Throughout the base, the attack on the robot continued. Let cut to the chase and ignore the colorful discussion.

It was a totally lopsided statistical massacre.

…

“What is that?”

“Get away! Help! Fight that…”

“No way in hell.”

It took little effort for the mastermind to secure the room. The surprise attack on the ununited group of competitors vying to backstabs each other for pieces of treasures succeed without a hitch. Turret mowed down every chamber in proximity and war-drones dropped from the ceiling to smash the resistance like a sledgehammer. Worsening the carnage were flying drones joined the fray with a portable turret.

Roughly hundred participants were active in the water facility, but within the first minute, a quarter of that numbers got taken down, carried off through the darkened hallways into the location unknown.

However, the treasure seeker were survivors, and they already piled counter attack.

…

Artos Sevar slipped past a metal fist and buried his sword into the heart of a war-drone. Beside him Aryssa Holyworth conjured a barrier and raining down holy light while Mamacia Cocogar employed her smart, honed by the Isle of Knowledge, to dissect the bundle of wires she pulled from the wall.

Turrets kept shooting, but Amitate’s [Devil Flame] lighted the ceiling with inextinguishable fire. Not losing to her brother, Emily Aztellic covered the entire floors in aquamarine ice. They nodded to each other and performed a joint attack.

[Underworld Formation: Burning Ice Altar]

Emily and Amitate should be considered a special case amongst the 33 Stars. Alone, their power and competence was around a regular A-rank, but their cultivation in both [Devil Flame] and [Infernal Ice] allowed them to combine their element to launch a powerful attack with incredible property worthy of upper 33 Stars.

Pillars of deep blue ice pierced from the ground, impaling turrets and drones. The ice blinked twice and burst with scorching black flames, turning everything near them to ash.

Magnolia Drakokia glared at the demons while drowning the drones on her side of the room and freezing them solid. An ice-covered ore sprouted with thorns, and a miniature mermaid floated by her shoulder.

“You know, it would be great if you do that when we fight the bucket head,”

“Wow, 25th, you talk like you never went down in one attack.”

“Shut it, Amitate,” Emily growled, dusting herself. “Get over that lost and back to surviving. Cocogar, what you can tell me.”

Mamacia punched the wall in rage.

“We are fucked. The entire base is under a complete lockdown.”

“Is that bad?” Sorin Enma said before the door burst opened to reveal more attacking war-drones. He blasted the entire group with a beam of concentrated lightning. “You can’t be serious. These things are around A-rank, and particularly dumb A-rank at that.”

Amitate walked over a to a surviving war-drones and decapitate its head with a flaming hand.

“Enma is right,” Amitate turned the metal head into slag with his burning fire. “As long as they came at us one-by-one, we are good.”

Unconvinced, Mamacia connected the wires with her crystal ball and took a quick reading.

“Awww hell.”

“What now?”

Mamacia Cocogar yelled.

“The drones are only an initial phase to soften us for the trap!”

“What trap?”

The floor they were standing on fell, revealing a pitfall. The seven 33 Stars suddenly felt themselves standing on nothing but empty air with only darkness waiting below them.

“Oh fu-“

The seven cartoonishly fell down into darkness.

…

In another part of the base, the defense mechanism performed its best. A valiant effort from every grain of metal involved. Countless turrets spun right on time, war-drones and flying robots assembled to stall the intruders. Every chunk of cybernetics were commanded to defeat and captured their opponent. All robotics were fully prepared with weaponry and self-destruction sequence, thunderously marching as one.

But alas, they ran a deficit on two most important resource to combat this opponent. Bioelectrical field which acted as a passive protection against telekinetic judo and [Aura] which functioned as an active barrier to keep a certain jaded guardian of justice from dissecting them with his brainwave.

In the end, the best anti-Rem measure enemy could take was… scratch that. The best counter against Reality Breaker was still the subject of debate. Rem could mind trick average grunt into shooting their foot. Unliving opponent possessed no defense against being telekinetically scrapped. Now that the living, robot and the dead were proven ineffective; the only thing seemed to even dented the heaven-blessed Superman’s fan-boy was an elite team who prepared to die fighting. But even then, unless the entire team was an S-ranker, the only things they would find was a crate of time bombs.

Rem was a unique cocktail containing the most absurd spice one superhero could have. Imagination of evil genius, the multi-tasking ability of Professor Charles Xavier, En Sabah Nur approved I-have-no-qualm attitude on augmentation his own ability beyond its overpower limits, wisdom of Master Yoda and foresight of Darth Revan when he wasn’t fuck up by plot-induce wheelchair. All these affinities were wrapped by Anakin Skywalker’s hungry enthusiasm to dish out a lightsaber when negotiation fails, and love to ham that made Sheev Palpatine shy.

