They moved like forgotten horrors, twisted creatures of gearing and steel. Dozens of legs undulated with unnatural jerks, slipping from motionless to blurring speed as six automata raced down the hall in loose formation.

  Kaius slowed his approach, cautious. This was a new foe, and for all that an eager hunger simmered in his chest, his blood-song had been tempered by experience. They might have done research in the guild for histories of combat against these beasts, but he knew better than to trust such things with his life.

  He couldn't help but focus on their build. They were dissimilar from the descriptions he'd heard of the ancient Empire’s weapons of war — too small, and their armour too thin, with three arms on each side ending in tools of all things.

  He wondered if they were more the corrupted tools of artifice than true guardians. Still, a chisel stabbed as well as any knife, and even though they were smaller than what he'd heard of war automata, they were not small. Each one's torso was wrapped in flawless metal plating that looked equivalent to medium armour. With their long spider-like legs, they towered at least as tall as Ianmus, at seven strides, perhaps more.

  Their lack of heads only made them seem more imposing; it left nothing to humanise them — just many-limbed hunks of deadly steel.

  Still, if they were automata, they should have levels, although perhaps that was only true of the combat models. He focused his Truesight to be sure.

  Imperial Worker-drone - Level 150

  Automaton, Artisan

  Kaius tensed in surprise. They were artisans… but for crafter automata to have that level. An unpleasant surprise, indeed. He pushed the information he had gleaned to Porkchop through their bond, knowing that the rest of his team had their own identification ability. All he got was a growl of affirmation.

  Kenva struck first.

  Mana surged through her bow and stamina fuelled her limbs. She loosed, an arrow racing down the hall with a snapping crack. Wreathed in a howling aura of wind, it punched straight through the chest of the leading automaton. Sparks and snapping discharges of mana ruptured from the torn rent in the metal, and shrapnel burst outwards.

  To Kaius’ displeasure, the creature didn't even stumble, ignoring the wound as it continued charging forth. He'd known that fighting the creatures would be similar to undead, but these were made of metal — metal reinforced with the power of stats. He’d seen Kenva’s arrow tear through the defences of Silvers; in comparison, the damage to the automaton had been minor.

  They needed to locate the core if they wanted to destroy the creatures. At the very least, Kenva's shot had proven that their strength was still enough to sunder the angled plates that surrounded the artificial life’s innards. Without the regenerative properties of Health, they could focus on fouling the fine gearing that was exposed on the joints of their limbs.

  He called out his ideas to his team as they rushed to meet the approaching threat. Porkchop could blunt their charge, while Ianmus and Kenva focused on disabling movement. He was confident in his blade, especially when backed with the powers of Mystic’s Rend and Mercurial Reversal. Plus, with Sergeant's Insight, he should have the best shot at finding their core. Kenva would likely be able to help with that as well, considering the sensitivity of her own ocular skill.

  They charged as the strides disappeared between them and the approaching force. Thank gods that these automata lacked true projectile weapons, letting his back line assault them with impunity as they closed the gap.

  With every step, arrows and lances of light shot past him, yet, to his surprise, not all of them found their mark. The automata were wily, agile things that skittered to and fro. Their joints seemed to have a full range of motion, bending in ways impossible to creatures of flesh and blood as they reacted instantly to the incoming projectiles.

  While he and his team far outpowered them, they moved with seemingly perfect cohesion.

  Still, the power of stats was impossible to deny. Kaius watched as one of Ianmus’ sunbeams lanced into one of the reticulating arms of the leading automaton right at the shoulder. The joint fouled, seizing, yet it had four more below it; the movement of the limb was only partially frozen.

  Seeing the level of redundancy, his back line shifted to the lower limbs and, one by one, they slowed the approach of the mechanical creatures.

  Porkchop let out a roar, speeding up his pace as the very ground quaked beneath his feet, tapping into his skill, Breaker of Men. It took him bare moments to reach the automata. As the gap closed, he plunged his claws into the ground at the last second. A shard-wall erupted, breaking the charge of the automata. A cacophonous metal clang filled the air, as the solid wall of orichalcum smashed into the insectile creatures, .

