​The Juggernaut did not grant them a single second of respite.

​Its massive hammer slammed into the laboratory floor with a force that felt capable of stopping a heart. CRASH! The marble floor, mute for thousands of years, exploded, sending stone shards three meters wide flying toward the spot where Thorne had stood just a second before. The captain leaped backward—a veteran reflex that refused to surrender to death—but the shockwave still hammered his chest like a giant’s fist. His body was thrown back, slamming into a concrete wall with a sickening crack.

​"Captain Thorne!" one of the soldiers shouted, his voice cracking with panic.

​"Tsk, don’t look at me! Focus on that monster!" Thorne stood up, his teeth gritted in a pained snarl. He wiped the blood streaming from his temple with the back of a trembling hand and raised his weapon once more. His shoulder felt as if it had been pierced by a hot nail, but he refused to fall.

​"All units, scatter!" Rianor’s voice boomed through the chaos. "Don’t be a static target! Move, move, move!"

​The infantry moved with iron discipline. They fanned out into a loose semi-circle, their boots thumping rapidly to avoid the hammer’s reach. The Sudrath Spears barked in turns, spitting flashes of mana that slammed into the robotic armor.

​Ting! Ting! Clang!

​The bullets simply ricocheted, leaving sparks of light without a single meaningful scratch on the black metal plating.

​"Damn it, that’s pure Adamantite!" Arvid shouted from behind the data terminal, his fingers frantically wiping his glasses, which were fogged from his heavy breathing. "It’s not just an alloy like the Sentinels! It’s thicker! Ordinary bullets will only tickle its skin!"

​"Then give it something harder!" Thorne barked, pressing the trigger of the light explosive launcher on his shoulder. BOOM! The explosion hit the Juggernaut’s chest dead-on. Thick black smoke billowed, momentarily obscuring their vision. However, when the smoke cleared, the machine still stood tall. Static. Unscathed.

​The Juggernaut began to rotate its body. Its movements were slow yet unstoppable, resembling a mountain that had suddenly decided to walk. The hammer in its right hand spun slowly, creating a strange whistling wind, while its single remaining red eye—the other having been destroyed by Khulafa—flickered wildly, scanning every heartbeat in the room.

​Then, it swung again.

​This time, the hammer swept horizontally—a low attack designed to level anything standing on the ground. WHUUSH! Laboratory tables shattered into splinters of wood and metal that flew like grenade shrapnel. Kell, a soldier whose arm was still wrapped in bandages, wasn’t fast enough to react. A shard from a table slammed into his shoulder, sending him sprawling with a muffled, agonizing groan.

​"Kell!" Thorne sprinted through the dust before the soldier could even hit the floor.

​"Gulp... I... I can still go, sir!" Kell crawled up, his right hand clutching the rifle he had nearly dropped. Fresh blood began to seep through, soaking the white bandages on his arm until they turned crimson again, but he kept his barrel pointed forward. "Don’t stop... just keep firing!"

​On a half-collapsed balcony, Dom and Khulafa lay prone amidst the rubble. They regulated their breathing so as not to disturb their aim. Through their blue-tinted scopes, they dissected every inch of the metal giant.

​"Hmm, I don’t see a single soft spot," Khulafa whispered, his finger already on the trigger but not yet pulling it. "The front armor is too solid. Even a Gauss round would probably just buckle."

​"Patience," Dom replied, his eyes never blinking as he followed the Juggernaut’s movement patterns. "Every machine has a heartbeat that can be stopped. Watch the pattern."

​They observed keenly. The Juggernaut swung the hammer vertically—CRASH!—shattering the floor. It took exactly four seconds for it to lift the hammer back up. Then a horizontal swing—WHUUSH!—swept a wide area, and it took three seconds for it to change direction.

​"There’s a delay," Dom murmured. "Every heavy attack forces it to vent excess energy."

​"Look at its neck," Khulafa pointed. "After a vertical swing, the vents at the nape open slightly. It’s venting steam. Oh, the gap is large enough."

​"But it only stays open for three seconds, at most."

​"Enough for one strike."

​Dom immediately pressed the Vibro-Comm on his helmet, sending the coordinates directly to Rianor.

​Rianor pressed his back against a concrete pillar that was spiderwebbed with cracks. His crystal tablet displayed old data from the first expedition. Sentinels. Neck vents. Cooling systems. The same pattern, an identical design. The Project Legion engineers had apparently used similar blueprints for every guardian unit—because they never imagined these robots would be forced to kill their own creators.

​They never expected a betrayal.

​"Riven!" Rianor shouted. "The vent on the neck! Just like the Sentinels! As soon as it swings vertically, that vent will open for three seconds! That’s your entry point!"

​Riven—who had been standing still with his mechanical axe in hand—smirked thinly. It was the smile of a predator that had caught the scent of blood. "Heh, I remember."

​He vanished into a blur.

​It wasn’t a foolish, straight-line run. Riven moved in a zig-zag, using table debris and pillars as stepping stones. He shifted direction just as the Juggernaut’s red eye tried to lock onto him. The machine swung its hammer—CRASH!—but Riven had already leaped high, rolled across the floor, and sprung back up with an unpredictable movement.

​"Dom! Khulafa! Divert its sensors!"

​Thung! Thung! Thung!

​Three Gauss rounds hissed from the balcony. Their targets weren’t the body, but the shoulder sensors and the remaining red eye on the machine’s head. The Juggernaut jerked, its head spinning to find the new source of interference bothering its detection sensors.

