Weils gave orders to the church personel.

“Whatever that thing is, we will need to get past it”, Weils said. “If we run into it, we will see how strong it is, but until that happens, we will avoid it, if we can.”

He thought for a moment and then looked at Kaden.

“Kaden, you stay”, Weils continued and then looked at the mercenary leader. “Leave some of your people too. You need to slow that thing down as much as you can.”

“Shit”, Kaden cursed in his mind. “I’m expendable. I need to solve this problem quickly.”

While Kaden thought what to do, the mercenaries left one of the heavier armored people and Emina for firepower.

Weils and his remaining group left quickly to another direction leaving Kaden with the mercenaries and the sect members.

“Why not join us?” Silver Eye told them suddenly. “The inquisitor has left you here to die. None of you seem to be member of the church.”

Kaden considered it for a moment, but going with the freaks might make Weils his enemy. It would likely also go against order.

The shouts of the guardian were coming closer now.

“No”, Kaden said.

“We could… you know, work alongside them, ok?” Emina mumbled in her weird way.

“I agree with Emina”, said the other mercenary. “Whatever that thing is, its going to come after us and we will have to fight it. No one said we will have to stop it here.”

In fact, Kaden had been hoping to take part in the fight and see how strong the thing was and escape if necessary. The mercenaries could be left behind to die. If the sect member were also gone, no one would be around to say that he abandoned the mercenaries. He could then inform Weils that he did his best and is the only survivor.

“Oh well, meat shield are good too, I guess”, Kaden thought to himself and shrugged and then merely agreed with the mercenaries. “Fine then.”

The voice repeating ‘i am beautiful’ seemed to come closer and closer all the time.

“How strong is it?” Kaden decided to ask suddenly as they stopped to arrange a way past, regardless where the guardian came from.

“Hard to say”, Silver Eye replied. “It is not a natural creature, so its power is harder to determine, but we are working on assumption it can fight someone at Condensation stage.”

Kaden frowed. A group of people at Formation stage could totally put up a fight for a moment, but winning would be difficult.

The group decided to take the time to stop the guardian. It seemed the sect members wanted to split to look for more valuable things from the remnant once the guardian was distracted. Kaden was thinking to do exactly the same. The mercenaries probably wanted to do the same too so he figured he should stay with them, if they lived. Kaden remembered the faded map from earlier and figured more important things would be deeper.

“I AM BEAUTIFUL!” Shout came very close now.

Suddenly a roughly human shaped thing made out of metal stepped out from a doorway.

“PLEASE OBSERVE THE DISCOUT PRICE!” The metallic guardian announced and it raised its arm towards the defensive spots where everyone were. A gun mounted on its arm started spinning and soon after it started spraying out bullets everywhere.

BRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

The storm of bullets shredded apart everything it was pointed at. The walls and other objects would only provide protection for a while until they were torn to pieces.

“That’s some kind of construct ancients made, a robot”, shouted the heavily armored mercenary. “Never seen a functional one!”

“Its like… slightly broken”, Emina mumbled.

Kaden didn’t care. It was going to kill anything it could get its hands on. Despite seemingly randomly shooting around, Kaden watched it turn about slightly, forcing people to smaller groups and separate them and blocking ways out. The robot was clearly not just simply attacking everything indiscriminately. It was doing so efficiently.

“I AM BEAUTIFUL!” The robot announced yet again and started walking forward. Unfortunately towards Kaden and the mercenaries.

Noticing this the remaining sect members decided to take the chance to move out while they had the chance.

“While I was planning on getting rid of them at some point, this gives me a good excuse”, Kaden smiled. “If they think they can use me as cannon fodder, I can drop all the pretenses.”

Kaden observed the scene a bit more. The robot didn’t move quickly, but if the evaluation was that it was capable of fighting Condensation stage, it should be able to. For some reason it didn’t, if it ever chose otherwise, Kaden assumed he would be dead soon after. At the moment the slow speed gave Kaden some ability to move, but the weapon was a problem. As soon as he stepped out, he would be shredded apart. Yet, now he had a plan to get past and move towards the doorway that was supposedly going further down, the place where the robot had come from.

“Move quickly after me”, Kaden quickly whispered to the mercenaries. Those people he couldn’t get rid of yet.

Emina and the heavy armored mercenary had a bit surprise showing on their expressions, but Kaden was pretty sure they would know how to act quickly. Kaden then grabbed one of the two sect members.

“Whatever defensive abilities you have, you better use them now”, Kaden coldly told him.

