Bumblebee turned his power armor around to face Luke. “Bet. I mean it’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it, but I’ve never met someone that was there that day. I just watched it in high school, and you know how shitty the footage was.”

  Luke set down his sandwich. “I wasn’t on base when they attacked, National Guard only train one weekend a month. I was at my other job, an AC repairman. When I got the call, I thought it was some kind of weird joke. I hadn’t seen the news yet. The corporal convinced me by threatening extra PT.

  “Anyway, it was a madhouse when I got there. No one knew what we were doing. We aren’t usually the first called into combat, but we were the closest, and it’s all hands on deck for an alien invasion. Eventually we got armed and organized. The portal isn’t far from the base, so we got there in like twenty minutes.

  “Nobody was using the words orc or dwarf back then, so all I saw was this field full of aliens, with more marching out of the portal. All of them were in full armor and wielding these medieval weapons. They had crushed this house in front of the portal, just flattened it to the ground. There was a 7/11 gas station to the east and a row of houses to the west. A haze covered the area, purple and red. It felt like death.

  “The videos you saw all start after the fighting. Before then, while we were all getting into place, they tried to talk to the aliens. They had four scientists, the Sergeant Major, and a camera crew. They just walked right up to the invading army and started talking. This elf came out and talked to them for a bit, but neither side understood each other.

  “It was a dog that started it all. Someone’s pet had gotten loose, wandered too close to the dwarves. One of them shot it with a bow, all casual like. The arrow went through the dog and made a crater in the asphalt. We should have known then. But then some idiot from J company tried to get revenge for the dog. It all started over a dog.”

  Luke sighed and took a bite of his sandwich. Bumblebee didn’t say anything while Luke chewed, so he felt like continuing.

  “The bullets bounced right off an invisible shield. We thought it was a forcefield, but it was really a simple battle shield. The dwarf fired back at the idiot and killed him with a single shot. Killed the three guys behind him too. Every arrow was like a tank round. The battle kicked off then, both sides opening fire. Our shots bounced off, theirs didn’t.

  “In addition to the bows and javelins, they had mages throwing fireballs, acid bombs, and sonic blasts. There was this one orc mage that would point at people, and they would just disappear. Point, poof, gone.

  “We had eight ATVs with heavy guns and one Bradley. They were the only things that could punch through the Kalibutan battle shields. Still, I think we only killed five of them before someone gave the order to retreat. It wasn’t the Sergeant major though, he died in the first few seconds. By the time the retreat started, we had lost more than two hundred good men and women.

  “People were screaming, breaking rank and running, it was madness. There was fire everywhere, ATVs were burning. The smell. The smell was awful. Hit you in the back of your throat and made your eyes water.

  “My squad stopped on Waterglen Dr as a delaying action, so the rest of the company could keep retreating. I’m pretty sure the captain expected us all to die. The orcs had broken rank and scattered to chase us; each one seemed like an invincible juggernaut.

  “A pair of orcs stomped our way and just shrugged off our rifle fire. Marquez and Jackson ran then. The rest of us stayed, although I’m pretty sure we all expected to die. One of the orcs had a whip that moved through the air like a snake. He wrapped up Jones and sent him flying through the window of a nearby house. Broke his back, he’s in a wheelchair now.

  “I kept firing, even though it wasn’t doing any good. I figured their armor was special, but maybe not their eyes. Turns out I was right, but for kind of the wrong reason. The purple and red haze I mentioned earlier? That was an army buff that wore off when they left the zone of mana around the portal. In addition, the mana started seeping out of their bodies, making them less tough the farther they walked.

  “I got a lucky shot in. Hit the right orc’s eye and bounced around his brain. When he died, the other orc flipped out. I still remember the look of his face when he turned to me and roared. So loud I felt his breath from fifteen feet. He had a chipped left tusk and a scar above his right eye.

  “I kept firing, but I only hit his helmet. I backed up and tripped on something. It’s the only thing that saved me. The guy had an enormous scimitar and he slashed down at me. I avoided most of the strike, only lost my right leg.

  “The orc didn’t like that, and tried to kill me again. That’s when the Bradley IFV said hello. Hit him in the chest and sprayed his guts across the street. I almost didn't notice. My leg was gone and blood was spurting out of the stump. Every heartbeat felt like it was my last. I was so sure I was dead. A medic ran back just in time to put a tourniquet on my leg. If it wasn’t for the Bradley and the medic, I would have been marching in heaven with them. I was lucky.

  “You probably know how the rest of it went. Close to the portal they were basically invincible. As they entered the mana dead zone that is Earth, they were vulnerable to our weapons. Since our rifles are longer range than their magic, they couldn’t break the cordon we set up. The stalemate was just long enough for the eggheads to start translating the language. Honestly, we were lucky. The army invading from our portal didn’t have Diamond Golems or Battle Wasps. We could have ended up like China.”

  They both shivered as they thought about the fate of China. So many died in that attack, even more when their government dropped the nuke.

  “Thanks for telling me, man. I know that’s gotta be tough reliving it,” Bumblebee said in the silence.

  Luke stood back up, “Yeah, I don’t like talking about it, but I figured you earned yourself some answers. You are a good fighter, glad to have you by my side. My mana’s almost full, let’s get going.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Bumblebee hopped up and they headed west, towards town. They needed to head south to check on the slimes, but sticking to the flat paths would allow Luke to keep up with Bumblebee. Without his digitigrade legs extended, Luke didn’t have a chance of keeping up with the young fighter.

