Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

"Right, to start off with we'll see how yeh fare 'gainst me mechanical horde," Gimrock says, taking up position beside the now-closed door and gesturing for Emily and Mensacus to make their way into the centre of the room. "These fellas 're tuned to put up 'bout the same fight as a second-level opponent. Some 'ave guns, some 'ave claws, tis up to yeh to fend 'em off as yeh please."

"Are you okay with us breaking them?" Emily asks, her gaze already scanning through the robots filing in to search for weaknesses.

"Aye. These're all made to be broken, and if yeh succeed, I just get to make more. No trying to steal control with yer machina though, this is meant to replicate a varied battle, not a duel between mechanics. Now, by Guild rules I'm meant to see proof of the size of yer forces, but since they're bots yeh made yerself, not people, I'll take yer word fer it if yeh can handle me swarm without all 'em, and rate yeh 'propriately. Wait fer me mark to begin."

Emily and Mensacus stop at the centre of the growing swarm. Most of the testing robots are quadrupedal, with some resembling wolves and others stalkers, but there are a few humanoid bots hanging back, raising arms with built-in gun barrels and projecting electromagnetic shields from their chests to protect their nearby allies.

Emily turns to her son and gives him a silent nod before releasing a flood of machina into her small squad of metal troops. The half-golems all take up positions around them like points on a compass, before throwing up several overlapping barriers boosted by Emily's machina reinforcement. She pulls the barrier disk from her belt, hidden beneath her robes, and slots two metal and two lightning crystals into it before throwing it up into the air at the centre of their defensive formation, watching it lock into place with a pulse of magnetic energy before a buzzing, mesh-like barrier spreads to cover her and her son alone.

Mensacus splays and stretches his tentacle-like limbs out of the layers of barriers, the ink-black markings covering them glowing with dark mana, and three wendigos crawl out from within. The monsters look around inquisitively, moving in jarring, unnatural motions. Their gazes snap towards Gimrock, sensing his lifeforce, but Mensacus lets out a low, guttural clicking that corrects their focus back to the robotic horde.

In reaction to their preparations, Gimrock sends dozens of flying robots out to join the horde, circling with obvious explosive payloads clasped in their claws. Finally, after over three hundred opponents have taken their positions, the open ports supplying the horde slide shut.

"Begin!" Gimrock shouts, opening with a rain of explosives from above.

The fliers' payloads crash into Emily's first layer of shields, spreading ripples but not shattering it. Tens of bestial robots slam headfirst into the barrier, slashing it with electrified claws and teeth. A few further back open ports on their shoulders, revealing autocannon barrels that unload shells over the heads of their allies.

The wendigos let out three harrowing screams before charging into the swarm, shattering bots with each wild swing of their claws and shrugging off the returned attacks without slowing. The six metal soldiers within the barrier open fire, sending out a spray of metal, fire, and explosives.

Two flamethrowers are aimed towards the sky, stirring up the air and destabilising the fliers trying to drop more bombs. Bullets from two internal-belt-fed rifles tear through the thin armour on the light melee attackers who are smashing themselves into the outer barrier, and two grenade launchers huck projectiles that burst into heat and shrapnel in the midst of the tightly packed horde.

The humanoid robots standing at the edges of the group protect some of the nearby beasts from the hail of projectiles, sending their own shots towards Emily's barriers at the same time. However, as the first layer of barriers shatters, and the half-golem that spawned it collapses in a spent heap from the backlash and excessive Overdrive, the wendigos leap at the shielding units with violent fervour. Their claws rend the electromagnetic barriers like paper, and their jaws close around the robots' heads before they can react, instantly cutting their numbers by three and opening the once-protected beasts to ranged attacks.

A few of the dying robots near the barrier abandon using their teeth and claws and simply throw themselves against the barrier before detonating, creating cracks instead of just ripples.

Emily calmly watches the chaos unfold and, as Mensacus lashes at any bots within reach to keep them from self-destructing against the quickly weakening second barrier, she draws the Whisper and shoulders it. Flooding the gun with machina, she squeezes the trigger to build up a chamber full of plasma. She completes the trigger pull and swings her aim across the sky, drawing the subsequent beam into an arc that slices through half the enemy fliers in one go, dropping them to the ground as melted balls of slag.

