[L-the... debts will be... p-paid with h-high in...terests. S-soon... V-very soon...]

Zzshhwww!

"I don't understand a fucking thing you're babbling about!" Draylith spat with disdain, firing a small silver gun in his hands and turning an android into melted metal.

It looked like a pistol, but its barrel gleamed with intense violet.

This act caused the dark second level, which was only illuminated by the dim lights on the soldiers' helmets, to suddenly light up in all its corners for a brief second.

Until recently, he had used his BlasterX to eliminate thousands of automatons, but the number of enemies had drastically decreased. When he shot now, he no longer contributed; instead, he caused harm to his comrades due to the shockwaves from his impacts.

"Friendly fire..." he whispered with a hint of guilt in his voice.

This was the reason he was forced to be in this battalion, and if after all this time he hadn't learned, then he was useless!

Reluctantly, he was forced to switch to an EclipseX, from the X series of plasma weapons. They didn't provide him with another plasma rifle, as he had lost his previous one.

Draylith searched for it, but no matter which direction he looked, he couldn't find it, as if the earth had swallowed it.

Tsk!

"This discontinued thing... Why, being also part of the army, do they give us plasma weapons? Was it so difficult to provide us with particle weapons? With just one shot, we could have deactivated countless pieces of this rusted metal without wasting so much time," Draylith murmured as he looked at the pistol, as if merely wielding it disgusted him.

With subatomic particles, each component of those automatons would suffer molecular damage, resulting in irreversible malfunction.

Thud! Thud!

"You're living in a dream if you think our battalion will be given modern weaponry," Zyrgon mocked as he approached him in his heavy Xenotech armor.

Draylith responded with a somber tone, watching his companion's sniper rifle, "You're not one to talk; at least you kept your Magnetic Hunter. I was stripped of all my weapons when I joined this battalion..."

"Huh?"

On the other hand, Zyrgon looked at him and whispered: "Do you really think I kept this without paying anything?" he pointed to his massive sniper rifle and continued speaking angrily, "I pleaded, saying it was a family relic, and many more reasons that should be acceptable, but it wasn't until I paid four hundred thousand Lumi Units that I saved my whole life, you know? It was seven hundred years! Literally all my adolescence and a part of my adulthood of savings."

"..."

Under his Xenotech armor helmet, Draylith had a look of disbelief, glanced at his plasma pistol, and dropped the subject.

At least he still had his units...

They watched the few remaining automatons. After hours of shooting, only a thousand were left. Still, each of these soldiers showed signs of exhaustion under their armors. Even if their race didn't need sleep, mental fatigue would still show.

Zzzaaap-zzzaaap-zzzaaap!

With the shots from some plasma rifles, they were all decimated.

"Finally!" exclaimed one of the soldiers with a tired voice.

From the troublesome Sages to the androids and robots, all were reduced to heaps and heaps of melted or shattered metal pieces.

Now, kilometers of ground were a mixture of bones and rusted metal.

"...This is where the signal that AI received was, but there's nothing unusual except for all those automatons we destroyed," Zyrgon looked at the thousands of soldiers around him and continued speaking, "There are two possible reasons why there's nothing here. The first could be that the AI made a mistake, which I would expect from a useless set of data, and the second would be that it's in the lower levels of these facilities."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

One of the soldiers took off his helmet, revealing a square and manly face with three green pupils, red skin, and no hair.

"Maybe I'm exaggerating, but if there were more than a hundred thousand of those things on the upper levels, shouldn't there be more on the lower levels?" he asked with an exhausted and irritated expression, as if being there was the most unpleasant experience of his life.

Zyrgon looked at the soldier but chose to remain silent, turning his head as if immersed in doubt.

Like all those soldiers around them, he was in this low-grade battalion due to his actions on various battlefields. Despite being a skilled sniper that ranked among the top thousand in the Lumineos sector, every time he found himself at a disadvantage, he chose to retreat, leaving his comrades behind and causing considerable losses, when he should have controlled the battle from a distance.

He could have chosen another path, but he only had two options: face prison for desertion or serve under the command of that fat Zarok...

Of course, he chose the second, with no desire to spend his life behind bars.

Even if there were more of those automatons, he doubted they posed a threat. However, fatigue was taking over him, and he preferred to directly communicate to that AI that there was nothing unusual. He even considered the option of informing Eldran about a possible system failure, exploring the possibility of a replacement.

