Chương 277

As they drew closer, the fog thinned, pulling back to reveal a sprawling compound of poured concrete, brass tubes, and smokestacks venting smoke. Orion crouched on the hill overlooking the basin, adjusting the data streams to learn as much as possible. The Arcane Overlay struggled against the heavy concentration of Silence in the air, throwing intermittent static across his vision, but the purely physical thermal scans provided a perfectly clear picture of the staging ground.

Though at first he'd been reminded of the secret plant beneath Silverpeak, this was an actual industrial fortress. A high concrete wall encircled it, studded with alchemical turrets and patrolled by a continuous rotation of Centurions. Its size alone was at least six times that of the secret facility, and the quality of its guardians was even greater. Within the walls, the base was divided into three distinct sectors.

To the west stood a cluster of chemical silos, linked by a web of pipes that pumped yellow sludge into the main complex. To the east lay the barracks and vehicle bays, crawling with augmented soldiers. At the center, dwarfing everything else, sat a sprawling, windowless manufacturing hub.

"The big one is where most of the activity is taking place," Orion whispered, tracing the heat signatures with his eyes and replicating them into a light construct for the others' benefit that slowly began to take shape.

"The thermal output suggests it's where most of the heavy machinery is, and if an Apprentice is here, it will be there. I can also see assembly lines where they build the Walkers and process the Silence gas directly inside. I can't get precise details, but the amount of signaling coming out of there and its sheer speed suggest there is a construct regulating it all at the heart of that structure, managing the automated defenses and the production." Garrick stared down at the compound's mock-up.

"We cannot sneak seven people through a perimeter that tight. The Burrowers have seismic sensors, and I can see the guards are wearing better armor. A single misstep would bring a small army down on our heads." Everyone else remained silent, giving him the time he needed to decide. Though they'd not been a team for long, they'd all come to respect Garrick in their own way, whether merely for his prowess in battle, like Erethemor, or for his experience; they knew he wouldn't steer them wrong.

"We should split up. I'll lead a frontal assault on the eastern gate with Jordan, Erethemor, and Daus. We'll hit them hard, loud, and fast, drawing every machine and every soldier to the eastern wall, where we can retreat to more favorable ground."

"You want to expose the center," Verner noted mildly.

"Exactly," Garrick agreed.

"Esmeralda, Verner, Orion. You are the infiltration team. While we attack the eastern gate, slip through the northern drainage culverts. Esmeralda, you'll be in charge. I expect you to do your best to keep them out of trouble. Verner, handle any magical trouble on your way. Orion, watch out and guide them to the core. Find this operating system and destroy it."

Considering that the central construct seemed connected to every machine at the same time, its destruction would at the very least cause much chaos, if not directly deactivate the entire garrison.

"They'll fight hard until we can destroy it," Orion warned. He wasn't opposed to the plan, but he'd seen firsthand what the more powerful machines could do. Even Centurions, who no longer seemed as foreboding as they once had, could become truly formidable enemies if properly directed by a central intelligence.

"I know," Garrick replied. He seemed appropriately grave, so Orion let it go, though that was also his default expression. I hope he really does. If we're killed here, it will be a far more serious loss than a mere mission failure. He was still nervous about Team Obsidian's sheer potential. It allowed them to punch above their weight class, which was good, but even a single loss would have grave ramifications. After a few moments of silent contemplation, Garrick looked at each of them and met their eyes.

"Now, contingencies. If the core is protected behind defenses you cannot breach, pivot to the western silos. Rupture the coolant lines and let the acid flood the compound. If the facility goes on high alert before you infiltrate far enough, abandon the mission and fall back to the river bend. Failing here would be bad, but dying would be far worse. Understood?" The team offered a chorus of quiet assent.

"Good," Garrick said. He looked at Jordan, Erethemor, and Daus.

"Let's give them five minutes to reach the culverts. Then we'll show these machines what Cyril is made of." The three gave various signs of understanding, but from the dragonkin's feral grin, Orion suspected the show would feature more than a little fire. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Well, better that he goes all out against our enemies when no one around him is too weak to defend themselves. And the more attention they attract, the further we'll be able to go.

Then it was time to move out. Esmeralda wove a sphere of dark mana around the three of them. The shadows clung to their coats, absorbing stray light and muffling the sound of their boots. Once she was satisfied with her handiwork, they slipped down the hill like ghosts through the mist. The northern wall loomed ahead, slick with condensation and acidic runoff. A wide iron grate covered a drainage pipe that discharged warm, foul-smelling water into a carved trench.

Orion pressed his hand against the iron bars and found the metal already rusted, despite having been forged no more than a few months earlier. He summoned a point of gravity at the base of the hinges, twisting the vectors sharply. The grate sheared with a soft crunch, and Verner caught it before it could fall into the water, then set it gently against the concrete wall. They slipped into the pipe and began to make their way through.

