The streets boiled with panic. People sprinted with bags slung over their backs, cars clogged intersections, horns blaring. Sirens wailed overhead.
Ethan ran straight through it, armored frame gleaming, flanked by twenty scouts and twenty-four workers. Alloy feet pounded pavement in unison, metal claws clinking. He didn't care anymore if people saw.
"Holy shit!" someone screamed, dragging their kid to the sidewalk.
"Are those?... Robots?!"
"No way! government bots! Military finally brought them out!"
"Bullshit, they don't move like that what the fuck IS this?!"
Phones were out. People shouted, cursed, some stumbling back as the worker constructs vaulted over abandoned cars, scouts scaling walls and dropping down with insect precision.
Ethan kept his eyes forward, lungs burning. "Don't stop. Don't you dare stop."
One man in a baseball cap stood frozen in the street, pointing. "They're not human what the hell's happening?!"
---
Ten minutes later
They reached the crater. Ethan slowed, chest heaving, and the world seemed to tilt.
The street here was shattered concrete torn into jagged slabs, buildings leaning with broken windows. The crater itself glowed faint green, mist boiling out like smoke from hell.
And from the mist… they came.
Skitterlings. Dozens already, scuttling on too many legs, armored shells dripping with slime that hissed when it touched the asphalt. Their mandibles clicked in hunger.
Above them, a handful of Stingers wheeled in the air, wings buzzing like chainsaws, abdomens pulsing with venom.
"Jesus Christ…" Ethan muttered. His HUD flickered with dozens of red markers. "Scouts, workers kill as many as you can. No mercy."
The automatons surged forward, silent but deadly. Scouts darted along rooftops, springing down with blades drawn, stabbing Skitterlings through carapaces. Workers moved in phalanx formation, heavy arms slamming down like pile drivers, shattering shells.
The street exploded into chaos. Screeches, chitin cracking, acid sizzling as it splashed against alloy. A scout was bowled over by seven Skitterlings, dragged down, but another leapt from a wall and gutted the vermin with a twin-blade slash.
Ethan charged in with them. His exosuit whined, muscles doubling in power. He grabbed a rusted street sign, tore it free, and swung it like a glaive—cracking a Skitterling in half, slime spraying across his visor.
"Fuck you!" he snarled, kicking another back into a worker's waiting claws.
---
Gunfire cracked. Ethan spun.
Soldiers. A squad had arrived from the west, rifles raised, helmets glinting under gray light. They stopped dead when they saw the automatons.
"What the fuck?"
"Who the hell deployed those bots?!"
"They're not ours!"
One soldier swung his rifle toward Ethan. "Identify yourself! NOW!"
"Not the time!" Ethan barked, jabbing a finger toward the swarm. "You want to live? Shoot the bugs!"
A Stinger swooped, wings buzzing, aiming for the soldiers. It stabbed its stinger down only for a scout construct to intercept midair, grappling it in a tangle of metal and chitin. Both crashed into a shop window, shattering glass.
The squad leader froze for half a heartbeat, then screamed, "ALL UNITS OPEN FIRE!"
Gunfire roared, muzzle flashes strobing. Bullets tore into Skitterlings, acid spraying, limbs snapping. The constructs fought in eerie silence beside them, blades and claws tearing vermin apart.
Ethan ducked under a leaping Skitterling, drove his gauntlet claws through its thorax, then hurled the twitching body aside. His HUD screamed warnings as acidic spray ate through plating at his shoulder.
"Patch it!" he barked. A worker construct rushed over, spraying black nanite mist onto the burn, sealing the suit as another lunged to shield Ethan from a diving Stinger.
The battlefield was madness humans, automatons, monsters.
Ethan shouted over the chaos, voice raw: "Scouts clear the rooftops! Workers lock down the street! Don't let them out of the crater!"
A wall of alloy bodies formed, four-armed constructs bracing, shoving Skitterlings back with brute force. Scouts cut down the ones that slipped through, flashing blades slicing in arcs.
Still, the mist swirled, and more shapes writhed in the crater. Bigger ones. Hundreds more.
Ethan's throat went dry. He glanced at the soldiers, then at his constructs, then back at the crater.
"This… this is only the start."
Gunfire rattled, the stench of acid and smoke thick in the air. Ethan's HUD screamed red warnings as more Stingers dove, their drill-stingers gouging straight into worker frames, splitting alloy like paper.
"Dammit!" Ethan snarled, slamming his claws into a Skitterling's head and ripping it free. "We're bleeding out constructs faster than I can count!"
He sprinted to a wrecked car, palm slamming against the hood. Material Scan – Initiate.
