The first plan I came up with to steal the Skill Orb was to teleport it, which I promptly tried, and failed. The mana density around and inside the room was too high for me to teleport anything but very short distances. If I wanted to get the Skill Orb with teleportation, then I was going to have to be much closer to it than I currently was.

Luckily I wouldn’t have to have the metal container, that was holding the Skill Orb, open for me to get the Skill Orb, I should be able to teleport it even from within the container. It was definitely a plan, just walk up to the container and acquire the Skill Orb. However I wasn’t certain that the robot wouldn’t be able to sense the Skill Orb disappearing, although it seemed to check on the orb very often, it was probably doing that for caution's sake more than necessity.

If I was going to steal the orb, then I was going to need a distraction that would keep the robot busy while I stole the Skill Orb and made my exit. However, even after pondering for quite a while, the only distraction I could think of was the monsters, and I wasn’t sure how well that would work out.

Then it came to me. I could lure the monsters here with a spell like what happened before. It was definitely surprising how many monsters I drew in with just a few inefficient spells. I wonder how many I would draw in if I actually tried.

With that in mind I started to draw out and utilize as much of my mana as I could. After a few moments of gathering mana from my mana nebula, I started to strain from the effort of handling all of the mana in one place.

When I reached my limits I let go of all of it and generated a veritable mana explosion with me at the center. It would be an extremely wasteful use of mana in most circumstances, but it was exactly what I wanted for the current situation. I hope that was adequate enough to lure a large group of monsters to distract the robot. I just hope there’s enough monsters to distract the robot long enough for me to grab the Skill Orb and skedaddle.

-M-713-

The [Priority] was still there, which was good. M-713 had lost the [Not Allowed] after the electromagnetic interference levels had increased to severe levels while the model C197’s were still in the process of breaking through the earth barrier that the [Not Allowed] was in. Now M-713 had to check on the [Priority] at regular intervals just to make sure it hadn’t disappeared like all of the things the [Not Allowed] had touched.

M-713 continued to scan the city for any traces of the [Not Allowed], and wasn’t able to find much of anything, but a while after the electromagnetic interference levels had decreased M-713 detected abnormal movement from the in the [Allowed] vicinity of its building.

M-713 recognized the repeating pattern of [Allowed] going after [Not Allowed] and started to scan for the [Not Allowed] that must be somewhere in the vicinity. But as it was scanning, M-713 also recognized that the [Allowed] were flowing into the building it was in and headed towards its current location, the location holding the [Priority].

This was not good. Although they were currently [Allowed], that was only while they weren’t near the [Priority]. If anything got near the [Priority] while it was being ‘worked on’, that was [Not Allowed]. Although the [Priority] had been in the process of being ‘worked on’ for countless cycles at this point, and would stay that way until further instruction, M-713 didn’t care about that, M-713’s only concern was to secure and protect the [Priority].

-Radiant-

After I heard the monsters approaching I ducked into the room with the Skill Orb to hide from the monsters’ mana senses. Because of the higher mana density within the room, my own mana signature would be overshadowed by the mana signature of either the robot or the Skill Orb. Hopefully the mana signature of the robot would be the dominant one, but even if it wasn’t the robot would probably still fight off the monsters and be distracted like I wanted.

I quietly snuck around the edges of the large room before moving any closer to the Skill Orb. I wasn’t certain what kinds of methods the robot would have to detect me with, but I decided to be cautious and get as many obstacles between it and myself before I tried to get any closer to the Skill Orb.

It wasn’t long before the horde of monsters arrived outside the room where I had set off the mana explosion, but when the monsters got there they seemed confused when they didn’t immediately find anything. This didn’t confuse them for long though, and they wasted no time before starting to wander the area trying to find any other traces of whatever had created the mana explosion. Of course the robot noticed this gathering horde of monsters as well, and moved to put itself between the growing horde and the Skill Orb.

By this point I was already at the opposite side of the large room watching everything unfold, and seeing that the robot had focused on the horde, I decided to use this opportunity to start sneaking closer to the Skill Orb while moving between cover as much as I could, trying to stay out of its line of sight as much as possible. And while I was sneaking around I tried to keep an eye on the situation on the other side of the room.

It didn’t take long for some of the monsters to cross the threshold holding in the room’s mana, and immediately they let out a chilling scream to notify the other monsters before running toward the robot and the Skill Orb.

The robot did not seem to like this development at all, as it started to let loose magic projectiles at the monsters that entered the room. At first the robot used metallic projectiles, but that was quickly proven to be ineffective on many of the monsters and only seemed to take out roughly half of the monsters the robot had shot at. The robot quickly adapted and switched from using metallic projectiles to fiery darts that took care of another portion of the approaching horde, but yet again there were many that seemed to shrug off or resist the projectiles. Like this the robot quickly switched from shooting one kind of magic projectile to another as it tried to shoot down the approaching horde. However the robot seemed to be limited to shooting only one type of magic projectile at a time, limiting the amount of monsters it was able to eliminate at one time.

I witnessed this scene as I made my way towards the center of the room as quickly and stealthily as possible. By the time I arrived at the base of the sphere that contained the Skill Orb within it, the robot had retreated from its original position and continued to steadily draw closer to the Skill Orb. I need to get the Skill Orb and get out of here quick, before the robot gets too much closer.

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Focusing on the space before me I started to channel one of the teleportation spells I knew. This particular version of teleport was designed to overcome things like the large amount of mana density within the room, but it had its downsides due to its powerful short range teleportation abilities. One of these downsides was immediately apparent and that was its unstable boundaries. As I tried to form the boundary around the Skill Orb hidden within the large sphere the teleportation boundary wobbled around more and more as I tried to focus it in on the Skill Orb trying to exclude as much solid material as possible.

