Chapter 5

I was feeling quite calm the entire time we traced back the steps I took as I was running away from my pursuer a year ago. Thankfully, as I didn't want to make a rash decision. 

I also felt in security, as I looked at my dependants and droids following me. Finally in the mood to observe the scenery, I watched Aurea in all of it's beauty but also it's ugliness as I watched an animal wailing from it's heavy injuries, most probably successfully escaping from it's predator, although it will still die but from blood loss.

'This time, I am not alone.'

Drawing a striking similarities from me and that animal after the second escape, although my injury wasn't as serious as this animal, but I couldn't help but be reassured from the presence of my partners that are the 7 dependants.

Entering the dense vegetation, my dependants and I began to put our guard up and try to detect some 'brain waves' with our signal detector. Jungle are very dangerous due to the amount of hiding place present everywhere that the dense vegetation offer. A fact I understood with pain and two pursuit from predators.

As we arrived nearer the lake as I noticed with the humidity level, I detected a signal that gave me a bad feeling. I raised my hand to signal to my troops to stop. The next moment, every 'soldiers' put themselves in combat position and prepared to put themselves in cover to avoid some potential attacks.

Pointing at 2 o'clock

"40 meters away."

Hearing my words, the droids began to move carefully in the direction I pointed, in a formation permitting them to cover their fellow droids no matter from where the ennemies come from

Trying to know which animal was spying on us, I found myself surprised to be very familiar with the form and appearance of the animal. Who wouldn't after being pursued two times by the same animal.

'It's you isn't it, my pursuer?'

I thought with a dark look. Somehow, a thought in the corner in my mind was telling me that this animal was the one that took my arm. Maybe it's from the fact that Metallbrecher are a very territorial animal that have a very long lifespan. So it is rare for one of them to die, especially so due to the fact that they are at the top of the food chain.

Noticing that we knew it was there, the Metallbrecher charged at us. Perhaps it was due to the lack of danger it was exposed during it's life, or maybe it never encountered the Automatas civilization before which damped it's crisis awareness, or maybe it was simply hungry and thought we would make a good meal. 

Anyway, the Metallbrecher charged toward the droid who immediately fired on it with their blaster, firing blue bolts with a medium precision.

Thankfully, I took the AP-B140 (Anti Personnel-Blaster model 140), which is a blaster known for the damage given by it's shot.

'Why are the aim of the IA so bad? Shouldn't it be excellent due to the amount of calculation it can do in an instant compared to an organism? I should try to understand the reason...'

Although their aim was average at best, we could see that the shell took a lot of damage, but it arrived near the droids very quickly and slit two droids next to each other with it's powerful tail, and began to ready to hit another with it's claw. But just before it hit the droid, Artoria blocked the claw with a sword. Dependants are after very strong combat units, which permitted them to inflict a lot of damage due to their strong strength, agility, aim,....

As she blocked the claw, the droid quickly began to aim for the unprotected eyes of the Metallbrecher with it's blaster. But just before it began to shoot, the Metallbrecher got out of the way, a moment before the other droids began to shoot.

Although the animal wanted to retreat due to the injuries and damage taken on it's shell, Jalter blocked the way with her halberd, halting it in it's retreat.

Seeing it's retreat sealed, it shreaked toward Jalter trying to scare her, but Jalter instead of retreating charged toward it and swiped her halberd, having no choice, the Metallbrecher blocked with it's claw, hissing from the pain of the shock as it's muscle trembled.

Just the moment after, blue bolts pierced the shell behind it, making it wanting to escape even further, but the moment it wanted to run in another direction, another dependant with a weapon, this time a scythe stood before it. Not wanting to risk anything, it ran toward the droid group and tried to break it's way through. But halfway, as it cut the sixth droid on it's way, another dependant stood before it. It wasn't Artoria but Melusine, while Artoria stood on the right and Scáthach stood on it's left, finally, Medusa and Jalter stood behind it.

Being completely surrounded and having no hope of running away, it began to struggle with all of it's might as if it lose reason.

It's at those moments that we can understand why some people say that cornered beast are the most dangerous as they have no hope but to fight against their ennemies with everything they have otherwise they know they would die.

As Melusine tried to thrust her sword toward it's eyes, it ignored the sword and swung it's claw to the head of Artoria, forcing her to retreat and parrying the blow. 

On it's rear, it did a wide swipe with the tail, although it didn't hit anyone, it made them retreat, albeit for a short instant, as they came once again and injuried once again with their attacks. Surrounding it from all sides, making the beast confused from which side it should attack, but the Metallbrecher finally continued it's attack on Melusine with it's two claws and tried to keep the others at bay with it's tail.

Despite the rapid attacks it did toward Melusine, she did not lose her calm and retreated the attacks or parried the blow she couldn't avoid, effectively stalling for the precious time necessary for her partners to injure it even further with an impressive show of agility and dexterity.

'Thankfully, I didn't try to kill it with some traps. It's shell and flesh is just too tough do kill it with just traps...'

Finally losing too much blood, the beast couldn't continue the brutality due to the lack of energy it had, making Melusine be able to take the offensive and injuring it even further when at some point it missed it's attack and Melusine successfuly destroyed one of it's eyes with her sword with a quick thrust.

Injured, exhausted and being attacked, it couldn't hold on longer and collapsed with ragged breath heard even from my position.

Looking at my nightmare of my early days dying on the ground, I did not feel any particular emotion. Perhaps, when I built the settlement, I knew that it wasn't much of a threat for me any further, or time diluted my hatred toward it, or my emotions we simply tuned down.... Looking at it silently for a minute in a daze, I concentrated myself and focused on the current objectives.

It can be said that this involuntary 'hunt' had good results: a predator who can eat droids has been killed and won't impact potential convoy who will transport raw material necessary for the settlement. It could do after all as much damage as a country that does gerilla warfare, which is not only hard to deal with, but also very costly.

"This mine has been recorded by the Automata civilization. It contains a big deposit of durasteel, which can sustain our settlement for a long time."

The moment we arrived at the mine, Medusa informed of the potential of this mine. Currently, we don't have the strength too many mines at the same time, which limited us about which mine we could use and indirectly the placement of the settlement as we couldn't be too far away of metall deposits.