The fight was ugly. It lacked the choreography of a duel or the honor of a match. It was just a slaughter.
Kieran sat on a stack of crushed intake manifolds, one leg crossed over the other, his massive Piston Arm resting on his knee like a scepter. He watched with a cold, analytical detachment as his new tool went to work.
The Recompiled Warrior—formerly the leader of this sad little pack—was fighting with the reckless abandon of a machine that had deleted its self-preservation protocols.
He took a fireball to the chest armor. He didn't flinch. He took an arrow to the thigh. He didn't stumble.
Because Kieran hadn't programmed him to feel pain.
"Violence is so much more efficient when you remove the hesitation," Kieran mused, his voice smooth and terrifyingly calm in the chaotic cavern.
The Warrior swung his rebar greatsword. CRUNCH. The blade caught the opposing Mage in the midsection, folding him in half like a lawn chair. The Mage shrieked, static electricity discharging wildly, before he was bisected.
The remaining two Prototypes—the Archer and a Rogue with rusted daggers—were panicking.
"He's crazy!" the Archer screamed, backing away. "Code-Breaker! Stop him!"
Kieran tilted his head. The violet circuits on his face pulsed.
"I am not breaking the code," Kieran whispered to himself. "I am optimizing it."
The Warrior lunged at the Archer. The Archer fired three arrows of hard-light in rapid succession. THWIP. THWIP. THWIP. Two bounced off the Warrior's shoulder plate. One pierced his neck, passing straight through the throat.
Blood sprayed black and thick.
But the Warrior didn't stop. He couldn't. His command line was simple: [Status: KILL].
He grabbed the Archer by the face. He squeezed.
SQUELCH.
The Archer's head popped like a grape.
The last survivor, the Rogue, dropped his daggers. He fell to his knees, trembling. His yellow eyes looked from the pile of corpses to Kieran sitting on his throne of trash.
"Mercy!" the Rogue begged, his voice box glitching with static. "Recompile me! I will serve! I am fast! I can steal!"
Kieran stood up. The servos in his Piston Arm whined as he lifted the heavy limb. He walked slowly toward the survivor, his titanium spine keeping him rigid and tall.
"Kieran," Spam warned, hovering near his ear. "Your Integrity is still at 30%. Your fuel reserves are low. And your CPU load is high. Maintaining the Warrior is costing you 10 Bytes per minute."
"I know," Kieran said.
He stopped in front of the kneeling Rogue. The Rogue looked up, hope flickering in his optic sensors.
"Please, Lord," the Rogue whimpered. "I can be useful."
Kieran looked at the Rogue's data.
[Entity: Failed Prototype (Rogue).] [Level: 12.] [Potential: Low.] [Data Value: 150 Bytes.]
Kieran smiled. It was a smile that didn't reach his eyes. It was a smile of a predator looking at a meal.
"You are useful," Kieran said gently.
He placed his Piston Claw over the Rogue's head.
"You're lunch."
"Wait—NO!"
SNAP.
The hydraulic claw closed. The Rogue was decapitated instantly.
Kieran didn't waste time. He triggered [Deconstruct]. He didn't absorb the metal or the gear. He absorbed the Soul Data.
Violet light ripped out of the Rogue's corpse and flowed into Kieran's chest. The rush was immediate. The pain in his broken ribs faded. The burns on his back from the firewall cooled.
[Data Absorbed: 150 Bytes.] [Integrity Restored: 30% -> 65%.] [Capacity: 180/200 Bytes.]
Kieran exhaled, a cloud of violet steam escaping his lips. He felt the power settling in his marrow.
He turned to his Warrior.
The big man was standing amidst the carnage, swaying slightly. He had an arrow through his neck, burn marks on his chest, and his sword was bent. He stood awaiting orders, blood dripping from his hands.
"He's damaged," Spam noted. "He'll bleed out in ten minutes. You spent resources acquiring him, and now he's scrap."
"He's not scrap," Kieran said, walking over to his minion. "He's a canvas."
Kieran activated his [Scavenger's Eye]. He looked at the Warrior's wounds. Then he looked at the pile of dead prototypes around them.
The dead Archer had excellent leg servos. The dead Mage had a shielded power core. The dead Rogue had lightweight titanium joints.
"Spam," Kieran commanded. "Scan the parts. We're doing a field upgrade."
"You're going to Frankenstein your Frankenstein?" Spam sighed. "Fine. But I'm not cleaning up the blood."
Kieran spent the next hour working.
He didn't have tools. He used his Piston Arm as a clamp and his Decompiler hand as a welding torch.
He ripped the arrow out of the Warrior's neck. He grabbed a plate of armor from the dead Mage and Patched it over the wound, fusing the metal to the flesh.
He ripped the damaged leg armor off the Warrior and replaced it with the Archer's hydraulic shins.
[Skill: Patch.] [Target: Minion.] [Compatibility: Forced.]
When he was done, the Warrior looked terrifying. He was a patchwork of four different combat styles, welded together by violet scars. He was taller, broader, and radiated an aura of jagged menace.
Kieran stood back to admire his work.
"Name," Kieran stated. "You need a designation."
The Warrior stared blankly. "Unit 7-4-9 ready."
"No," Kieran shook his head. "That's a slave name. You are the first of the new breed."
Kieran looked at the heavy plating on the Warrior's chest.
"You will stand at the front. You will take the hits so I don't have to. You are the Vanguard."
The Warrior's eyes flashed violet.
"Vanguard," he rasped. The voice was deep, grinding like stones. "Acknowledged."
Kieran turned away, looking out into the darkness of the Undercroft.
"Spam. The map."
Spam projected the hologram of Layer 0 again. It hovered in the air, a glowing grid of misery.
"We are here," Spam indicated a flashing dot at the very bottom. "The Undercroft. Above us is the Rust Sprawl. That is the territory of the first Warlord: The Lady of Rust."
"Tell me about her," Kieran said, testing the weight of his Piston Arm.
"She controls the recycling plants. She has an army of 'Scrappers'—fast, light cyborgs. She hoards the data cables. If you want to control the information flow in Layer 0, you need her territory."
"And she has a Key?"
"Yes. The Key of Iron."
Kieran nodded. His plan was forming. It wasn't a hero's plan. He wasn't going to challenge her to a duel for the fate of the world.
"Does she have outposts?" Kieran asked.
"Dozens. Small processing stations where they grind down new arrivals."
"Good," Kieran said. His eyes gleamed. "We don't attack the Lady. Not yet."
He looked at Vanguard.
"We attack her food supply. We hit the outposts. We kill her men, stealing their data, and we raise their corpses."
"That's..." Spam hesitated. "That's horrific. That's attrition warfare."
"That's how a virus works, Spam," Kieran said coldly. "It infects the host cell by cell until the whole system crashes."
He began to walk toward the exit of the Undercroft, his metal footsteps heavy and rhythmic. Vanguard fell into step behind him, a silent, lumbering wall of death.
Kieran checked his status one last time.
[Name: Kieran Valis] [Class: The Decompiler (Architect of Entropy)] [Army Size: 1 (Vanguard).] [Objective: Total War.]
"Let's go," Kieran said, his voice echoing in the dark. "I want to see what the Lady is made of. Literally."