When the two heavily armed men had suddenly appeared, I’d been surprised—which was unusual. With my drone augmenting my already impressive sensor suite, I’d thought that remaining hidden to my senses should be nigh-impossible for these primitives. Still though, in that precise moment I’d been distracted by the goings-on in the path below with the majority of my mind mulling over possibilities, probabilities, recriminations, and what to do next. Looking back at the logs from the drone and my sensors revealed how the two figures had accomplished this feat of stealth: with magic.

Obviously, if I hadn’t been distracted by my lapse of proper reasoning, I’d have noticed the patch figures approaching in a field of absolute silence. Interestingly, they were even quieter than I was—a complete vacuum of noise—which shouldn’t be possible. Even active noise suppression made some noise. The apparent magical spell had enabled the rather bulky men to remain undetected rather well, at least until the larger one brandished a sword and started bellowing:

“HERETIC, SHOW YOURSELF AND ENGAGE IN HONORABLE COMBAT! KNOW THAT THIS NIGHT, YOU SHALL BE VANQUISHED BY THE HOLY HAND OF TASMIAN, HIS WILL EXECUTED THROUGH MY BODY AND SOUL, KNIGHT PALADIN HADDRAL!”

This, combined with the men’s strange appearances, let me know what they were: some sort of magical combatants who served a Divine Entity named “Tasmian”. Honestly, I didn’t take the man’s threat very seriously. He was brandishing a sword, an actual sword. My neurostunner will make short—no it won’t. I cursed mentally. These Knights unknowingly had the perfect counter to the simple survival weapon: metal armor. Even a layer of metallic foil would be enough to attenuate the neurostunner’s beam beyond usefulness—there was a reason why the neurostunner was considered a disposable weapon and put into survival packs that would probably never see usage. Thickly armored as they were, my neurostunner’s most effective use as a ranged weapon would be if I chucked it at them or if they got close enough, I could use it as a bludgeon.

Still, I was confident that I’d be able to deal with a sword somehow. Instead, of worrying about it, I wondered about how my concealment had been so handily pierced by this primitive. My camouflage was good, I was absolutely silent, and even if this Knight Paladin had some sort of magical spell that let him see into more wavelengths than normal, my skinsuit and internal sensor baffling should still render me extremely difficult to detect. Then, “Haddral” pointed the sword directly at where I was hiding, and yelled again:

“EVIL, I KNOW YOU ARE BEHIND THAT TREE. REVEAL THYSELF, AND FIGHT HONORABLY.”

Interesting, he obviously can’t see me since to his sight I would appear as “part” of the tree, but he knows almost exactly where I am. Some sort of magic I was unaware of was probably at play, magic that I apparently can’t hide from with my ‘mundane’ equipment.

Deciding to try to go for a diplomatic play, since I’d already messed up the encounter with the mob royally by subconsciously leaning too far into my ingrained instincts, I stood up and reverted my skinsuit’s camouflage. My mission, as much as I’d screwed it up, was already successful: the villagers had completely forgotten about Dakla and according to a quick check from my drone’s viewpoint, she’d already made it half-way back to her home and wasn’t being pursued. The best think I could do to make up for my screw-up would be to keep these two warriors distracted so they didn’t end up going after Dakla.

I quickly holstered my neurostunner and held my hands, palm-open, at my shoulder level in what I hoped was an easily understood universal sign of nonaggression. Then, in my clearest pronunciation and with my least ambiguous word choice, I spoke:

“I apologize strangers, but I do not wish to fight you.”

Then, to my surprise, without a yell or another loud proclamation, the man simply began rushing towards me with his sword prepared to cleave me in two. Well, I hope everyone on this strange planet isn’t so violent. Did I say something wrong? I reviewed my wording but, no, I was reasonably certain that I didn’t accidentally insult him or anything. Maybe he’s just a violent man. I mentally shrugged, and eventually, when he heaved his great slab of steel towards me, I stepped back, avoiding the blow with ease.

My thought process was in utter chaos—I was mentally floundering. On the one hand, my combat instincts, the countless tactical subroutines, and threat-evaluation systems were already spooling out dozens of ways in which to subdue my two new foes, constantly updating their models with every new bit of sensor data they received. Frustrated though, I pushed those suggestions aside. I’d just seen, seconds ago, their core weakness: the mindset of those who’d programmed them. When I’d been thinking about how to handle the situation with Dakla and the mob, those instincts had shown their heavy bias towards “shoot first, revive those who weren’t supposed to die later”-strategies. In fact, judging from the perspective of Elise-the-student, the combat instincts were remorseless, bloodthirsty, and trigger happy to an incredible degree—which makes sense from a corporate perspective.

Further suppressing the combat instincts, I decided to use this situation as a trial run. Instead of Elise-the-indentured, I’d attempt to be more like Elise-the-student.

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This new goal left me with a major problem though: without the insistent demands by the combat subroutines, I had no idea what to do. Should I simply tire him out? Maybe try talking again? With that sword, he’s not really a threat and the more time I can buy, the more time Dakla has to escape.

