“We won Buddy! We make such a great team! I knew we could do it!"

Toby's words caused me to open my eyes and cock my head quizzically. I couldn't understand what this "we" stuff was about.

"What in the hell are you talking about? WE didn't do anything. I won. You just watched. What makes you think..."

My words trailed off as realization dawned on me. I didn't have much time to think about it when it happened, but maybe Toby did have a hand in this victory. I remembered the intensely bright light and the howling screech when I had been pinned down by the beasts.

"Of course I helped Buddy. I'm the one who activated the stun grenade. I also triggered the sensors to protect themselves from the stun grenade. We make such a great team, don't you think?!"

Controlling the Calipso to view the place the stun grenade should be mounted on the armor's waist, I found a large circular scorch mark instead. Toby was telling the truth. He had saved my life.

I thought back to the battle. I remember the position I was in. The panic and the way my mind could not come up with a way to pull myself out of the predicament I was in.

Toby had done all of it of his own accord. He didn't receive any orders or prior requests to intervene if needed. I had trouble understanding why.

Up until this point I'd looked at Toby as nothing more than a machine. A machine I didn't like very much. My dislike actually bordered on hatred.

“Why did you do it? I didn't give any orders to do that."

"I couldn't let my best buddy die now could I? There's no need to thank me. We're in this together!"

I wondered if that was just a canned and programmed response. I thought about whether he had helped me because of some programming that made him protect users or admins.

In the end, I decided it didn't matter either way. The end result was the same. I owed my life to Toby. thinking about it, I owed him my life twice over.

When I had first met Toby, I was a dead man. The radiation poisoning would have killed me eventually, but because of Toby, I lived. I held so much anger and resentment for the pain Toby put me through during his experiments, but they did save my life. They may have also given me the tools needed to make a better life.

I straightened my posture in the chair and spoke.

"Thank you, Toby. I would be dead if it weren't for you. Truly, thank you."

And I really meant it. At that moment I decided to lay down all of my hatred and malcontent with the intelligent program. I wouldn't hold a grudge against him anymore.

"No problem buddy. That's what friends are for!"

The edges of my mouth curled up into a small grin.

"Yup, that's what friends are for."

The feeling of being alone that I had felt since I left Grey Rock City dissipated. There was someone who had my back now. Toby may not be much more than an intelligent program, but he was a hell of a lot better than nothing.

"Caleb."

"What was that buddy?”

“Call me Caleb. That's my name. My friends call me Caleb.”

“Caleb, that's a good name. I think Buddy is a better name, but Caleb is a definite close second.”

I couldn't help the chuckle that escaped my mouth. Now that I didn't hold a grudge, Toby's words actually made me laugh. He was a quirky little program and he was quickly growing on me.

We didn't have much time to talk. I had some more work to do. The cores needed to be collected and we needed to leave the area immediately. More core beasts might arrive at any second.

Digging the cores out of the corpses of the beasts was extremely delicate work when you are trying to do the work with massive metal hands. So delicate in fact, that instead of controlling the armor manually I triggered the full link mode to do the job.

Using the force blade set to the absolute minimum output, I was able to dig all the cores out of the corpses in good time.

I worried about damaging the cores by using too much strength or hitting them with the force blade, but the cores were much sturdier than I thought. I didn't test them out with the full output of the force blade or attempt to crush them in the armors fists, but they could definitely survive being handled by the armors brutish hands.

When all the work was finished I dug out a total of 27 cores. A number that surprised me. Had there really been so many of the beasts? That put the total well over thirty if I counted the beasts that fled. I felt some pride at the number.

One of the was different than the rest.

The core of the last beast I had killed, the one that used the ability on me and seemed to slip into some sort of shock after, was dim and brittle.

Its core came out in pieces. When I handled the pieces they fractured further until they were nothing more than dust.

That left me with 26 cores. All of which were brighter and larger then the cores I had dug out of the hyena-like beasts during my scavenger work with the group.

Cores that were unrefined were not as efficient as refined ones, but they should be more than enough to fuel the Calipso until I reached Anarchy City. Toby's estimates confirmed my thoughts.

The other downfall to unrefined cores was that the core drive could not operate at full output with unrefined cores as the fuel. The core drive could only achieve 80% of its max output with unrefined cores.

That was a problem, but I soon found a workaround after talking the problem through with Toby.

I had Toby partition a section of the Calipso's internal fuel storage for refined cores only.

During normal travel, the core drive would use unrefined cores as its fuel source. During combat, Toby would automatically switch the fuel source from unrefined cores to refined cores.

It was the best workaround for now. If combat was sprung on me it would take a bit for the core drive to clear out the unrefined fuel and begin burning the refined cores, but I definitely didn't want to burn through all my refined cores in non-combat situations where they were not needed just so that I would be at top condition at all times. I would run through what little refined cores I had left very soon that way.

