“You stupid tin puppet—what are you so excited about? I’m going to beat you until you’re picking bolts out of the dirt.”
The “top-tier master” hadn’t even arrived, and his voice was already dropping from the sky.
If anything, it made me happier.
“Ka—” I caught myself, then tried again. “Lord Blin… you’re alive. Thank goodness.”
Lord Blin landed on a bamboo branch outside the hall, head held high.
“Kah-kah-kah. Of course I’m fine. Do I look as dumb as you?”
He flicked his gaze over me with disdain. “But you made it back in one piece. I suppose my effort wasn’t wasted.”
“I was too slow,” I admitted. “If you hadn’t arrived in time, I would’ve been terminated. I’m just glad we’re both okay.”
“Pah.” He spat the word like a seed. “Don’t lump yourself in with me. You’re alive because you got lucky. I’m alive because I’m good.”
He tipped his beak toward the Old Man in greeting and flew into the hall.
The Old Man nodded back. Then he snapped his fingers.
Lord Blin vanished.
In his place stood a compact, muscular man in black sparring clothes—except his face was covered by a bird-beak mask.
He raised both hands and studied them as if remembering old machinery. “Haven’t used this body in a long time. Wonder if it still fits.”
The Old Man laughed softly. “You’ve almost forgotten what you look like. You’re handsome like this. Why insist on being a bird?”
“You don’t get it,” Blin said. “Bird’s better. Anywhere you go, you can take a straight line.”
As he spoke, he lifted his right hand over his shoulder. A wooden staff more than a meter long appeared in his grip.
He spun it once—clean, casual—and finally looked at me.
“Let’s begin. I’ve wanted to teach you a lesson for a while.”
I bowed deeply.
Blin gave the slightest nod in return.
Training began.
I set my stance carefully.
Blin slung the staff over his shoulder and strolled toward me like he was out for a walk.
Then he swung without warning.
“Quit pretending you’re a master, you punchable piece of junk.”
I didn’t even have time to understand the angle. I dodged the first strike by reflex.
The second was already there.
I brought my wooden saber up to block.
Blin didn’t retract the staff. He slid it along my guard and flicked the opposite end upward.
My saber flew out of my hand.
“Pathetic,” he said. “Can’t even hold a sword.”
The butt end could be used like that…?
I retrieved my saber and changed tactics. This time I went on offense.
Blin’s defense was almost lazy. A small shift of the shaft dissolved every attack I threw.
But the tip of his staff never left my head.
It was a strange sensation—me attacking, yet feeling more threatened than he was.
Not long after, the staff jabbed into my face.
“Is your face made of armor plate?” Blin snapped. “You blocking with your face? Huh? Blocking with your head?”
He hammered my skull with rapid taps, strike after strike.
“Again,” I said, refusing to let the word die.
I had thought I’d improved drastically.
In front of him, I was a child being toyed with.
His moves weren’t flashy. They were efficient—cruelly efficient.
If I showed even a hairline opening, he seized it. After that, the blows came like weather: wind, rain, hail, all at once.
And the hits came with a torrent of ridicule.
“What are you blocking? Kah-kah-kah. Dumb as a rock. No wonder you come back missing limbs every time.”
“Why are you jumping so high? Trying to scare me? Now see where that gets you.”
“Where are you looking? The next cut is written all over your face.”
“Your feint is fake and ugly. If you want to fool me, you need to fool yourself first.”
…
I was battered into splinters—and his taunts boiled my processor until I could barely think.
Only when the Old Man paused the simulation—warning that too much activity might trigger system attention—did Blin stop swinging.
Even then, he kept complaining from the side until I started to wonder if robot life was a mistake.
Another day had already passed.
Time was tightening. Father could enter maintenance at any moment.
When I finally regained control, training resumed.
I kept getting hit, but the Old Man persuaded Blin to rein himself in during breaks. The ridicule dulled—slightly. It stopped drawing blood.
Cycle after cycle, half a day later I could finally trade a few exchanges without being immediately broken.
Once, I perfectly neutralized a five-hit sequence and even managed to control his staff.
Blin gave me one line of praise—and immediately ruined it.
