones. When the bones were subjected to stress, they could actively absorb kinetic energy and convert it into weak electric currents to nourish the surrounding muscles and nerves.

Just as the skeletal lattice fully formed, an even more profound reconstruction began.

The electromagnetic arc contracted further, and inside every carbon nanotube, gaps precise to 2 picometers were etched with precision.

This was a realm that neither the Imperium of Man nor even the Golden Age had ever touched.

Those tiny cavities were the very sites where the famous Casimir effect in physics occurs.

Simply put, when two parallel metal plates are brought to the nanometer scale, the vacuum fluctuations between them are compressed, creating a measurable attractive force. The countless 2-picometer cavities within Elena's bones applied this effect to the extreme. They were no longer just structures for bearing weight; they were tools for harnessing the energy carried by quantum fluctuations in the cosmic background, commonly known as vacuum zero-point energy.

This meant that Elena's body no longer relied on mitochondrial ATP synthesis, nor did it need a digestive system to extract energy from the outside world. Every one of her bones was silently drawing negative entropy from the cosmic vacuum; her cellular metabolism was covered by a brand-new energy flow—purer than a stellar core, more stable than Warp psychic energy, and a primal power derived from the underlying rules of the universe.

As long as the laws of physics exist, she will never be hungry, never be tired, and never collapse from energy depletion.

The skeletal lattice continued to grow, and when the last rib formed, a molecular-level repair membrane began to cover the surface of the bones. This thin film, composed of carbon-based nanomachines, could detect micro-cracks within milliseconds and mobilize surrounding carbon atoms for in-situ repair.

Even when subjected to the extreme impact of Titan-grade firepower, Elena's bones could self-heal at a speed visible to the naked eye.

After the bones came the growth of flesh.

From every node of the carbon nanotube skeleton, graphene-reinforced muscle fibers as thin as hair grew out. These muscle fibers spiraled around the bones, and each bundle could release enough force to twist steel plates within microseconds.

In the gaps between the muscles, a translucent nano-repair fluid wandered. These programmed nanobots floated in the intercellular matrix, ready for battlefield-grade rapid repair—when muscle fibers tore, they would instantly gather at the damaged area to re-stitch the broken actin.

But what truly made all of this transcendent was the genetic blueprint constantly reappearing deep within Elena's soul.

As the reconstruction of the bones and muscles neared its end, the electromagnetic arc expanded one last time, turning into ripples that spread outward from the core of the embryo. This time, it did not bring a stacking of structures, but a leap at the information level.

Within the genetic sequence, a dormant code was completely activated.

It was an optimized human genetic module that existed in the form of quantum encoding, transcending the chemical structure of DNA, and was directly branded onto the essence of Elena's soul. When it was awakened, Elena's nervous system began a silent explosion of intelligence.

The speed of synaptic connections increased by three orders of magnitude, and memory encoding shifted from chemical signals to optical quantum storage. Her brain cells began to operate in a manner similar to topological quantum computing, with every neuron becoming a miniature information processor capable of parallel computation across multiple dimensions simultaneously.

This was a leap at the cognitive level. Now, Elena could complete a simulation of a sector-wide campaign in one ten-thousandth of a second and, upon gazing at a strange technological artifact, reverse-engineer its entire principle in an instant. Her intelligence was no longer the intelligence of a "superman," but intelligence at the civilization level. It carried the cold, precise light of reason unique to a Level 3 civilization—the culmination of civilization technology capable of building a Dyson Sphere, controlling black holes, and modifying physical constants.

At the same time, another segment of quantum genetic coding was activated simultaneously—a trait with a simple name: Super Strength.

In the context of the Warhammer Universe, this trait sounds like merely a numerical enhancement.

But in the genetic map of the stellaris Empire, it represents the ultimate understanding of the essence of life.

Elena's body would be reshaped into a fortress at the molecular level.

Her cell membranes were replaced with piezoelectric-enhanced lipid bilayers, capable of actively resisting high-energy radiation (energy shields); her immune system was upgraded into a nano-scale annihilation fleet, capable of identifying and destroying pathogens before they touched her cells; her metabolism was reconstructed into a closed-loop system, capable of re-synthesizing required resources from waste.

She could tear through the adamantium armor of a Titan with her bare hands, and she could stand safely in the center of a nuclear explosion, watching the mushroom cloud rise beside her without suffering a single scratch; she could survive in the vacuum of space for months, relying solely on the vacuum zero-point energy within her bones to sustain her life.

This was an ascension at the level of survival. In the eyes of a Level 3 civilization, combat capability should never be the starting point of pursuit. It is merely a trivial side effect after the improvement of survival capability.