I ran into the problem of where to store all these new cores but eventually came up with a solution.

I emptied the food and water reserves from the calipso storage compartment and brought just enough to survive until I reached Anarchy City into the cockpit with me and dumped the rest. It made the cockpit extremely cramped. I was forced to carry some of it on my lap. There was barely any room to wiggle in the cockpit.

The Calipso was surprisingly only lightly damaged during the fight. The beasts had smashed the Calipso against the ground and the large slab of rock, but the damage would only add a day or two to the repair time. Clearly, the Calypso's outer shell of armor was insanely strong. There were only dents where the beasts had struck. None of the Calipso's internal components were damaged.

With all of the work done, I climbed the mound, retrieved the old damaged armor and left.

As a single armor moving through the forest, I found that I attracted very little attention to myself. As long as I was careful not to make too much noise, I went unnoticed.

My days traveling through the forest were almost uneventful as I continued practicing manual control and even-handed control over to Toby from time to time so that I could practice moving the armor under combat conditions in simulations.

The simulator gave me an assortment of opponents and scenarios to choose from. I lost the fights more than I won them, but I could feel myself improving and showing better results with each simulation.

I avoided training with full link mode for now. I really needed to work on my manual control. I couldn't rely on the full link mode too heavily. As I had already learned, it wasn't always available and it did have a time limit.

I was beginning to trust Toby more and more and didn't feel the need to monitor his every move. Without me telling Toby to shut up every time he spoke up with his chipper attitude, he tended to prattle on and on. Before the battle on the mound whenever he did this it annoyed me. Now I found myself giggling and smiling at his childlike attitude.

There was an incident where I stumbled upon a core beast with very feline features feasting upon a fresh kill. The beast looked like a larger version of a jaguar I'd seen in a book growing up.

It immediately set down its meal and launched itself at me with its crystal-like claws bared.

The fight was quick and ended with a single swipe of the force blade. I collected its core and moved on without wasting more than 5 minutes.

On the 5th day of my journey following the winding path to Anarchy City, I had another run-in with core beasts. But the encounter was unlike anything I expect when running into core beasts.

I had been following what looks like a well-worn game trail when the path opened up to a large clearing of long grass.

When I stepped into the clearing I was shocked to find what must have been one or two hundred massive Green Elk with pristine white antlers.

At first, I didn't know they were core beasts. When I magnify the image displayed, I could see the yellow cores embedded in their foreheads. I felt a few moments of fear at the idea of so many core beasts charging me. Their antlers looked extremely sharp and had an unnatural sheen to them.

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When the large herd noticed me I got ready to begin hightailing it into the woods like a madman but stopped when I noticed there was not much of a reaction from the herd.

A few of the larger beasts step forward and position themselves between me and the herd, but besides huffing at me with loud grunts and scraping at the ground with their hooves while dipping their antlers at me, no aggressive moves were made by the herd.

I stood watching for a few minutes and realized these were not meat eaters. I watched as these massive green elk lowered their head and tore up some of the long grass. They placidly chewed it and almost completely ignored me.

It was the first time I'd ever thought of core beasts as majestic. I found myself having a new outlook on core beasts. The words core beast had always been associated with the word monster in my head.

Now, I wasn't exactly sure what to think. Obviously not all core beasts where mutated monstrosities. The thought gave me comfort and made the forest around me seem less foreign and brooding.

My time of gazing upon the herd was cut short as what appeared to be one of the herd leaders got annoyed and impatient with me eyeing the herd.

It suddenly initiated a short charge that nearly stopped my heart in my chest before suddenly breaking off its charge halfway and resuming its huffing, grunting, and scraping the ground with its hooves while staring at me. He was obviously trying to scare me off.

I took the hint and moved on, but not before recording the images. I wanted to show them to my mother. There were very few animals kept in the outer circle. Not many people were stupid enough to try raising a pet when most can barely feed themselves.

Even if you could afford to feed it, there was no guarantee someone else wouldn't see a cat or dog as a convenient source of meat. As such the likelihood of seeing animals that didn't want to eat you was minimal.

I was sure my mother would appreciate the sight of the herd just as I had. They were truly majestic beasts and gave you a sense of peace from watching them.

On the sixth day, I began drawing very close to Anarchy City and the region became very mountainous. I was lucky to have the map or I probably would have gotten lost many times over.

At one point during my travel, I noticed half a dozen large white shapes on the rocky side of a slope higher up on a mountain.

Magnifying the image with the Calipso's optics, I could see that they were some sort of horned and hooved creatures that I failed to recognize from any literature or tales I'd heard. They were incredibly nimble and seemed to cling to the mountainside effortlessly.

