Chapter 54: Chapter 48

The doors fell before him and he went inside, lacking any grace, his every step sending tremors through the steel floor of the facility. The dust that had lain on the floors for ages, pieces of rubble, long broken automatons, tables with various tools on them, all jumped up slightly when he, Tlaltzin Bento, stepped inside, careless of any danger he might find.

His body no longer resembled that of a human form. His torso now looked more like an armored vehicle without tracks, his legs were two elongated columns of servomotors, covered by reinforcement titanium plates, his arms were two long clawed limbs, bristling with weapons and tools meant for slaughter and dissemble. His mechanical body no longer needed such a structural weakness as a head, and so the elder of the Bento tribe removed it.

He stepped inside, the countless sensor arrays in his body came to life, scanning the place for any movement, be it in this reality or any other. It took him but a moment to detect a flicker in the stale air of this place. An optical camouflage. Pathetic.

His systems transmitted the information to his bodyguards at the same moment as hundreds of green beams came from the air itself, only to be stopped by a forcefield produced by one of countless generators in his body. Tlaltzin’s bodyguards, a unit of skinny-looking cyborgs known as Seconborn, charged to his left and right, their inverted legs carrying them over the dusty ground, the plasma dischargers in their arms felling the stealthy foes one after another. Each and every one of them was handpicked by him, he would gladly trust any of them with his life.

Tlaltzin spread his arm forward, allowing the energy to run from his steel insides, all around his skinned body within, and finally coil, like snakes made of thunder, around his hand.

A thunderstorm was unleashed. Lightning, far more potent than anything that nature could ever hope to produce, left his arm, spreading in a perfect pattern that speared the defense automatons, burning entire holes in them and leaving the bots broken before his might. A cloud of nanomachines came from his shoulders, locating even the most stealth targets and signaling their location to his Seconborn and unleashing EMP waves that messed with the targeting systems of the machines.

The Ravaged Lands were a treasure trove unrivaled even to this day. In a similar facility, the first people of the Bento tribe found educational materials on how to change their bodies, escaping the limitations of the flesh. In another, he and his dear Jekaterina found a way to manufacture hover tanks. In another, he, Huntsman, and King found the ancient weapon. All such facilities were valuable beyond any reasonable imagination. And yet, some of them, like this one, hid danger untapped, in this case, a virtual intelligence that went mad. The elder grunted, his lungs producing a sound that was amplified numerous times by the inner workings of his machine frame before emanating from his chest and transforming into a sonic cutter that reduced the five bots in front of him to a pile of steel dust.

It is not the worst that can be found. At least there is no true rogue AI here. Tlaltzin thought, charging forward and allowing his arms to do the work, spinning his torso and shredding the human-sized bird-looking bots, whose wings could disembowel humans with ease and whose torsos were equipped with medium-power laser weaponry. If their bodies had ever been painted in any way, time had eaten away all of their once proud markings, leaving them silent beasts with blue lenses glowing over steel beaks. 

The Seconborn kept their distance from him, doing their job from a safe distance. Some of them jumped to the ceiling, using mag locks on their legs to stay there and fire on the bots beneath. Others were busy connecting to a network of secure systems within the room, turning off the turrets before they could be activated. A few were busy categorizing the tools on the table and taking photos of the surroundings to give the archeologist something to work on later.

Their nimble bodies almost danced around the enemies, in this limited space, the frames of the heavy assault team were almost unusable. There was enough room for Tlaltzin, but if all his elite guards came in the heavy frame, they would just stumble against each other. For this reason, they used the "inferior frames", ones that were meant for the lower ranks. But here and now, they proved that it was skills that mattered, nimbly evading the shots and destroying the opposition with a well-placed burst of plasma, leaving molten pools of steel in the wake of their advance.

Tlaltzin charged through the pathetic guards from the Old World, paying them as much thought as a human armed with a flamethrower would give to a colony of ants in his way. Their steel bodies were shredded by his claws, pierced by energy beams coming from his body, reduced to dust by the augmented sound of his contemptuous laughter. The elder’s sole goal was to reach the mighty gates on the other side of the room. According to what he was able to gather on two floors above, they were nearing the lowest level, where experimental weapons were produced.

The floor to his side came apart and something, a mix between a crab and a centipede, came out. Lightning bolts that were leaving his palms harmlessly splattered against its pitch black body, while a mighty pincer of the creature hit him across the torso, sending all thirty tons of his body into a wall behind him. Tlaltzin crashed into it with the force of a rocket, causing rubble to fall from the ceiling and throwing some of the bots off their steel feet. The robot followed after him, moving on dozens of mechanical legs, each the size of a grown human, its pincers ready to pry his body open. Plasma came from a trio of green eyes at the "head" of the machine, crashing harmlessly against his shield.