His HUD blinked. [Viable Alloy: 82%. Composite Reinforcement: Acceptable.]
"Good enough. Workers—convert it!"
Two surviving workers broke formation, claws glowing as nanite mist poured into the frame of the car. It shrieked and groaned, metal twisting, reshaping. In seconds, two new worker constructs tore free from the husk, car doors reshaped into arms, tires fused into armored plating.
"Back in line!" Ethan barked, already sprinting to the next hunk of wreckage.
A soldier skidded beside him, eyes wide behind his visor. "The hell are you doing?!"
"Keeping us alive!" Ethan snapped, scanning another overturned truck. His gauntlet pulsed as the HUD lit up. [High-grade Steel: 91%. Optimal conversion.]
Metal bent like clay, two scout constructs clawing their way out, blades gleaming in the gray light.
Bullets cracked again. Another squad had arrived, joining the firing line. "Holy shit look at them!" one shouted. "Those aren't military! What the fuck are they?!"
"Doesn't matter!" their leader barked, firing into a swarm of Skitterlings. "If it kills bugs, it's on our side!"
Grenades arced overhead, detonating inside the crater with deafening thooms. The ground shook, limbs and acid flying in all directions, but more Skitterlings just poured out.
Ethan leapt onto a half-crushed bus, stabbing his claws down to anchor himself. His HUD swept over the wreck, analyzing. [Structural Steel: 74%. Plastics: 40%. Convert viable mass.]
"Scouts, two of you help me rip this apart!"
They scrambled up beside him, four-armed frames tearing into metal as Ethan pumped nanites into the wreck. The bus convulsed like a living thing, reshaping, collapsing into six humanoid forms that crawled free—three workers, three scouts.
"YES!" Ethan roared, his throat raw. "Keep this shit coming!"
But the victory was short. A Stinger screeched, dive-bombing into a worker formation. The massive insect drove its stinger through a worker's torso, venom hissing as alloy cracked, before wrenching upward and splitting the machine in half. Sparks burst like fireworks.
Another scout tried to intercept but was torn from the sky mid-leap, the Stinger dragging it up before hurling the construct back down into a building.
"Fuck!" Ethan's chest heaved. "Hold the line!"
Soldiers were fighting like madmen now, rifles spitting, grenades flying. "Push them back! Don't let them through!"
Still, the swarm kept spilling from the crater.
Ethan slammed into another Skitterling, claws punching through, then wrenched free, eyes wild. "I need more! I need more—"
His HUD ticked. [Construct Tally: Scouts – 28 | Workers – 31]
He stared, panting. That meant… he'd lost almost half since the start.
"Fuck me," he whispered, wiping slime from his visor.
The soldiers beside him reloaded, one panting hard. "Is it working?!"
Ethan growled, stabbing another Skitterling down. "Barely. But it's keeping them out of the city. That's all that matters right now!"
For nearly twenty more minutes the chaos raged constructs torn apart, only to be replaced with new ones from ruined vehicles, rubble, even streetlamps and torn billboards. The soldiers fought like demons, shouting, screaming, swearing, lobbing grenades, their boots slipping on slime-slick pavement.
Finally, finally, the swarm thinned. Skitterling corpses littered the street, acid pools steaming. The few remaining Stingers were hacked apart by scouts and shredded by concentrated rifle fire.
The battlefield fell quiet, only the hiss of dissolving flesh and the heavy pant of exhausted men.
Ethan stood in the street, chest heaving, surrounded by twitching insect carcasses and dented automatons. His HUD blinked.
[Current Constructs: 28 Scouts | 31 Workers]
[Tier Advancement Progress: 5% - 7%.]
He froze. "...Still only seven percent? After all that?"
His stomach dropped.
He turned, staring at the crater. It still pulsed faintly green, like a wound that wouldn't close. But worse his gaze lifted to the horizon.
And his blood ran cold.
A dark smear blotted the distant. A swarm. Not hundreds but tens of thousands.
Even from here, he could see the air shimmer with wings, hear the faint tremor of a thousands bodies moving as one. The city's outer defenses were already lighting it up artillery thundering, jets streaking overhead, bombs falling like rain. But for every swarm that burned, a hundred more pushed forward.
Ethan's breath caught. "That… that's not just a swarm. That's a tide."
A soldier followed his gaze, jaw dropping as the swarm shadowed the horizon. "Oh my God…"
Another whispered, voice trembling, "How the hell are we supposed to stop that?"
Ethan clenched his fists, his constructs bracing around him. His HUD flickered, cold and unyielding.
[Tier 2 Progress: 7%]
He swallowed hard, whispering to himself.
"I'm not even close to tier 2."