Yes, half the above were supervillains. What do you expect? Satholia needed a man who could hold the fort against the entire world of backstabbers. Her supreme luck just hit a supervillain with a semi-working moral compass and an idol in the grandaddy of Superhero. You essentially had the man who aspired to Space Jesus but fight like Doctor Doom.

The robots came into the fight ready to face anything below S-rank of Phantasia. It wasn’t prepared to fight Dr. Doom with an ability to peek into the future.

The robot didn’t even land before the telekinetic force washed them.

Unlike most Jedi or Sith, Rem didn’t force crush. He flexed worse than Anakin, but he preferred to be sophisticated. Instead of being squeezed like a tin can, it was a certain shifted in the gear and shattered valves. Some wires inside the turret got pulled out by an invisible hand. Hatches that supposed to deliver reinforcement drones bent at an odd angle. Actions which were pebbles in telekinetic might, but an ultimate display of wisdom, insight, precision and raw locating ability.

Every engineer worth their salt knew that loose belt or misaligned gearbox in generators could sink ships. An incorrectly assemble turbines would blow. A gas leak in the turret would cause improper combustion or explosion at worst. Safety technician tried for generation to minimize such epic weak point in machinery.

But no egg-head possessed the solution against the man who contained a future modeling simulation that could pinpoint every design weakness, a search engine with the power to get those data, mental calculus to ran all failure scenarios in time to blink and the power to make those scenarios become reality.

Rem clicked his fingers, and everything fell apart for the mastermind.

War-drones experienced a catastrophic failure in their internal generator. The turret met a lethal malfunction from detached regulator and disjointed fuel valves. Cube shape reinforcement blasting down the hatches got stuck at the unfortunately misaligned metal joint, causing a major traffic-jam, damming the entire delivery system in the area. Flying drones dropped from the sky in shambling pieces due to unscrew rotor blades. Trap corridor failed to activate because a telekinetically detached circuit.

Cytortia watched the machination assembled to capture them fell to smithereens by the power of tiny but lethal malfunctioning. A telekinetic feat displaying simultaneous control over unseen tiny object exerted with a force of a surgeon. She stared at the boy beside her.

“You have been practicing.”

“Well, squeezing lead cube got boring, so I decide to try multitask,” Rem massaged his sore shoulder. “And I must admit it is paying dividend. Good news, I just finished scouting this place.”

This development got Cytortia’s attention.

“Wait, you are scouting this place?”

“Cy, you just see me destroy a squad of robots by telekinetic multitasking. You must know I have weeks to fine tune my processing powers.”

“I remember you asking for aspirin. You realize tinkering with your processing ability like that is risky, right?”

“Well, good things I save my mental-setting before each experimentation. Just say it took a while to get a right UI, but I adjust…”

“Your brain, Rem, you are tinkering with your brain.”

“Hey, I only need time to get used to it and I have helpers. She is helping me set up the basic. Long story short, it took several investments, but I can multitask several functions of [Tenshou] and Astral Tracing. Since, I need to divide most of my mental power between keeping track of [Clairvoyance] and actually walking, the remote scouting is quite delayed in producing result.”

“Rem, I don’t care about the math formula you used to turn yourself into a computer. I want to make sure you won’t die on me.”

“Cy, you know I am not going to just die and left you alone,” Rem lied. “And my scouting reveal where exactly we need to next?”

“Okay, open the telepathic channel and brief everyone.”

…

Test. Test. This is Horizon Dawn's briefing session.

To update, we got transported into mysterious underwater facility. As the advisor of this operation, I am briefing you on this base's layout and our mission.

New Intel revealed this base wasn’t a dome. It is a sphere. Ergo. We were originally teleported to the upper part of the sphere roughly worth about one third of this massive facility. The experiment was held in the donut maze covering the center portion of the sphere. What we should be preparing for was the mess below that floor. Below that area was a mustering zone for a small army of the war-drones surrounded by factory rings of robotic assembly — the work horse portion of this underwater base. The rest of the base was supplies space, make-shift prison quarters and a laboratory running on automatic. The bottom pole of the sphere worked as an incinerator and garbage disposal.

The base was connected by a series of delivery vents to transport the drones. The center of the sphere was a cylindrical chamber where I believe the mastermind was holding the string. Those vents also connected to the massive central garbage chute leading right to the incinerator. Be warned. Every area was fully installed with transportation vents and turrets.

Currently, I am in one of the maintenance corridors below the dome. Luxinna was inside the supply areas and beating her way to the mustering chamber. Melody, Hikma, you needed to head there because all the targets and the threat were dropping into that zone. My condolence. It would be the most chaotic battle for the Dawn since the first hour of Capital of the Dead, so hold nothing back. Show them defender of the weak wasn’t a force anyone can poke their nose to challenge.

Meanwhile, I and Cytortia will be heading down to inspect a certain room that might give us a final edge over this base. I believe I am 90% sure we were really dealing with that.