I had just started to get the same majestic and peaceful feeling that I had when I observe the herd of green elk when a massive and monstrous bird swooped out of the sky like a streak of lightning and grabbed one of the pure white beasts.

The sudden death of the furry white animal on the mountainside reminded me that the outside world was not quite as beautiful and majestic as I had started to believe.

The world outside the walls of any city still operated on the rules of the jungle. If I really thought about it, the rules of the jungle even applied inside the cities. The world was both beautiful AND ugly.

On the evening of the seventh day, I drew within 50 km of the city, a travel time which actually overshot the estimations I had made earlier by a noticeable margin.

Instead of being upset at the delay I was happy because that night the shield system started operating again. They couldn't achieve full power, only a little under 50%, but it was better than nothing. Should things go wrong at Anarchy City, they would be very helpful. The outer shell armor had also been completely repaired minus the minimal aesthetic damage that I left on purpose.

Instead of approaching the city at night and risk being identified as an enemy armor sneaking up or having someone with a twitchy trigger finger shoot at me as I approached as nothing more than a shadow in the night, I decided to wait the night out and approach in the morning.

During the night I had toby make up a special map file that I could use before actually trading the real map file. It was nothing more than a mock-up of the coverage of the real map. It showed the areas mapped without actually revealing the data. It would allow me to give a potential buyer an idea of what they were buying.

I planned on using the map data to purchase entry into the city if needed. I wasn't sure if it would work, but I sure as hell wasn't going to start my bargaining tactics off with trading away the old world armor slung over the Calipso's shoulder. It was worth much more than entry to the city and I would be foolish to you use it that way.

Besides, in a city full of bandits that travel the region hunting for merchant caravans, I figured map data would be an excellent trading commodity.

As I slept toby woke me and informed me of activity. Two helicopters passed over me a few kilometers to the south. They ran completely dark, but the sound of the rotors, as well as their heat signatures, stood out plain as day to the Calipso's sensors.

The helicopters were moving in the direction of the city. They were heavy cargo helicopters like the ones that had come to join the noble Count Vagnar, but these were louder and obviously older designs.

Nothing else of note happened the rest of the night and I set out for the city in the morning.

When I got within a few dozen kilometers of the city the Calipso's systems picked up a signal. The signal was unencrypted and broadcast on an open channel. A gruff male voice repeated the same message over and over. The message was obviously recorded and set to loop as well as transmit a set of map coordinates.

"This is Anarchy City defense forces. If you are hearing this message you are within the defense perimeter of Anarchy city. You ARE being watched. Any suspicious activity will be met with swift and deadly force. No warning will be given.

If you intend on entering Anarchy city proceed to one of the coordinates being broadcast and enter by the marked path. Broadcast your location on approach over channel 3.26. When contacted by security forces over that channel follow all instructions. DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT make any aggressive actions or attempt to sneak into the city. Only a quick death awaits anyone who tries entering the city by unauthorized methods. Obey all instructions and you will not be harmed."

The message was clear enough and I had no plans to disobey. I made my way to the coordinates sent along with the voice transmission, making sure to keep my weapon down and doing my best to appear peaceful.

I did, however, turn my shield systems on. If someone took a shot at me I would at least be prepared.

When I arrived at the coordinates there was a sign stabbed into the ground with a large arrow pointing up a gravel path and a large A within a circle.

I followed the path cautiously. It felt weird knowing I was probably being watched. Some ass hat probably had a weapon trained on me right at this very moment.

There was nothing I could do about it though. I walked the path with the sensor systems set to active and broadcast my location openly on the channel the earlier message instructed me to.

There were two modes for the sensor systems. Passive and active. Active mode sent out radar, lidar, and an assortment of other wavelengths and signals to try and get active return data.

Passive mode did not send out any signals or energy of any sort. The cameras simply watched and the sensors passively received any wavelengths or signals already generated by outside sources.

Passive was the way you ran your sensors when you wanted to stay incognito. You run your active sensors when you didn't care about being found. They gave you a much better picture of the world around you but it was basically like setting off a flare in the middle of the night.

I learned all of this from the data files toby helped me find inside the Calipso's data core. The file was a sort of a user manual for the Calipso and I had dedicated it to memory. It wasn't a complete tutorial on tactics and methods but it was extremely helpful.

I didn't mind being seen and in fact, I wanted to be seen. So I ran the active sensors. The last thing I needed was to be thought of as trying to sneak up on the city.

The gravel path ascended up and in-between three massive mountains that formed the point in a V-shaped mountain range.

As I ascended into the mountain path, I began to see defense emplacements built into the steep mountain ridges to each side. They looked to be hardened bunkers with cannons and even some surface to air missile batteries.

