The CLANG was a sound of pure, brutal force, ringing through the fused metal of the doorway and vibrating up through the stone floor. It was followed by a grinding screech—the sound of Shield-1's heavy barrier being shoved backward across stone.
Isaac's heart hammered against his ribs. "M-001, M-002, go! Now!"
The two Militia didn't flinch. They dropped and scrambled through the breach, one after the other. The moment the second one vanished, Isaac heard the first volley.
CRACK! CRACK!
The musket fire was deafening in the confined space of the corridor. Muffled shouts—not from his units, but guttural, alien roars—answered the shots. Something heavy thudded to the ground.
"Status!" Isaac barked into the breach.
"Beachhead contested!" M-001's flat voice reported, punctuated by another musket shot. "One Tier-2 hostile engaged. Shield-1 integrity at 65%. Minor damage sustained."
A Tier-2, already. And it was damaging his expensive shield.
"M-003, M-004, you're next! Reinforce the firing line!" The two designated rear-security units went through. More gunfire echoed, a staccato rhythm of disciplined volleys. The alien roars grew more frantic.
"Isaac motioned to M-005 and M-006. "With me. Now."
He went through last, the jagged edges of the melted metal snagging his hoodie. He emerged into chaos and cacophony.
The Manufactorum was a cathedral to industry, now a charnel house. Vast, silent forge-hammers hung from the ceiling like petrified fists. Conveyor belts were frozen rivers of cracked leather and rust. Crucibles were cold, dark mouths. The air was a soup of ozone, hot metal, and the coppery stench of Gloom-ichor.
His beachhead was a five-meter semicircle just inside the door. Shield-1 was planted solidly, its front face gouged with three parallel, deep scratches that glimmered with residual black energy. Behind it, M-001, M-002, and the newly arrived M-003 and M-004 were arrayed in two ranks, firing, reloading, firing again with machinelike precision. Smoke hazed the air.
Their target was the Tier-2.
It was a nightmare of industry perverted. It had the basic, hunched-over silhouette of a gorilla, but its "flesh" was a patchwork of corroded metal plates, rusted chains, and pulsating black sinew. One arm ended in a massive, hydraulic-powered fist, currently raised. The other was a whirling, saw-toothed rotary blade that shrieked as it spun. Its head was a faceless dome of pitted iron, with a single, vertical slit that glowed with malevolent green light. A Gloom-Forged Brute.
The Brute was trying to close the distance, but the concentrated musket fire was staggering it. Each .75 caliber lead ball struck with a spang of metal on metal, denting plates, shearing cables, and eliciting roars of fury. Black ichor seeped from a dozen wounds. But it wasn't going down.
Isaac took it all in with a single, sweeping glance. His militia were holding, but they were fixed. The Brute was a bullet sponge, drawing all their attention. And in the deeper shadows of the vast room, behind silent lathes and toppled furnaces, he saw movement. Smaller, skittering shapes. Swarmlings. And something else—lanky, whispering forms that clung to the high gantries.
The Brute wasn't the problem. It was the distraction.
"M-005, M-006! Flanking positions! Watch the gantries and the rear! They're trying to surround us!" He pointed with his sword, the gesture feeling theatrical and absurd.
The two reserve units broke from the group, moving to opposite sides of the beachhead, muskets raised, scanning the gloom. Just in time. A pack of four swarmlings detached from the shadow of a conveyor and charged M-005's position from the left. He fired, dropping one, then used his bayonet in a short, efficient lunge to impale a second. M-006 fired at movement on the gantries, the shot sparking off an iron railing.
The Brute saw the diversion. It lowered its head and charged Shield-1, its hydraulic fist drawing back for a colossal blow.
"Brace!" Isaac yelled.
The fist came down like a pile driver.
CLAAAAAAAAANG!
The impact was seismic. Shield-1's unit was driven back a foot, its boots scraping stone. The shield itself deformed with a shriek of tortured metal, a central dent the size of a dinner plate now glowing hot. The System flashed in Isaac's vision.
Alert: Heavy Barrier Shield integrity at 22%. Unit Shield-1: Structural stress detected.
One more hit would obliterate it, and the Brute would be in amongst his firing line.
He had no plasma pistol. He had a sword. He had seven soldiers in a desperate fight.
His eyes darted to the environment. The forges were dead. The machinery was still. But the principles… the principles of a factory were about leverage, kinetics, and focused force.