Mensacus finishes casting a complex spell, and black mist erupts from his arms, crawling along the floor and submerging all of the opponents' legs. Every piece of metal touching the mist starts to rust at a visible rate, locking up the robots' joints and making them easy prey for Emily's troops to pick off one by one. Patches of the room's ground begin to flake as well, but Gimrock quickly reinforces it with machina, stopping the spread.

After a second shot into the sky to finish off the fliers, Emily turns the Whisper's barrel towards the last surviving humanoid bots and punches clean through them. Two more of her half-golem soldiers collapse, but the last one holds strong until only a few limping beasts remain. The two gun-toting soldiers overheat and lower their weapons, having run through their entire magazines in one go, and those equipped with grenade launchers start making nasty grinding noises as their internal mechanisms wear down from excessive Overdrive. The final half-mage runs out of mana before its cracked barrier shatters and makes an unnatural whirring sound when it turns back to face Emily, but it stays standing.

Emily slings her Whisper over her shoulder and turns to face Gimrock as the wendigos finish off the stragglers.

"Satisfied?" she calls out to him.

"Haha, aye." He nods with a booming laugh, slowly approaching them and building up enough machina for Emily to feel the air humming against her skin in response, even through the still-active barrier disk. "Those're some fine bots of yers. I take it yeh worked together on the magical aspects; not often yeh find a mage who works so well with one of us."

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The wendigos drop their dead prey, and all turn to face Gimrock before cautiously backing up to the edge of Emily's barrier. Her instincts flash her a warning of coming danger.

"Now, I could call yer test there, but I reckon you'd fare mighty well against meself if you'd like to test yer mettle."

"I assume that will boost our combat rating a level if we succeed?" Emily asks, swinging the Whisper back into her grip and charging it with machina again.

"Aye. If yer both still standing when I call the test, I'll confidently give yeh a P6."

"Why not. Any restrictions?"

"Nothin' radioactive." Gimrock sends a pulse of machina into the ground, and a thin energy barrier springs up from somewhere below, covering every surface of the room. "Other than that, come at me with all yeh got."

Gimrock's machina shoots out, flooding the room and latching onto every one of his shattered robots. The metal gravitates towards him, shifting and locking together like pieces of a jigsaw. The mass of scrap latches onto his plate armour, lifting him and bulking him up until his body is completely covered by a hulking, humanoid behemoth that nearly touches the ceiling.

He rushes forwards, moving surprisingly fast with so much mass, and swings a giant fist towards Emily's barrier. His knuckles are lined with the crackling, electrified teeth and claws of his bestial robots.

Emily sends machina into the barrier disk to reinforce it, subtly converting some of the energy into mana within the device, where it can't be detected. She raises the Whisper and fires a shot into the falling fist, while Mensacus simultaneously lashes out, trying to slow the coming blow. The beam of plasma melts the surface of one of the large construct's digits, but otherwise peters out without doing much damage as fresh material is pushed out from within the construct to fill the gaps.

The fist lands with a roaring boom. Cracks spread across the barrier, but it holds as Gimrock draws back for another blow.

Mensacus hisses, and his wendigos leap forward to gnaw on the mech's ankles. Gun barrels extend from the mech's waist, firing down on the monsters and suppressing them with a concentrated flood of machina-charged projectiles that manage to draw blood.

Emily makes a quick decision before the fist can fall again and recalls the barrier disk.

"Split," she commands her son, dashing to the side and reaching a hand inside her robes, raising her plasma rifle with the other to fire towards the construct's chest.

The fist can't redirect in time and slams into the ground, sending ripples through the barrier shielding it and releasing a burst of air that ruffles Emily's robes harmlessly.

The Whisper's barrel starts to glow red-hot as Emily Overdrives it to the max and fires an unending beam of plasma that slowly eats into the mech's supply of material. More gun barrels poke out from random positions across the construct, trying to hit Emily as she charges her legs with machina and weaves unpredictably across the testing chamber. Mensacus releases a flood of black mist after a few shots slam into his chest, concealing his position while he calls back his wendigos and begins charging another spell.

Several explosives are lobbed out from ports that open across the mech, and Gimrock sweeps one of his massive mechanical arms in an attempt to clear the mist.

