THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS VIOLENCE THAT MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR SOME READERS.
The high-pitched whine of the charging energy cannon reached a high, almost aching peak.
Damon threw up a shield of light right in front of Klaven's chest. The blue blast slammed into the barrier, shielding Klaven from the direct impact, though its side effect made blood burst from his ears.
Nyra dropped from Damon's shoulder without a second thought, hitting the dirt with her hands clamped over her ears.
Damon hitched his grip on Alya's cold, lifeless body, his voice dropping to a harsh, focused whisper as he took in Klaven's state in the machine's grasp.
"What's happening here? Isn't he working for them?"
Cythera clenched her jaw. Her eyes stayed locked on her cousin—bloodied, limp, and barely breathing in the machine's grasp.
The robot ignored Damon's shield entirely, tossing Klaven aside like a piece of scrap metal. He hit the dirt with a heavy thud.
The machine's torso spun unnaturally, its joints popping as it swiveled toward the group. Its four mechanical arms twitched into a fresh alignment, and it punched a fast sequence into its forearm console. A low vibration rattled the undergrowth.
A split second later, Damon—even with Alya's heavy weight dragging on his shoulder—Cythera, and Nyra all felt a massive energy spike rushing through the trees.
Shapes tore through the thick vegetation. Dozens of them.
Nyra took a step back, her eyes widening. "There's almost… a hundred of them. How did a hundred soldiers get in here?"
"That's not the point, Nyra," Damon said.
The three of them moved fast, turning until their backs were pressed against each other in a circle.
"I'll get the core from the one with four arms," Damon muttered, eyes tracking the crowd. "Doran said he wanted Alya and me, so I'll take her core and lead these guys away from you."
Cythera glared over her shoulder. "How do you intend to do that with Alya in your arms? Or have you also forgotten the side effects of every blast?"
"I've got a plan," Damon shot back. "You just focus on beating these guys around us. Try your best to hit them before they can fire."
Nyra braced her legs, sparks already flickering on her knuckles. "Have you two formed an actual plan yet? Because these guys aren't waiting!"
The robot with four arms didn't give them another second. It pointed its sword straight at the trio in the circle, ordering its men to attack. A single, heavy blast fired from the tip of its blade.
"Scatter!" Damon yelled.
Damon, Nyra, and Cythera scattered in separate directions.
The blast cratered the dirt right where they had been standing, detonating into a massive shower of soil. The concussive shockwave tore through the clearing. Blood leaked from their ears, and they gritted their teeth against the sharp, stabbing pain.
Damon hit the ground in a crouch, wiping his face with his free hand. 'It doesn't hurt as much as before...' he thought, looking up. '...but can Nyra hold out?'
He checked on his sister.
Nyra was already charging, her boots carving deep trenches into the soil. She ducked under a metal fist, grabbed a robot by its heavy leg, and used her raw strength to swing the entire machine into three others, shattering their visors.
Every punch she landed boomed like a cannon, though the flames around her knuckles began to die down as she switched to pure physical force for the fight.
On the other side, Cythera's hands were thrust downward. Her aura dropped the temperature in a flash, sending frost crawling across the ground in a jagged spiderweb pattern before the earth ruptured.
Massive ice spikes shot out of the dirt, impaling the robotic bodies and pinning them mid-air. She was already drawing a long, swirling stream of water when Damon thought:
'They seem to be doing fine,'
Then his eyes shifted down. 'Klaven…'
He looked down and saw Klaven's limp, almost pitiful body sprawled in the dirt. Damon froze for a second, struck by how completely broken the boy looked.
'I see. He was just trying to help us escape after all. I thought he'd been working for Doran this entire time. I let our past encounter cloud my judgment. That's a mistake on my part, but I guess anyone would do that. What I don't get is his sudden change of heart.'
A mechanical hum cut through his thoughts.
In a flash, the four-armed robot thrust its sword straight at Damon's face. Without a hint of panic, Damon tilted his head just enough to let the blade hiss past, then lashed out with the back of his free fist.
The backhand sent the machine flying backward. Damon didn't let it escape; he lunged, caught it by the ankles mid-air, and slammed it down into the dirt.
BOOM!
The impact cratered the ground, splintering the soil wide open. The violent shockwave rattled the entire clearing, forcing a weak groan from Klaven as his eyes fluttered open.
Damon didn't waste a second. He reached into the crater, grabbed Princess Alya's core from the robot's grip, and kicked the machine high into the sky. Before it could even try to recover, Damon unhinged his jaw and blasted a massive torrent of fire straight from his mouth.
The wall of heat melted the robot's internal mechanisms, driving it higher into the air until its metal chassis turned completely black.
