Maple Valley.
While Phantom Forge was forcing its way into Edean Tower, Blin was racing down a pipe shaft.
It was the longest chute he had ever seen, narrow and claustrophobic, and it felt bottomless. The deeper he fell, the hotter the air became.
He dropped in free fall for more than a minute before his sensors finally found the end. Blin grabbed the guide rail, bled off speed, and drifted down to the floor as lightly as a feather. The temperature read a staggering 243°C, and yet the walls around him were still the sealed interior of the shaft. A quick check told him why: he was standing on the roof of an elevator car.
He cut through the car’s top with the Riftshock Blade and slipped down in silence. The car was cylindrical, and absurdly small. Two passengers would have felt cramped. The door was only eighty centimeters wide.
When he pried the door open, he stepped into a circular room about ten meters across. The moment he crossed the threshold, a chill washed over him. His sensors updated: the temperature had plunged to -4°C.
Edean’s intel said the mainframe chamber should have been a vast cylinder, Phantom Forge’s core rising in the center.
This room didn’t match at all. The floor was steel plate. The walls were raw stone, banded in gold and dark gray-black. The gold bands were real gold, the most common and worthless mineral on this planet.
In the center sat a holographic projection table, casting an image of a star system. Blin glanced at it and knew at once it was not Lansen’s system. Aside from that, there was only an unremarkable hatch set into the far wall, barely larger than the elevator door.
Where was he?
Where were Ollie and Ofer?
Then he heard it, faint but unmistakable: the sound of fighting. It came from behind the metal hatch.
He split the door with a single slash. Behind it was a spiral staircase winding down. He plunged after the sound, circling a few turns before reaching the level below.
The instant he stepped off the stairs, multiple attacks stabbed in from both sides.
Blin reacted like a fired shell. His body blurred, almost vanishing, leaving only the Riftshock Blade’s rings of light and a string of crackling impacts. In the next heartbeat he was more than ten meters away.
He swept the room with a single look. Another circular hall, but far larger than the one above.
And in the center were more than a dozen pod-like bays arranged like spokes around the hall’s axis, packed close together. Blin could tell from their size and build that they were not stasis pods.
He didn’t have time to study them. CSTs were shifting into position, forming a ring and tightening it around him. The ambush at the stairwell had been theirs.
Twelve of them.
“Robin Blin?” One of the CSTs sounded almost curious. “It’s you?”
“What, does the sight of me turn your stomach?” Blin sneered.
“I knew the humans wouldn’t send only two bugs. A mission this big, of course they’d call the strongest. Did Wyatt come with you?”
“Cha-cha-cha. Guess.”
A weak, exhausted voice cut in. “Lord Blin… I’m sorry. We screwed it up.”
Blin looked toward the corner and found Ollie and Ofer.
Two boys. One was charred black, curled in on himself, dead or close to it. The other was trapped in a fine metal net, his body mangled, but he still held his arms out, shielding the burned one.
Blin felt irritation, not because he was outnumbered, but because he still couldn’t see Phantom Forge’s mainframe. This space didn’t seem to have any other doors, either.
The nearest CST threw a punch at the netted boy.
Thump. The boy’s head hit the wall, then sagged forward like a dropped rag.
Another CST stepped in with a flamethrower, ready to paint the corner in fire.
A fast shadow snapped through the air. A throwing knife punched clean through the CST’s hand. The flamethrower clattered to the floor.
At the same time Blin lunged at the closest CST. It tried to retreat. Too slow.
Three cuts, the same line, the same power. The CST blocked twice. The third strike broke its guard and dropped it hard.
In that same breath, Blin whipped a tiger-tail kick that sent another CST flying, drove an elbow into a third, and slipped between two stabbing palm blades.
More CSTs surged in. Blin feinted mid-swing, flashed a blinding flourish, and redirected the blade behind him. One target went down with a kicked leg. Another barely evaded the edge, only to take the blade’s flat and the hilt from opposite sides.
Three seconds. Five CSTs on the floor.
The rest attacked in fury, some trying to grab him, some swinging with everything they had. The ones he had dropped began to rise again and rejoin the ring.