However, as I tried to draw the teleportation boundary closer and closer to the Skill Orb, the mana radiating out from the Orb sent the teleportation boundary wobbling off into the solid container holding the Skill Orb. This made it impossible to complete the teleport because this spell was absolutely incapable of severing solid matter with its teleport.

Seeing that I would be unable to complete the teleport, I quickly decided to switch to a different teleportation spell, as I was running out of time before the robot reached me. None of the other teleportation spells I knew would be able to teleport out the Skill Orb from within the sphere it was contained in, but that didn’t mean that I was out of options just yet. Although I wouldn’t be able to teleport only the Skill Orb from within the inside of the sphere, I could still try to teleport the sphere itself. I switched to a different spell, this time instead of using a quick and easy method I went for a slow and steady method.

I took the opportunity to glance at how the situation between the robot and the monster horde was proceeding and was relieved to see that, although the robot had continued to retreat, it wouldn’t arrive at the Skill Orb within the amount of time it would take me to complete my teleport. So I focused on slowly building the teleportation boundary around the large spherical container while only taking occasional glances at the fight between the robot and the monsters.

It was quite interesting seeing how much harder it was to fight off the monsters without a direct counter like my radiation beam. The diverse array of monsters, although they weren’t much individually, were able to overcome even the barrage of bullets the robot was firing.

After I completed about half of the teleportation boundary, I took another glance at the fight and calculated that it would be maybe another 5 minutes before the robot reached the point I deemed too close. However, just as I was thinking this, the robot suddenly stopped fighting off the horde of monsters flooding into the room and rushed towards the Skill Orb.

I didn’t expect this at all and tried to speed up the formation of the teleportation boundaries. However the robot arrived at a few panels and started to tap on them making the sphere open up. That made my teleportation spell get disturbed as the mana radiating out of the Skill Orb rushed out from the inside of the sphere. As my teleportation spell went off, roughly half of the sphere container disappeared into my Internal World, but I didn't get the Skill Orb.

The rush of mana also disrupted my camouflage and revealed me to the robot at the same time. I tried to rush forward and retrieve the Skill Orb, but one of the robot’s quick and nimble arms retrieved the Skill Orb like a flash of lightning, making my attempt to retrieve the Skill Orb utterly worthless. The robot then proceeded to quickly store the Skill Orb within its body before turning its attention to me.

I could tell that the robot was not pleased with my attempt to steal the Skill Orb, and it immediately fired up multiple magic bullet spells aimed at me and fired them off without any mercy.

Of course I wasn’t idle during this short moment either. I recognized that my mission had failed and immediately started to cast the quickest defensive shield spell I knew. That would hopefully last long enough for me to get an obstacle between myself and the robot as I sprinted away.

My shield went up just before the robot fired off its spells at me, but by now I had put quite some distance between me and it, and I had nearly reached some cover as well. So I was pretty confident in my chances of getting out of here.

But the robot didn’t seem to care about my proximity to cover as it fired off its bullets anyways. The first couple of bullets were stopped by my shield, but it quickly became evident that there was a reason this shield was so quick to put up. The shield cracked and shattered after only a few impacts, but by then I had reached my destination and was in the process of getting out of the line of fire. However I wasn’t fast enough, because my left arm and shoulder proceeded to receive a few bullet wounds before they made it out of the way, and my left calf got grazed by a bullet as well.

My injuries weren’t life threatening, but looking at the distance between me and the next portion of cover I could tell that, if I used a simple shield again, I would be receiving many more bullet wounds. I grit my teeth, from the pain, yes, but also because I knew that I was going to have to use one of my last 2 defensive spell crystals if I was going to get out of here alive.

Before I could second guess my decision I let loose my water barrier spell crystal. A swirling barrier of water formed around me, and I didn’t waste any time as I dismissed my earlier plans of running between cover and decided to go right for the exit.

Because this barrier was made of water instead of earth, it was able to easily move and stay around me as I sprinted out from behind my cover and towards the crowd of monsters. Although this water barrier wasn’t nearly as strong as the earth barrier I had used before, it was plenty strong enough to keep me safe from the robot and the monsters. So there was no suspense as I received a barrage of bullets and made my way into the crowd of monsters.

I was expecting the monsters to start attacking me when I neared them, but instead they completely ignored me and continued on their way towards the robot, which was now radiating the full amount of mana the Skill Orb could put out after it was no longer contained within its sphere. This was a surprise to me, but it was a good surprise nonetheless, with this I would be able to escape from the robot while the monsters kept it company.

As I reached the boundary that kept the mana within the room, I was pleased to find that the boundary seemed to have disappeared with the removal of the Skill Orb. So I wasn’t swarmed by the nearby monsters as I made my way out of the room and through the halls of the building. However, before I could get too far away from the robot, the monsters very close to me suddenly turned their focus towards me and started attacking instead of following the rest of the horde, and as I got further and further away from the robot the more monsters turned their focus towards attacking me.

This caused my speed to get slower and slower as more and more monsters started to impair my forward momentum. My heart sank as I started to wonder if maybe the monsters ignoring me had only been a temporary thing. But, weirdly, as my pace slowed to barely a crawl, the monsters seemed to once again lose interest in me and start to make their way towards the direction of the robot. This whole situation repeated multiple times, with monsters ignoring me, me speeding up and making some distance, the monsters gaining interest in me, and then losing interest after I stopped making much progress.

After a while I came to a conclusion. The monsters were only ignoring me while my mana signature was swallowed up in the mana the robot was radiating. This meant that no matter what I did, I would never be able to get farther than a certain distance away from the robot.

Well… Crap. This isn’t looking good for me.