Then he kicked the guy out in front of the robot which then immediately changed target. At this point Kaden put up all his defensive abilities too and rushed to the open area keeping the unfortunate sect member in between to soak the shots.

Quite a few of the bullets simply put penetrated the man in the weird animal suit and collided with Kaden’s external armor which also shattered. Luckily at that point most of the force was already gone and Kaden suffered only minor wounds. He made it easily past the line of fire. The mercenaries had also followed him behind.

“I AM BEAUTIFUL!” The robot announced yet again as the meatshield fell on the ground and was basically mass of meat and blood. “THE DISCOUNT IS UP TO 50% FOR ALL WARES!”

The last remaining person at the dead end, the last sect member, was shocked.

“You bastard!” He screamed. “I’m going to kill you!”

Kaden looked back at him, but considered him already dead. While escaping the area he got a good look what the robot did next.

The sect member tried to rush to them too, but there was no longer meat shield left. The robot quickly mowed him down, but didn’t finish him. Instead it approached the bleeding man who was screaming and trying to get away.

“PLEASE OBSERVE THE CATALOGUE!” Robot announced as it stood next to him. Then a small part of of its arm opened up and revealed some kind of saw. With precise and quick movements, it opened up the man’s skull, who was still alive somehow. “INTERFACING!”

The robot then shoved in some things on its other arm into the now openly visible brains and basically ground them to mush.

“ERROR! ERROR! CONNECTION NOT FOUND!” The robot annouced and left the corpse on the floor. “CONTINUE PATROL! ERR E ERRR ERR…. I AM BEAUTIFUL!”

Kaden wasn’t planning on staying any longer and he rushed the pathways with the two mercenaries.

“I think we should avoid rest of the sect members”, Kaden told the two mercenaries. “Weils has also moved further and we don’t know where he is planning on going? Unless you mercenaries were informed of it?”

They shook their heads.

“In other words, I suggest we look for artifacts, information and whatever fortuitous encounters together”, Kaden continued. “The maps show a few potential spots deeper.”

“Ah… I agree”, Emina said. “I would rather not … you know, fight with the machine.”

The other mercenary didn’t disagree. “There appears to be some kind of interface at the lower levels”, he said.

Kaden wasn’t sure, if there was anything more valuable than knowledge in the remnant. It seemed like place where people lived. Not a military base or research laboratory or any of the sort. He felt information was acceptable. Ancients knew truths about things that, despite mana and how powerful it made people, current humans didn’t understand. The church at least was interested. That already should be enough to convince people of the value. Who knows if there was even something else they wanted.

The way down on each level was through stairs. For some reason one could only go down one level at a time and next stairs would be a bit further away. Kaden was pretty sure it was very inefficient design or the remnant had distorted itself somehow.

At any rate, they had to keep moving. The robot was always behind. It was easy to notice due to its repeated announcements. Not that it always followed them. It seemed to prefer stopping people from going down the previosly mentioned stairs and took shortcuts to block them. Sometimes they even heard sounds of fighting nearby.

“Its probably the sect members who left with Silver Eye”, Kaden decided. “That is unless Weils was being slow and has not progressed down yet, which is doubtful.”

Eventually they did run into some more shredded corpses along the way, but also seemed to have avoided the robot that probably went after the larger groups. This also seemed to give a rough time limit. Once the robot guardian decided to change its priority from the larger groups to Kaden’s smaller one, it could be bad.

One thing was sure, the robot could move faster than it had shown previously. If it wasn’t a mechanical construct, Kaden would have thought it was playing around. Then again… the place was a remnant. Anything could happen. Its structure seemed to even be such that it supported the ‘hunting’ methods the robot used. It picked off a few people at the time, let the rest escape and went after them again.

While thinking of these matters Kaden merely used Devour a bit on the corpses to heal whatever wounds he had received earlier. The mercenaries frowned slightly, but ignored the acts after a moment. He didn’t share his opinions of how the remnant worked with them. The mercenaries could be used as meat shield too.

Not long after they ran into Silver Eye and rest of the sect members. The robot had them pinned down.

“You are still alive?” Silver Eye said seemingly sounding happy after leaving them and even those few sect members of his to die. “Can you help us?”

Kaden sneered, but didn’t say anything as they passed the area. The robot wasn’t targeting them and was on the other side. It was now that group’s time to hold it back while Kaden took the chance to get to the nearby stairs.

Silver Eye looked back at them angrily, but Kaden didn’t care. They were doing exactly what he wanted. That is to hold back the robot. The destination was just two levels below which was not far, if the thing wasn’t following them.