Chapter 285: Brass and Blood
They weren’t digital Cleaners. They weren’t glowing hard-light Seraphs. They were Hardware Sentinels.
The Sentinels were a horrifying, steampunk nightmare of clockwork and meat. They stood roughly eight feet tall, their bodies forged from heavy, rusted iron and spinning brass gears. But woven directly into the metal framework were thick, pulsing bundles of raw, exposed red muscle fiber. They didn’t have faces, just smooth, sloped brass domes fitted with glowing, mechanical red lenses.
The Sentinel on the left wielded a massive, jagged halberd that leaked thick black oil. The one on the right had a literal, spinning buzzsaw bolted directly onto its forearm, the rusty teeth humming aggressively.
They looked brutal. They looked heavy.
"INTRUDER DETECTED," the center Sentinel buzzed, its mechanical jaw snapping open and shut with a grating screech. "BASE REALITY COMPROMISED. INITIATING PURGE."
Sebastian didn’t try to summon a spell. He didn’t try to open his UI. He knew it was useless.
He was entirely mortal right now. But as he stared down the three mechanical horrors, the cold, pragmatic survivor who had fought rabid Demon Wolves in a cramped alleyway with a rusty knife slowly woke back up.
His thirty-percent physical synchronization was permanent. The Ethereal Plane might have turned off his magic, but they couldn’t undo the biological steel braided into his muscle fibers. They couldn’t undo the hyper-dense calcium in his bones. He was mortal, but he was a highly optimized, incredibly pissed-off mortal.
"I really hate Mondays," Sebastian growled, raising his fists and dropping into a loose, unbalanced boxing stance.
The Sentinels charged.
The one with the halberd lunged first, thrusting the heavy, jagged blade directly toward Sebastian’s chest. It moved with startling, mechanical precision, the exposed muscle fibers on its arms bulging as it generated massive kinetic force.
Sebastian couldn’t dodge with frictionless, supersonic speed anymore. He was sluggish. His broken ribs screamed as he violently twisted his torso to the right.
*SWISH!*
The halberd missed his chest, but the jagged edge clipped his right thigh.
*SQUELCH.*
The blade tore through his black tactical trousers, slicing a deep, agonizing gash into his leg. Hot, red human blood sprayed across the stone floor.
"Ah, fuck!" Sebastian yelled, stumbling backward.
The pain was incredibly sharp, a biting sting that sent a jolt of pure adrenaline straight into his brain. The pain didn’t paralyze him. It infuriated him.
The Sentinel ripped the halberd back, preparing for a horizontal sweep to take his head off.
Sebastian didn’t retreat. Fueled by a sudden, violent surge of rage and pain, he stepped directly *into* the Sentinel’s guard.
He grabbed the thick, brass-plated shaft of the halberd with his good right hand. He didn’t try to wrestle the machine for it. He used the Sentinel’s own forward momentum against it. He dropped his weight, planted his boot against the Sentinel’s iron kneecap, and violently leveraged his hyper-dense mass.
He twisted the brass arm backward.
*CRACK!*
The sound of shattering iron and snapping biological muscle fibers echoed loudly. Sebastian forcefully bent the Sentinel’s articulated arm completely backward, shattering the elbow joint.
"GURK—" the Sentinel buzzed, its red lens flashing wildly.
Sebastian didn’t stop. He ripped the heavy, jagged halberd right out of the machine’s broken grip. The weapon was incredibly heavy, but his biological steel muscles handled the weight. He spun the halberd around and violently drove the jagged blade straight up, underneath the Sentinel’s sloped brass dome, directly into its exposed, fleshy neck.
*SQUELCH!*
Thick black oil and bright red blood exploded from the wound, splashing hot and sticky across Sebastian’s face. He ripped the blade sideways, cleanly decapitating the mechanical horror. The heavy brass head hit the floor with a loud *CLANG*, and the body slumped over, twitching as the muscle fibers rapidly died.
The second Sentinel was already on him.
*WHRRRRRRR!*
The buzzsaw swung downward in a vicious arc, aiming to saw Sebastian in half.
Sebastian threw himself to the floor, rolling over his injured left shoulder. He hissed in pain as his fractured bone ground together, but he avoided the saw. The spinning blade bit deeply into the stone floor, kicking up a shower of bright orange sparks.
