“The Oracle has been with us since the beginning of time,” Sahusa explained as he put on the dead hobgoblin guards’ gear, having healed up to full with another of Kyle’s health potions. “But Osir is no easy foe; he is one of the strongest hobgoblins there is, which is how he maintains his position as leader of the Howling Wind Tribe. In order to defeat him-“

<Hey! What happened here?> Another group of patrolling guards spotted Sahusa and Kyle in the open, prompting Kyle to charge them without hesitation, easily dodging their swords and killing them with multiple strikes to the head and body. Kyle could read their attack patterns like an open book, knowing that all of them were probably trained the same way.

“Where is the Oracle?” Kyle wiped the blood splatter off his cheek, walking back to Sahusa without a sweat. The former Goblin King gulped internally as he watched Kyle approach him, his mind slowly comprehending how strong Kyle was.

“I need to go the armoury to pick up my armour set first,” Sahusa explained. “This way, I can also assist you… a little.”

“Fine by me.” Kyle nodded. He wouldn’t say no to some more arctech armour. Perhaps he would find something that could help him even more.

Kyle finished off the crippled guide in the prison in one clean swing, tying up loose ends and moving quickly through the palace with Sahusa as the guide. Sahusa was half-expecting Kyle to meet up with another group of humans, but as they neared the armoury, he did not see any others there. Weird, did he enter the palace alone?

The armoury was unprotected, its gilded rows and shelves of equipment noticeably barren. All of the weapons and equipment had already been taken and distributed among the rebel soldiers, pillaged to oblivion. Sahusa was crestfallen at the disappearance of his own armour set, one that represented what the King was. “Osir seems to have taken everything of worth in here.”

“Then you stay put here. Tell me the way to reach the Oracle.”

“No, I’ll go with you. I can handle my own.”

“No.” Kyle gripped Sahusa’s shoulder tightly, forcing him down onto the ground. “If you don’t stay here, I’ll tie you up. I can’t have you dying on me.” Kyle did not want a liability tagging along with him – the death of the former king would make it even harder to consolidate the area with legitimacy.

If Kyle could rule directly, he would not hesitate to decimate the entire royal bloodline. However, this would only create resentment among the surviving goblin population. In order to ease the transition of power, he needed a figurehead, one that can be accepted by the goblins.

Sahusa tried to get up in defiance, wanting to seek his own revenge against Osir. He grabbed Kyle’s wrist, exerting force in trying to pry it off his shoulder. However, he did not have enough strength to overpower Kyle even in such a simple scenario, Kyle’s grip firm. “Fine, I’ll stay hidden here. The Oracle stays in a grand cave far behind the palace. Simply head further into the mountain, and you will find it. I doubt Osir managed to make it past the entrance.”

Kyle nodded, barricading the armory with fallen debris to make sure they couldn’t easily reach the former king. He sprinted through the palace in a general direction, killing a few more hobgoblin guards along the way. The entire palace was a disaster, with dead servants, pillaged kitchens and storerooms. The centuries of decadence and wealth had been ruptured and ripped apart by equally ruthless rebels.

The construction of the palace seemed to follow the cavernous tunnel itself, stretching inwards deep into the mountains, yet every structural design seemed to be a maze in order to prevent anyone from reaching its end. However, Kyle’s job of navigation was made easier with the trail of rebel footprints and hobgoblin guards posted along the expected route.

He soon approached an elongated corridor resplendent with former luxury, the originally yellow carpet stained by the blood of a vicious battle, dead bodies piled up and oozing along the grooves of the hand-laid tiles. Up ahead laid an encompassing darkness, the natural cavern spreading further than his eyes could see save for a few lanterns placed sparsely along the floor, leading in.

Kyle took great precaution, scavenging for a shield from a fallen hobgoblin as protection. Such a cavern only served as a perfect line of sight for any ranged attacks. He wasn’t about to simply assume that the elite warriors of Osir had completely forgone bows and arrows, or even guns if they had them.

Each step he took echoed through the thunderous cavern, yet no attack seem to be imminent. The path was eerily silent, and there was a conspicuous dearth of bodies and corpses, as though no one had tread here before.

As he moved further in, he finally spotted a few bodies of hobgoblin warriors fallen onto the ground, their chests gouged out by a perfectly circular searing wound that went straight through their hearts, the edges of the gaping hole still smoldering. The cauterized flesh had been blackened, the missing parts turned to ash.

