The remaining two grunts circled me, their heavy boots splattering the mud. They didn't attack immediately. They pivoted, flanking me from opposite sides, cutting off any escape route.
The one on the left tilted his brass mask. The riveted slit faced me, and from behind it, a muffled, static-laced voice rasped through the copper pins.
"You... possess remarkable data. Your kinetic output is unstable, but your sequence... it is unbound."
The one on the right dragged his Odic wrench through the mud, leaving a glowing green furrow. "The flesh is weak, brother. But his circuit... it sings a chaotic frequency. The Apostle would wish to study such an anomaly."
The left grunt stepped closer. His organic hand—the one not grafted to the wrench—reached toward me, palm up, an almost paternal gesture twisted into a mechanical horror. "Abandon the failing meat, wayward soul. Let the Clockwork refine your composition. Join the congregation. We will strip away your pain and replace it with eternal precision."
They're recruiting me. I am being headhunted by a brass death cult in the middle of a nightmare forest while standing over the cooling corpse of their buddy. This is objectively the worst pitch in the history of corporate outreach.
"I'm good," I rasped. My voice sounded like gravel scraping asphalt. "I like my pain exactly where it is."
The right grunt's shoulders shifted, the pneumatic valves hissing. "Then you will be recycled."
They charged simultaneously from opposite sides.
Hakuiki. White Breath.
I dropped my center of gravity, pivoting my entire body in a flawless 180-degree horizontal arc. The rusted shortsword didn't cut flesh. It hooked the second grunt's pneumatic ankle right mid-stride, using his own momentum to rip his footing out from under him.
He pitched forward, wildly off-balance.
I didn't stop the rotation.
Bridge Two. Hyōran. Ice Storm.
I chained the exact momentum of his fall into the final transition. The bridge technique violently pulled my center of gravity back up, redirecting the rotational inertia forward and outward, converting the sweeping defensive motion into a sudden, explosive offensive vector.
Ranki. Disrupted Air.
I unleashed the accumulated kinetic pressure into a localized, weaponized shove. The physical air displacement launched the tripping cultist entirely off the ground. He crashed violently into the third grunt. A tangle of brass limbs and heavy canvas slammed into the base of a nearby oak tree with a heavy, metallic crunch.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ ⚠ CRITICAL ADVISORY : Maximum transition limit reached (2/2). ]
[ Muscular failure imminent. Cooldown: 60.00 Seconds. ] ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
My vision blurred into white static. My grip failed. The rusted shortsword slipped from my fingers, clattering against the stones. My right leg burned with agonizing, white-hot cramps.
The two tangled grunts were struggling to untangle themselves. The impact had damaged their pneumatic legs. One was dragging himself forward on his organic arm, his brass arm twitching erratically. The other was trying to stand, his knee joint grinding and sparking.
I didn't have the stamina to finish them.
I didn't have the strength to run.
I barely had the strength to stand.
I pressed my back against the oak tree, my chest heaving, my burned hand cradled against my stomach, my bleeding temple trickling warm copper down my jaw. My face was doing the nothing thing. The blank, deadpan mask that my brain defaulted to when the panic got too loud to process.
The first grunt's dead eyes were still burned into my retinas. Still pleading. Still silent.
I killed a man.
And I'm about to die next to him.
The two grunts finally separated. The one with the damaged knee staggered up, his brass mask twisted, the copper pins screeching as they scraped against the metal. The other one crawled a few feet, then pushed himself up, his organic arm trembling, his Odic wrench dragging in the dirt.
They looked at me. Two broken machines, their gears grinding, their cores sputtering, but still standing. Still armed.
I was a wreck. My legs were giving out. My hands were empty. My stamina bar was flashing critical red. I had zero frame data left to exploit, zero stamina to exploit it with, and exactly zero weapons to exploit it on.
The one with the damaged knee raised his wrench. The sickly green core in his chest flickered, struggling to power the arm, but the piston was still cocking back.
"Your... composition ends here, wayward soul."
Move. Do something. Anything.
I pushed off the tree. My legs screamed, the muscles tearing, the ligaments stretching to their absolute limit. I lunged. Not for him. For the wrench.
My burned hands clamped onto the heavy brass wrench as it swung down. The impact drove me to my knees, the sheer weight of the pneumatic arm slamming the wrench into the mud inches from my shoulder. A jagged edge of brass sliced across my cheek, a hot, sharp sting opening a gash that immediately welled with blood.
I held on. My fingers, slippery with my own blood and his green fluid, wrapped around the cold metal. I couldn't let go. If I let go, he would swing again, and this time it would land on my skull.
The other grunt was moving. I could hear his heavy, dragging footsteps circling behind me.
You have no weapon. You have no strength. You have exactly one thing left.
The first grunt's organic arm—thin, pale, covered in crude copper wire grafts—was exposed as he tried to wrench the weapon free. He was pulling up; I was pulling down. We were locked in a pathetic, desperate tug-of-war in the mud.
Let go of the wrench. Use what nature gave you.
I let go of the wrench with my right hand. My burned, blistered right hand. The one that was screaming in agony with every micro-movement.
I drove my thumb directly into his organic eye.
The grunt shrieked. A raw, animal sound that pierced through the brass mask, muffled but agonizing. His grip on the wrench spasmed. I ripped the heavy brass weapon from his hand, the sheer momentum spinning me around.
The second grunt was right behind me, his own wrench raised for a killing blow.
I didn't swing the wrench. I didn't have the shoulder strength to swing it. Instead, I jammed the heavy, rectangular head of the wrench directly into the gap between his chest plate and his shoulder joint, the exact spot where the Odic core fed power to the arm. I pushed. Not with my arms, but with my entire body weight, slamming my shoulder into the handle.
