Tavi breathed ragged breaths beside me, hands on his knees, staring down while the mechs rushed forward to their first confrontation. I wasn’t interfering at all; this would also be a test of the general intelligences loaded onto the mechs and the combat tactics produced via simulation.

The two HIGHWALLs moved forward, each one engaging one of the GOATs, blocking head-butts and punches with the towering metal walls. The mechs didn’t move. Each one weighed easily a thousand kilos, making them immovable titans when faced against simple monsters of flesh. The HAMMERHEADs focused on the left most GOAT, head mounted turrets firing in a line of light and power that cut through the air and filled it with the smell of burning ozone.

The left GOAT erupted with a scream.

The head mounted cannons were much more powerful than the simple Nova-3 affixed to my arm; they were supposed to be built as stationary emplacements for warding off wildlife or human raiders.

Melted flesh sloughed off the goat as it collapsed.

I noted to add a routine to the AI to encourage them to cause less critical damage, so that we could reuse the corpses as undead.

The HIGHWALL turned, lumbering towards the other goat that was being contested. Instead of moving their slow-moving legs, the second HIGHWALL was simply rotating at the waist to block the GOAT trying to outflank it, spinning quickly to block a rain of punches or a head bash, absorbing the blows from the GOAT’s horns with little more than paint scratches.

The GOAT made a bleating noise before backing up — right into the first HIGHWALL, who slammed a sword into it. It screamed, and the HAMMERHEADs fired again.

The room was clear in only a few seconds.

It was a little less efficient than gassing the dungeon and dragging the bodies away, but I could trust these mechs to act independently, running this dungeon and, eventually, others on their own. Additionally, they would gain classes and levels. Once they all reached Grade 2, we would be ready to clear the second floor of the dungeon.

On the feed from the support drone hovering above, I saw something strange. The monsters in the connected rooms were retreating. It matched no known behavioral pattern. There was a sloshing noise from above, and I ordered my drones to fly higher.

Too late.

Several drones flying in a holding pattern between me and 615 carried a signal, hopping between each of them for near instantaneous communication. I added a note to program the drones to fly in a higher scouting pattern and monitor the rooms above us in the dungeon as well. That would probably save our next batch of drones.

Water splashed down into our room from the room above, carried with a noise like a roar as a boulder half the size of the room fell from the second floor, a Grade 2 monster slamming into the ground like a meteor. The destroyed earth of the dungeon exploded outward, filling the room with dust.

One of the two HIGHWALL’s crumpled into scrap. Tavi let out a swear, covering his eyes and coughing out dust.

The plasma of my Nova-3 splashed harmlessly against the stone body.

//QUERY: SITUATION BRIEF

“What?” Tavi asked between choked coughs.

//REQUESTING IDENTIFICATION OF HOSTILE TARGET PENDING DESIGNATION. DESIGNATION UPDATED: TURTLE01

“There’s no fucking turtle. The dungeon just dropped a boulder on us.” Tavi paused. “What did you do to piss it off? You haven’t been… you aren’t taking all the bodies from here, are you?”

//QUERY: ELABORATE

“Dungeons… dungeons eat the bodies! If you repeatedly take all the bodies, you starve them. You probably pissed it off and now it’s trying to kill us. Lets run, and — “

The boulder roared, cutting Tavi off, before rising to its feet. A dozen legs opened out of the stone, ending in spikes instead of the flat feet of a turtle. A head emerged from a hole in the obloid, rocky shell.

Then it charged, moving forward at a jog pace before ramming into the wall of the room, retracting its head and staggering.

Dust, dirt, and water fell from the dungeon room above us. Everything shook. The turtle roared as the dust finally settled. The HAMMERHEADs fired simultaneously, plasma heating the side of the shell and causing molten rock to spill out of the hole they slagged into its side.

It roared again, and a second head emerged as it reversed its charge, rushing towards the mechs again.

The HIGHWALL was useless, its sword insufficient to do lasting damage to the turtle through its gigantic shell and its shield, unable to halt its staggering charge. The turtle rammed into the wall of the dungeon, rock crumbling free from where it impacted.

“Grade 2? Or Grade 3… lets leave them here and go, Offo!” Tavi said.

//NEGATIVE. THIS MONSTER SHOULD BE ACQUIRED

“How can you possibly kill that thing!? Your weapons can’t even cut past its shell!”

//WE CAN KILL IT. SLOWLY.

I prepared to take control of the general AI’s directing them to repeatedly fire on the same spot, as me and Tavi did when we killed the bear, but they acted before I did.

Both HAMMERHEADs had moved to either side of the turtle as its original head emerged from its shell, preparing for its charge.

Instead of firing at the turtle as it rushed towards them, they melted the ground in a flash of brilliant light and fire, sweeping as they released beams of plasma that turned the ground to super-heated mush.

Sinking half way into the molten dirt, the turtle scrambled its legs to get free, doing little more than digging itself deeper Its heads extended, screaming. The HAMMERHEADs reacted right away, blowing off one of the two heads with focused fire. The other retreated to its shell, legs still desperately trying to scrabble out of the hole of melted earth and away. They only buried it farther.

I observed as the hammerheads aligned their shots, drilling a heated hole in the shell's side. The remaining HIGHWALL assisted, carving away at the hot slag while waiting for the hammer heads to fire.

They carved several feet into the monster’s shell before it finally stopped thrashing its legs, buried in the hot soil.