Chapter 232: Armored Units
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Chapter 232: Armored Units
Tala was finally ready, her preparations complete.
She stood within a guilds main hold, within the city of Platoiri.
Around her lay the broken bodies of basic model automata.
Before her stood the entrance into the next section of this dimensional pocket complex.
Her tungsten sphere pairs were gravity amplified to lethal levels and awaiting her need in the pouch at her waist.
Not Kit. A different pouch.
Kit hung beside the lesser pouch, together balancing out Flow that hung on her opposite hip.
She had contemplated holding Kit when she went through, but decided that there was no need.
She still did have her tungsten rod and sphere in position, along with the three defensive discs in random orbit around herself, however.
The book didnt say anything about ranged combatants, but they sure did seem to throw accurately enough.
With one last nod to herself for confirmation, she unlocked the door into the next section, watching with her mage-sight as defensive fields and spatial locks retracted to give her access.
Instead of swinging open, the doors faded away, and she was left standing in a decorative archway, leading deeper into the facility.
She knew from the book that if she put the key back into the center of the empty space she could reestablish the doors and seal off the welcome atrium, but that shouldnt be necessary.
Sadly, there were no convenient automata standing right in front of the door this time, so she was forced to leap to get within range of the closest ones.
Flow snapped into her hand, taking the form of a glaive as she lashed out.
The space she was in now was a faux outdoors, roughly a mile or so across.
Dozens of outbuildings were scattered throughout the lightly wooded area.
The trees were conifers, a mix of pine and fir if Talas guess was right.
The ground beneath her feet was a well-manicured lawn, and there were seating areas, including picnic benches, scattered throughout, especially concentrated near the paths and waterways.
It was a park, exclusive to the guild and their guests.
Well, now exclusive to solely their arcane creations.
-And you.-
Tala smiled at that. And me.
The first automata she slew in quick succession were all the base model, and none of the first dozen even had time to come out of their magic absorption mode before they were decommissioned.
Regardless, it wasnt long before she saw squads of the armored variant, the foot soldiers coming her way.
In addition to the armor, they were all armed with mundane weaponry, but nothing seeming to be long range.
-Yeah, what sort of madwoman would throw a sword?-
Hush you.
There was a single odd automaton in the middle of each squad of five armored units.
Thats odd. Do you remember anything like them mentioned in the book?
-No, but the concentration of power within them is much greater than the others.-
Conveniently, there were four squads coming Talas way, so as she fought through the base automata she pulled out pairs of spheres, switching their targets one set after another, to take out the twenty armored enemies.
The air cracked with a series of reports that sounded like hail striking a metal drum, assuming the hail was as large as Talas fist.
The first two armored foes died easily, but not in the way Tala had hoped.
Their chest armor, heavily reinforced over their cores, was harder than shed hoped, and it deflected the tungsten sent to destroy them.
Blessedly, the angles of the armor sent the attack up at an angle, into their heads.
Two heads vaporized, and their bodies began to fall.
Tala took a couple of punches from the basic units around her as she finished sending off her twenty spheres.
This is ridiculous. Holding them in pouches is slower than keeping them in my hand, and still takes my hand to get them free for use.
They didnt really hurt as her elk-leathers defenses actually deadened the blows. Hey! My defenses weren't immediately overpowered.
That was a nice change, honestly.
Four more bodies dropped, then twelve had were falling, then sixteen.
Interestingly enough, as Tala had targeted the things cores, the tungsten returned to slam into the fallen bodies once again, sometimes ending up resting in a newly created divot in the tough armor exterior, and sometimes finding a way down inside to actually reach the targeted destination.
Even so, while they were struck down, they were adapting.
Tala could see magic flowing through their armor as it reshaped. It wasnt fast enough for most of her targets, but the final four? It did quite a lot.
The seventeenth and eighteenth armored foes had morphed enough of a deflection that only half of their heads were blown off, rather than the entirety being basically vaporized by the redirected impact.
It was still decommissioning for them, but it was an improvement from a defensive standpoint.