I could see armor patrolling around these defensive emplacements of varying types. Many of these armor seemed to be watching me.

It was extremely uncomfortable being under the barrel of these cannon filled fortifications. If these cannons began firing, would the weakened shields of the Calipso hold?

Making my way further and further up the path, the defensive measures became more and more numerous. Anarchy City had a massive defense network wrapped around it obviously.

"Sensors are picking up drive core signatures and moving contacts directly in front of us. The distance of these contacts is about a kilometer. Sensors register at least 8 contacts of varying size. Estimate contacts to be a group of armor."

Toby rattled out the information and my tension ramped up. This would be my first contact with anyone from Anarchy city and I was worried what I knew about Anarchy city was false.

Proceeding along the path, eventually, I saw the group. They also saw me as well. When they spotted me they paused much the same as I did. We appraised each other for a half minute before they began to move forward again.

At first, I thought they were the welcoming party of anarchy city, but when they finally got close instead of stopping they simply stayed to one side of the path and passed by. They did seem to keep their guard up against me and I noticed most of the group turning the heads of their armor and main sensors to keep an eye on me. They passed quickly and we parted ways. No attempt to contact me over com channels was made.

After another 15 minutes of slowly proceeding along the path, I saw reinforced concrete buildings blocking the path ahead. I also noticed the edge of a city poking out of the forest higher up and nestled between the mountains. The walls looked much higher than Grey rock city's walls.

Multiple sets of armor patrolled this outpost on the path. Some of these armor stood directly on the path and seemed to be waiting for me. Just as I began to think about how to approach them, I received a notification from toby telling me there was a comm connection request on the channel I had been using to broadcast my location. I immediately accepted the request.

"Connect to channel 3.97 and continue your approach. Do not make any sudden moves. Turn off your active sensors. They can mess with our own sensor systems when you are close. You don't need to continue broadcasting on the original channel you were ordered to anymore."

The male voice that came over the channel was very gruff. I did as ordered and waited for more instructions.

"That's good. My database does not have your armor registered. What group or unit are you a part of?"

I thought for a second and answered.

"I'm not part of any group from Anarchy city. This is my first time here. Is that a problem?"

"No. It's uncommon but not that rare. You will need to be registered and given an ID before you are allowed entry to the inner city. You will also be required to disarm here before you can proceed. Don't worry, all of your weapons will be returned in time."

I guessed as much. They wouldn't allow an unknown man to enter the city armed to the teeth. It would be stupid to allow that.

"That's fine. I expected as much. Are there any requirements besides that for entering the city."

"Not much really. You can't bring your armor into the city proper. It will be stored in a sectioned off part just inside the wall, but you can access it anytime you want. It's required of every pilot within the city. Only defense forces or council sanctioned units are allowed to pilot armor within the inner city."

The thought of leaving my armor under the protection of others was not a comfortable one. It was a good thing I had Toby. If someone tried to steal the Calipso he would be there to stop them, or at least put up a fight. I would leave his existence as a secret and let him be a surprise for any would-be thieves.

The process at the outpost went smoother than expected. My weapons were taken while multiple armor watched and I was led towards Anarchy city by half a dozen armor.

"Are you a noble?"

The question surprised me.

"No. I'm not even a knight."

"That's good. People here don't like nobles. In fact, most people hate them. You would run into a lot of trouble if you were one. If you're lying about not being one... I warn you now, we have an extensive list of noble identities and it's unlikely you will escape notice."

"It won't be a problem. I'm not a noble."

"A more in-depth questioning will happen when you get to the city. This outpost is just a buffer before anyone enters the city. I suggest you be open and honest about your reasons for coming here."

There was nothing to really say in response. So I said nothing. The man didn't appear to be interested in talking anymore either. None of the other armor pilots spoke on the channel.

The closer we got to Anarchy city, the more I was surprised by its size and defensive layout. It was built into the side of the mountain and looked like a hedgehog made of walls and cannons.

Above the city was the gaping mouth of a massive cavern. I was surprised when a pair of jets rolled in over the treetops and seemed to dive directly into the mouth of the massive cavern.

The man who guided me along with my other escorts must have noticed my attention on the odd sight.

"That is the air base for Anarchy city. It's built directly into the mountain for defensive purposes."

I gave a short grunt in acknowledgment of his words. Eventually, we came up the walls of the city and a massive gateway built into the wall. When we came to a rest, the gate began to slowly part with a rumble.

Another group of armor was waiting on the other side of the gate as it opened. My weapons were handed over to this new group and I was ordered to follow them.

As I stepped inside the tunnel behind the gate, it began to close. I wondered if coming to Anarchy city was a mistake.

Only time would tell. I really knew of no other place I could go.