“Ah scrap,” I cursed. “IronHide just got atomized!”

“What... does that mean? IronHide?” Lena asked, confused.

“Reduced to particles! Obliterated! Vaporized! Taken offline with extreme prejudice!” I shouted.

“Prime, settle down,” she said calmly, putting a hand on my shoulder. “What has happened?”

I filled her in on how IronHide’s group had reached the Azmadalauth plains to find that the ceasefire had broken. The group initially wasn’t going to get involved until they saw Dezarus’s AutoPlague spreading. The spread was exponential and they were unable to do much more than slow it a bit before the resurrected AutoDragon joined the battle. The AutoDragon annihilated IronHide, easily. Without him there, I could only guess at what was happening, but none of my guesses were happy ones.

She took the news better than I thought she would. She had been pacing as I relayed the events to her, but stopped to put a fist through a solid wooden column.

“Those fat old bags of gorsham flax!” she growled. “They had no intention of seeking peace from the beginning. This has all been a sham to give them an excuse to move forward with their war since they lost any legal justification for preceding!”

“Everyone here are expendable pawns in their game,” I agreed.

“Prime!” she said intensely, grabbing me by the head with both hands. “How quickly can you get to Azmadalauth on your own? Your God Armor has been repaired and is ready, correct? That thing is going to just destroy our army!”

I gently took her hands and pulled them from my face, down to my chest.

“It has been repaired but I can’t form the God Armor without IronHide. My CloudBurst armor is still trashed so I can’t fly on my own either... If I could get there right this second and was able to power it up, I only have enough mana saved up to power it for... eighteen seconds,” I admitted.

Lena slumped to the floor.

“Our army... our people... what do we do?” she said, quietly.

I was at a loss. My mind raced but I couldn’t work out a single path that could turn things around. Dezarus had managed to steal and repair the AutoDragon with upgrades, and had command of tens of thousands of Automata drones. That army was now, in all likelihood, laying waste to both the allied forces and the imperial forces. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that he was also using the opportunity to force convert soldiers off the battlefield as he went.

Wait. If he was running all these mobile factories, where is he getting all the materials from? While magiSteel isn’t a rare material in this world, it’s still not exactly super common. The ore has to be blended via a rather complicated recipe into the alloy by skilled metallurgists and then further processed by magiSmiths to make it suitable for embedding spells and channeling magic through it.

I had yet to try making my own and could only rely on what I’d stolen from the Trone Factory or from what Milliardo could get me from whatever suppliers he had access to. I hadn’t gotten the opportunity to clean the Factory out like I’d wanted but it shouldn’t have had the resources for completing the dragon let alone continuous production of more Automata frames.

If we could shut down his supply chain then we could, at least, stop him from producing more units. It probably wouldn’t stop him from murdering people though.

“If you were full power, you could stop all of it, right?” she asked, almost to herself.

“I think so. At the very least I’d be able to power the God Armor for a couple of hours instead of a couple of seconds. I still need to solve the problem of IronHide getting destroyed,” I answered.

“Those... What were they called? Immortal something? You said they have a way of increasing their mana. Something about a holy place out on the ocean somewhere. If we can get you to that location, maybe you can fully recover,” she theorized, pacing rapidly.

“Maybe, though I don’t know where this holy place is or how I could use it to recharge,” I admitted.

Lena got up and pulled the iron door blocking the entrance to the room out of the door frame again and carelessly tossed it aside.

“Let us egress, there is no longer any point to remaining here and playing the role of their prisoner,” she suggested.

“Where are we going?” I asked, trotting after her.

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Remi, who had been casually hanging out in the hallway backed up in surprise but flattened against the wall to let her past him. I gave him an “I have no clue” look but I doubted that it carried over. Still, he fell in step as we followed the Princess through the building.

“To find a boat!” she shouted back.

Several times a guard would run up to her but she would effortlessly knock them on their backs without breaking stride. More often than not, they were left confused and shocked but generally unhurt. If they attempted a second go of it, they changed their minds after I’d dropped my disguise and donned my Convoy armor.

We made our way out the building with little to stop us until we reached the central courtyard in front of the primary temple building. There, our way was blocked by a smug looking cat man in a turban, who was, in turn, flanked by several of his cat-ish soldiers as well as a number of simian troops, that chimp spell caster, and the giant purple ape.

“Your Highness, you’ve saved me the trouble of coming to find you. I suppose you had your AutoKnight break you free but it was all for nothing. You’ll be coming with us now to stand trial for your deeds. I’m personally rather looking forward to your public execution,” he rattled off, his words dripping with malice.

Lena’s [Cloak] dissolved, revealing her true Automata nature. She snapped her arms out to her sides, flinging out her integrated arm blades and the back panel lights that I could see peeking through the sheer fabric of her blouse shifted from a cool blue to a vibrant red.

“My love, I shall need for you to firmly grasp my beer,” she practically growled.

I looked at Remi, who shrugged back at me.

“Who’s teaching you these phrases?! It’s Ram, right?” I asked, bewildered.

