I sprinted through the abandoned buildings, ducking low and weaving through broken doorframes, snapped rebar, and collapsed pillars. Shards of concrete crunched underfoot as I moved. Windows became doors. Narrow cracks turned into last-second escape routes.
A quick glance behind nearly made me trip.
At least fifty machines. Maybe more. All of them scrambling after me, limbs clattering against stone as they surged forward like a pack of hungry wolves.
"Fuck," I hissed, lunging sideways through a half-shattered wall.
My shoulder scraped against jagged concrete as I forced myself into the gap, the rough edges biting through the thin fabric of my sleeve. One of the machines tried to follow—a fat, round-head simply slammed into concrete. Its metal skull jammed against the opening, gears whining as it tried to shove itself through.
Didn't work, thankfully.
I pressed my back to the ground and exhaled, trying to slow my breath. I scanned the area—a collapsed support beam to the left, a few holes along the walls, and a dark hallway leading to a dead end behind me. Nothing immediately approaching.
But I could still hear them. The clatter of metal feet. Angry scraping as machine sex cultists were scraping through the ruins, trying to find me.
I laid there for a moment, breathing deep, chest rising and falling. If these ruins hadn't been filled with narrow gaps and hidden cracks, I'd be a corpse already.
So yeah. Most days, being built like a string bean sucked.
Right now, it was probably the only reason I was still breathing.
So… yay for being skinny, I guess.
I forced myself to push past the stray thoughts and the pounding fear, narrowing my focus to the one thing that mattered—what to do next.
I was strong. Fast, too. Whatever powers went on in my body, along with the perks the god gave me, definitely overhauled me completely. I could feel it with every movement—my limbs moved cleaner, my reflexes sharper. Honestly, I could probably qualify for the Olympics without breaking a sweat. Maybe even more than that. There was no way someone as fast as I was now should also be this physically strong.
Human bodies weren't built like that. But setting aside my physics-defying biology—
All that new athleticism didn't mean much when over fifty machines were actively trying to claw my face off.
Strength alone didn't get you far when your enemies were made of steel and didn't get tired. I had a slight edge in speed, at least. Most of the machines had stubby legs and clunky builds, which kept them just slow enough for me to stay ahead.
The issue was numbers.
There were too many, and I had no room to move. Every direction was blocked or about to be. And running across sand had drained me quicker than I expected. Not ideal.
Should I wait them out?
No, that was a terrible idea. I was already worn down, and there was nothing useful in this ruined stretch. No food, water, or safe shelter that would last more than a few minutes. If I stayed here, more machines would show up, and eventually I'd either pass out or they'd get lucky.
Only one real option left—fight my way through and run like hell.
I glanced down at my cybernetic arm and hesitated.
A flicker of unease twisted in my gut. The arm looked high-tech—sleek, solid, clearly advanced—but there was always that nagging possibility. Maybe this was some setup by an asshole god, the kind who hands out second chances just to watch someone crash and burn. Give a guy a shiny new start, then bury a hidden drawback deep inside the so-called "cheat," just for the fun of it. I'd read enough isekais and novels like that to know the pattern.
Still, I shook the thought off. Didn't feel like that was the old man's style. And if it was true, then I was screwed anyway, so there wasn't any use thinking like that.
I forced myself to focus. Breathed in, let my senses zero in on the arm. Before, I'd just used it without thinking. But now I noticed them—thin, silver lines, barely visible, flowing beneath the gunmetal surface. They were dim, almost blending in, but I could see them now. Just a little brighter than before. Slowly but steadily getting brighter.
Okay, if the big blasts drained too much energy too fast, then maybe…
I opened my palm and focused. Tried to condense that flicker of energy down, small and tight. A weak pulse of light sparked from my hand and splashed harmlessly against the far wall, leaving nothing but a faint scorch mark.
Still, I felt it this time—the charge. Faint, but at the back of my mind. Now that I knew where to look, I could feel it building under the surface of the arm like a current humming just out of reach.
Alright. So I could control the output—regulate how much energy I put into each shot—and it looked like the arm recharged slowly over time. But based on that pitiful spark from earlier, getting it back up to full power was going to take a while.
A sharp scrape of metal pulled my attention. I turned on instinct.
One of the machines had managed to wedge a piece of rebar aside and was now forcing its way through a narrow gap in the wall, torso twisting unnaturally as its clawed hands scraped along the edges, struggling to pull itself through
I shifted back a step, ready to bolt—then stopped. No other red eyes in sight. This one was alone.
If I was going to test things, this was as good a chance as any.
I stepped forward and drove my foot into its head before it could get all the way through. It lurched, stuck halfway, hissing in distorted machine speech. I raised my arm and focused.
The first beam hit clean across the head, a sharp flash of light that left a shallow dent in between its eyes. It kept moving. I fired again.
Second shot—deeper dent. The thing spasmed, claw twitching.