The nineteenth and twentieth had enough time to alter their armor, having morphed the defense to have something like a gorget, but grown up from the breastplate. Isnt that called a bevor?
-Your guess is exactly like mine.-
In any case, it caused the spheres to deflect up and to one side, knocking the targets around, but not killing them.
Tala cursed, but it quickly didnt matter as those spheres, like all the others, were still locked onto her foes cores.
The tungsten slowed as it moved away then quickly accelerated back down with another nearly unified crack in the air.
They drilled down through the less armored necks and struck the cores.
Gravity for the win! It wasnt a single attack that could be deflected and then ignored. Her projectiles just start coming, and they dont stop coming, forever.
Well, until they hit their target, but that means theyve arrived.
-The sentiment stands, I think.-
Tala held in a maniacal laugh as she finished wiping out the twenty-five or so basic units that had swarmed her at the beginning.
That worked so, so well.
-Well, aside from having to pull them out of your pouch.-
Yeah, that wasnt ideal, but the rest? Amazing.Witness the debut of this chapter, unveiled through Ñôv€l--B1n.
With the armored units dealt with, she just had the four examples of the unknown variant. What idiot in the guild decided tried to hide these?
They were approaching slowly, making Tala wish that shed kept some spheres back to speed things up.
The fourth never came as Flow easily cleaved through the Mage variant.
Sadly, the one right beside it, less than five feet away, was unharmed. Why do I feel like I should be able to hurt that one too?
-Life is a mystery sometimes.-
Tala vaulted the last stretch as she slammed her knee into the chest of the automaton. With both her hands free, she grabbed onto its shoulders as she did so, riding the thing down to the ground.
Even as it slammed down, she grabbed its head, giving a great, twisting pull.
She used a large portion of her strength as her back arched, and she growled in determination.
With relatively little resistance before her efforts, the head tore free.
I might need to get another weapon somehow. Throwing Flow is awesome, but it leaves me unarmed.
-Your hands work pretty well.-
Yeah, so would a rock, but its not ideal.
-Fair, fair.-
She pulled, and Flow zipped back to her, clipping another of her foes on the way by.
Sadly, that damage was healed rather quickly.
Feeling a bit ironically vindictive, Tala flung the headless Mage variant at its fellows, sprinting after the body to capitalize on the chaos.
Less than half a minute later, the other three Mage like things were out of commission.
Not bad, Tala. Not bad at all.
-Yes, let the self-congratulations flow through you.-
Rust you, Alat, Im doing great.
Alat just chuckled. -Youre right; you are.-
Tala took a moment to look around at the park-like surroundings. They were a bit torn up nearby, but for the most part, this place was still pristine.
Good. I think parts of this can be quite useful to us.
A thought occurred to her, likely born of what shed seen out of the edges of her vision earlier.
She pushed Flow into its void-knife form, and her vision changed.
With the void-sight, she was able to see the edges of reality for the simple reason that there was nothing past them at all.
Ahh, I can see the void.
-Well, you can not see anything, and that absence indicates the void.-
Semantics.
-Fair enough.-
This pocket dimension ended only a foot or so below Tala. She could also see that, below the trees, great bowls of reality had been created, extending down and out in a half-sphere to allow the trees to have a solid foundation.
Thats a clever way to save on internal volume while still allowing healthy, large trees.
She continued her examinations as she retrieved all her tungsten spheres from the bodies of the armored automata.
She could feel something watching her.
The book had indicated some sort of unified connection between all the things, and that it could observe within the hold as a whole. So, the feeling wasnt unexpected.
Even so, she wasnt in a rush.
In fact, no matter how long she was in here, within reason, her duties would be taken care of by others. It would be nice to have a bit of a break from the monotony, honestly.
It couldnt last forever, sadly.
I give it a week before Pallaun is sent in after me.
She definitely wouldnt need a week, but she was tempted to take as much time as she could, regardless.
Eh, Ill see how this plays out.
Thats when her enhanced hearing began to pick up the thud of footfalls.
She hadnt had a chance to charge up more than a single set of tungsten spheres to a lethal level.
