I shepherded my motley crew of robots up the dirt ramp I carved in the side of the impact trough earlier to get down. Despite how loose and uneven the crumbled and collapsed earth was, the various designs’ shared use of limbs allowed them to climb the rough terrain easily, though their feet did sink somewhat due to their relatively high ground pressure. As for how I got them to move in the first place, a set of [Select All Units] and [Follow] commands located underneath their portraits on the left of my view made them walk in an uneven line behind me like a giant, six-legged mother duck and her assorted mechanical ducklings. An apt comparison in my opinion, even if the analogy breaks down upon cursory inspection.

The scout drone named I made was still riding on top of my head, to give it a better vantage point from my 3 stories tall frame. I hadn’t yet found a zoom function despite my crystal clear vision, so I would be relying on the little guy to provide me with long-range detection. As for the direction I was heading, among the options of heading along the path or going through the urban zones, I went with going towards the city.

That meant traversing a tier zone called the instead of the tier zone. The snaking path through the forested areas was certainly safer, being of lower threat ratings along the entire path towards my objective, but the areas consisted of mostly resource points with a few orbital defense subtasks scattered among them. Given that I had ditched almost all my industrial equipment apart from the on my large courier, I didn’t think this would be a very productive way to go. I could also see a few canisters had dropped on these zones, meaning I would be competing for resources with my fellow pilots who already had a head start.

The urban zones, on the other hand, were of a much higher threat rating overall and had about double the drop pods dedicated to them. Given that I was effectively immortal and in this pilot business for a long time to come, I wanted to get some combat experience and advice from more experienced soldiers. After all, I doubted all my future drops would be in tranquil, uncontested pastures of livestock.

I and my little army thus walked towards the zone, which connected further on to the tier , tier , and tier zones. We had about 50 kilometers to go from our current location, so we had a decently long journey ahead of us.

Our group actually managed quite a brisk pace of around 30 km/h across the green pastures, through which we carved a muddy path of destruction as our legs tore up the ground. The group only managed this speed after I loaded the slowest robots onto myself, which were surprisingly the small couriers. Their millipede bodies, while flexible and capable of carrying large amounts of weight, had pathetically short strides, meaning they struggled to move faster than 20 km/h outside of short bursts of speed. The pair of large robots actually had no trouble keeping up, despite their lumbering forms, and the small combat robots were pretty much all legs so they were sorted in the mobility department. That left the three mediums, who were the slowest among the remaining robots, but too bulky and numerous for me to carry all of them.

On the way, I spat out more small robots from my sides, unpacking them as we moved. They were mostly capable of keeping up, with the exception of a small courier I had to stop and stick on my side with its siblings, and an amphibious bot with a long tail and stubby legs who’s main armament was apparently racks of tiny missiles on its back, not unlike a missile sub. That one went on my back, acting as an alternative to my tactical missile launchers. There was also a “tiny” flying robot, at only 2x1x1 slots while packaged, at least compared to the other smalls. After significant amounts of unfolding, it ended up being a dragonfly-like drone with antennae not unlike those on my scout robot . I kept that one on me also, not wanting to burn through its battery.

Speaking of batteries, the small drones did occasionally break formation once they reached about 60% fuel, or battery life in their case to attach themselves to their medium and large brethren. It was a fast process, with the robots exchanging power cells upon linking instead of plugging in to charge. The mediums and larges, meanwhile, consumed fuel blocks directly to replenish their entire stores. This only happened once on the large courier, as it needed a lot of energy to run the . The rest hadn’t burned enough fuel to warrant using an entire fuel block. I myself had a central capacitor charged by a nuclear reactor with a general meter on fuel rod depletion.

Around 30% of the capacitor was reserved for moving and running my internals such as my assembler, with the remainder presumably for my weapon systems. That was about 290 out of 400 energy units, which was equivalent to more than a minute of continuous firing on one of my beam weapons. It was a lot of power.

The terrain changed at some point to farmlands of half-grown crops. With no roads in the direction of our destination in sight, we walked directly through the fields. It was a bit wasteful, but given the vast fields stretching to the horizon, I don’t think we did too much damage. I eventually saw the one pod that had landed in this zone on my minimap, hidden from view by a large cluster of industrial buildings in the distance. As we got closer, there were obvious signs of damage that appeared among the silos, warehouses, and conveyor systems.

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Brown grain spilled out from holes near the base of some silos, the sheet metal punched through with little resistance, before the projectiles buried themselves into the dirt in massive gashes. Almost certainly railgun shots from a strider like me. An entire barn-like warehouse had its roof collapsed, the metal literally melted in a gash slanted across the top. I peered into the rubble, lifting up a corner of the collapsed roof with my foreleg to see what was below. There, I saw my first bodies.