His gaze locked on a massive, overhead crane arm, its hook dangling ten feet above and slightly behind the Brute. It was attached to a thick, taut chain that ran up into the darkness.
"M-001! M-002! Cease fire on the Brute! Target the chain on the crane arm directly above it! The thick one! Now!"
The order was counterintuitive—stop shooting the monster. But his units obeyed without question. Their muzzles lifted in unison. Two shots rang out.
CRACK! CRACK!
The lead balls struck the thick, rusty chain where it met the crane's pulley housing. Sparks flew. One link shattered. The chain, under the tension of the heavy hook, snapped with a whip-crack that echoed louder than any gunshot.
The multi-ton iron hook plummeted.
The Brute, focused on rearing back for another blow at Shield-1, never saw it coming.
The hook struck it directly on its iron-dome head with a sound like a cathedral bell being struck by a meteor.
DONNNNNGGG!
The Brute's legs buckled. Its whirling saw-arm sparked and died. It crumpled forward, not with a roar, but with a final, pathetic wheeze of escaping hydraulic fluid, crashing onto its face at the feet of Shield-1. The green light in its head-slit winked out.
Tier-2 Hostile Eliminated. Essence Core (Greater) Acquired: +50 Units.
Fifty. A fortune. But there was no time to celebrate.
The loss of the Brute seemed to break the coordination of the remaining Gloomspawn. The swarmlings' charge lost conviction. The whispering shapes on the gantries retreated into deeper shadow.
"Advance!" Isaac commanded, seizing the momentum. "Shield-1, hold position and recover. M-001 through M-004, forward by pairs! Clear the immediate area! M-005, M-006, cover the flanks!"
His militia moved like a single organism. Two would step forward, fire into a shadowy corner or behind a machine, then kneel and reload while the next pair advanced past them. It was a basic bounding overwatch tactic, executed with perfect, emotionless synchronization. They flushed out two hiding swarmlings and cornered a Bloater that had been oozing its way along a wall, dispatching it with a point-blank volley.
Within five minutes, the immediate area around the entrance—a space about twenty meters in radius—was secure. The cost: Shield-1's barrier was a mangled wreck, barely functional. Two militia had minor scratches from glancing claws. Their ammunition was down by nearly half.
But they held the doorway.
Isaac approached the fallen Brute. Its core was larger than his head, pulsing with a deep, angry crimson light. He placed a hand on it.
Essence Core (Greater) Added to Inventory: +50. Total Essence: 72.
He turned his attention to the room. The Manufactorum was vast. His secure area was a tiny bubble of light in an ocean of potential threats. But he could now see the primary objective: against the far wall, some eighty meters away, was the Manufactorum Control Node. It was a larger, more complex version of the Barracks console, housed in a protected alcove. A shimmering, faintly visible energy field—a flickering barrier of pale blue light—surrounded it. The barrier was cracked and sputtering, but it had held. That was why the node wasn't destroyed.
And clustered around that barrier, scratching at it, pawing at its weakening light, were at least a dozen more Gloomspawn of various types. He saw two more Bloaters, several skittering packs of swarmlings, and clinging to the ceiling above the node like malignant stalactites, three of the lanky, whispering creatures. The System tagged them.
Entity Identified: Gloomspawn – Category: Whisperer (Tier-1). Threat Assessment: High. Emits psychic dissonance waves. Fragile physical form.
Psychic attacks. Fantastic.
They hadn't noticed him yet, wholly focused on the dying barrier protecting their prize.
Isaac retreated to his beachhead. His seven militia gathered around, their grey eyes fixed on him. The shield was ruined. They were low on ammo. The target was across a kill zone, defended by a mixed force with unknown abilities.
A direct assault was suicide.
He looked at the silent, powerful machines around him—the dead forges, the cold crucibles, the dormant conveyor belts. The Manufactorum wasn't just a room to clear. It was a tool to use.
A slow, cold smile touched his lips. They wanted to play with corrupted industry? He would show them real industry.
"New plan," he said, his voice low and steady. "We're not going to them. We're going to make them come to us. And we're going to use their own factory to grind them into paste."
He pointed to a large, intact furnace with a heavy, counterweighted dump-chute. "M-001, M-002, with me. We have a trap to set. The rest of you, fortify this position. We're about to throw a very loud party."