Kyle immediately recognized the type of wound, having seen it far too often in the Galactic Era. Particle beam guns? They exist here?

He was not too surprised at the fact that Galactic Era technology was present in this world. He had already seen an ancient exosuit spine as well as a personal energy shield from the Ilysian Punks. But he did not expect such technology to be hidden under the primitive goblins.

Kyle had been trying to pin down the history behind the world that he was in and how he had awoken here. Plenty of theories swarmed in his head, but the existence of the particle guns forced him to reconsider the validity of most of them.

More and more goblin corpses were appearing with increasing frequency as he continued to move down, their faces still frozen in agony and surprise. The row of corpses numbered in the dozens, leading up to a large broken metallic door, a gaping hole evident in the very middle as though someone had clawed it out with their own hands. Dangling wires hanging out of destroyed mechanical turret stands stood testament to the brutal fight here. A massacre.

The door was recognizable of Galactic Era technology, the hinges and composite metal armor clearly manufactured under immense heat and pressure that was hardly achievable in Raktor. Yet Kyle could see a few signs that it was not the same level of technology, the material makeup of the armour far more advanced that what he had possessed in his former life.

The Galactic Era did not imply that every single sector in the galaxy had the same level of technology, with the time taken to perform FTL travel from the center of the galaxy to the rim being more than ten years. This led to the stunted growth of technology in the sectors on the outskirts, which was where Kyle’s criminal empire used to thrive, far away from the reaches of the Council at the center of the human quadrant.

As such, technology grades in the Galactic Era were split between ‘classes,’ with Kyle’s previous domain being C-Class. The difference in exotic material concentration also inhibited technology adoption – even if a C-Class force knew how to make a B-Class technology, it did not mean that they had the materials to do so.

The turrets and door were of A-Class technology, two grades above what Kyle knew. The door was also far too big to be an entry point of a crashed ship, and he highly doubted that a capital ship this size would not have made any obvious landmark to the natives.

Yet for an A-Class metal composite armor to be successfully broken by the goblin army meant that it had weakened over the years. Kyle walked up to the door carefully, inspecting the damage dealt. Instead of seeing a perfectly arranged multi-layered armour cutaway, it instead looked like a amalgamation of bacteria and slush, as though it was the innards of an alien hive.

The door had already been previously attacked by a metal nano-plague in the past…

Kyle did not waste anymore time surveying, knowing he had to stop Osir as soon as possible. Every hour he delayed was another hour where they spent more money than was necessary on iron and coal. He entered the doors, noticing a large lab-like hallway, except the walls were dark blue and the ceiling was immeasurably high. It felt more like a temple of sorts, with a single delineated path running down through the middle.

Countless bodies of robotic turrets were smashed and broken apart, some entangled with dead hobgoblins who fought to the end, using their bodies to bear the brunt of the damage, pockmarked with particle beam wounds.  It was clear that Osir had forced his way in with his forces, utilising the king’s armoury to its limit.

Installation 12? Kyle became even more curious. He had never had a system message for entering a new area before, not even when he entered the Culdao Peaks area or different parts of Raktor.

For the System to react like this to such an area, it seems like it could hold the answers as to what exactly is Kyle's holographic system interface.

He picked up the pace, moving through the large hallway. However, he immediately spotted something that forced him to stop and deviate, running towards the wall.

Kyle leaned down next to a deformed skeleton with two horns jutting out of its skull. However, it was wearing a wholly destroyed exosuit, the particle beam rifle in its hand entirely shattered by what seemed to be a bullet.

It was not the only monster skeleton piled up along the side, with multiple different types of skeletons of varying shapes, sizes, and forms. Only a few were actually human, and they bore a different type of exosuit compared to the monster skeletons.

Kyle was not an expert in determining the time of death, but for the exosuit to have decayed this badly over time indicated it could have been more than a few hundred years, less if he considered the effects of the metal nano-plague. The time scale gave his heart a sinking feeling, the possibility that whatever he knew of the Galactic Era could have been long gone by now.

He tried to salvage some equipment, yet there was not much still functioning. Most of the exosuits that laid about had already been ravaged to a shadow of their former glory, the metal nano-plague pervasive. Yet there was a conscpicous lack of rifles and weaponry, as though someone had taken all of it. This is bad.