  Kaius raced in behind Porkchop’s skill, ready as soon as the magic dissipated. Vision restored, he found the creatures quickly recovering — fallen in a battered tangle of limbs, yet righting themselves with unnatural precision, without fear and confusion. Despite the sudden assault, their artificial minds brought them to their feet in moments.

  Hells. He was barely even sure if they'd managed to take down the three automata at the rear of their formation. It looked like, as soon as their closer allies had been impacted, they'd relied on their precision reflexes and agility to dart back in time with the moving wall.

  Still, they were corralled right to where he wanted them. As Porkchop bounded in to his right, setting on the meat of the group with his bulk and the smashing blows of metallic crystal, Kaius set his eyes on the left-most in the pack. Time to see if ancient steel could match up with his reborn blade.

  “Hold off the pack! I’ll take one and locate their cores!”

  He dashed in as soon as he got Porkchop’s affirmative grunt, leaning on his senses and skills as he drank in his opponent. Target or no, he was not so green as to forget the rest of the battle. One automaton lunged, capitalising on a blind spot that Porkchop had, only for a clawed paw to snake out and dig into its chest as Kaius fell deep into his bond, feeding his senses to his brother. The path was clear.

  Kaius kicked off with his back foot as his many-limbed opponent flew into a blur of smashing hammer-blows and stabbing chisels and drill bits. As it moved, time almost seemed to slow—arcs of violent intent cutting through the air. Kaius could see the very paths of its assaults, and he flowed around them like water.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Witnessing its arm whip up high into a hammer-blow that would come down towards his skull, Kaius snapped his blade up. Energy flooded his sword as he tapped Mercurial Reversal, accelerating his parry as the edge of his sword screamed its way through the air. , Biting deep into alchemical steel, Kaius levered as he stepped in to slip around a lancing chisel that shot for his chest.

  With the creature's arm caught in his bind, Kaius felt the force leach from its strike, flooding into his blade and potentiating in a gleaming shine at the tip of his sword.

  Guiding it to the left and low, he snapped out of his parry with a twist of his wrists, lunging forward into a thrust. Armoured it might have been, large it might have been — an impossible work of artifice it most certainly was — it wasn't enough to defend the creature from his blow.

  Tortured steel screeched as crystal dragged along its ragged edge, punching deep into its torso. Kaius widened his senses, searching for any sign of where the core might be — a heightened glow of magic, perhaps. It was hard to tell. The entire damn creature glowed like it was an artefact, lacking much of the natural variance and flowing energy that could be seen in a thing of flesh and blood.

  He was forced to abort his strike a moment later as the automaton pressed on with its assault, utterly uncaring of the damage he had just inflicted. Three limbs moved to pincer him—blows that would have ripped through his throat and punched into his spine.

  A Moment of Flow highlighted the path of danger. Kaius felt energy flood his limbs, a magical counterpart to his natural adrenaline dump at a potential threat. He moved, his skill hastening his speed, as he kicked back, sliding out of range.

  As its attack was foiled, Kaius felt something ephemeral grow within him — accumulated peril utilised by Sergeant's Insight making itself known. The natural inclination of the skill to direct his attention to weaknesses and openings intensified, dragging his eyes to the hair-fine cracks on the creature's armoured stomach caused by the earlier holes he had punched higher up in its torso.

  Moving quickly, Kaius slipped a hand from his blade and thrust; his potentiated magic burst from the glyph of Drakthar on the back of his palm. A spike of twisted steel and hate slammed home into the gap. Lodged halfway into the finger-thick steel, it unfurled, wrenching open the crack to reveal the automaton’s innards.

  He'd hoped it was the moment he was waiting for — where their core would be revealed and they could press their assault to a quick end.

  For all their hardiness, the automata were no match for them; it was only their unrelenting persistence that had allowed them to survive for so long, ignoring blown-off limbs and wounds that would have crippled an organic creature.

  Yet the only sight he saw, gazing into the creature's chest, was gearing and metal plating of unimaginable complexity — wires, hair-fine, with even finer runes inscribed, stretching in a tangled mess. Some of it was important, but he struggled to see where — Sergeant's Insight only painted the whole thing as a weakness to exploit.