  They quickly made it to the estate village. Luke stopped in to check on Jinx, but she was sleeping in the naga’s burrow. Her heated bed was heaven for the bionic cat. They headed back out after a short conversation with Kruro. She mentioned he should keep an eye out for monsters with strong exoskeletons. They were running out of the chitin needed to build power suits.

  As they headed south, Luke considered visiting the spider den again. It was an easy source of organic armor. He decided against it though. Both the crab and the spiders hadn’t been able to stand up to his magic swords at all. He wanted something tougher to build his mech army.

  Halfway between the city and the portal, Bumblebee slowed to a stop.

  He said, “This general area is slime territory. Close to the road on both sides are the red slimes, further west is purple slime territory, further east is yellow slime.”

  “I wish we had the manpower to split up, but no use complaining. Let’s start on the west side and make our way east,” Luke said and shrunk down to his normal sized robotic legs. “By the way, will the slimes attack us if they see us?”

  “Absolutely they will. They’ll suck the mana dust right out of your runes. Duck and dive, duck and dive. We gotta get them to attack us in the first place, cus we can’t count them otherwise. They are pretty good at hiding. It’s the only way they stay alive, really. They are pretty pathetic monsters.”

  They headed into the underbrush. Luke noticed that Bumblebee was better at quietly walking through the forest even when he didn’t use his Evade skill. He just had better skill gained from years of practice. It was slightly disappointing to Luke because he had high dexterity and his Machine Bond, but some things weren’t going to come easy to him no matter how high his level rose.

  As a consequence of his lacking woodcraft, Luke was usually the one to get ambushed. The first time was only a few hundred feet from the path when he walked under a redwood branch. At first Luke ignored the movement out of the corner of his eyes, the damn trees were always moving.

  But then his vision cut out and a line of red goo started to try and seep in through his visor slit. Luke yelled and started flailing around.

  Bumblebee laughed his ass off in between shouts of “Don’t kill it, don’t kill it.”

  The red slime was weirdly sticky, except when he had it in his hands, then it slipped through like water. Luke was able to get the slime off his helmet and onto the forest floor after the fourth try. Once it was finally on the ground, he hightailed it out of there. Thankfully the slime was slower than their walking speed so he didn’t have to go far.

  He checked his helmet, but it hadn’t managed to slip in and remove the runes inside. The next few attacks were basically a repeat of the first.

  “I am legit starting to wonder if you forgot you are supposed to jump out of the way.”

  Luke gave him the finger.

  Bumblebee laughed and said, “Look, keep an eye on the tree branches you are about to walk under, the slime’s mana is slightly brighter than than normal and it will tense up just before it jumps down. Or up, but I’ll keep an eye out on the ground for you.”

  Luke got a bit better after that, avoiding half of the next attacks. They spent the next three hours combing the forest and counting slimes of different colors. They killed a few predators along the way, a Mist Fox, a pair of Displacer Bears, and a Fungus Rabbit.

  He didn’t add any cores to his storage though, Bumblebee insisted they leave the cores for the slimes so they could bud into more slimes.

  As they walked, Luke made sure to keep on top of his mana. Whenever it was full, he practiced Repair Craft. Hours passed without damage, but it was still an easy way to clean his power armor of dust and mud. His efforts were rewarded after several hours.

  The level up put a smile on his face and also meant that he could use the first half of Repair Craft up to 2 1/2 hours before the second half. As soon as mana was full again, he cast the upgraded version. When his mana pool filled up again, he wouldn’t have to spend it again right away.

  When they finished their survey, they were on the southeastern edge of the lord’s peninsula. Bumblebee suggested they head a bit farther south to meet up with the road heading to the other estates so they could run back faster.

  “I can already tell you the Hive Wolves aren't eating the slimes. There are more of the little buggers than last time, I’m sure of it,” Bumblebee said.

  “Seems like the hive is hiding. Still weird calling wolves a hive.”

  “It’s cus the more of them there are, the stronger their hive mind gets. Nothing to do with bees.”

  “Yeah, I remember, just weird. Do we even need to worry about them since they are hiding?”

  “Hiding is bad. It means they are smart. We don’t want to ignore them and let them get smarter, trust me,” Bumblebee said in a voice far more serious than normal.

  The road appeared in front of them and they stepped onto it together.

  Luke said, “Do you have a history with hive wolves? Cus it seems like...” He trailed off because of the strange sight on the road.

  There had been an attack. Baskets and bodies were strewn about. A fifteen foot tall humanoid was standing in the middle of the road. It was naked and hideous with pebbly skin. It had the body of a dwarf in its right hand and was slowly bringing it up to its mouth.

  “Oh shit. It’s a troll,” Bumblebee whispered.

  It was more than a hundred feet away, but as soon as he said that, the troll jerked its head up. It dropped the body and started running towards them.

  Bumblebee swore and fumbled with the swords on his back. He dropped two of them as the litany of swears continued.

  Luke drew his trusty acid sword and held it at the ready. The troll was pounding down the dirt path directly at them. Luke noticed it didn’t have eyes, or a nose. Just a bumpy fleshy face and a too wide mouth. It didn’t even have teeth, just protrusions around its jaws.

  With an expression of disgust, Luke decided to attack from a distance. He pushed mana into the sword and swiped it forward. A wide arc of acid droplets flew out in front of him. He had timed it just right and the majority of the acid droplets hit the troll in the chest.

  Everywhere the acid hit puffed with green smoke. Small spots of skin turned black and sloughed off. The troll didn’t even slow down. Luke had just enough time to be surprised before it barreled into him.