“Now you look like something.” He leaned in. “But why are you standing there after you take control? Waiting for your enemy to compliment you?”
He kicked me away.
Then he raised the difficulty again.
“Remember this,” he said. “In a fight, it’s not just your sword. Fists. Feet. Elbows. Knees. Head. Shoulders. And your other weapons. Everything can hit at the same time.”
Whatever confidence I’d built evaporated.
…
I sank fully into the duel with Blin and lost track of time.
Then the Old Man abruptly ended the training.
His expression had changed. The window had arrived.
“The data flow is abnormal,” he said, eyes closed, brows knotted as if listening to a storm. “Phantom Forge is setting up system defenses and consolidating data. He’s about to enter self-maintenance.”
Blin pointed at me. “Any way for me to go with him?”
“No,” the Old Man said. “The loophole from last time is patched. And Phantom Forge won’t leave me unguarded during maintenance. I suspect he’ll cut the physical connection between us—or set a trap.”
He opened his eyes.
“You’ll go alone.”
His voice softened, just slightly.
“Don’t rush. If anything feels wrong, stop immediately and return to your maintenance cradle. I’ll erase your traces.”
“We can wait for another chance,” he added. “If you’re exposed, it’s over.”
“Understood,” I said. Even so, unease flickered through my circuits.
Blin caught it at once.
“After two days of my trials,” he said, “if you can’t handle one or two Umbrals, you might as well smash your head into a wall and terminate yourself.”
He jabbed a finger at my chest.
“Confidence comes before strength and technique. So don’t chicken out. Just do it.”
“I’ll remember,” I said.
The Old Man clasped my hand. “Good luck. I hope next time we meet, it’s under a free sky in the real world.”
Blin snorted. “Be smart. Don’t die.”
The world went black.
Back in Grayrock Base, the maintenance sector was unnaturally quiet.
I opened my eyes slowly.
The bright repair hall had shifted into dim red emergency lighting. Most of the mechanical arms were frozen in place.
Half-repaired robots lay scattered in their cradles, and nothing moved.
Low-power mode.
Ninety percent of the base’s energy was being routed to Father’s local core for maintenance. Everything else had been throttled down.
My condition was acceptable. My damaged arm had been replaced. My energy reserves were above eighty percent.
I verified, again and again, that Father’s signal was absent.
Then I set a mission timer: one hundred twenty minutes.
I slid out of the maintenance cradle and sprinted—silent and fast—toward the maintenance sector’s main gate.
Grayrock Base was enormous.
The entire base was hidden inside a peak in the Grayrock Mountains. The mountain’s interior had been nearly hollowed out.
The surrounding rock provided natural armor, but as one of the front-line bases against the Tower Clan, Father had reinforced most critical areas with a dense protective layer.
Anti-air emplacements and shock towers were embedded throughout the mountain as well—hard to spot, hard to kill.
The base was divided into thirteen zones.
Level 1 was Zone A: parking and service for heavy ground units like Z-8 Land Dominators and Devastator tanks.
Level 2 was Zone B: medium units—Raiders, Bloodthirsters, Bigfoots.
Level 3 was Zone C: small units. My level.
Level 4 was Zone D: engineering and logistics units.
Level 5 was Zone E: Central Control—the location of Father’s local mainframe.
But this mainframe was only one of his many “containers,” a secondary core he had built for himself. Every base had one.
As for Father’s true body… that was Plando’s highest secret. I doubted any robot knew it—except Father himself.
Levels 6, 7, and 8 were Zones F through H: transports and fighter craft.
Above Level 8 were three large warship berths and their support structures scattered through the mountain—the I Zone complex.
Beyond that were the mountain’s external defenses as a whole, grouped as Zone J.
Aside from Levels 4 and 5, every level had its own repair area, armory, and mission hall—and each had at least one direct exit to the outside.
Underground, there were three more levels.
Sublevel 1—Zone K—served as a logistics transfer hub and long-range missile storage, linked to nearby launch shafts.
Sublevel 2—Zone L—was the energy sector, plus a massive warehouse.
Sublevel 3—Zone M—had only recently begun construction. After the ant nest was discovered, Father started excavating a tunnel, as if he meant to annex the nest into the base.