Emily tosses out several explosives of her own, pulling grenades from her belt and aiming for the construct's legs. Heat and pressure erupt in alternating blasts, slowly turning more and more of the mech's material supply into unusable scrap.

One of the mech's arms focuses on searching for Mensacus as the mana density in his smoke grows, while the other shifts and transforms, turning into a long whip lined with electrified barbs that lashes towards Emily. She listens to her instincts and narrowly dodges the whip, taking several shots from the many guns pointed at her in the process. The bullets cut through her unenchanted robes, but get caught against her Second Skin, bruising the top layer of her skin but not even denting her subdermal.

The Whisper finally fails, turning off before the superheated barrel melts, and Emily tosses it away, drawing a blade from her belt instead. The sword is a prototype to test a design for an arm attachment, and she doesn't expect it to last long, but it's suitable for her plan. She presses a button on the hilt, and a thin sheen of charged plasma shoots out to cover the blade's edge.

Emily dashes towards the mech, sliding under a wild swing from its whip arm and slashing through the back of its heel, where its Achilles tendon would be were it flesh and blood. The blow doesn't cut deep, but it forces the mech to halt its next step, repairing the damage before loading the limb again. A flood of bullets falls towards her, and Emily raises her left arm, activating a shield generator attachment to absorb the shots as she targets the other leg.

Mensacus takes advantage of Gimrock turning his attention to Emily, ceasing his movement within his mist and taking aim with his left arm splayed, wrapping his right around it to reinforce the railgun within. The magic circle dispersed through his mist activates, and the mist rushes back into his arms, building up enough mana to draw Gimrock's attention back to him.

There's a fraction of a second where the flood of bullets attacking Emily stutters thanks to the distraction, and she uses it to Overdrive her sword before leaping and plunging the weapon into the mech's knee. The sword bursts, and the joint shatters. Emily pours her machina into the disconnected lower half of the limb, clashing with Gimrock's machina and preventing him from reattaching it immediately. The construct pitches to the side, and Gimrock's booming laughter can be heard from within as he still fires on the mother and son.

Mensacus releases his charged shot as several bullets tear through his lower limbs. A black beam connects him to the mech's chest, and his malice pours into it, viciously eating away at the construct's integrity. The fired projectile stops short of hitting Gimrock, catching against an electromagnetic barrier hidden in the construct's chest, but all the metal around it decays, falling apart in blackened flakes.

Emily sticks a time-delayed bomb, boosted by a hefty chunk of her machina, to the limb she's severed before dashing towards the mech holding itself up with an arm on the ground. The explosive detonates as she slides under a spray of bullets, swallowing the leg in a ball of superheated fire that scorches Emily's robes. She ignores the stinging heat behind her and converts mana to machina to refill her drained reserves before plunging her left arm into the construct's surviving leg.

Mensacus sways but remains standing, half the tentacle-like limbs of his legs destroyed, and pours the last of his mana into the construct. Emily unleashes a flood of machina into the constantly-moving internals of the mech, forcing it to remain still and keeping the gap in its chest open. She reaches her free hand into her belt to produce another powerful charge, but the moment she pulls her arm back to throw it, Gimrock calls out to her.

"I concede!"

The barrier protecting him, covered in thin black veins of Mensacus' malice, flickers out, and he releases the machina holding the construct together. The mass of scrap metal falls to pieces around the dwarf as he pulls himself free.

Emily lowers her throwing arm and stows her explosive charge before pulling her arm free of the scrap. Her robes are tattered, letting the examiner get a clear look at her sleek body armour and mechanical arm, but her right arm is still mostly hidden.

"Very impressive," Gimrock says as he approaches her, nodding in appreciation at her prosthetic. "Yeh got many of those bombs?"

"Enough to flatten a city. More if I wasn't limited by space and could go nuclear," she answers, pulling a black cloak from her belt and covering herself up again.

"Aye, thought as much. Yeh coordinate well and, 'siderin yeh look less spent then me, yeh punch well above yer weight. Yeh'll make a fine addition to our Guild." He holds a hand out for her to shake, squeezing her metal hand enthusiastically. "See to yer son, and meet me back in the main hall. I'll get yer rating sorted."

With a final satisfied glance at his scrapped mechanical horde, the dwarf marches out the door, leaving it open behind him.