Well, thats irritating.
She also really didnt want to hold the spheres
She cocked her head in thought, an idea striking her. With a mild application of focus and power, she willed her elk-leathers to grow a set of ties on her upper chest.
She then deftly fastened those around the two spheres, using the dip between them to keep them from moving side to side.
Their attraction to each other was sufficient to allow her to pull the cord relatively tight without pulling between them.
She tested it out, moving around. The spheres did pull a bit, but it wasnt too bad.
Shed reduced their downward pull first, so they werent weighing her down with anything but their inertia.
Well, lets give this method a try.
She looked up as, around a bend in the main path, a unit of ten automata came into view.
These were armored as expected, but a few things seemed to have changed.
First, their armor had grown.
This was not mere stretching or reshaping. Unfortunately, they looked to have doubled, if not tripled, the mass of metal in their armor as comparted to the initial armored units Tala had slain.
Additionally, their heads were pulled lower, seemingly more closely connected to their shoulders. The shape of the armor was now clearly meant both for deflecting blows away from the head and core and to make it difficult to get a good grip on the head or neck.
They can upgrade to counter me, too? Not just change behavior or do surface level changes?
-This was listed as a factory for them, Tala.-
Yeah, but their production speed cant be this good.
-I believe that these were merely upgraded based on your previous clashes.-
That made a lot of sense, actually.
Building new ones? Slow.
Upgrading existing ones with a bit more armor? Fast.
Alright, then. I suppose its time to make some more scrap.
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Chapter 232: Armored Units
Tala was finally ready, her preparations complete.
She stood within a guilds main hold, within the city of Platoiri.
Around her lay the broken bodies of basic model automata.
Before her stood the entrance into the next section of this dimensional pocket complex.
Her tungsten sphere pairs were gravity amplified to lethal levels and awaiting her need in the pouch at her waist.
Not Kit. A different pouch.
Kit hung beside the lesser pouch, together balancing out Flow that hung on her opposite hip.
She had contemplated holding Kit when she went through, but decided that there was no need.
She still did have her tungsten rod and sphere in position, along with the three defensive discs in random orbit around herself, however.
The book didnt say anything about ranged combatants, but they sure did seem to throw accurately enough.
With one last nod to herself for confirmation, she unlocked the door into the next section, watching with her mage-sight as defensive fields and spatial locks retracted to give her access.
Instead of swinging open, the doors faded away, and she was left standing in a decorative archway, leading deeper into the facility.
She knew from the book that if she put the key back into the center of the empty space she could reestablish the doors and seal off the welcome atrium, but that shouldnt be necessary.
Sadly, there were no convenient automata standing right in front of the door this time, so she was forced to leap to get within range of the closest ones.
Flow snapped into her hand, taking the form of a glaive as she lashed out.
The space she was in now was a faux outdoors, roughly a mile or so across.
Dozens of outbuildings were scattered throughout the lightly wooded area.
The trees were conifers, a mix of pine and fir if Talas guess was right.
The ground beneath her feet was a well-manicured lawn, and there were seating areas, including picnic benches, scattered throughout, especially concentrated near the paths and waterways.
It was a park, exclusive to the guild and their guests.
Well, now exclusive to solely their arcane creations.
-And you.-
Tala smiled at that. And me.
The first automata she slew in quick succession were all the base model, and none of the first dozen even had time to come out of their magic absorption mode before they were decommissioned.
Regardless, it wasnt long before she saw squads of the armored variant, the foot soldiers coming her way.
In addition to the armor, they were all armed with mundane weaponry, but nothing seeming to be long range.
-Yeah, what sort of madwoman would throw a sword?-
Hush you.
There was a single odd automaton in the middle of each squad of five armored units.
Thats odd. Do you remember anything like them mentioned in the book?
-No, but the concentration of power within them is much greater than the others.-
Conveniently, there were four squads coming Talas way, so as she fought through the base automata she pulled out pairs of spheres, switching their targets one set after another, to take out the twenty armored enemies.
The air cracked with a series of reports that sounded like hail striking a metal drum, assuming the hail was as large as Talas fist.
