The bio-drones, emitting their high-pitched squeals, intensified their psychic assault. Ethan felt his head swimming, the nausea threatening to overwhelm him. The images of his mother's worried face, the weight of his responsibility, the sheer alienness of his surroundings – all these thoughts were amplified and twisted by the bio-drones' attack.
Kiaz, his luminous eyes squeezed shut, staggered back. "They're… they're targeting our neural pathways! Overloading our senses!"
Ziak, though visibly strained, seemed to be holding on better than the others. He focused his energy, creating a shimmering field around himself. "They're trying to break us from the inside. We need to fight back, not with force, but with… with mental discipline!"
Remembering their experience in the Chamber of Whispers, Ethan realized that a direct confrontation with the psychic energy was futile. He needed to find a different approach. He focused on the tracker, feeling its cool metal against his skin. It had helped him against the Cellucas' psychic defenses before; perhaps it could help him now.
He channeled his neutrino energy into the device, focusing on the bio-drones. He tried to understand their psychic attack, to decipher its structure and frequency. The tracker's display flickered, showing complex patterns of energy flow.
Suddenly, a new function appeared: "Neural Interference: Generate counter-frequency to disrupt psychic signals."
"The tracker!" Ethan exclaimed, a spark of hope igniting within him. "It can disrupt their psychic signals! Like before, but more targeted!"
He selected the Neural Interference function and focused on the closest bio-drone. A beam of energy, this time a soft, pulsating white, emitted from the tracker, washing over the orb. The high-pitched squeal wavered, then abruptly cut off. The orb dimmed, its red glow fading.
"It worked!" Ethan cried, emboldened. He targeted another bio-drone, and then another. The white energy beams from the tracker silenced them one by one, their psychic attacks abruptly ceasing.
Ziak, seeing Ethan's success, focused his energy on creating a similar counter-frequency, projecting it outwards like a wave. His emerald energy shimmered and pulsed, creating a field of mental static that disrupted the remaining bio-drones.
Kiaz, relieved from the psychic onslaught, fired precise energy blasts at the neutralized orbs, shattering them into harmless fragments.
With their combined efforts, they quickly silenced and destroyed the remaining bio-drones. The chamber, once filled with disorienting noise and psychic pressure, became quiet and still.
"That was… intense," Ethan said, wiping sweat from his brow. "These Cellucas are really throwing everything at us."
Ziak nodded grimly. "They are desperate. This structure must hold something of immense value to them, or they wouldn't have gone to such lengths to defend it."
Kiaz scanned the chamber, his luminous eyes searching for their next objective. "The source of the bio-drones… it must be connected to the vein network. Let's follow the largest vein. It should lead us to the heart of this… organic fortress."
With the psychic defenses neutralized, they prepared to venture deeper into the alien structure, ready to face whatever new horrors the Cellucas had in store.