The smell was foul enough to force him to pull a cloth over his face, leaving only his eyes exposed, and even then, he could still taste the acidity in the air. Still, he trudged on, following Esmeralda as Verner watched the rear. A while later, as they reached the end of the tunnel and light filtered through, a deafening roar echoed across the base. They scrambled, hurrying to get out of the pipe before the fighting could really start. As they reached the light, the ground shook.

A brilliant flash pierced the fog through the drainage pipe behind them, followed immediately by the staccato thunder of alchemical rifles and the shriek of tearing metal. Erethemor's draconic bellow rattled the tunnel's concrete walls shortly after.

"To give them their due, I would certainly be distracted by that," Verner whispered, drawing a thin smile from Orion.

"Keep moving," Esmeralda urged, her eyes glowing crimson in the gloom. As they left the tunnel behind, they emerged into a maintenance access shaft that, as Orion expected, led directly into the central manufacturing hub. The temperature inside rose sharply, and he had to wipe a bead of sweat from his brow as his glasses finally made sense of the sheer scale of the base's industrial capacity. Through the steel grating overhead, he watched an assembly line in motion.

Mechanical arms welded brass plating onto a Walker's chassis. Augmented workers in treated aprons hauled vats of green fluid, fusing organic material into the machines. The Silence was so dense that it felt like a clog against his eardrums. His CC warned him of extreme mana suppression, forcing him to manually reroute the connection once more, lest he be left without one. Esmeralda glided up a rusted access ladder, forming her rapier as she climbed.

She vanished through a floor grate, reappearing a moment later to signal the all-clear, the blade greedily drinking in fresh blood. Orion and Verner followed. They stepped onto a suspended catwalk overlooking the factory floor as she took the time to throw the dried-out corpse of a worker back into the hatch.

"Where are we?" She asked softly, keeping her back pressed against a steel pillar. Orion pushed mana into his glasses, sweeping the corridor ahead. The overlay filled with glowing orange figures.

"We're a third of the way through. I see two guards by the blast doors at the end of the hall," he reported.

"But there's something else. Look up." He pointed toward the ceiling. Tucked in the shadows beneath the crossbeams, a small multi-legged mechanical construct hung motionless, its glass optics slowly scanning the catwalk.

"That looks like a burrower, though much smaller and with more optics," Verner murmured.

"It's likely equipped to send out an alarm." Esmeralda's lips curled into a predatory smile. She melted into the shadows, her form blurring into an indistinct shape. A second later, she materialized directly beside the mechanical spider. Her rapier flashed, piercing the brass casing and impaling the organic core with surgical precision. And that is why you send Tier Three people on this kind of mission.

To destroy it in one blow, I would have needed a much flashier spell, whereas she could channel all that mana into her rapier without anyone noticing. She caught the dead machine before it could fall, lowering it silently onto the catwalk, then turning to the guards. They were dead before they even knew it.

Taken in by her illusions—which he noticed she had to reapply multiple times because the Silence ruined their stability—they were left staring dazedly as Esmeralda simply walked up to them, ripped their throats out, bled them dry, and threw them into the hatch with their fellow. Verner took over then, tracing a series of glowing blue runes in the air. He pressed his palm against the blast doors. A subtle wave of arcane mana rippled through the metal, disrupting the pneumatic locks.

The doors hissed open, releasing a rush of stale air. They slipped inside, leaving the assembly lines behind. The inner half of the facility was eerily quiet. Soft yellow lights bathed the corridors in a strange glow, yet as more explosions rocked the camp and more guards were drawn out, they found their path surprisingly clear, allowing them to cross the corridors with impunity until they reached a large chamber where Orion had calculated the central machine would be, based on the path the signals took.

He was right, though he almost wished he hadn't been. As he'd come to expect, the machine was a towering cylinder of glass and brass, filled with a bubbling, translucent fluid. Suspended in the liquid was an immense, grotesque organic structure. It looked like a dozen human brains stitched together into a single mass, linked to a sprawling network of copper wires and alchemical tubes that fed directly into the floor.

"That's it," Orion muttered in disgust. He had to admit that hijacking a brain's processing power to bypass the lack of computers was a remarkable achievement, but he couldn't forget that those brains had once belonged to someone and were kept in a constant state of pain. Iron State Amalgam - Coordination Protocol Class: High Cerebral Homunculus [A-rank] Level: 151 Mind:??? Attunement:??? Body:??? Traits: Arcane Void [A-rank]; Hive-Mind Integration [A-rank];??? [A-rank];??? [A-rank];??? [A-rank];???

[A-rank] Goddamnit, not now! Unfortunately, the Silence was far too thick for him to grasp everything the System was trying to tell him. Still, with effort, he began to parse the messy data until a stark blue warning prompt flashed across his vision. Orion stopped. He blinked, adjusted the lens's sensitivity, and tried again. No, it was correct the first time. Something isn't right. Glowing faintly beneath the alchemical residue was an intricate, highly structured weave of arcane magic.

It was a complex matrix of interlocking runes and swooping lines, something that should have been impossible for the Iron State's alchemists, given that he could recognize a few bits and pieces from what he'd seen of the Collegium mages.