Brennan, with swift strides, immediately picked up his pace as he dashed for his party members. However, his eyes widened in surprise as he felt a forbidding feeling behind his back. Unable to take it further, he slightly glanced over his shoulder and, with a grave realization, immediately ducked.

  Overhead, a terrifying sharp limb that seemed to mold into a blade swept over and nearly missed him by a hairsbreadth. Fueled with adrenaline, he immediately stood up and dashed with all his might. Once he arrived where his party members were, he looked back.

  Lyria and Mira, who merely waited for him, also had the same expression as he did.

  “S-Stygians!” Lyria screamed at the top of her lungs.

  Brennan heaved a mouthful of air and brandished his axe, drove his right foot and shoulder forward, taking the lead and vanguard of the party.

  Mira, who was watching from the sidelines, had a calm look on her face. She raised her left hand, and magical energy gathered and molded into a bow. She placed her right hand and fingers along the string and pulled it back as an arrow emerged already nocked while her black coat glinted through the sunny sky.

  Lyria, despite trembling in fear, wiped off her flowing sweat and tears that were forming along her eyes. With a decisive decision, she stomped her right foot and raised her staff with both hands as magical energy whisked through the air and around the entire party.

  All the while, the ancient construct danced with utter swiftness and grace overhead.

  Altair, like a master of playing cards, juggled numerous interfaces and controls—clicking, pushing, pulling, and sliding—then repeated all over again. His eyes remained focused and unyielding. Fatigue crept within his tired arms, yet he gritted his teeth throughout the ordeal.

  “Lieutenant!” The Adjutant whirred to life.

  Altair, who was also staring laser-eyed at the battle in front of him despite only three abominations remaining.

  “Lieutenant, one of the three abominations diverted from us and has now begun attacking the sentient species we have encountered!” The Adjutant sprung with even more desperation in its tone.

  Upon hearing the sentence, Altair’s eyes squinted as he processed the matter. With his mind still too preoccupied, he slammed and drove the Ironside farther from the main battlefront, which freed up some brain power to process the problem.

  “How likely are they to survive?” Altair questioned while his eyes never left the sensor interfaces. As the seismic waves detected movement, he cautiously moved the Ironside away from potential ambush points.

  “Indeed, despite lacking in data, based on preliminary research and according to their technological level at face value along with the biological threat assessed,” the Adjutant buzzed, “survival rate: less than one percent.” Its voice audibly went down as it progressed through the sentence until its end.

  Altair gripped the controls hard until his palms turned white and his nails pierced through his bloodied gloves. He knitted his eyebrows in frustration and sighed as he rummaged for a solution within his mind.

  Faced with the dilemma of facing death once again or saving another life despite it having no value to him, he felt his stomach churn as his past mistakes and regrets started to surface once again. The thousands of iterations of this exact situation replayed over and over again within his mind.

  His face then suddenly lit up as an idea popped into his mind.

  “What is the percentage of our current power output and resource reserves?” His voice was deep and slightly crackled as he awaited a response.

  “Power reserves at fifty percent, and resource reserves: we still have enough to manufacture a few more warheads of missiles,” the Adjutant hummed with a bright tone.

  “Excellent!” His voice filled with relief. “Adjutant, how many anti-burrower countermeasures could we manufacture with our remaining materials?”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “If we produce in haste, we could manufacture about fifty seeker charges, Lieutenant!” the Adjutant answered with evermore increasing energy.

  “Great! Manufacture five seeker charges immediately!” he said as his features contorted in agony while he gazed toward the interface and toward the threats.

  “Affirmative. Manufacturing modified seeker charges will consume five percent of our remaining power supply and ten percent of our material reserves,” the Adjutant fizzed. “Beginning immediate production in haste.”

  “Do it; we are not dying to the same tactic twice,” Altair toughened his jaw as flashes of him dying from that terrifying liquid struck a deep fear within him.

  “I understand, Lieutenant,” the Adjutant replied. “Fabricating munitions in progress.”