The wrench head crunched into the gap, severing the copper tubing. The Odic energy in his core discharged violently, a blinding, sparking explosion of green static that knocked us both backward.
I hit the mud hard. The breath was driven from my lungs. My vision was a haze of red and green.
But the grunts were down. The first one was clutching his ruined eye, rolling in the mud. The second one was convulsing, the severed tubing in his chest spraying green fluid like a ruptured artery.
I lay there, staring at the grey sky. My face was covered in blood—the grunt's, my own, the green Odic fluid. My hands were trembling, burned, bruised, and coated in the visceral evidence of what I had just done.
This isn't a game. This isn't a screen. This is blood. This is bone. This is a man screaming because I blinded him with my thumb.
I rolled onto my stomach and pushed myself up. My arms shook violently. My legs were numb.
The grunt with the ruined eye was still alive. He was crawling toward his wrench, his brass arm scraping uselessly against the mud, leaving a trail of red and green in his wake. He was tenacious. He was a believer. And he was going to kill me if I let him get his hands on that weapon.
I tried to lift the wrench I had stolen. My biceps screamed. My shoulder joint felt like it was packed with crushed glass. The wrench slipped from my numb fingers and hit the mud with a wet thud.
No. No, no, no. Pick it up. Pick it up and finish him.
I couldn't. My muscles had completely seized. The lactic acid buildup was so severe that my arms felt like lead weights attached to a stranger's body. I had zero frame data left to exploit, zero stamina to exploit it with.
The grunt reached his wrench. His brass fingers closed around the handle. He started to push himself up.
He's going to kill me. He's going to get up, and he's going to crush my skull, and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it because I can't lift a goddamn wrench.
A primal, suffocating terror gripped my throat. The gap between my internal panic and my external blank mask had never been wider. On the outside, I was staring blankly at a crawling cultist. On the inside, I was screaming at the top of my lungs.
The grunt got his knee under him. He raised the wrench.
Do something. Do anything.
I didn't think. I didn't plan. I just moved.
I launched myself off the ground, not with technique, not with martial arts, but with the raw, animal desperation of a cornered rat. I slammed my full body weight into his side, knocking the wrench from his grip for the second time. We tumbled into the mud, a tangled mess of flesh and brass.
He thrashed underneath me. His organic arm clawed at my face, his fingernails tearing at my cheek, drawing fresh blood. His brass arm was pinned beneath my knee, but the piston was firing erratically, trying to cycle, the mechanical elbow slamming into my ribs.
Pain flared, sharp and breathless.
I couldn't let him up. If he got leverage, his mechanical strength would tear me apart. My hands were slick with blood and oil, my grip failing on his brass shoulders. He bucked, throwing his weight sideways, and my right hand slipped off his shoulder.
His brass arm swung up, the piston fully cycling, the heavy forearm racing toward my temple.
I can't block it. I can't dodge it. I can't—
My left hand shot out. Not to block. Not to grab.
My hand clamped onto the exposed section of his neck where the brass collar met his organic flesh. My thumb pressed into the soft tissue of his throat, right beneath the jawline. My fingers dug into the back of his neck, nails biting into the greasy, sweat-slicked skin.
And I squeezed.
I didn't squeeze like a martial artist. I didn't apply pressure to a nerve cluster or target a pressure point. I squeezed like a dying man trying to crush a rock. My knuckles turned white. My tendons stood out like steel cords. My biceps burned with the absolute, final reserve of my failing stamina.
The grunt's eyes bulged. His mouth opened in a silent, wet gasp. His brass arm flailed, the piston firing uselessly against the mud, but he couldn't get the leverage to strike me. His organic hands clawed at my wrists, tearing the skin, drawing blood, but I didn't let go.
I couldn't let go.
His struggles grew weaker. His brass arm slowed, the pistons losing pressure as his organic body failed. His eyes, wide and terrified, locked onto mine. The same raw, animal fear I had seen in the first grunt's eyes. The same desperate plea.
Please.
I squeezed harder.
Something in his neck gave way. A wet, crunching pop that I felt through my entire arm. His body spasmed once, twice, and then went limp. His brass arm fell to the mud with a heavy thud. His organic hands slipped from my wrists, falling to his sides.
He was dead.
I stayed there, kneeling in the mud, my hands still clamped around his throat. My chest was heaving. My lungs were burning. My face was a mask of blood and oil and blank, unreadable nothing.
Inside my skull, the screaming had stopped. Replaced by a hollow, ringing silence.
I killed three men. With a sword. With a wrench. With my bare hands. I choked the life out of a man with my thumbs because I was too weak to lift a weapon.
What does that make me?
The question hung in the dead air. A hollow, ringing silence where the answer should have been. My blood-soaked hands trembled, waiting for the guilt to formulate a word. Waiting for the moral math to resolve.
Nothing came. Just the sound of my own ragged breathing and the distant clash of steel in the clearing.
Alive, a cold, practical voice in the back of my head whispered. It makes you alive.
I let go of his throat. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely form fists. They were covered in blood—his blood, my blood, the green Odic fluid. The metallic scent was overwhelming, mixing with the copper taste in my mouth and the bile in my throat.
I pushed myself up. My legs wobbled but held. I stared down at the three bodies scattered around the oak tree.
Move. Survive. Now.
But even as I took a step toward the clearing, I knew I would never be able to unsee the look in his eyes. The moment my thumbs had crushed his windpipe. The moment the life had left him. The moment I had become something more than a player behind a screen.
I was a killer now. For real.
I think I'm going to be sick.