The forest around them no longer whispered; it screamed. Heatwaves warped the landscape, bending the faint light into flickering illusions. Even through the nanite-tuned HUD of Erevos, Karl could feel the intensity pressing in, the kind of heat that made nanites shiver. Tiny warning alerts blinked across his visor: nanite matrix stress, localized melting, Vythra flow surging to compensate.
"…Damn," Karl muttered under his breath, his fingers tightening around the Drive Regulator. The cockpit's purification turbines spun at near-maximum capacity, fighting back the infernal pressure. "…This is worse than I thought."
Agnes's voice flickered beside him, calm but tense. "…It's testing you. The Sentinel isn't just attacking; it's calibrating your endurance, the response of Erevos' systems. Be careful—those rails aren't going to shield you forever."
Karl's jaw clenched. "…I know."
He leaned forward slightly, letting the nanite-optics sweep the area. The Sentinel's royal azure flames churned in slow, deliberate swirls, their heat distorting everything within a hundred meters. Every rotation, every pulse of light, reminded him of Goliath—how relentless the Core Bearer could be. But this one moved differently. Mechanical precision layered beneath a living furnace.
The first wave of heat arrived like a hammer. Shimmering columns of flame erupted from the Sentinel's arm vents, radiating outward in concentric arcs, searing everything they touched. Karl felt the cockpit's walls begin to blister; the nanites shivered as if in pain, their protective fields struggling to maintain integrity. His skin crawled with heat despite the full exoskeletal shielding.
"…It's not just fire," Karl muttered, eyes narrowing. "…It's compressing air, energy, everything… I need to stay mobile."
The rails beneath Erevos hummed with latent energy, vibrating in tune with the cockpit's nanite stabilizers. Karl flicked the switch for the Gearstorm Nova projection system. Transparent rails and support beams shimmered into existence, stretching forward into the scorched forest. He shifted slightly, letting Erevos' legs nudge the vehicle onto the first projected rail.
"…Good," Agnes said, voice clipped but approving. "…Keep moving. You can probe without committing. Draw it out."
Karl exhaled, letting the nanites expand the rails beneath him, creating a network of temporary support beams and tracks. Each movement was precise: forward, pivot, backward, retract. He didn't just advance—he tested the Sentinel, poking at its defenses with short, controlled approaches. Erevos' cockpit glowed faintly with royal-azure indicators as the heat sensors screamed warnings.
A wave of superheated plasma erupted from the Sentinel's left arm, aimed toward him. Karl reacted instinctively, retracting the cockpit backward along the rails, weaving between the support beams like a bullet train on a branching track system. The plasma wave struck a projected support beam midair, sending sparks cascading into the forest. Karl's visor registered the subliminal heat spike as the nanites were briefly scorched.
"…Cockpit integrity dropping," Agnes muttered, voice calm but urgent. "…Vythra flow compensating. But you can't let it last long."
Karl gritted his teeth, forcing Erevos to rotate mid-rail, bringing its secondary turbines online to vent excess heat. The rails beneath him shimmered, adjusting in real-time as he pivoted, dodged, and probed again. Each movement was a dance: a probe, a retract, a test, the mechanical echo of his prior near-death experiences guiding him.
The Sentinel's flames responded. Its mechanical arms shifted, launching shockwaves of energy that compressed the air into scalding columns, pushing trees down and forcing Karl to retreat along newly projected rails. The heat licked the edges of Erevos' cockpit, making the metal paneling hiss and steam.
"…Its core…" Karl muttered quietly, scanning the chest cavity through the heat distortion. "…It's barely visible behind those plates… sapphire. Flickering with every pulse of the flames."
Agnes's avatar leaned close to his display, tone serious. "…That flicker is a phase indicator. It's adapting its defenses. You need to time it right—one wrong approach, and you'll overload."
Karl's knuckles whitened. "…I've survived Core Bearers before. I'll survive this."
He shifted weight, retracting backward along a rail, then extending a probe forward into a gap in the forest's burned-out canopy. The Sentinel reacted instantly. Its flamethrower vents rotated with machine-like precision, hurling a wave of royal-azure fire toward the probe. Karl twisted Erevos mid-rail, letting the nanite projections absorb some of the impact while retreating safely.
The cockpit felt like an oven. His skin burned despite the full internal shielding, his Vythra pulsing in warning, nanites vibrating as they strained to maintain control. Yet, every retreat, every probe, every careful approach taught him something new about the Sentinel's pattern, its rotational vectoring, the subtle cues that indicated where it might expose