Damon caught the radiant core out of the air. He glanced up at the smoking sky, then back down as the blackened robot crashed into the dirt with a heavy thud.
'Hmm. That finished way too easily,' Damon thought, a frown tugging at his brow as he looked at the weakened boy. 'Klaven's still at the Aegis stage. Even with me being a stage above him, he shouldn't have lost this badly… why did he get hurt so badly?'
Damon instantly dropped Princess Alya beside Klaven, holding her core gently in one hand. He placed his free palm flat against Klaven's chest. A warm, steady glow of light seeped from his hand into the boy's body, slowly sealing the deep gash on his forehead.
Klaven's eyes opened slightly, his breath cracking. "Damon… Prince Damon, you're—"
"I suggest you don't talk," Damon cut him off with his expression tightening and brows lowering.
"How'd you lose this much blood from fighting that? Nod if it's because of the after-noise it makes."
Klaven looked up, his half-healed face twisting in confusion. He gave a hesitant nod, then quickly shook his head.
Damon's face twitched with irritation. He sighed, though his palm kept glowing. "There's no way he beat you up that badly. Is your brain still intact? I don't have time for theatrics, so which is it? I've healed you enough, so you can speak now."
Klaven's voice was still weak, but it sounded clearer now. "When I departed the crypt, I was chased and ambushed by several of Doran's men. I fought my way out, even with my ears hurting from the noise. Then…"
Klaven shifted his weight, propping himself up unsteadily on an elbow. His gaze drifted past Damon, taking in the charred wreckage of the four-armed machine before watching Nyra and Cythera tear through the remaining soldiers.
Nyra wasn't even using fire anymore. She was pure, savage muscle, ripping the metal suits apart with her bare hands.
Cythera was even more brutal. She drove a sharp blade of ice into a robot to pin it down, while her other hand gripped a frozen spear that had impaled three of Doran's men at once.Two more bodies lay beside her, sparking electricity through puddles of water.
She noticed Klaven watching. Her eyes locked onto his for a moment before she snapped her head away. A sharp tension hit her shoulders—she was clearly glad he was alive, but utterly disappointed.
Another robot lunged, and she fired a heavy sphere of water straight from her mouth to smash it back.
Damon didn't look back at the fight. His eyes stayed fixed on Klaven, steady and unreadable, "So? What happened next?"
"Huh? Yes," Klaven muttered, dragging his eyes back to Damon. "Then the one with four arms came. When I fought him at first, I destroyed him easily. Then, I turned my back to check if Alya's core had been harmed in any way... and the thing had fixed itself and suddenly threw me."
"How's Alya's core still intact?" Damon asked, his eyes narrowing.
"When it flung me, I threw the core into the air and guessed where I'd land. Luckily, it fell right back into my palm as I landed," Klaven explained, his chest heaving.
"But as we kept fighting, it was as if it was exactly as strong as me, even slightly better, yet I felt as if it was holding back. I couldn't protect the core and fight at the same time. And the blasts hurt my eardrums a lot more—"
Klaven hacked, coughing a splatter of dark blood onto the dirt.
Damon's expression softened for a moment. "It's okay," Damon said, lifting his hand as the light faded. "You've told me all I need to know."
"No," Klaven coughed again, wiping his mouth. "After it held me by the neck... right before you got here. It said something about me not being a target."
Damon's eyes narrowed. "I guess it would say that. Stop talking now. You've lost too much blood. Just stay down and try not to listen to anything around us. Except your own heartbeat, so you can tell me if you're dying."
Klaven let out a weak chuckle. "I can't tell if you're joking or not."
"It's a mystery you're not meant to solve," Damon said calmly.
He paused, looking down at Klaven's face. His mind jumped back to the boy's beaten, prideful posture at the Trineum festival, mirroring the crooked, broken shape he was in right now. The only difference was that back then, Damon was the one doing the beating, and Klaven looked even worse.
Damon exhaled a heavy sigh, a conflicted expression crossing his face. "I thought you were working with Doran, judging from your past actions. I'm sorry about that."
Klaven's eyes widened, his entire face freezing. 'What? Is he sorry? Did the Prince just… apologize to me? I don't believe it.'
"Prince Damon, what exactly are you thinking right now?" Klaven asked aloud.
Behind them, the violent crashes of Nyra and Cythera's battle continued like a wall of noise, ensuring none of the hundred soldiers could break through to reach the three of them in the center.
'Why's this guy suddenly calling me Prince? He wasn't doing that at the festival.'
Damon finished the thought and looked down at the pulsing golden sphere in his palm.