The third shot landed with a sharp crack, warping the metal inward. The bot froze mid-crawl, head twisted just enough that it stopped moving altogether.
It slumped forward in place, half in and half out of the wall.
I kicked it one last time just to be sure. No movement. No screaming threats. Dead.
Three weak shots—roughly a quarter of the energy drained, compared to the single blast from earlier. Not efficient, but maybe viable if I staggered my shots and gave my arm time to breathe.
If I played it smart, I might—
No. Who was I kidding?
That kind of cautious pacing wasn't going to work. I couldn't just stand there expecting these things to politely wait their turn like they were locked into some kind of turn-based RPG. They were fast, aggressive, and nowhere near dumb enough to let me chip them down one by one.
"Damn it," I slammed my cybernetic arm down into the wrecked machine's chassis in a flash of frustration.
Something pulsed. I looked down—and froze.
The light wasn't coming from my palm this time. It had wrapped around my arm, shaping itself into something else.
A hammerhead of golden light encased my hand, solid and gleaming like it had been ripped straight out of a sci-fi construction toolkit.
"Oh." I blinked. "Okay. Guess it's not just a beam weapon."
Hard light. Actual hard light. Fuck yeah. One of the all-time best sci-fi gimmicks was in my hands. I narrowed my focus, gave my wrist a slow twist just to test it—and the hammerhead shimmered, reshaping itself in real time. The light warped cleanly into a blade, sleek, sharp, and somehow just as solid.
So I had a melee option. That changed the calculus.
I checked the charge again, fully expecting some drop after switching forms.
Nothing.
The energy lines across the arm hadn't dimmed—not even a flicker. That made no sense. Either the beams and the hardlight weapon forms each pulled from separate reserves, or there was some internal rule I still wasn't aware of. Whatever the reason, I'm not complaining.
Good. Maybe I could Rambo this after all. The machines weren't exactly tactical masterminds. If I stayed mobile, I could take them one by one. A bit of guerrilla warfare, hit-and-run pressure, and I might thin the numbers enough to punch through.
I focused again, shaping the sword with more intent. It flickered once, then locked into place—no wobble, no instability. A few test swings told me it held solid, didn't falter, and, more importantly, didn't vanish the second I lost focus.
Alright. Now I was getting somewhere.
A sharp metallic crack rang out above me.
Ten machines came bursting through the ceiling, limbs tearing through concrete as dust rained down. I could see them in slow motion, mid-fall, claws extended as they dropped straight toward me.
"Holy shit!"
I reacted without thinking, throwing my hand up just as a beam of golden light exploded from my palm, piercing cleanly through the ceiling and everything around. The machines didn't even make it halfway down—burnt to pieces mid-fall and scattered like metal confetti.
The charge vanished along with them. Everything I'd built up was gone in an instant.
And then the red eyes appeared. Dozens of them, glowing from the edges of the ruined walls, blinking on one by one like a wave of silent predators closing in.
So I used the most ancient and sacred technique known to man.
I turned and ran.
——
"Ugh, I hate this," Popola groaned, kicking at the sand a little harder than necessary.
Devola let out a patient, long-suffering sigh. "It's just a standard machine nest clearing. Why are you so worked up about it?"
Popola crossed her arms with a scowl. "We wouldn't even need to do this if they just let us buy the parts we needed."
"Anemone was nice enough to let us use this mission as payment," Devola reminded her, voice light but firm.
Popola rolled her eyes, unable to hide the irritation in her tone. "We had more than enough to barter. But nooo, they wouldn't trade."
Devola didn't reply. She understood why it got under Popola's skin—the dismissive looks, the veiled comments, the way the other androids kept their distance like mistrust was policy. Decades of that didn't just wear you down—it carved itself into you.
Still, she couldn't deny it. They had every right to be wary. Every right to resent them for what they did.
Not like any of their harassment could compare to the guilt of their failure.
Devola opened her mouth to speak, then paused, tilting her head.
"Wait. Do you hear that?"
Popola stilled. "Yeah… I hear it too."
"Are any Resistance cells supposed to be this far out?" Devola asked, brow furrowing.
Popola shook her head. "Nope. No one should be here. Could just be machines screwing around, though."
"Maybe," Devola said slowly. "Still, we should check."
"There's nobody around," Popola muttered with a groan. "We should just head to the nest Anemone assigned us."
A beam of golden light shot into the sky.
Both twins snapped their heads toward the source at the same time.
"Right," Devola said flatly. "Nobody around."
"Oh, shut up," Popola grumbled, already sprinting toward the light's origin.
Devola chuckled softly and followed. She hoped, maybe foolishly, that whoever was out there might actually be friendly. Popola could use a break—just one friendly face that didn't look at her with disgust.
She shook her head.
Who was she kidding?
Nobody was going to treat them well. Not when they were the ones who failed humanity.