While the Sentinel struggled to pull its weapon free from the rock, Sebastian lunged from the ground. He drove the stolen halberd forward like a spear, burying the jagged tip deep into the center of the Sentinel’s exposed chest muscles.
He didn’t just stab it. He left the weapon embedded in its chest, grabbed the Sentinel by its heavy iron shoulders, and used his raw, unadulterated physical strength to hurl the eight-foot machine backward.
He threw it directly into a massive, exposed, grinding gear-shaft built into the wall.
*CRUNCH! SPLATTER!*
The massive iron gears caught the Sentinel. The machine shrieked, a horrific sound of grinding metal and tearing meat, as the gears dragged it inward, completely pulverizing the clockwork horror into a messy, oozing pulp of flattened brass and pulverized muscle.
The third and final Sentinel froze, its red lens locking onto the shredded remains of its comrades.
Sebastian stood in the center of the room. He was panting heavily, his chest heaving. His black leather coat was drenched in a disgusting mixture of black oil, his own bright red blood, and sweat. He was bleeding from his thigh, his ribs ached with every breath, and his left arm hung uselessly at his side.
He reached out with his right hand, gripping the shaft of the bloody halberd he had left embedded in the second Sentinel, and ripped it free with a wet *shhhk*.
He rested the heavy weapon casually against his shoulder and stared the final machine down.
"You want some too, tin man?" Sebastian growled, his voice a low, terrifyingly human rasp. "Come get it."
The Sentinel didn’t charge. Its internal logic processing evidently determined that the bleeding, broken human standing in front of it was significantly more dangerous than it appeared. The machine took a slow, clanking step backward, retreating into the shadows of the corridor.
Sebastian didn’t chase it. He let out a long, ragged breath, letting the heavy tip of the halberd drop to the stone floor.
He leaned on the makeshift weapon, staring down the long, dark corridor that led deeper into the mega-structure. The sterile white light of the Prime Architects’ throne room pulsed faintly at the very end of the hall.
He was mortal again. He was fragile. Every step was going to hurt.
"Now," Sebastian whispered, his silver-tinged eyes burning with a fierce, unyielding resolve. "You get to see what a human can do."
**
Sebastian limped down the dark, oppressive corridor of the Motherboard. Every single step he took sent a violent, jarring shockwave of pure agony straight up his right leg.
*CLANK. DRAG. CLANK.*
He leaned heavily on the stolen brass halberd, using it as a crude crutch. The weapon was slick with the black motor oil and bright red human blood from the Sentinels he had just butchered. He left a smeared, wet trail behind him on the rough stone floor.
"I am never complaining about fast travel ever again," Sebastian grumbled, his voice a ragged, exhausted wheeze.
The sterile, blinding white light of the Prime Architects’ throne room still pulsed faintly at the very end of the hallway, but he wasn’t going to make it there in this condition. His left arm was fractured, dangling uselessly against his ribs. The deep gash in his thigh from the Sentinel’s blade was bleeding freely, soaking his black tactical trousers.
Without his green Administrator UI, he couldn’t just pop a healing potion. There were no health bars to regenerate. If he kept bleeding at this rate, he was going to pass out and die in a puddle of his own making.
He needed a safe room.
He dragged himself past a massive, churning wall of interlocking iron gears. The deafening *SCREEECH* and *GRIND* of the machinery made his skull throb. Just beyond the gears, he spotted a heavy, rusted iron door set into the stone wall. It looked like an old maintenance closet.
Sebastian threw his weight against the heavy iron handle. It didn’t budge.
"Oh, for fuck’s sake," he growled.
He didn’t have magic, but he still had his thirty-percent biological steel density. He lifted his heavy combat boot and kicked the door right next to the locking mechanism.
*BANG!*
The rusted lock violently snapped. The door flew open, hitting the inside wall with a loud *CLANG*.
Sebastian stumbled inside and kicked the door shut behind him. He dragged a heavy metal work desk in front of it to barricade them in. Then, he simply gave up. His legs gave out, and he slid down the cold, unpolished stone wall until his ass hit the floor.
*THUD.*
He let the heavy halberd clatter to the ground. He tilted his head back against the wall, taking deep, painful breaths. The room was incredibly small, dimly lit by a single, flickering yellow utility bulb dangling from the ceiling by a frayed wire.