The first two armored foes died easily, but not in the way Tala had hoped.
Their chest armor, heavily reinforced over their cores, was harder than shed hoped, and it deflected the tungsten sent to destroy them.
Blessedly, the angles of the armor sent the attack up at an angle, into their heads.
Two heads vaporized, and their bodies began to fall.
Tala took a couple of punches from the basic units around her as she finished sending off her twenty spheres.
This is ridiculous. Holding them in pouches is slower than keeping them in my hand, and still takes my hand to get them free for use.
They didnt really hurt as her elk-leathers defenses actually deadened the blows. Hey! My defenses weren't immediately overpowered.
That was a nice change, honestly.
Four more bodies dropped, then twelve had were falling, then sixteen.
Interestingly enough, as Tala had targeted the things cores, the tungsten returned to slam into the fallen bodies once again, sometimes ending up resting in a newly created divot in the tough armor exterior, and sometimes finding a way down inside to actually reach the targeted destination.
Even so, while they were struck down, they were adapting.
Tala could see magic flowing through their armor as it reshaped. It wasnt fast enough for most of her targets, but the final four? It did quite a lot.
The seventeenth and eighteenth armored foes had morphed enough of a deflection that only half of their heads were blown off, rather than the entirety being basically vaporized by the redirected impact.
It was still decommissioning for them, but it was an improvement from a defensive standpoint.
The nineteenth and twentieth had enough time to alter their armor, having morphed the defense to have something like a gorget, but grown up from the breastplate. Isnt that called a bevor?
-Your guess is exactly like mine.-
In any case, it caused the spheres to deflect up and to one side, knocking the targets around, but not killing them.
Tala cursed, but it quickly didnt matter as those spheres, like all the others, were still locked onto her foes cores.
The tungsten slowed as it moved away then quickly accelerated back down with another nearly unified crack in the air.
They drilled down through the less armored necks and struck the cores.
Gravity for the win! It wasnt a single attack that could be deflected and then ignored. Her projectiles just start coming, and they dont stop coming, forever.
Well, until they hit their target, but that means theyve arrived.
-The sentiment stands, I think.-
Tala held in a maniacal laugh as she finished wiping out the twenty-five or so basic units that had swarmed her at the beginning.
That worked so, so well.
-Well, aside from having to pull them out of your pouch.-
Yeah, that wasnt ideal, but the rest? Amazing.Witness the debut of this chapter, unveiled through Ñôv€l--B1n.
With the armored units dealt with, she just had the four examples of the unknown variant. What idiot in the guild decided tried to hide these?
They were approaching slowly, making Tala wish that shed kept some spheres back to speed things up.
The fourth never came as Flow easily cleaved through the Mage variant.
Sadly, the one right beside it, less than five feet away, was unharmed. Why do I feel like I should be able to hurt that one too?
-Life is a mystery sometimes.-
Tala vaulted the last stretch as she slammed her knee into the chest of the automaton. With both her hands free, she grabbed onto its shoulders as she did so, riding the thing down to the ground.
Even as it slammed down, she grabbed its head, giving a great, twisting pull.
She used a large portion of her strength as her back arched, and she growled in determination.
With relatively little resistance before her efforts, the head tore free.
I might need to get another weapon somehow. Throwing Flow is awesome, but it leaves me unarmed.
-Your hands work pretty well.-
Yeah, so would a rock, but its not ideal.
-Fair, fair.-
She pulled, and Flow zipped back to her, clipping another of her foes on the way by.
Sadly, that damage was healed rather quickly.
Feeling a bit ironically vindictive, Tala flung the headless Mage variant at its fellows, sprinting after the body to capitalize on the chaos.
Less than half a minute later, the other three Mage like things were out of commission.
Not bad, Tala. Not bad at all.
-Yes, let the self-congratulations flow through you.-
Rust you, Alat, Im doing great.
Alat just chuckled. -Youre right; you are.-
Tala took a moment to look around at the park-like surroundings. They were a bit torn up nearby, but for the most part, this place was still pristine.
