Chapter 42: Silver Grass

  It was a lot easier to break into the Yantra hunting grounds than I'd anticipated. Even expecting as I did that the security measures were primarily intended to keep drones in rather than people out, I was surprised at the utter lack of resistance.

  First, I climbed down one of the rusty metal ladders that jutted out of the side of the block I had eaten my noodles on. Then I turned and walked towards the block that was clearly abandoned. I had half expected a swarm of drones to explode out of the huge building the moment my feet touched the ground near it, but nothing so exciting happened. I needed to walk around the circumference of the one-time vertical community for a little while to find an entrance. When I did it, it turned out to be a cement ramp that led beneath the block and into a [Parking Garage]. My understanding of the area was that it would have acted sort of like a set of stables for the residents of the block, only without food, water, and other amenities for animals. Instead, it just had designated places where one could leave their vehicles, big or small, and reasonably expect them to remain unmolested by thieves and the like.

  Judging from what I could see down the ramp I was headed toward, it now acted as nothing more than a dank and nearly lightless expanse.

  "Hey," Called a male voice from atop the nearest street-level barricade. "Do you have clan permission to be in there?" Turning to face the source of the questioning voice, I found myself shielding my eyes from a large and highly powerful [Search Light].

  "Yeah," I called back.

  "Alright, well, happy hunting and good luck," the voice behind the light replied, and the beam of luminescence was turned elsewhere. That was the entirety of the challenge, and I trotted down the ramp into the waiting darkness with a small smile on my face.

  'They say all warfare is deception.' I thought to myself. 'If that's true, this was the easiest battle anyone has ever fought.'

  It was certainly an easier battle than the one that broke out not long after I reached the bottom of that ramp. The parking garage was mostly obscured by darkness, with only the light that pooled at the base of the ramp and a trio of flickering ceiling lanterns scattered about to see by.

  They weren't bright enough to see by but a series of gem sized purple lights ignited into being all throughout the dark garage, and they were accompanied by a low rumbling in all directions that I recognized as being from a vehicle engine, and the clicking of claws on cement Pushing forwards I was soon being circled by the shadowy figures of three or four quadripedal drones whose spines glowed with those little purple gems. They seemed to think that they had me trapped like a wolf pack or a swarm of sharks swimming around some wounded sea beast.

  I caught enough glimpse of one of the drone's mechanical bodies that my HUD was able to tell me enough of what I was dealing with that I knew for certain that I was the wolf pack, or the shark swarm, not they

  [Over-Surge Purple: Scout Drone]

  [Level 5]

  The scavenger drones made by that populated the green Over-Surge hunting ground had been almost exclusively level three; the combat drones spawned by the calamity dragon had mostly been level four. Even if all four of the scout drones currently trying to trap me were level five, I was confident they wouldn't be anywhere near strong enough to overwhelm me with such few numbers, not when I had already dealt with more than a dozen combat drones at once.

  Normally, when surrounded like this, the appropriate move is to try to break out by identifying the weakest point in the encirclement and hitting it hard and fast. Instead, I decided to treat these machines as the training exercise I considered them to be when in such small numbers. Perhaps I was being arrogant, as I was unfamiliar with this type of Over-Surge drone, but I've fought plenty of beats in my time. These drones that padded about at the edge of my vision were shaped like wolves or big cats, and I was confident they would fight like them also.

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  The mechanical beasts were faster than I had anticipated, and in possession of a far greater ability to accelerate than I would have thought. Fortunately, it didn't matter as they were shockingly easy to predict. Before each of the scout drones launched themselves at me, they would release a mechanical whirring sound that started as a deep sound and quickly crescendoed into a high-pitched screech just as the drone began to move.

  To their credit, the pack of drones would attack with multiple of them at once. Usually, in a pair with one pouncing high and the other lunging low as their clawed metal feet light up with that same purple energy. If they hadn't made their high-pitched engine noise before each attack, they would have honestly been dangerous; with it, my little training escapade was rather enjoyable. I flowed around the scout drones catching glimpses of their triangular almost sharklike heads. They did a good job keeping me encircled, but it didn't matter; each of their cunning little attacks was simplicity itself to avoid, and I continued to get more and more elaborate with my dodges until, after about twenty minutes, I got bored and started fighting back properly.

  Three minutes after that, I had almost reached level two and was making my way up a cement staircase that tightly wound around itself as it took me up into unknown hunting grounds. My hands and arms were now covered in cuts and burns from having beaten four machine beasts to death with them. It wasn't an experience I was looking forward to repeating, though, should I be attacked again, it wouldn't cause me to hesitate.

  I was happy to see that the further up the tight cement stairs I climbed, the more light returned as the walls fell into greater disrepair, and it could leak in from the outside. I was nine floors up in the seventy-floor block when I began to hear it. The pounding of hooves that I had, on occasion, been hearing.

  "You hear that, the hooves?" I asked Diaochan, who took a moment to reply inside my head.

  "There is no such noise being detected by your ears, but yes, I can hear it."

  That was about as strong an endorsement as I could reasonably expect, if I was going mad, Diaochan was losing her mind along with me. So I followed the sound of thundering hooves out from the stairwell onto one of the block hallways. The blocks, as I have said, were more like vertical towns than apartment buildings, so understand when I say hallway, I am referring to a corridor large enough for two cars to pass side by side.

  It was bizarre, but much as Diaochan had suggested, the sound of running hooves was growing stronger, but didn't actually interfere with my hearing. I was even able to pick up the sound of scout drone claws clicking along ahead of me before the mechanical beasts noticed me. Forewarned, I had forced my way into what I'd thought would be an apartment, but ended up being some sort of store for wheels, that had long been abandoned and kind of stank with a chemical smell I didn't recognize.

  Of course, I could have defeated the scout drones, but I wasn't interested in slicing myself up further fighting battles I didn't need to. Yes, I wanted to finish filling my soul gauge, which was now at 471 out of 500 after the drones I had defeated downstairs. However, I could wait just a little longer if it meant avoiding pointless injury.

  Besides, once I was secure, I had a plan to get my spear back, along with some supplies, but once I had those things, I would be precisely where I wanted to be, and in the perfect position to catch up to my daughter's level. Even just thinking those words frustrated me. I am Lu Bu; I should always be more powerful than my own daughter.

  Once the sound of clicking claws had passed far enough away, I crept out of the store with its walls covered in degraded old wheels and back onto the internal street. The entire time, the sound of running hooves had never left my ears, and I followed it past numerous abandoned stores and shattered bikes that clogged up the hallway.

  Unlike the overgrown machine forest that made up the green hunting ground in the Irons territory, there were no trees or vines made of metal here, but the deeper into the block I went, the more I began to notice silver grass covering the dull cement floors more and more thickly. It had the same consistency to walk on as real grass, but was obviously metallic to the point that it even resisted being torn in between my fingers.

  By the time the sound of hooves was almost deafening, I found myself in a section of hallway that bent into a circle and featured a warehouse-style store that stood virtually alone. Where the machine grass had been patches before, it now covered the entire ground like I was on a silver version of my home steppes in miniature.

  [Vaestro's Restorations] was the name that was displayed on my HUD, and I wondered what exactly it was that was restored here.

  Bro is missing his spear pretty bad

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