An Ether connection? With an egg? How is that even gonna work?

  These were the first questions that entered Arthur’s mind once the initial shock wore off. Sure, he had a few theories—maybe even decent ones—about what might happen if he agreed to form the connection, but how could this possibly benefit him? He was a tank. This was an egg of a bird. A tiny one at that by the look of it.

  Another issue was that this process required Ether, and well… he didn’t really have much of it to spare. He had to become mobile again as soon as he could, and that meant devoting all of his energy to repairs.

  For all I know, saying yes right now might just hurt me, Arthur thought, his gaze still on the egg. Should I wait? Is it even worth it?

  To his surprise, a notification appeared in front of him.

  The Vanguard System works only for the benefit of the Warrior. No offered upgrades, evolutions, or other processes will cause you harm.

  And that was it. Clearly, the System had sensed his hesitation and stepped in before he could make a decision based on fear. Pretty nice.

  The real question now was how much Arthur trusted this strange and powerful entity to always have his best interests in mind.

  It had pulled him out of the void and offered him a new life. That alone earned it a considerable amount of goodwill. Placing him on the edge of a hostile territory in the wrecked body of a World War II tank, however, took some of it away.

  Then again, ever since he had awakened, the System had done nothing but assist him… even if it liked to omit some key details.

  Arthur hummed.

  What to do? What to do… Ah, to hell with it. System! Start the process.

  Sure, he could have sat there weighing all the possible pros and cons for the next few hours. But did he want that? Or hell, did he have the patience for that? Of course not. Which was why he decided to just go with the flow. It had worked so far, hadn’t it?

  And no, the idea that he might get a pet bird, thus some company, out of this definitely had nothing to do with his choice. Not at all. Or at least, that was what Arthur tried to tell himself as the System acknowledged his decision and pure golden light enveloped the egg.

  A moment later, a brand-new connection bloomed in his mind. Unlike all the triggers and valves he already had access to, this one felt much different.

  Stronger, yet weaker. Dormant, yet alive.

  Arthur tried to reach out, but similar to all his destroyed systems, this new connection refused his touch. This just left him with one other thing to do: watch the golden cocoon around the egg slowly fade into nothingness.

  At first, it was hard to see anything, the light was just too bright. But then, bit by bit, the egg returned into view, and his nonexistent eyes widened. He sure hadn’t expected this.

  While the egg itself retained its original colors of red and brown, its surface seemed smoother than before, polished almost to a shine. The jagged crack had also vanished, most likely healed by the Ether’s mysterious properties.

  Still, the real surprise? The size.

  Before, the egg had been tiny, just barely larger than a golf ball. Now, that was no longer the case, and it had grown enough to easily match the size of a melon. Quite the difference.

  Huh… Never mind then. Guess it’s gonna be a big birdy after all.

  For another minute, Arthur’s excitement climbed as he waited for the egg to hatch. This had to be it, a way to finally alleviate his boredom to some extent. No more counting all the rocks he could see through the barrel of his cannon.

  Then a new notification arrived and dashed all his hopes away.

  Ether connection established. Adaptation in progress. Time until completion: 24 hours.

  Arthur huffed.

  Dammit all.

  With the System busy doing… well, whatever it was doing to the egg of the Bloodwing, Arthur had no other choice but to deactivate Silent Observer. He returned to his watch over the Hell Gate through his cannon, hoping to maybe spot some details he had missed earlier.

  Spoiler: he hadn’t.

  Aside from the gate being a little smaller now, there was nothing else interesting about it. No new monsters. No weird pulsing. Nothing.

  Arthur once again had to hold himself back from loading an HE shell and firing it into the portal. Sure, he could most likely win another fight with a cyclops if it came to that, but it made more sense to wait until he had more ammo. He wasn’t about to let his goldfish attention span get him killed.

  That decision, however, left him with almost nothing to do once again. Reading his status page and fantasizing about upgrades only entertained him for so long.

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  And so, he decided to give sleeping a try, Hell Gate or not.

  At first, nothing he did worked. Closing his ‘eyes’ just trapped him in an uncomfortable darkness, and picturing himself lying down was pointless. He wasn’t tired after all. Hell, he didn’t even know if he could get tired in this state. Probably not.

  This led him to a different approach to his problem.

  The System had once put him under something called ‘recovery hibernation.’ Perfect solution, right? He would get some sleep, pass a few hours in a blink, and maybe even speed up his repair.

  Nope.

  Recovery hibernation protocols are unavailable at this point in time.

  Arthur groaned.

  Back to counting rocks it is.

  A couple of hours later, which included three more ammo production cycles, the sun was back on its way to the top of the sky. Arthur didn’t care much for it thanks to his ability to see in the dark, but all this waiting at least revealed that the cycle of night and day here was quite similar to the one on Earth.