Blin did not panic. He moved like a ghost, then struck like a hunting cat. Every cut was ruthless. Every dodge was light as smoke. The CSTs tried to drive him into a corner and failed, again and again.
As the fight dragged on, Blin noticed something else. The CSTs were not equal. Some could trade several moves with him. Others couldn’t survive half a beat.
But all of them were unnaturally tough. Striking them felt like chopping into iron. And their recovery was the same: fast, relentless.
After a brutal exchange, Blin realized he had not reduced their number at all. Worse, a few small mistakes had nearly cost him.
He understood the math. No matter how good he was, he could not keep trading with CSTs that fought like perpetual machines. Given time, he would lose.
So he poured power into the Riftshock Blade and triggered its riftshock function mid-swing. As the edge bit in, a repulsive force burst out on both sides.
Boom. The impact sounded like a breaching charge. A half-meter wound tore open as if it had been blasted from within. The struck CST stared in disbelief, then collapsed.
“Nice blade,” one of the CSTs said, and kept coming.
The riftshock function had a cooldown. Twenty seconds between uses. But a CST that took that kind of damage needed far longer to recover, and for the first time, Blin began to see real attrition.
Blin’s swagger returned. “Cha-cha-cha. Watch me end you parasites today.”
“Lord Blin lives up to the name,” a CST said, sounding almost weary. “But aren’t you working with Lord Julian? Why are you suddenly fighting for humans?”
Blin hesitated. “Does it matter?”
It mattered. “If you were on Julian’s side, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
“What are you implying?” Blin’s blade lowered a fraction.
“Julian and the humans appear to be enemies now.”
Blin snorted. “Fearmongering won’t save you.”
“Uh… you really don’t know?”
“Know what? And how would you know anything about the humans?”
The CST looked genuinely startled, then smiled. “So you really don’t know. Ha. Let me show you something interesting.”
A hologram snapped on above them and projected into the air in front of Blin.
An iceberg summit. Linneya was on her knees, screaming at the camera through sobs: “Phantom Forge! I know you can see me! If you like killing, there’s a cave full of people. Go kill them. Go kill every last one. Go! I’ll lead you there…”
The view swung to a door. The feed went first-person and pushed inside, finding a cramped room with multiple corpses and robot wreckage. Among them were a burly man and a thin man whose skull had been smashed. The camera didn’t pause. It kept descending until it reached a vast, black space.
“That’s how I found Edean,” the CST said, chuckling. “Heh.”
Silence.
The video hit Blin hard, but his first thought was that it made no sense. “Fake,” he said. “You forged it.”
“I always thought the Apocalypse Ranger was not only unbeatable, but able to tell truth from lies,” the CST replied. “Guess I gave you too much credit.”
“That girl’s father died by your hand. Why would she say that?”
“Because Julian is finished.”
“What did you just say?”
“Julian has been ended by humans.” The CST raised its voice. “I’m already inside that tower. The humans are about to be wiped out, and Julian still hasn’t moved. Isn’t that enough proof?”
“Then show me what’s happening now,” Blin said, refusing to believe it.
“Gladly.” The CST smiled.
The hologram shifted to the Glimmer Caverns. Blin saw a tower burning, a plaza littered with charred bodies and wreckage, a collapsed wall, and ruined turrets.
The view switched inside the tower. Corpses everywhere. Blown corridors. Pockets of resistance that looked more exhausted than brave.
Blin’s stomach sank. No one could fake Edean in that kind of detail without having been there.
“Hey, Blin,” the CST said, bright with malice. “You’re going to love this. Perfect timing. We’re live.”
The scene snapped to Soren lying in a pool of blood, begging. When Soren screamed, “Because I ended your greatest enemy! Julian!” the CST laughed out loud.
Blin did not doubt anymore. He whipped his gaze back to the corner.
The netted boy shouted, “Lord Blin, don’t believe it! It’s all fake!”
A CST kicked him away. The boy flew several meters. The burned companion he had been shielding shattered with him, and what was left was only a thin, blackened skin, hollow inside, like an insect shell after molting.
Blin froze. The CSTs around him changed expression at the same time.
“Heh-heh-heh. Too late,” the boy crowed.
He grinned like a madman. “Phantom Forge… you’re finished!”
A heartbeat later, a soft gunshot sounded from below.