Chương 72: Book 8 - Chapter 68 - The nature of the enemy

In hindsight, the full scheme Avalis had cooked up was more understandable. He'd gotten hold of the same exact mass call to action. So he knew Talen was coming here solely from Urs broadcasting to the world he was at the citadel. Avalis probably caught wind of Talen shortly after making his way, likely from the loss of reports and scouts along the path getting crushed by the man. After an hour or two, he could probably calculate the estimated time Talen would make it here, so he'd have a timeline to work with.

And if we were getting near the end of that timeline, then he'd be trying to buy himself more time: By kicking me out of the citadel. The moment Urs was brought anywhere else, chances of Talen finding us went back to what it was before - basically zero. After which, Avalis would have plenty of time to fully prepare every last possible resource to throw my way and not be constrained to solely nine hours of plotting and logistics planning.

Unfortunately for him, I generally don't cooperate well with enemy plans, and take great joy in messing with them. The nearest machine jammer I could find was one floor down, and a few dozen feet off our side. We stormed out as a unit into the hallways, cutting down every target enemy in the path. Poor metal bastards were caught on a two-front war: A group of Crusaders had gathered up and were making a hard push to fight their way to the control center, probably trying to come to our rescue.

Instead of needing rescue, my small army burst out the fortified doorway, and swept through the enemy like they were opened ration bars tossed into the chicken pens, quickly cutting a path to the 'rescue' group and incorporating them into our rising tide. Another twenty seven Crusaders joined ranks behind us without question. They had no idea where we were going, what the plan was, or even say much more than a few acknowledged salutes.

They form up behind the Winterscar knights and took on well practiced formations, lockstep with the others. We advanced forward and had to fight for just about every inch of metal and polished granite we passed by. Machines were crawling everywhere. The variety of them were just as different as the Feathers. Some were smaller swarms, too small to effectively swipe a blade through or shoot bullets into, but flames from my occult ghosts and pulses of force put them down fast.

Others were longer snake-like weasel bodies, similar to murdershrimp, just far more suited for scrambling around the hallways with the right size for it. They'd move around constantly avoiding shots and firepower, all the while firing out some kind of acid spit that ate away at shields if it landed. Our version of acid spit was the occult gel and that ate shields way faster. The machine-weasels were also unfortunately not well equipped to being stabbed through the walls by ghost blades stabbing into their bellies.

And this close up to rifles, they couldn't dodge bullets very well either. This time, with full control of the situation again, not a single crusader in our expedition party was killed, though there were a few close calls that Wrath patched up. And we couldn't leave anyone behind either, because the machines were flooding the citadel just as quickly as they were being put down.

The control center itself was already being breached again, as some machine-tunneler type was cutting a hole through the ceiling, letting a fresh wave of Lessers led by a Feather dive into the empty room looking for me. Given it was a single Feather instead of a squad, I could already tell Avalis was losing control over his tightly woven plots and plans because Feathers. Glory seekers were going to become his problem real soon, and I for one welcomed the enemy stepping all over each other's feet.

The soul sight was really pulling heavy duty, but the sheer amount of things happening around me was equally hard to keep track of. Urs was much better; He was feeding me the important bits through the soul tendril link I had, like a friendly handshake between us. I was able to sense a lot more from him this close. He had an alien way to see the world, where the concepts of the occult itself were revealed to him. And soul tendrils themselves did have a shadow in the occult in a way I couldn't quite understand.

But I did realize one thing: He was impressed and content. Specifically with me, and for the most banal of reasons - the Winterblossom technique. He hadn't considered moving the soul around his own body until he could no longer move it himself, in order to fool the armor sensors. He'd gotten too used to having such fine and precise control with his body, all he had to do was turn off his nervous system and connect directly to the armor to puppeteer it.

He had no idea how to replicate that speed to a normal non-modified human, since we couldn't turn off our nerves like a computer. He'd been the original creator of the imperial technique for the Imperators, and he'd rather disliked the idea of permanently crippling a human body in order to allow the armor to handle the rest, despite the volunteers still doing so willingly.