Good. I think parts of this can be quite useful to us.
A thought occurred to her, likely born of what shed seen out of the edges of her vision earlier.
She pushed Flow into its void-knife form, and her vision changed.
With the void-sight, she was able to see the edges of reality for the simple reason that there was nothing past them at all.
Ahh, I can see the void.
-Well, you can not see anything, and that absence indicates the void.-
Semantics.
-Fair enough.-
This pocket dimension ended only a foot or so below Tala. She could also see that, below the trees, great bowls of reality had been created, extending down and out in a half-sphere to allow the trees to have a solid foundation.
Thats a clever way to save on internal volume while still allowing healthy, large trees.
She continued her examinations as she retrieved all her tungsten spheres from the bodies of the armored automata.
She could feel something watching her.
The book had indicated some sort of unified connection between all the things, and that it could observe within the hold as a whole. So, the feeling wasnt unexpected.
Even so, she wasnt in a rush.
In fact, no matter how long she was in here, within reason, her duties would be taken care of by others. It would be nice to have a bit of a break from the monotony, honestly.
It couldnt last forever, sadly.
I give it a week before Pallaun is sent in after me.
She definitely wouldnt need a week, but she was tempted to take as much time as she could, regardless.
Eh, Ill see how this plays out.
Thats when her enhanced hearing began to pick up the thud of footfalls.
She hadnt had a chance to charge up more than a single set of tungsten spheres to a lethal level.
Well, thats irritating.
She also really didnt want to hold the spheres
She cocked her head in thought, an idea striking her. With a mild application of focus and power, she willed her elk-leathers to grow a set of ties on her upper chest.
She then deftly fastened those around the two spheres, using the dip between them to keep them from moving side to side.
Their attraction to each other was sufficient to allow her to pull the cord relatively tight without pulling between them.
She tested it out, moving around. The spheres did pull a bit, but it wasnt too bad.
Shed reduced their downward pull first, so they werent weighing her down with anything but their inertia.
Well, lets give this method a try.
She looked up as, around a bend in the main path, a unit of ten automata came into view.
These were armored as expected, but a few things seemed to have changed.
First, their armor had grown.
This was not mere stretching or reshaping. Unfortunately, they looked to have doubled, if not tripled, the mass of metal in their armor as comparted to the initial armored units Tala had slain.
Additionally, their heads were pulled lower, seemingly more closely connected to their shoulders. The shape of the armor was now clearly meant both for deflecting blows away from the head and core and to make it difficult to get a good grip on the head or neck.
They can upgrade to counter me, too? Not just change behavior or do surface level changes?
-This was listed as a factory for them, Tala.-
Yeah, but their production speed cant be this good.
-I believe that these were merely upgraded based on your previous clashes.-
That made a lot of sense, actually.
Building new ones? Slow.
Upgrading existing ones with a bit more armor? Fast.
Alright, then. I suppose its time to make some more scrap.