Kyle decided not to move ahead any further, quickly salvaging as much as he could find, hoping that the hobgoblins did not take everything. Soon, his keen eyes managed to find a working personal energy shield that somehow was not affected by the metal nano-plague, though the battery strength was degraded over time. Picking up the palm-sized energy shield module, the system surprisingly did not give him any indication of what the item was and its statistics, as though his system no longer functioned within the installation. Weird; it’s getting even weirder now…

The personal energy shield beeped while Kyle held it in his hands, displaying a holographic message. [Warning: 10% charge left. Proceed to the nearest employee charging station.]

It was far from ideal, but Kyle did not complain too much, equipping the personal energy shield to his body. The module latched itself onto its back, scanning his body’s outline before generating a skin-layer forcefield around his body that shimmered under the dim glow of the floorlights. This should be good enough unless I have to fight the automated defense turrets.

As he continued on, he found the entire situation simply ironic. He had spent the majority of his criminal empire attempting to hustle for highly controlled B-Class technology, yet here he was, wearing an A-class personal energy shield by simply scavenging.

He soon approached the end of the hallway, noticing a thick rusted bolted door as the only exit, pneumatic pistons stretching into the recesses of the walls. Before Kyle could even consider how he was going to open it, a large hissing sound was heard as the pneumatic doors on the end opened to reveal five hobgoblin guards exiting the hallway.

<Do you feel stronger? I feel like I can crush anything with my fist now!>

<That green smoke – it is a blessing from the Oracle! No doubt with our comrades improving their strength, we can strike back against Gulak and the humans!>

Kyle noted that they still had their weapons sheathed, taking advantage of surprise to rush at the hobgoblins, firing his entire arctech handgun clip at two of them, overwhelming the point defense armour engravings, killing them instantly as green arcia bolts lanced across the wide hallway, attempting to shoot down Kyle’s pellets.

<What?! Intruder! Go back and warn Osir that the humans are here!> One of them roared, but none of them had the time to react as Kyle charged them down, closing the gap in four short leaps and pummeling the hobgoblin.

<Fool! I have the power of the Oracle behind me no-> The hobgoblin roared just as Kyle sank his fist into its face, crushing the entire skull in one fell swoop. A sword swing came in too fast for Kyle to react to, causing the A-class personal energy shield to flare up and deflect the sword.

[Warning: 5% left. Proceed to the nearest employee charging station immediately.]

Their attack pattern is the same, but its much faster. Kyle grunted as he swiveled to grab the attacking hobgoblin by the neck, snapping it with his grip and flinging him aside as the third hobgoblin stabbed towards him, forcing him to dodge and take a step back before speed reloading his handgun.

The final hobgoblin fell, the point defense vambrace unable to react at such close range. Kyle noticed that there weren’t any system messages for him killing the hobgoblin as well.

Determined now to find out the truth, he headed past the open pneumatic doors, entering a large circular chamber where a lone hobgoblin decked in golden armour was in the middle, surrounded by numbered doors all along the circumference. Each of the doors had a countdown clock over them, with thirty seconds left.

The hobgoblin was the largest he had seen yet, towering at nearly 2.4 meters in height. It roared as it slammed the command console in front of it, the orange holographic interface illuminating his green muscles.

<Oracle, why do you not answer me! What is the truth behind this place?! Where did this power come from?> The large hobgoblin roared to the console.

[Error: Voice Pattern not recognised. Please repeat the question. Note: Due to the destruction of defensive systems, following Protocol 138A, all relevant data has been erased from the databanks.]

<GAH! I TIRE OF YOUR NONSENSE, ORACLE! If you are unwilling to tell me the truth, then you have no more purpose!> The large hobgoblin gripped the command console, ripping it off its stands and the connected wires, causing it to fray as the console was tossed to the side, its monitors and keys smashed to pieces.

<This… I know what this place is—a relic from the Heavenly War by our forefathers. To think we had so much heritage, so much untapped potential hidden within our bodies! How dare Sahusa and his tribe hide such information from the people!>

The large hobgoblin glanced at Kyle entering the chamber, his eyes widening. <HUMAN! You defile the holy chambers of our ancestors!>

“I take it that you’re Osir.” Kyle brandished his handgun, aiming it right at Osir and firing three shots. Instead of hitting Osir, a shimmering personal energy shield on Osir glowed purple, blocking the shots and dissipating them.

Osir barely flinched, instead glancing towards the countdown clock and grinning <Fool, you are no match for our improved potential!> The doors around the chambers hissed as residual green gas began to waft out, with nearly two dozen hobgoblins stepping out of their individual chambers, all clearly improved hobgoblins armed with a sword and shields.

<Human – today, you die here!>