My solution with the soul fractal was far more 'elegant' in his thoughts, and he felt rather silly to not have considered it himself, as the one who worked with armor the most. He had all the tools and information to do so, he just didn't have the same perspective I came with.

"Everything's built on everything else." I told him as we scythed through the chambers and hanger until we reached one of the staircases downwards.

"I wouldn't feel too much regret at missing some easy wins. We got there in the end." He seemed surprised I knew what he was thinking, until he realized his thoughts were bleeding through our connection. Although more in a quirk of curiosity manner, not an instinctive fear for privacy. The stairwells here were a slight roadblock.

To'Avalis had clearly studied the architecture of the entire fortress and had ordered some of his forces to blockade the staircases, likely giving them orders to hit the ground running directly for these areas. Giant walls of viscous caustic chemicals formed large walls of slime, all supported by a lattice of plastic and ceramic, currently being put down by machine worms on the other end with one too many ant-like Lessers climbing all over.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. The worm machines were taking in material, erasing it, and converting the matter into more of the slime, while the ant-like machines were busy constructing the solid barrier where the slime would then be packed into, slowly hardening. I could tell right away the acid here would trigger armor shields up, and then would start to burn through the metal.

It was already fizzing at the bottom of each stair, where parts of it had dribbled over the flat ceramic tiles the ants had laid down as the foundation.

"Clearly built to prevent the rest of the citadel from responding and cooperating." Father said, coming to a stop near the barricade. The rest of the citadel, but not us. That's because my occult ghosts could easily travel through material like that, where they sank through into the enemy nest and started slicing away at all the machine infestation. We tried to burn our way through the material, but it was fire resistant. That didn't stop us, because while it might resist fire, it didn't resist massive shockwaves.

Urs triggered Resolve, and I felt the occult crackle through my hands as I triggered a shockwave directly through, empowered by the emperor himself. It blasted the entire thing all the way to the very end of the path, where it remained squashed up. Any of the machines that had somehow still been alive after my occult ghosts ripped through were now crushed bits of metal.

"That worked." I said, examining my handiwork. We hurried down to the lower level right after, repeating the process a few times over, clearing the obstacles, until we came to the right floor and exploded out into the hangar here. Feathers had built a barricade of sorts around other Feathers who were dedicated to defense. They'd all been bickering with each other as we arrived, but whatever To'Avalis had done to convince them, they did at least try to work together. For all the good it did them.

I had Winterscar Knights, Father himself, Wrath, more Crusaders following right behind us constantly streaming into the hangar through the cleared staircases, and three imperators who could also move just as fast as the Winterscars could. The time dilation fractal each of my knights used was what tilted the favor from Feathers being able to outspeed everyone, to our side being able to out-speed them.

And of course, Superior was with me, collecting several hundred versions of himself into only a handful of dimensions. In those dimensions, we came into that hangar with a wall of spears launched straight at the enemy. Whatever happened to survive that assault was cut into pieces as the rest of my forces rushed behind like highly methodical attack dogs. The enemy rushed reserve defenses immediately through the portals lined up within the chamber here, but that wasn't going to stop our attack force.

Avalis sent some interesting Feathers who'd been dedicated to peeling Urs off my back. A good attempt on his part to keep his jammers protected, but this attempt only caused three prime dimensions to be scratched off as a loss, and combined back to the main root. One of those reinforcing Feathers could have done a lot more damage, but she had the unfortunate fate of jumping out of her portal directly into Father. She did not survive long enough to complete whatever she'd been trying to channel.

"This is it then." I said, walking through the chamber of dead machine corpses, as the last of the Winterscar knights up ahead sealed up the portals and the Crusaders hacked the machine Lessers into pieces.

"I can see the creation of it was recent." Urs said, equally probing the heavy box-like machine here.

"The metal itself retains properties of being recently molded. And it holds no sign of being made by a mite forge. Your opponent is creating these items by his own ability."

"And he's cutting corners just about everywhere he can." I said, looking over the abomination of efficient functional construction. The Feathers and machines had carried it by hand through the portals into the chamber here, all while fighting off the original defenders inhabiting this hanger. Four handles had been cut into the jammer itself, quite literally. He hadn't bothered putting even handles on these things.