“Knight Paladin Haddral, I believe you’re mistaking me for someone else,” I attempted, “I’m not a Demon or an Infernal. In fact—” I cut off as it became clear the man wasn’t paying any attention to what I was saying. I’m not getting through to him…

I repositioned my feet and looked at the man in a calculating way. What will he do now? Assuming the man wasn’t a complete fool, he would’ve already realized that his attacks wouldn’t work against my superior evasive speed. Then, without any warning he simply dropped his weapon. Is he surrendering or something? No, he’s reaching for… a metal whip?

This was interesting. Swords and other primitive weapons were familiar to me from my history databases, but this was unique: from my visual inspection, it appeared to be a three-ish millimeter thick metal cord, maybe some sort of spring steel, which was covered in a light layer of oil and approximately two meters long. In fact, due to this length, the long flexible metal was already doing something that should be impossible: it was pulling itself out of the coiled storage container at his hip without any visible actuator or external force being applied.

With the slithering noise of oiled metal on leather, the whole length of metal slipped out of the case and extended into the air. Once brandished, it almost seemed like it was under different gravity or moving under a breeze that wasn’t there. Clearly, magic is at play here, although—shit!

With acceleration that seemed to come from nowhere, the metal wire that the Paladin had gripped in one end jumped towards me with a rather quick speed compared to the sedate sword swing from before. Still, with my enhanced muscles and rather good grip on the ground below me, I was able to dodge without too much strain. At this point, it became clear to me what this weapon was: a weapon specifically designed to fight opponents that were far faster than the wielder.

As I stood back and watched, the man began to slightly twitch his hand and the entire two-meter length of metal started weaving through the air in front of him in an elaborate pattern like a ribbon-dancer’s ribbon. Why did this man come prepared to fight me? Or, is this just a common type of weapon? Regardless of why he had such a unique magically-assisted weapon, it did present a problem for me.

While I dodged, I took a close look at the little of the man’s face I could see through the metal visor and analyzed the complex patterns the wire wove in front of him to come to an interesting conclusion: Whoever had designed this weapon and the patterns of movements had been highly intelligent. I couldn’t spot any obvious openings and he hadn’t repeated any sequence for long enough to become statistically predictable. Furthermore, it became clear that although he was countering any simple approaches without risking an abrasion from the cable, his actual reaction or perception speed wasn’t enhanced. Fascinating that they have an entire fighting technique dedicated to fending off a vastly quicker opponent.

Then something happened that I wasn’t expecting: my radar picked up a… bullet? That’s interesting. Normally, my radar wasn’t all too useful compared to my visual sensors but there was one area it excelled at: locating small, fast-moving, dense objects. With a precise fix on the projectile, I took a closer look and was promptly confused, mostly due to the results from an involuntary query I’d made to my munitions identification subroutine: It couldn’t pin down what the thing flying at me was and provisionally decided that something so slow and boring must be deceptive in nature, classifying it as: “unidentified, likely cloaked, low-velocity projectile. Payload unknown”. I, however, knew something that the munitions identification subroutine didn’t: the likelihood of encountering metal spheres filled with attack-nanites, high explosives, or fissile material on this backwards and alien world was unlikely. Reprimanding myself that I’d dipped into my combat-instincts again, I suppressed the wayward subroutine and considered the situation:

Magic was a wild-card, and I dodged the magically accelerated spheres with a wide safety margin just in case. After the revealing of the whip-sword, I wasn’t going to underestimate my opponents when it didn’t cost me anything. I simply integrated dodging the occasional metal sphere into the rapidly growing evasive pattern database I was building up.

At this point, I’d already been dodging the Knights for close to a hectosecond, and while the whip-wielder’s patterns were still unique, I knew he’d slip up eventually. Then, I’ll slip past his guard and—? What should I do? Of course, I could simply punch him or bludgeon him with the neurostunner, but despite my comparative monstrous strength, jamming my fist against what appeared to be quite thick, magically glowing, metal plate armor could have a variety of consequences, barring even magical repercussion: it would be all too easy to hit too hard or not hard enough if I wanted to non-lethally subdue. Can I grapple him somehow? Maybe.

While I continued to crunch through possibilities, I still watched the path that his weapon was making through the air, and quickly noticed when he started repeating a pattern from earlier in the fight. Yes! That was my chance, so recalling where the thin metal would go next, I lunged forwards—only to need to jump back again due to one of those annoying metal spheres shooting towards me. I have to admire their teamwork; they’re clearly outclassed by my speed but they’re still managing to keep me on the defensive.

Despite my setback, I now had a weakness I could exploit; eventually. An unaugmented human mind—like his surely was—simply wasn’t good at generating random numbers or random sequences, and as soon as he ran out of pre-memorized sequences, I’d rapidly be able to learn his patterns and slip past the defenses to gently subdue and then… question him? I was still unsure of exactly what I would do once I got into his guard, but I was sure that my internal power cell would outlast however long this man could fight without even losing a full percentage point of charge. All I have to do now is wait for the right opportunity, I thought as I settled into an easy rhythm of dodging, weaving, and observing the two men’s patterns.