Chapter 232: Armored UnitsTala was finally ready, her preparations complete.She stood within a guilds main hold, within the city of Platoiri.Around her lay the broken bodies of basic model automata.Before her stood the entrance into the next section of this dimensional pocket complex.Her tungsten sphere pairs were gravity amplified to lethal levels and awaiting her need in the pouch at her waist.Not Kit. A different pouch.Kit hung beside the lesser pouch, together balancing out Flow that hung on her opposite hip.She had contemplated holding Kit when she went through, but decided that there was no need.She still did have her tungsten rod and sphere in position, along with the three defensive discs in random orbit around herself, however.The book didnt say anything about ranged combatants, but they sure did seem to throw accurately enough.With one last nod to herself for confirmation, she unlocked the door into the next section, watching with her mage-sight as defensive fields and spatial locks retracted to give her access.Instead of swinging open, the doors faded away, and she was left standing in a decorative archway, leading deeper into the facility.She knew from the book that if she put the key back into the center of the empty space she could reestablish the doors and seal off the welcome atrium, but that shouldnt be necessary.Sadly, there were no convenient automata standing right in front of the door this time, so she was forced to leap to get within range of the closest ones.Flow snapped into her hand, taking the form of a glaive as she lashed out.The space she was in now was a faux outdoors, roughly a mile or so across.Dozens of outbuildings were scattered throughout the lightly wooded area.The trees were conifers, a mix of pine and fir if Talas guess was right.The ground beneath her feet was a well-manicured lawn, and there were seating areas, including picnic benches, scattered throughout, especially concentrated near the paths and waterways.It was a park, exclusive to the guild and their guests.Well, now exclusive to solely their arcane creations.-And you.-Tala smiled at that. And me.The first automata she slew in quick succession were all the base model, and none of the first dozen even had time to come out of their magic absorption mode before they were decommissioned.Regardless, it wasnt long before she saw squads of the armored variant, the foot soldiers coming her way.In addition to the armor, they were all armed with mundane weaponry, but nothing seeming to be long range.-Yeah, what sort of madwoman would throw a sword?-Hush you.There was a single odd automaton in the middle of each squad of five armored units.Thats odd. Do you remember anything like them mentioned in the book?-No, but the concentration of power within them is much greater than the others.-Conveniently, there were four squads coming Talas way, so as she fought through the base automata she pulled out pairs of spheres, switching their targets one set after another, to take out the twenty armored enemies.The air cracked with a series of reports that sounded like hail striking a metal drum, assuming the hail was as large as Talas fist.The first two armored foes died easily, but not in the way Tala had hoped.Their chest armor, heavily reinforced over their cores, was harder than shed hoped, and it deflected the tungsten sent to destroy them.Blessedly, the angles of the armor sent the attack up at an angle, into their heads.Two heads vaporized, and their bodies began to fall.Tala took a couple of punches from the basic units around her as she finished sending off her twenty spheres.This is ridiculous. Holding them in pouches is slower than keeping them in my hand, and still takes my hand to get them free for use.They didnt really hurt as her elk-leathers defenses actually deadened the blows. Hey! My defenses weren't immediately overpowered.That was a nice change, honestly.Four more bodies dropped, then twelve had were falling, then sixteen.Interestingly enough, as Tala had targeted the things cores, the tungsten returned to slam into the fallen bodies once again, sometimes ending up resting in a newly created divot in the tough armor exterior, and sometimes finding a way down inside to actually reach the targeted destination.Even so, while they were struck down, they were adapting.Tala could see magic flowing through their armor as it reshaped. It wasnt fast enough for most of her targets, but the final four? It did quite a lot.The seventeenth and eighteenth armored foes had morphed enough of a deflection that only half of their heads were blown off, rather than the entirety being basically vaporized by the redirected impact.It was still decommissioning for them, but it was an improvement from a defensive standpoint.The nineteenth and twentieth had enough time to alter their armor, having morphed the defense to have something like a gorget, but grown up from the breastplate. Isnt that called a bevor?-Your guess is exactly like mine.-In any case, it caused the spheres to deflect up and to one side, knocking the targets around, but not killing them.Tala cursed, but it quickly didnt matter as those spheres, like all the others, were still locked onto her foes cores.The tungsten slowed as it moved away then quickly accelerated back down with another nearly unified crack in the air.They drilled down through the less armored necks and struck the cores.Gravity for the win! It wasnt a single attack that could be deflected and then ignored. Her projectiles just start coming, and they dont stop coming, forever.Well, until they hit their target, but that means theyve arrived.