  The manufacturing line snapped awake as overhead rails clanked while raw steel plates were fed into hydraulic presses that stamped out casings in rhythmic thuds. Sparks showered whenever robotic arms swung in, welding seams with precise arcs of cerulean flame. Conveyor belts advanced the shells into the next station where circuit boards were dropped into vibrating trays and into waiting slots. Wires snaked out, soldered in place by bursts of lasers.

  Hoppers above released measured streams of pale explosive pellets, which were funneled into hollow cores. Pistons descended as they stamped the fillings with dull and repetitive thumps. Detonators no larger than thumbnails clicked into recesses as soft chimes confirmed alignment. As it passed by, a ring of scanners swept each unit—red light, pause, then green.

  Once approved, it glided onward, matte black and seamless, cooling into a stable temperature as they traveled through the conveyor belt.

  At the end of the line, mechanical claws lifted them into their individual compartments as lids were lowered, magnets snapped shut, and in a final orchestra a hiss sealed the vacuum. Behind it, the belts kept moving as another and another casing were dropped and pressed, and then the cycle repeated for a new type of munitions.

  The manufacturing line never sleeps unless it is out of resources or reserves.

  “Lieutenant! The seeker charges are now good to go!” The Adjutant buzzed with excitement.

  “Alright, calculate the two abominations below us,” Altair ordered with a decisive breath.

  “Lieutenant, seismic readings confirm two abominations below us at a few hundred meters of depth.”

  Altair knitted his eyebrows. “They’re trying the same tactic again.” His jaw and chest tightened with anger. “Not this time.”

  “Drop them!” His voice echoed through the dimly lit cockpit.

  Hatches below the Ironside opened with a quick and swift motion as drill-tipped cylinders dropped. Upon landing they spun violently as they punched into the soil, vanishing in mere seconds.

  “Tracking… target one locked. Target two locked,” the Adjutant whirred.

  As the Adjutant managed the seeker charges, Altair maneuvered the Ironside out of the way and made a quick dash toward the party of sentient life.

  Once they left, the ground erupted in two places with the soil turning into superheated magma. The ground below imploded and threw matter upward; the soil collapsed as it dissolved into the forming magma, which quickly filled up all the tunnels the abominations had made. Their biosignatures flatlined in less than a moment.

  “Targets have been neutralized, Lieutenant,” the Adjutant whirred.

  The last abomination fighting the party of sentient life visibly pulsed and let out a scream of frustration.

  Brennan, Lyria, and Mira stared dumbfounded at the scene before them.

  Mira watched, with her bow half drawn, as the ancient construct meters from them released a strange object under its belly that proceeded to burrow into the earth like metallic rats.

  “What is it—” she said in confusion before being cut off.

  The ground convulsed; an implosion erupted before them as five perfectly circular sinkholes appeared from where the ancient construct had been moments ago.

  “It hunted the Stygians underground,” Brennan breathed. “Even if we couldn’t see it, it fought the enemies underground on their very turf, blind.”

  Lyria’s hands trembled in fear. “Is this even magic?”

  Mira, who had been studying ancients for a long time, muttered, “That is not magic.” She whispered, “That is something else.”

  Her hands shaking slightly, her fa?ade cracking as she gazed back at the side of the ancient construct’s hull—the inscriptions “United Earth Defense Force”—as if she understood what it meant.

  But then they all snapped to attention as the last Stygian in front of them, which had stopped moving quite a while ago after the detonation, opened its numerous distorted mouths.

  “Cover your ears!” Brennan screamed at the top of his lungs.

  Brennan and Lyria immediately went down to their knees, grabbing any sort of plug they could find, while Mira simply stared at the ancient construct.

  The large and long protruding metal on the top of its hull swiveled. Her eyes dilated as she gazed unblinking into the ancient construct while the edge of the metal glowed a bright cerulean color, and with a shockwave that traveled in a concentric circle.

  A thunderous sound echoed through what remained of the forest as Mira and the others had their faces and clothes splattered with crimson and black liquid.

  “Thankfully, it has not produced any acid yet,” Mira said with a plain tone but never leaving her gaze at the ancient construct.

  She wiped off the crimson-black stain from her cheeks and observed the ancient construct as it moved closer to them.

  “United Earth Defense Force,” Mira muttered under the silent air, which made the ancient construct stop in its tracks.