  A feral grin spread across his face. He supposed they would just have to destroy all of it, piece by piece, until he found the core. With Porkchop using his weight and size to smash back automata every time they charged, he didn't have to worry about being overwhelmed. He dashed back in, right as an arrow slid past his hip and slammed into one of the spider legs on his target.

  It skittered, remaining limbs suddenly adjusting to the change in its balance. Kaius smelled opportunity. Wanting to conserve his spells as much as possible for what could end up being an extended battle, he kicked off, a spike of stamina fuelling the movement, as he appeared next to the creature.

  Five limbs went towards him. Ancient steel gave out as A Father’s Gift flowed into a dizzying blitz of counterstrikes, hacking at its arms — the metal only a few finger-widths wide.

  Stamina fuelled Initiate's Glyphic Bladerite, honing the sharpness of his blade as its enchantments were empowered. Relying on speed more than brute force, it wasn't enough to sever each limb in one go, but he had accuracy on his side. Snapping from high to low, he slammed his blade home on the divot he had made in an earlier parry, shearing through one of the automaton’s limbs. It clattered to the ground. The others followed quickly, leaving the creature defenceless. Still, it flowed on, two front limbs ending in pointed spikes rising to dart in viper-like strikes.

  Step by step, Kaius directed the pace of their engagement. His Insight and Moment of Flow synergised beautifully — the former drawing his attention to feints and particularly dangerous blows, even as the latter visually painted the route that its weapons would take in a breath’s time. It almost made it easy. For all the automaton was swift and preternaturally graceful, he was faster.

  The pressure he felt from Sergeant’s Insight grew with every blow he slipped past, potentiating the nudges it gave him towards the creature’s openings. A leg just a hair out of place was blown open with the whining crack of a Rend. Barely a second later, when he slid around a sudden lunge, he fouled delicate internals with a sudden mundane swipe.

  Still no bloody core. Where the hell was it? The notes in the guild said they were usually found in the chest cavity, but he’d rained hell on the creature’s internals and done little more than slow it. With how fragile runework could be, the creature should have long since been disabled.

  “Found it!” Kenva cried from behind and above him.

  Turning slightly, he caught sight of the ranger out of the corner of his eye — mid-air, with the roots of her Vinestride still coiled around her legs. Her bow was at full extension, aiming right at the exposed internals of his opponent. Not bothering to answer, Kaius kicked back to give his friend room to aim.

  Her arrow fired a moment later, coiled with potent mana that enlarged it to the size of a spear — a Lance of Fury. The oversized projectile shot straight through the creature of steel, deep into its girdle.

  Focused with his full attention, Kaius watched it shatter a box the size of his fist. Mana roared free, a conflagration that consumed the automaton with a sudden blast of arcane fury.

  Rotten bloody roots — the core had been shielded! He’d thought it had been a simple structural component of its skeleton, given how dead it had seemed compared to other, rune-dense components. It fell to the ground a heartbeat later, dead and inactive.

  “It’s a box in the centre of their hips, just slightly forward from the direct middle!” Kaius called out, relaying what he had seen. “Shielded from manasight!”

  Porkchop roared out his Bulwark’s Challenge, smashing back two of the remaining automata with a Shardwall as he held the line, their artisans’ tools struggling to break through his armour.

  Strange — that was the second time he’d used the skill this battle. Was the roar less effective? Regardless, they had a job to do.

  Watching Porkchop outright crush the hips of a downed automaton with a limb wrapped in a crude mace of orichalcum, Kaius raced in to join him. A thin whine echoed out from his blade as a wire of unstable arcane magic surrounded its edge. Slipping under a hasty swipe, Kaius punched his blade deep into the base of the closest automaton’s hips. His skill detonated a moment later.

  **Ding! You have slain Imperial Worker-drone - Level 150 Living Tool!**

  **Experience Gained! Reduced Experience for slaying a foe of significantly lower level!**

  Kaius let out a feral grin. Now that they’d found their cores, the automata weren’t so tough.

  It took them a bare minute to crush the rest.

  “Let’s move!” Kaius said, gesturing down the hall.

  They had plenty of ground to cover yet, and no doubt there were plenty more steel creations waiting for them in this half-living ruin. No point getting bogged down here.