In conclusion, the Dawn mission was simple.

1) Secure the mustering area and suppress the threat.

2) Subdue the out-of-control Luxinna

3) Find out the truth of Alcra Shaxter

4) Defeat the mastermind

Lady and Gent, good luck.

…

Magnolia Drakokia woke up to a commotion.

She wasn’t surrounded by seven people anymore. There was a crowd around her. The room was dark and dusty except for the giant monitor in the center of the room, which was trickling with numbers. Magnolia stifled a scream when she discovered several hundred war drones surrounding the survivor. 

She stood on the floor piece with metal tiles. Sounds and scents bombarded her senses as a series of question rose around her.

“Where are we?”

“What is going on here?”

“What are those robots?”

Before Magnolia had time to join the chorus, she felt it.

The scent of blood. The ominous glow of murder. A foreboding fear creeping up her mind. Thirsting darkness rippled through the crowd, silencing all life and light.

Clap! Clap! Clap!

Magnolia turned toward the noise.

“How plebeian,” It was a man dress in a dark suit covered in a thick stench of bloods and crimson vein disfiguring his handsome face like a mark of the beast. “A boring development, but a welcome one.”

The crackling man glanced around like something was missing, but he sighed in the end.

“Guess you ought to expect the opportunist to bail.”

Out of the crowd, a slash of light sailed toward the man. In replied, the ominous man covered in red stench caught the glowing beam and crush it with a crimson ripple of bloods.

It was the confirmation to what everyone already realized.

“A vampire! He is a vampire!”

“My god! Where is the Holy Church! Run!”

The crowd ran into a disorganized panic to get away from the predator. They moved like an insect swarm, barring each other's path in a disjoint attempt to progress. Soon Magnolia lost a head and tail of the situation in the sea of rushing crowd and indecipherable yelling.

It was then the situation got worst.

Around them, the war-drones lighted up simultaneously. The crowd suddenly found their sandwich between the terrifying visage of being sucked like fruit juice or being smashed by the hoard of mechanical terror.

Amid that panic, someone grabbed Magnolia by her neck.

The elf yelped.

“Quiet, deployed the barrier to hold the robots. Artos is already deploying his spirit to calm the crowd.”

Magnolia stared at the woman who displayed out of character aura of calm and resolved. She couldn’t believe she agreed with this cow out of all people.

Aryssa Holyworth assembled a staff topped with a cross radiating with life. The perpetually miffed and disinterested expression warped into one of anger and focus. It was a complete flipped of the voluptuous priestess she knew. Holyworth held herself like a goddess of battle as she charged several holy spells.

“What are you waiting for? We are in a battlefield, you pointy-ear imbeciles.”

Magnolia’s brain still lagged several strings behind.

“Are you really Aryssa who just got trash by weirdos in black?”

“That isn’t important! The most important things right now is putting that parasite head on a pike!”

Aryssa shrieked as she rained holy fires down on the vampire who was surrounded by wind, lightning and water.

After all, that was the divine mission taught to all Holy Church clergy since they were young; extermination of the cursed vampires. Countless Family members, friend, lovers were humiliated and killed to fulfill that holy mission. No member of the Church shall rest until all vampires burned at the holy stake. Despite her prides and arrogance, those pain and sacrifice were something Aryssa experienced full-well.

The vampire must be buried no matter what.

…

Mamacia Cocogar wasn’t distinguished at electronic, nor did she boast the skill of Alchemy over Cytortia Tianshang—the former 33 Stars. However, she possessed enough investment in both skill-set to concoct a specialized Alchemical tincture which hid her from sensors. It wasn’t something complicate. Cytortia from six-month ago would replicate the formula in a week, while the current Cy would pull that off in an hour. However, combine with invisibility projector, this technology allowed her to sneak amongst the chaos undetected.

Mamacia avoided using this method because she didn’t want to share it with the other. It was her ace in the hole to confirm her suspicion. Unlike Aryssa and Sorin, she had the hunch those freaks in Halloween costume got a point, but she needed to check it herself.

Originally, the mustering area seemed to be a test lab, considering several consoles left collecting dust. Mamacia sneaked past all the carnage and investigated the artifact stuck in the wall.

It was an old Magitech, but the UI was still comparable to the one circulating in the market. Whoever designed this technology was good. Mamacia tapped the crystal screen and began downloading data into a crystal memory, praying no-one notice the activating console. Unlike Earth’s technology, Phantasian tech relied on Mana circuitry, micro-vacuum tubes, gears and crystal storage. Mamacia was secretly thankful to the founder of the Isle of knowledge for shrinking the originally gigantic calculation machine into a more portable crystal-globe.

It was then a certain file caught her eyes.

PROJECT PALISADE: MAN-MADE INTELLIGENCE TO MAINTAIN GLOBAL ORDER.