-The sentiment stands, I think.-Tala held in a maniacal laugh as she finished wiping out the twenty-five or so basic units that had swarmed her at the beginning.That worked so, so well.-Well, aside from having to pull them out of your pouch.-Yeah, that wasnt ideal, but the rest? Amazing.Witness the debut of this chapter, unveiled through Novl--B1n.With the armored units dealt with, she just had the four examples of the unknown variant. What idiot in the guild decided tried to hide these?They were approaching slowly, making Tala wish that shed kept some spheres back to speed things up.The fourth never came as Flow easily cleaved through the Mage variant.Sadly, the one right beside it, less than five feet away, was unharmed. Why do I feel like I should be able to hurt that one too?-Life is a mystery sometimes.-Tala vaulted the last stretch as she slammed her knee into the chest of the automaton. With both her hands free, she grabbed onto its shoulders as she did so, riding the thing down to the ground.Even as it slammed down, she grabbed its head, giving a great, twisting pull.She used a large portion of her strength as her back arched, and she growled in determination.With relatively little resistance before her efforts, the head tore free.I might need to get another weapon somehow. Throwing Flow is awesome, but it leaves me unarmed.-Your hands work pretty well.-Yeah, so would a rock, but its not ideal.-Fair, fair.-She pulled, and Flow zipped back to her, clipping another of her foes on the way by.Sadly, that damage was healed rather quickly.Feeling a bit ironically vindictive, Tala flung the headless Mage variant at its fellows, sprinting after the body to capitalize on the chaos.Less than half a minute later, the other three Mage like things were out of commission.Not bad, Tala. Not bad at all.-Yes, let the self-congratulations flow through you.-Rust you, Alat, Im doing great.Alat just chuckled. -Youre right; you are.-Tala took a moment to look around at the park-like surroundings. They were a bit torn up nearby, but for the most part, this place was still pristine.Good. I think parts of this can be quite useful to us.A thought occurred to her, likely born of what shed seen out of the edges of her vision earlier.She pushed Flow into its void-knife form, and her vision changed.With the void-sight, she was able to see the edges of reality for the simple reason that there was nothing past them at all.Ahh, I can see the void.-Well, you can not see anything, and that absence indicates the void.-Semantics.-Fair enough.-This pocket dimension ended only a foot or so below Tala. She could also see that, below the trees, great bowls of reality had been created, extending down and out in a half-sphere to allow the trees to have a solid foundation.Thats a clever way to save on internal volume while still allowing healthy, large trees.She continued her examinations as she retrieved all her tungsten spheres from the bodies of the armored automata.She could feel something watching her.The book had indicated some sort of unified connection between all the things, and that it could observe within the hold as a whole. So, the feeling wasnt unexpected.Even so, she wasnt in a rush.In fact, no matter how long she was in here, within reason, her duties would be taken care of by others. It would be nice to have a bit of a break from the monotony, honestly.It couldnt last forever, sadly.I give it a week before Pallaun is sent in after me.She definitely wouldnt need a week, but she was tempted to take as much time as she could, regardless.Eh, Ill see how this plays out.Thats when her enhanced hearing began to pick up the thud of footfalls.She hadnt had a chance to charge up more than a single set of tungsten spheres to a lethal level.Well, thats irritating.She also really didnt want to hold the spheresShe cocked her head in thought, an idea striking her. With a mild application of focus and power, she willed her elk-leathers to grow a set of ties on her upper chest.She then deftly fastened those around the two spheres, using the dip between them to keep them from moving side to side.Their attraction to each other was sufficient to allow her to pull the cord relatively tight without pulling between them.She tested it out, moving around. The spheres did pull a bit, but it wasnt too bad.Shed reduced their downward pull first, so they werent weighing her down with anything but their inertia.Well, lets give this method a try.She looked up as, around a bend in the main path, a unit of ten automata came into view.These were armored as expected, but a few things seemed to have changed.First, their armor had grown.This was not mere stretching or reshaping. Unfortunately, they looked to have doubled, if not tripled, the mass of metal in their armor as comparted to the initial armored units Tala had slain.Additionally, their heads were pulled lower, seemingly more closely connected to their shoulders. The shape of the armor was now clearly meant both for deflecting blows away from the head and core and to make it difficult to get a good grip on the head or neck.They can upgrade to counter me, too? Not just change behavior or do surface level changes?-This was listed as a factory for them, Tala.-Yeah, but their production speed cant be this good.-I believe that these were merely upgraded based on your previous clashes.-That made a lot of sense, actually.Building new ones? Slow.Upgrading existing ones with a bit more armor? Fast.Alright, then. I suppose its time to make some more scrap.