Below that, nothing. At least, nothing I’d ever heard of.
The X Zone didn’t exist in any map I had access to.
In the dream, the Old Man and I had gone over the rescue details. Based on fragments he had stolen, he’d drawn me a rough 3D route and an estimated location.
But he couldn’t guarantee it was accurate. It was a guide, not a truth.
I could only hope I’d find it in time.
Outside the maintenance sector stretched a wide corridor that led toward the armory and the mission hall.
Midway down it, a branching route connected to a freight lift platform—usually used by cargo and engineering units.
According to the Old Man’s route, I had to reach Sublevel 2, the energy sector, before I could find the deeper passage.
As I neared the junction, I heard footsteps—approaching from around the corner.
The corridor was bare. Nowhere to hide. No time to retreat.
I climbed the wall in a single motion, scaled to the high ceiling, and flattened myself behind an exposed pipe.
A CBG rounded the corner and walked directly beneath me.
The pipe didn’t completely cover my silhouette, but the corridor was dark and the CBG moved slowly. As long as I stayed still and silent, it was unlikely to notice.
Once it passed, I didn’t drop back down.
I crawled forward along the piping, careful and deliberate.
Past the junction the route was a straight line—if I met another CBG there, I wouldn’t have time to hide.
Minutes later I reached the gate before the freight lift platform.
There was no power. The gate wouldn’t open.
A CBG stood guard anyway.
I moved above it, easing over its head a centimeter at a time, then slipped into a narrow side passage.
After several dozen meters, the corridor ended at a sealed door.
But above it ran a thick main pipe. The smaller pipe I’d been crawling on fed into it.
[COUNTDOWN – FATHER REBOOT] 108:43
I had reached the first waypoint.
It was an exhaust system. Branch ducts webbed through every zone. The main shaft ran vertically in a pipe well, connected to every level and to the surface.
In emergencies or during maintenance accidents, it could vent smoke and dust from deep inside the mountain.
But it was also a vulnerability.
If the Tower Clan could infiltrate the shaft and strike Father’s local core during maintenance, the entire base would be crippled.
Which meant that right now—while Father was down—every external defense would be dialed to maximum.
The metal ductwork also acted like a giant amplifier. Even a small sound could be carried and enlarged.
I couldn’t risk noise.
I listened. No movement. No voices.
Then I ignited my lightsaber and carefully cut an opening in the thick pipe—just large enough to squeeze through.
Inside, I crawled forward about twenty meters until I reached the vertical exhaust shaft.
It was massive—nearly four meters in diameter.
I leaned over the edge and looked down.
There was no bottom in sight. Only darkness… and, far below, the vague outline of enormous fan blades.
I began to climb.
Slowly. Quietly. Fingers locked into the seams of the duct wall.
Every thirty meters or so I encountered another fan assembly.
Under normal power those blades would spin at high speed, making passage impossible.
In low-power mode, they were eerily still.
I threaded through the gaps and continued downward.
I didn’t know how many fans there were. I didn’t know how deep the shaft ran.
According to the Old Man’s best guess, the deep research sector had to connect to this system somewhere.
If my luck held, a horizontal duct at the bottom would carry me directly to his location.
Then I slipped.
One handhold failed. For an instant I was weightless—falling.
I reacted immediately and fired my flight thrusters.
I stabilized just before I struck the next fan assembly.
Blue engine light flooded the shaft, and the roar of thrust echoed like a siren in a cathedral of metal.
I went cold with fear.
Without hesitation, I darted through the fan blades and into a side duct, hiding myself inside.
I curled tight, listening.
Once the thrusters shut down, the shaft returned to silence.
Minutes passed.
No alarms. No approaching footsteps.
Maybe I was far enough from the top. Maybe the fan stacks between me and the surface broke up the sound.
Maybe I was just lucky.
[COUNTDOWN – FATHER REBOOT] 94:08
I couldn’t afford patience anymore.
I decided to take a risk.
I inched to the opening and peered out.
A sphere shot into view—so close it was less than half a meter from my face.
In the next instant it erupted in blinding white.
My vision went to snow.