The three corpses were those of bipedal, lizard-like beings. They had torn up clothes, perforated by shrapnel and the parts of the collapsed building. One’s head had been melted across the top, leaving only the lower jaw and some cauterized viscera. Another’s entire upper body had been flattened by the fallen roof, reddish organs spilling out its sides above digitigrade legs. The one remaining one had a girder rammed through its torso, their eyes glassy and their long, scaled muzzle slightly open and leaking still coagulating blood.

I lowered the roof and paused for a while, considering the image in my mind. I had seen gore before, with the mangled livestock on the pasture. The sight hadn’t really bothered me at all. These had been thinking beings though, bystanders caught in a conflict between powers from the stars. Strangely enough, I wasn’t particularly horrified or disgusted by their gruesome demise. It was rather a more contemplative feeling. I wondered what type of person I was before this. I decided to take another look.

Upon further inspection, I discovered what appeared to be broken and crushed weapons by the corpses. From what I could gather, they had likely been taking potshots at the landed pod, before the pilot inside responded in kind. These weren’t shotguns or rifles either, but large, grey and boxy guns, along with what appeared to be man-portable rocket launchers. Quite excessive armament for some farmers. I still was iffy on the morals of killing the local people, even if they appeared to be well-armed and aggressive, but at least I knew the person I was following wasn’t a genocidal maniac.

One interesting thing I found out, using [Interact] on the bodies, was that apparently, they were worth resources. Each corpse was about 2 units of fuel and biomass. A resource cube was 100 units of packaged resources, so they wouldn’t contribute much, but it was something to consider. I looked at the grain spilling out of the silo, finding that it too had a fuel and biomass value, at 5 and 3 per 100 kilos. Our group had consumed 232 units of fuel traversing these 50 kilometers, out of the 40, 100-unit cubes of fuel packed in the pod. I could only assume the fuel consumption would skyrocket once we got into actual combat, not to mention the increased cost of traversing difficult terrain once we crossed the river into the mountainous areas. It would be a good idea to stock up whenever I could.

I decided thus to harvest the grain for fuel, leaving the desecration of corpses for more desperate scenarios in the future. As for how, well, I was informed by the tutorial that “Your mouth is there for a reason”. Thus, I found myself shoving my face into the silo, working my split bottom jaws to force material down the aperture into the internals of my body. Steam billowed out from beneath my side armor, along with piles of finely ground dust. Occasionally a resource block would pop out, falling onto the ground or hitting another cube with a thud. After 5 fuel blocks were printed; the equivalent of 10 metric tons of grain, I stopped, and dropped the empty courier I had made while traveling to pick up the fuel blocks, ignoring the biomass as I didn’t see a use for it. I also queued up some more robots to be assembled, mostly the small, bipedal combat units as they seemed useful.

Looking down, I realized I may have eaten a corpse in the process, given the blood soaked into the grain outside the silo. Probably wasn’t too much left of them anyways after the railgun shots; the pile of food merely hiding the scene rather than ending their life. I didn’t notice at all while I was “eating”, my jaws far too strong to feel any resistance. Apparently, my no eating bodies rule had only lasted a few minutes. Still, I wouldn’t go purposefully seeking out sapients nibble on, I promised myself.

I walked around the perimeter of the buildings, as I couldn’t actually fit myself through the dirt pathways between them, not without collapsing some structures. They appeared quite flimsy, being made of welded sheet metal, but I didn’t want to test my damage resistance against falling silos taller than myself. I saw more signs of combat throughout the buildings as I walked by; large holes left by railguns as before, melted lines carved across the walls of buildings before terminating in glassy, translucent ground, and an intersection between several warehouses with a massive crater left by an explosion, shrapnel giving the surroundings a speckled appearance filled with holes. There were bloodstains and occasional bits of gore, but it appeared most of the bodies had been cleaned up. I didn’t think the pilot consumed them though, given the lack of foot-holes in the ground. Having gotten close to a relatively intact structure at the corner of the buildings, I noticed multiple signatures appear on my minimap.

It was a similar warehouse to the others, corrugated sheet metal walls with skylights sheltered under a slanted, overhanging roof. They had been shuttered, big flat boards hanging vertically inside the structure forming an imperfect seal. I could hear tense breathing inside, periods of silence followed by involuntary gasps as individuals ran out of air. I knew they could hear me, my six-legged frame piercing the ground with each earth-shaking step, combined with the discordant whirring of my dozens of escorts. The large double doors ahead of me were jammed open, as the occupants watched a leg taller than the doorframe spear into the ground just outside the building.

I turned, pivoting to face the inside of the building as I found the survivors. They huddled in a corner away from me, eyes closed and shivering. Along the wall were sheet covered lumps. The minimap updated, marking the cluster inside the building as blue. A series of shots rang out, tiny projectiles that deflected off my jaws and armor without a scratch. One of the smaller lizard people had shot at me with a handgun. Their icon turned red as my energy beams automatically armed.