"I'm wondering if I should return Alya's core now. Her core was sealed, so I don't know if removing it from her body broke the seal. I don't think it did, but I'm not entirely sure. Additionally, to take someone's core, you've gotta have some form of positive emotional connection with them. I don't think she did with all ten kings, 'cause she probably never met them, so I'm being careful. Also, even if the seal didn't fully break..."
He glanced back at the explosions, his jaw tight. "When she wakes up, she'll be in total shock from almost dying. Isn't that enough of an emotional fallout to break the seal anyway? Won't she just die from the force of ten kings' worth of power hitting her body all at once? You started school before me, got any ideas?"
Klaven looked down at Princess Alya's greyish-dark, still form. Her eyes weren't closed. They looked like two dead mirrors, throwing back a clear reflection of his own healed face as he stared into her once-royal irises.
His grip on the dirt tightened, the weight of what he had done settling heavily on his chest.
"I shouldn't have taken her core," Klaven whispered, his voice cracking. "I was just trying to—"
Suddenly, the colour drained from his face. His expression turned completely grim as a shadow spawned on Damon's back.
"LOOK OUT!" Klaven gasped, pointing wildly right behind Damon's head.
Damon instantly kicked Klaven's body out of the way and snatched Alya to his chest, rolling hard in the opposite direction.
BOOM!
The ground where they'd been lying erupted a second later with a fresh crater swallowing the space whole as electricity arced through the shattered earth.
Thick and choking smoke swirled upwards with sparks of blue static. The air vibrated with a low, metallic hum. As the smoke's haze thinned, a silhouette rose from one knee. It was tall, deformed, and it steadily marched forward.
Damon's eyes narrowed while Cythera's lips parted slightly. Neither showed fear—instead, their faces hardened with a tense, grim realization.
Nyra froze mid-step, the fire flickering weakly around her fists. Klaven's breath hitched as sheer terror crawled up his spine.
The robot Damon, which had just smashed into the earth, was back on its feet, rising with a slow, absolute dominance—as if it owned the ground rather than stood on it, as if it was a monster remembering it was never meant to fall.
Its legs regrew with each step, the metal knitting itself together mimicking living tissue. Its four arms elongated, reshaping into something far more lethal.
The lower pair thickened as plates slid into place until two long, curved swords unfolded from the wrists. The upper pair expanded with barrels rotating as two heavy cannons locked into position.
The machine violently shook its frame, every newly formed metal plate snapping into place with a heavy click. Its wired voice echoed through the trees:
"Initial output phase insufficient for target termination. Combat protocols adjusted. Match achieved. Probability primary target has been identified: seventy percent."
Damon's expression didn't change, but his thoughts sharpened:
'I'm beginning not to feel so surprised anymore… but what in the world is that? As someone who's lived on Earth their whole life, who's seen so much, you'd think I'd be used to this by now. I thought I killed it? Well, I knew it ended too easily. What other tricks has it got up its hard drives?'
The robot's eyes scanned the battlefield. Every time its gaze landed on a face, its lenses flashed red.
Then it locked dead onto Damon. The optical light instantly turned a solid, glowing green.
A heavy hiss of pressurized white steam shot out of its joints, sealing its bulky chassis down into a tightened, assassin-like form.
"Subject registered in visual feed. Objective…"
Without waiting, Damon opened and closed his palm. Light flared up his hands as two elegant blades of light burst from his palm, humming with lethal heat.
"Attack."
The robot lunged first.
Its lower arms slashed forward in a twin-sword strike while its upper cannons powered up at the same time. Damon didn't wait. Tucking Alya's body into one arm, he flipped over the machine in a tight somersault, landing flat on his boots behind it.
The robot's heavy metal feet slammed into the ground, blades cutting through empty air—yet it stopped just an inch from where Damon had stood a second before. The upper cannons never even discharged their energy.
ts head snapped toward Klaven. Klaven froze. Then its gaze flicked to Alya's core… and ignored it.
It turned back to Damon, its entire frame vibrating with something disturbingly close to satisfaction.
'It doesn't want the core?' Damon thought.
The machine attacked again.
Damon hurled Alya's body upward into the air. Nyra, who had been watching him, was suddenly swarmed by half-broken robots and forced to fight them off. Cythera leaped from a tree, caught Alya mid-flight, slung her over her shoulder, and crushed two robots with a single sweep of water.
Two blasts shot straight at Damon.
Damon leaned back, letting the searing heat pass his cheek by a hair, then whipped up a burst of wind that sent both shots screaming back at the shooter.
One. Two.
The machine dodged both reflected attacks with a fluid, terrifying speed. The redirected blasts detonated near Klaven, who braced himself against the shockwave and crawled toward Alya's core.