  How was that even possible on a supposedly alien world? He hadn’t the faintest clue. But then again, he wasn’t an astrophysicist… or whatever people who studied that kind of stuff were called.

  In any case, during all these long hours, Arthur had at least managed to find something new to occupy his mind. And what was this miraculous discovery?

  His Core.

  Until a few hours ago, he had been treating it as nothing more than a power source and storage for items. Now, he was starting to realize what it truly was.

  In short, the Core was him, and he was the Core. It pretty much explained why Silent Observer had to peel off a fragment of it to give him a spirit form. Honestly, he felt pretty stupid for not realizing it sooner, especially after reading the description of the Core’s functions when he first woke up.

  Arthur blamed his temporary dip in IQ on his way-too-long vacations in the void and then becoming a goddamn tank.

  Oh well, it is what it is, he thought, giving a mental shrug. Now… Let’s get to work! I have waited enough. Fire!

  The HE shell he had preloaded shot out of his cannon with a bark of thunder. The Hell Gate swallowed it whole before shuddering and shrinking another few inches. The familiar pulsing came next.

  Arthur ordered a reload and readied the machine gun. This was also when he noticed that the mechanisms in his cannon definitely worked a bit faster than before. Upgraded Mobility for the win.

  Come on, he muttered to himself. I’m ready for you.

  Yet, no demons arrived. He took that as an invitation to fire his second HE shell.

  The gate shrank again, now barely large enough to let a small car pass through. This time, however, the bright pulse and shrieks coming from within told him he wasn’t getting another freebie.

  Finally!

  At his shout, demons spilled out of the gate. Fiends, dozens of them, their hands already burning with familiar flames. Yet, they weren’t the only ones to enter the wasteland.

  Vermin the size of an adult cat rushed ahead of their bipedal kin. They were fast, very fast, and their charred skin filled with orange glowing cracks was the only thing Arthur saw as he opened fire from his machine gun.

  Soon, blood mixed with the falling rain.

  Everywhere a bullet struck, a demon fell to the ground, dead or incapacitated for the time being. A moment later, an AP shell finished loading, and Arthur let it fly right away, pulverizing over four Fiends and a stray rat that were running at him in a straight line.

  A slow snap of his turret to the left filled the bodies of another hostile group with holes. Six more dead.

  Or so he had thought.

  Among the pack of Fiends were two rats. The first died with the other demons. But the second? It must have hidden behind its kin, and once the rain of bullets stopped, it darted out of the corpses and rushed at him again. Arthur tried to return his aim to the beast, but his turret just turned way too slow.

  It’s only one rat. No worrie—

  His thoughts were cut off as, at that moment, the vermin reached the back of his vessel. It didn’t try to scratch him with its claws, though. Instead, the cracks across its skin simply pulsed once before the beast exploded in a fiery blast.

  Shit!

  Warning! Armor is now Criticality Damaged. Be careful, or you may reach the point of no return.

  Arthur saw the message but didn’t really have the time to think about it. The demons were still coming, and now that he knew what they could do, he couldn’t let them reach him.

  And so he gave himself to the battle, firing as fast as possible without overheating the machine gun. At the same time, another HE shell landed just a step away from the Hell Gate, turning some of the newcomers into mush. The portal also shrank again, now just barely big enough for the Fiends to squeeze through.

  It didn’t stop the demons from using it, though. No, but it told Arthur exactly what he needed to do next.

  Load quick, he commanded while firing his final thirty bullets. Those should be enough. Had to be enough. Come on, come on…

  The trigger responsible for loading the cannon clicked.

  Arthur turned the turret, corrected his aim, and fired just as another thunder split the sky above. Quite fitting, considering what happened next.

  Just like with all the previous shells, the Hell Gate ate this one, too. It shuddered again and began to compress for the final time today. A Fiend still tried to force its way through, but before its body could cross fully to the other side, the gate blinked out of existence, cutting the demon in half.

  A beat later, the rain stopped. The few remaining demons froze mid-charge, confusion written on their twisted faces.

  It was their final mistake.

  Arthur cut them down with the last of his bullets. Then, silence returned to the area for the first time in almost a day. No rain. No thunder. No rattle of his machine gun. Just silence.

  It’s over. He laughed. It’s finally over.

  Now, in this situation, a normal person might have celebrated the destruction of the Hell Gate. But after his long stay in the void and then being reborn, Arthur knew he definitely wasn’t normal, or 100% sane for that matter. So sure, he was happy about the win, but his true joy came from somewhere else.

  The disappearance of the rain.

  No more listening to the endless patter. And no more suffering from water flooding every little crack and cranny of his damaged vessel. Oh, how he hated that one…

  Freedom at last!

  Mission success. Summon the System to redeem your rewards.

  Oh, right, there is also that.