​It was more than enough.

​By the time the Juggernaut turned toward the balcony, Riven had already leaped onto a two-meter-high pile of rubble. Using that momentum, he lunged toward the giant’s shoulder. His powerful hands gripped the edge of the armor, the muscles in his arms tensing as a faint orange aura enveloped his body—a shield against the searing heat capable of melting flesh.

​Searing steam blasted from the neck vent, hitting Riven’s face. It felt like the breath of a dragon that had just woken up. It was enough to blister the skin of an ordinary human, but Riven was no ordinary human. He was the Lion of the North. And a lion does not retreat just because of a bit of heat.

​The Juggernaut began to shake violently, trying to throw Riven off its back like a bucking bronco. But Riven gripped tighter. His left hand held the armor plate while his right hand raised his mechanical axe high.

​"You think you’re the biggest thing here, huh?" Riven growled.

​He pulled the ignition lever. VROOOM! The serrated blade spun wildly at 3,000 RPM, its high-pitched scream drowning out all the noise of the battlefield. "I’ve brought down things bigger than you!"

​He slammed the axe right into the vent opening.

​CRAAAK!

​The sound of tearing metal was deafening. It wasn’t the sound of an impact, but the sound of pure destruction. Sparks and black hydraulic fluid sprayed violently from the gaping wound. Internal cables were brutally severed, sparking wild blue electrical currents that lashed out in all directions.

​The Juggernaut jerked stiffly. Its massive body convulsed violently, like a living creature being executed in an electric chair. The engine inside its chest roared unstably—rising, falling, and then...

​CLACK.

​The machine suddenly went silent.

​Silence crawled in. One second. Two seconds. Everyone held their breath, staring at the heap of iron that no longer made a sound. Would it rise again?

​Then, the massive body slumped forward. CRASH! The laboratory floor vibrated for the last time. Thick dust billowed, momentarily blinding them. When the dust settled, the Juggernaut was motionless. Its head hung tilted, the giant hammer slipping from its grasp. Total shutdown.

​Riven leaped down, landing on one knee on the shattered floor. His axe spun slowly for a moment before he deactivated it with a soft click. His breath was heavy and deep, like a pump that had just been worked past its limit. His sweat mixed with the remaining steam still rising from the wreckage behind him.

​"Target neutralized," Thorne reported after confirming no energy signatures remained. "All units, check the comrade next to you. Kell, is your arm still attached?"

​"Still here, sir. Just need a new bandage." Kell smiled wryly, though his face was deathly pale.

​Arvid stepped out from behind the terminal, his steps unsteady. His face didn’t show victory; instead, his expression hovered between grief and an agonizing curiosity. He walked toward the Juggernaut’s wreckage, his eyes fixed on the chest area.

​"Oh, look at this... a cockpit," Arvid whispered softly. "This machine has a hatch on the chest. It wasn’t entirely an automated drone."

​Rianor approached. Sure enough. In the center of the Juggernaut’s chest, hidden behind armor plates that were now cracked, was a small hatch designed to be accessed from within. With the help of Thorne and two other soldiers, they pried the door open by force.

​Inside, sat a human skeleton.

​It still wore the remnants of an ancient pilot suit. Not heavy armor, not a military uniform, but an outfit that looked more like a lab coat—white, simple, with a small emblem on the chest whose colors had long been swallowed by time. Its hands still gripped the control levers, its skeletal fingers wrapped tightly around them, as if it had never intended to let go until its final breath.

​The skull was bowed, as if reciting a prayer that would never end.

​On the dim control panel before it, a screen still flickered weakly—remnant emergency power that had lasted for thousands of years. On that screen, a single last line of text was written in the ancient script:

​"Forgive us. We could not stop it."

​Arvid read the message in a voice that was almost gone. His trembling fingers touched the cold screen. "He... he was trying to stop this machine from the inside," he whispered hoarsely. "But the system was already corrupt. Perhaps since the first attack... when the betrayal happened. He locked himself in here, trying to take control so this robot wouldn’t slaughter his friends... but he failed."

​Arvid swallowed hard, his throat feeling dry. "He was trapped inside this slaughtering machine, forced to watch his comrades die one by one through this screen... until finally, he died himself in the silence. All alone."

​A suffocating silence enveloped the room. No one spoke. Even Riven just stood there, staring at the skeleton with an unreadable gaze.

​Rianor stared at the pilot’s skeleton with solemn respect. In his eyes, that figure was no longer an enemy, but a comrade—a warrior who chose to die protecting what he loved. Someone no different from himself.

​"They weren’t monsters," Rianor finally said. His voice was soft but audible in every corner of the silent lobby. "They were victims. Just like us. They built all this to fight the Darkness, but these machines... were poisoned by the fear of others."

​He turned, staring at the ancient elevator door at the end of the room—the gate to the next level. "We must reach the Core. That is where all these answers lie."

​Riven rested his axe on his shoulder. "Hmm, what else is waiting for us down there?"

​"I don’t know." Rianor stared into the gaping darkness behind the elevator doors. "But whatever it is, we will finish it. For those who can no longer tell their story."

​Thorne gave a signal, and the formation tightened once more. Ammunition was checked, and those who were wounded swallowed healing potions quickly.

​They began to march again, leaving behind the laboratory that had now become a tomb for a pilot who could finally rest in peace.

​Behind them, on the fading control panel, the message blinked for the last time.

​"Forgive us. We could not stop it."

​Then, the screen went dark. And the darkness swallowed everything once more.