The robot lunged again.
Its lower arms crossed in an X-strike as it leaped to hit him from above. Damon raised one light blade vertically, catching both swords at once. With his second blade, he slashed for its torso—but the machine jammed a forward kick into his chest.
Damon redirected, slicing its leg clean off before jumping back twice, blades still in hand.
The robot stood on one leg— then regrew the missing limb in seconds, metallic fibres weaving like living muscle.
A mechanical hum vibrated through its frame:
"Target metrics analyzed. Combat algorithms updated.Enemy vectors mapped.Opponent proficiency matched."
Damon blinked once, 'What…? Did it just… update my physical abilities?'
A smirk crossed his face. 'A robot that heals, adapts, and copies martial skill as long as it survives one exchange? What are you— Cybonic Doomsday? But I feel like it's studying me. If that's how it adapts, all I have to do is beat it without showing all I can do. It's so easy to stop, it's kinda irritating.'
Now he dashed forward.
'This sounds arrogant, but it's truly irritating. He kinda reminds me of PFB's. Full of pretence but nothing to show for it.'
His blade carved a deep line across the machine's side. The robot fired a blast at where he'd been—but Damon leaped, spun mid‑air, and drilled both light blades straight into its head.
"Hey, Robocop," he said coldly but loudly. "I know you're studying me. Am I your target?"
The robot didn't answer. Its upper arms snapped upward at sharp right angles and fired point‑blank.
Damon released his blades and vaulted off its shoulders. Now unarmed, he dashed in again.
The robot swung for his neck. Damon sidestepped and punched its side so hard the machine skidded across the clearing, metal screeching.
"I was hoping I'd get a good fight from this thing." Damon stood his ground, looking down at his hand. "But it feels so… fake. It feels like a prototype. It intends to study me, but why is it studying and fighting so aimlessly at the same time? That means it's useless. Unless…"
Nyra exhaled sharply, rolling her eyes as she crushed another robot's visor. Even she looked bored with this thing now.
"Am I being watched?" Damon whispered. "Putting the pieces together, I was the primary target. It was easily able to beat Klaven with its designed mechanism, but he can't even make my heart beat faster. The only viable use for such a thing is some form of live feed. Or a distraction, though that's less likely. The question is, who's watching?"
His eyes narrowed, "Is Doran still alive? I'm so confused now. What is his goal? One is to take Alya's core, but this robot just ignored it. Another is to get me, but it's utterly failed at that. Another is war, but what kind of idiot plants seeds for war from a school? Or were all three thing their aims and they just failed to meet them? No, I don't think something like this would end that easily."
Cythera noticed Damon standing still, lost in thought. She flung a robot aside with a whip of water, irritation tightening her jaw.
'We don't have time for this. Why isn't he killing it? We still have twenty hours to restore the Princess's core, but what's he thinking just standing there?'
Damon walked forward slowly, wiping blood from his ears as the robot struggled to rise.
"I don't get what's going on, Copy Cat," he said. "Assessing your abilities, the only thing you're good at is sending a live feed to someone. You copied my movements, sure— but you can't fight. It's useless because you're not as fast, physically stronger, and you can't think as fast as I can, either. It'd work on Klaven, he's kinda stupid, but not on me."
He raised two fingers like a blade, "Whoever's watching… needs a better prototype."
The robot proceeded to condense a blast—
SHREEK.
A single swipe of Damon's hand, his fingers pressed tight like a blade. The robot's head thudded into the dirt.
Nyra, Cythera, and Klaven stared as Damon turned away and walked back toward Alya's body.
'Is Doran even the one in charge... or is someone else watching through its lens?'
Suddenly, a massive, jagged shadow stretched across the ground in front of him.
Damon stopped.
The very robot he had just decapitated was already up in the sky behind him, plunging downward in a frantic attempt to end the fight.
The decapitated robot was above him—its head completely remade—descending with both swords aimed at his skull and both cannons primed.
The steel was a hair's breadth from cutting his hair, yet Damon vanished. He reappeared behind it, above its falling frame, cold as a whisper against its wires.
"I wouldn't get up if I were you."
Damon struck, driving his bare hand straight through the metal chassis. He dropped onto the dirt and, without a pause, grabbed the machine's wrecked frame and hurled it into the sky.
Before it could even try to knit its robotic fibers back together, several brilliant slices of light tore through the air, shredding the robot into tiny fragments that rained down as harmless scrap metal.
The clearing finally fell dead quiet, but a heavy question stayed behind in Damon's mind.
'The robot wasn't meant to win. It was meant to gather data.'
He looked up at the falling debris, 'Doran… what was your goal here?'