Instead of answering me, Lena launched herself at the Sunurian Minister. I looked at Remi and faux sighed. Remi already had his bow drawn for what I realized was the second time; one of the cat people soldiers having caught Remi’s first shot in the throat.

The giant ape was starting to glow with that golden color I associated with a physical power boost and was charging at Lena. I ran to intercept, peppering it with steel rounds as I got closer but the most they did was cause the ape’s fur to ripple with little shockwaves. It flinched though, so that’s something.

I converted my arms to blade mode and boosted at the ape. I jabbed and thrust my blades at it, catching a shoulder strap on the chest armor only to realize that the ape was female. I paused for only a moment in surprise but it cost me. She grabbed a meaty hand around my head and upper torso, squeezing me like a vice. Fortunately, my Convoy armor was constructed of stronger materials than her bones and ligaments.

Her grip didn’t do any damage to me but she was freakishly strong, preventing me from easily breaking free. I was jerked off of my feet and could only think “ah crap” with a clear premonition of what came next. True to my gut feeling, I was shook around like a ragdoll for a bit before getting slammed into the ground on my back. After a couple of thumps, she let go and started hammering down on me with both fists, embedding me into the ground.

My chest plate was caving inward but I wasn’t particularly taking much damage otherwise. She pulled back for a massive double hammer-fist so I used the break to thrust both arm blades upward and into the path of her descending fists. She realized too late and tried to pull back but still ended up with my blades puncturing both hands; severing most of the ligaments in her palms.

She recoiled, shrieking in an octave that was much higher than I would have expected from how she looked. Her fingers flopped open, unable to clench into a fist, blood flowing freely from the gashes and splashing across my frame.

I planted a foot against her chest and pushed off, igniting a booster and throwing her back and off of me. I would have expected her to fly off like a soup can over a firecracker but the best I got was a few feet in the air. I’d have to try with both feet next time.

She stumbled as she regained her footing but I was already up and hit my boosters again, including the ones mounted under my back plates. The thrust shot me knees first into her torso, shattering her chest armor. She flailed back but still managed to get a guard up in time to block my downward elbow strike. I dropped to the ground and nailed her inside knee with a round kick followed by a hook kick to the opposite knee.

Her legs wobbled and gave way as she dropped to her knees. I felt one of the auto suggested moves pop up and triggered it. Ribbon-like guides of light appeared in my HUD, mapping out how to move. My hands flowed like leaves on a stream, circling around and twisting in the current, wrapping around, chasing each other, building momentum. Then like a tsunami crashing against a lonely lighthouse, my fists crashed into the ape woman in a double fist strike, slamming into her chest.

She didn’t fly back or even tumble. Instead she almost seemed to attempt turning inside out and just caved in on herself and slumped, sitting back on her heels and letting her hands hit the ground. She coughed up an alarming amount of blood and her eyes lost focus. She sat there, wheezing, and taking large, shuddering breaths, but otherwise was unmoving.

Slowly, her eyes regained clarity and her gaze lifted from the ground to me. I took a half step back, dropping into a fighting stance with a chambered fist and an open palm guard.

“I... I’m done...” she whispered. “I don’t... I... I can’t...”

She coughed some more, blood saturating the fur on her chest.

“Can’t... won’t... fight you... anymore...” she strained, clearly fighting to get each word out.

I lowered my guard and [Inspected] her. Her sternum had been cracked, several ribs were broken, she had a punctured lung, her forearms had hairline fractures from guarding against my elbow, one knee had been dislocated while the other had a free floating kneecap, and the tendons in both palms had been severed. I checked my own systems and found the damage was mostly cosmetic. I was actually starting to feel a bit bad for her, should I knock her out or something?

“Prime!” Lena shouted over the din.

I looked up to see that some sort of portal or something had opened up. Purple and white light swirled around in a vortex, backlighting my Princess as she shouted at me.

“They took Char! I shall pursue the culprits! You figure out how to deal with that dragon!” she ordered.

Then she was gone.

She ran through the swirling light, followed by Toadwart and Dash. As soon as the centaur passed through the light, it collapsed, leaving behind a slew of dead cat people and monkey people. How did people always know when a portal was going to end? Was the portal programmed to know when an expected person had passed through? Or maybe it functioned like the automatic doors from my old world and stayed open as long as there was a person standing in front of it and moving around? Could a portal cut out while someone long like a centaur or a naga was halfway through?

“Looks like we be jus’ about finned,” Remi said, casually.

He held a short sword with a curved blade, almost looking like an upside down question mark. Blood was dripping off of it. He walked behind the ape woman and reached forward, pulling her head back in one hand and crossing her throat with the blade.

“Hold up! Leave her alive for now. If possible, let’s get a healer over here,” I ordered.

Remi shrugged and wiped the blade off on her shoulder before returning it to a hidden compartment in his back.

“Ye be awfully soft for a man o’ metal,” Remi accused.

“Aye, there may be some truth to that,” I agreed. “But we might be able to get some useful information out of her. I also suspect that Captain Wendy might like some time with her,” I added grimly.