Journey opened up the spectrum analyzer and I rapidly went through the data it was releasing, mixing it slightly with what I could see in the occult sight. The results were unsurprising considering Avalis.

"The signals are specialized."

"Specialized?" He knew way more than I did, but there were still some gaps here and there I'd learned by sheer chance, and wireless signals happened to be something I worked on often a year ago. Before all this.

"I think Avalis couldn't get a full understanding of how the Icon's setup here until he actually had a foothold. This both jams the local area and also cuts into any propagated signals. Which would include his own forces."

"I see the issue." Urs concluded as we looked over the box.

"Can we override it or infect their network maybe? We have Wrath with us. She might be able to generate a counter signal?" She stepped forward, ready to engage in her current best skillset: Abusing the viral suite the Icon had handed her from her own tinkering. That thing was now a real monster.

"He must have accounted for an opponent with matching cyber security prowess, I do not believe there is any chance at digital warfare." Urs said, and within the link there was an additional bit of unsaid information: The Icon would have already developed a counter-signal if she could. To'Avalis must have gone full scorched earth, fully randomized attacks that had no patterns to exploit. And Urs caught that part too when he searched deeper within the box.

"These are hardware specific. Built for one purpose and one purpose only. However…" His thoughts bled through, and the plan was quickly taking shape. I turned to the soldiers here, while slicing through the cube's antenna, effectively breaking the jammer in one swift motion.

"He's designed these to be quickly buildable and deployable. He knows the soldiers here will default to destroying the jammers directly when there isn't any other option, and specifically built these without mites so that they couldn't block their creation. But there's a limit to his logistics without mites. If we send strike teams backwards through some of these portals back into Avalis's home turf, we'll find the equipment or machines he's using to create these.

Destroying that will ruin everything on his end, he'll no longer be able to build them." I held a hand out, and Journey supplied a three dimensional image of the full citadel map.

"The Icon's signal originates from the center vault. Each jammer we break from that location upwards will bring her back online. And we'll need to make our way to the vault as well. Avalis didn't know how the Icon was communicating with the citadel, nor that it's the Icon at all." Conviction had been the one spotted storming Relinquished's turf, and likely everyone on the machine side assumed it was A01 leading the defense of humanity.

That's the last we got from the Icon during her nine hour war thus far, Avalis is likely running on the same information or else he'd be coming after the Icon in a far more direct way. And speaking of: "He'll be working hard to track down the mite terminal that's got us connected to our real commander, and then physically slice it apart." Which meant we had to do a war on multiple fronts.

Eliminate his home factories so that jammers couldn't be built and carried into the citadel, find out how he was generating portals all over the place, and also safeguard the Icon's foothold before it was overrun. I knew it was in good hands right now, held by Sagrius and a few of the older Deathless, so it'll hold off the enemy for some time. But eventually Avalis will come to the conclusion that this is where the Icon's source signal would come from, if the heavy resistance there hadn't already warned him.

"The vault is the highest priority to defend. Eliminating his jammers or closing all his portals would be worthless to us if the Icon's signal is cut completely. I'll make my way there and hold the ground personally." I turned to the gathered group here, "Once the vault is secured, you will all need to split into groups and fan outwards from the vault to break the jammers.

You'll jump through to the enemy portals into their territory and break anything they're using to make replacements, and then shut down the portals themselve- wait, really?" Urs sent me one last message, still feeling timid about giving speeches like this. And what he told me could change everything. When I heard his plan, I couldn't help but start laughing.

"You've only spent a few hours on my back, and you're already thinking like a Winterscar."

"I am uncertain of your House's particular specialties, however I see you continually use all resources available to you, including your enemy's tools. I believe that to be a wise method of operation.:"I'm so proud my own house is now corrupting the only god we've got left." Urs could see concepts of the occult itself. Which also meant understanding them at a far more instinctive level. Right down to being able to reverse engineer the equation from the concept itself if left to his own devices for long enough.

I turned back to the group, smiling.

"Change of plans everyone: We're going to steal Avalis's portal tech for ourselves."