The Seconborn turned their attention to this new foe, their weapons spat plasma, aimed at the long, elongated body that was coming from the opening in the floor. The overheated plasma splattered against the steel of the robot, leaving behind not even a burn mark, while the mechanism locked its gaze on the elder, calculating him to be the prime target for its eradication protocols.

Tlaltzin signaled to his Seconborn to stand away from this. He was the elder of the Bento tribe, and few things in the Ravaged Lands could ever hope to be threatening to him. And certainly not this ancient tin can. He extended his arm and the nanomachines that he released earlier began to coalescent around the moving machine, readying to manipulate the laws of physics themselves and to collapse the machine with the power of a short-lived singularity.

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A beam came from the entrance, spearing the machine’s head. The vehicle stopped in confusion when its “head” fell clean off, leaving a dent against the floor. Then it thrashed around, using some sensors to locate the attacker, before five more beams of energy speared its body, leaving the bot a pile of smoking metal.

The one who felled the robotic beast stood at the entrance, one hand still pointing at the downed robot, the other holding the place where he was wounded during the battle for Belaz.

"You have no reason to expose yourself to danger." Tlaltzin said to the figure clad in steel. King limped into the room, his breathing hard despite all his attempts to mask it. There were no gilded horns on his helmet, his whole armor was made to be as light as possible to give the leader of the Resistance a better chance to recuperate from the grievous wounds dealt to him by that blasted blue lizard.

Even in his current armor, King made sure not to show any part of himself to the world. His friend was very picky about not revealing his true form, hiding in his steel shell, acting like an embarrassed student after failing a test. He even refused the help of the medics, treating his wounds in solitude. Tlaltzin paid this no mind. Everyone had a right to keep secrets.

"There is no way I would allow my friend to risk his life…" King came to a halt, reaching for his head, and Tlaltzin charged at him, ready to hold him steady and keep his friend from falling. Tlaltzin and Jekaterina owed their very happiness to King. If not for his mediation, Jekaterina would forever give up on ever trusting the other humans, and he himself would abandon his flesh body forever. The dream of a united Bento-Soultaker state would never have taken off if not for King.

King stopped Tlaltzin with his arm, still holding the left side of his helmet. When he spoke, the strain of suffering could be heard in each and every sentence: "The news just came in. Yasen is dead. Darkhold is most likely fallen by now."

"How do you know it?" The elder asked. Even down here, Tlaltzin was connected to the information net of the Bento tribe. And so far, there has been no news about the fate of either Yasen or Darkhold.

"I have my own ways. Tlaltzin… My dear friend, the strength in my arms, the bearer of my dreams… Find it. To be free of the threat of being enslaved or dominated, we must obtain unrivaled powers. The matter of governance awaits me on the surface, with Yasen’s gone, Blaguna is soon to follow, and I must convince brave Chort to retreat for all our sakes. My dearest friend, I am counting on you to find us a sword and a shield."

Tlaltzin said nothing to this, allowing his leader to leave. King knew that he was not a man of many words. Instead, the elder charged toward the locked gates, smashing aside any bots that tried to stand in his way. His claws struck against the gates, leaving not a scratch on the surface. It will take too long to breach them the normal way. Allowing his Seconborn to guard his back, Tlaltzin pressed his palm to the control panel nearby.

Tlaltzin was a liar. No longer does he control the machinery through carefully crafted programs and protocols. Few in the Bento tribe were aware that he still had more than fleshy eyes and his brain floating in a jar. No, his body, skinned to the meat, was inside the mighty frame, locked into a humanoid-looking mechanical suit. Such frivolous use of space should have hampered his ability to control his current frame, but thanks to his power, all worked with mechanical accuracy. This was the antithesis of everything that the original Bentos believed in, but the elder no longer cared about such trifles.

For Tlaltzin had lost faith in the plan to escape to the virtual world. Instead, he gained faith in something else. This world too deserves a second chance. In the future, after the unification, the elder hoped to subtly influence the Bento tribe, convincing them to give one more chance to flesh, to enjoy the happiness of sharing a bed and a meal with a loved one in the real world and not through friendship separated by steel frames.

And for this reason, he needs to leave the Reclamation Army’s forces in his lands in such ruins that they would never again dare to show their faces in the Ravaged Lands. The blood vessels of his body slid through his steel arms, coming from his palm. And connected to the control panel, allowing his very being to become one with it.

All to find a weapon to kill the gilded lizard. Wohali might not approve of his obsession, but his old teacher will come around in time. King was right. Power was the only thing that could keep a person free.

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