After all, it was just a useless AI that they could replace without much difficulty; there were countless of them in the Astrum system.

"Let's all just leav-" but before Zyrgon could finish speaking, Draylith abruptly interrupted: "Let's stop the nonsense, go down, and if there are more of those things, just massacre them with our weapons. After all, when will we have another chance to have fun in battle?"

Although he spoke those words, his mind burned with anger. He had already vented a bit for the punishment received after failing the mission by destroying tens of thousands of those scraps, but if there were more...

They had to destroy them all without leaving a piece of metal intact!

Draylith gave a challenging look to the hesitating soldiers and, with a confident posture, continued: "We still have five hundred years to free ourselves from this shit planet and fulfill the royal mission. So, we have to sharpen our senses, or when we return to the battlefield, we'll be worse than cannon fodder!"

"Or is that what they want? To leave here only to be ridiculed for not even knowing how to handle a simple plasma rifle, all because of laziness?"

He finished speaking, waiting for the response of these troublesome soldiers.

They looked at each other and, in the end, nodded in agreement. They recognized that enjoying idleness during the day had its charm, even though they were all being punished by being stationed on this low-ranking planet. Still, they were part of a race that cherished battles and the feeling of standing on the mountains of their enemies' corpses.

It was true that these automatons were very weak, but it was better than nothing!

Sigh...

Zyrgon looked at his companion, whom he had known since being assigned to missions on war-torn planets and with whom he had survived dozens of battles. With a sigh, he also nodded.

If he wanted to avoid being punished again upon leaving this world, he needed to change his way of thinking.

"Well, let's break through here," Draylith pointed to the floor of section forty-six, marking the spot on the map projected on his HoloSync.

Although the maps of the six levels of these underground facilities seemed very detailed, they only showed the structure. Any other anomaly, like those automatons, was not visible, as that AI only recorded everything on this artificial island five hundred years ago and didn't bother to make more maps.

He saw this as normal; there was no need to spend time looking if something unusual was happening here. After all, nothing would pose a threat to them.

"It's absolutely exasperating that these insignificant beings chose to coat the lower levels with half a meter of silicon carbide! Why would they choose such primitive material? Only pathetically inferior civilizations resort to such rudimentary tactics, as if combining silica sand and coke were the pinnacle of engineering," Draylith commented. However, it couldn't be ignored that in front of the weapons they had, this material considerably complicated any attempt to advance.

Of course, it was only complicated, not impossible. With enough power accumulated in one place, any inferior material would yield to their plasma weapons and other types of weaponry they possessed.

"All those with heavy weaponry, aim here, and on the count of three, fire. Understood?"

With these words from Zyrgon, all those wearing Xenotech armor, equipped with high-powered weapons, aimed. His Magnetic Hunter began to accumulate energy, just like his companion's BlasterX.

There was also a soldier carrying a Voxelar, a weapon that fired ionic energy beams.

In short, with such power, it was impossible that they couldn't pierce this ground.

"One... Two... Three!" with Zyrgon's voice starting the attack, shots and bursts of light were present in this place!

Boom! Boom!

Zzchhhuuumm!

Krrraaack!

In less than a minute of shooting, a floor that had remained intact for hundreds of years was finally shattered.

"Let's go!"

Swoosh!

With Draylith's excited voice, everyone jumped through the hole.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The heavy sound of their armor was heard as they fell, although it was a fall of tens of meters, it didn't affect anyone.

"..."

In the third level, silence was palpable. Their helmets illuminated an eerie landscape: twisted roots intertwined with remnants of ancient laboratories that had been abandoned for five hundred years. Broken tubes and destroyed equipment lay as remnants of a forgotten era.

None of them said anything, but gesturing with their hands, they advanced in one direction, right where the roots became more numerous.

Upon reaching the place where the concentration was the highest, they saw nothing; only an empty hole of tens of meters, as if something had been removed from that place. Doubt seized them, questioning the existence of something in such a silent and desolate space.

"What is this th... ing!?" Before a soldier could even finish speaking, thin dark green tentacles, as if liquid, appeared out of nowhere.

Woooosh!

"Aahhh!"

They tied his body and dragged him into the darkness!