The soldiers stood guard under a light drizzle, barely breathing as they surveyed the surroundings. They had taken cover behind metal plates, their rifles aimed at the vast, muddy plain. The dark grey tones of the earth swallowed everything; despite the sun hanging in the sky, the environment was plunged into a darkness reminiscent of night.
The massive armored soldiers were not merely repairing the broken parts; they were reinforcing them with metal stripped from each other's armor. Bringing down even one of these walking metal fortresses, nearly three meters tall, was a feat of destruction in itself.
But that was exactly the purpose of the second strike of the war: To topple those fortresses. To eliminate the soldiers, who thought they were alert, before their barrels could even sense the danger... and to ensure not a single scratch touched the godforsaken cargo.
Lightning struck. It had been raining for a while, but the sky had been silent until now. By reflex, the soldiers turned their scopes and barrels toward the direction of the lightning. Another flash… but this time, they noticed something wrong with the bolt.
This light wasn't descending from the sky to the ground; it was erupting from the dark grey, cursed earth toward the heavens. The armed soldier, who could be considered their commander, raised his hand and pointed sharply. The danger was coming from there.
While his hand was still pointing at the rocks above, the lightning seemed to vanish the distance in an instant, appearing right beside him. When his eyes adjusted to the new image, he realized what stood before him. A cybernetic…
His body was overflowing with energy, and electrical sparks jumping from his skin were catching raindrops mid-air. Those bolts that had just torn through the earth were not the work of the sky, but of this being.
And whatever speed he possessed… a heartbeat ago he was far away, and now he was right in front of the commander.
The commander vomited the blood gushing up from his throat into his visor. The view was instantly covered in crimson. There was a massive hole in his stomach, opened by a fist; metal and flesh were fused together. He couldn't stay on his feet for another second and collapsed to the ground in a pool of blood.
"He's here! Among us!" screamed one of the soldiers. "Aim!" "Take him down!"
As bullets fired in succession filled the air like rain, Azrak moved almost faster than the bullets themselves. The bullets, the sparks flying from the armored soldiers' machine guns, the saliva sticking to the visors… all of it consisted of individual, slowed-down images for him.
He kicked one soldier aside; the armored body buried itself in the mud kilometers away. As another tried to aim his weapon, Azrak bent the barrel with his hand and landed a punch on the soldier's face. The visor shattered; the face collapsed within the metal.
But Azrak knew. This speed could not last forever. With every move, his body grew a bit heavier; the world was slowly returning to its original speed.
He leaped onto an armored soldier and shoved his arm through the visor. He grabbed the man inside the armor and threw him meters away. But now, the bullets were not as clear as before. The moments when he walked alongside them were over. Now, he had to dodge them.
He lunged to the left. Bullets tore the earth behind him. He grabbed a barrel nearby and hurled it at the soldiers. A small explosion… screams… a few wounded. Not enough.
Almost the entire platoon was still standing. They were all waiting for Azrak to make a single mistake. The bullets were much faster now.
Azrak delivered a sharp kick to the leg of an armored soldier. The knee portion of the armor shattered. He struck two more punches to the chest of the falling body; the man inside was crushed amidst the collapsing metal.
"I'm doing well," he thought. "Just… I need to push a little harder."
But the truth was evident. He couldn't win this war like this. The mechanical shells of these armored soldiers were incredibly durable. Perhaps they shattered while he was in super-speed, but the moment that speed ended, Azrak would be nothing more than a vulnerable, breakable cybernetic.
Therefore, he headed for the ammunition. He grabbed the weapons.
Now, even the bullets he fired were only as fast as he was. He had to wait for them to reach their target. As adrenaline disrupted the electrical balance of his cybernetic heart, he lost another fragment of his speed.
Bullets hit several soldiers simultaneously. But he couldn't dodge the ones coming toward him. Rounds lodged into various points of his body; deep dents opened in his metal frame. A soldier's corpse lay beneath his feet. Azrak clenched his fist and straightened up.
If he wanted to win this war, he had to appear invincible to the humans before him. This was the first rule of fighting humans.
But invincibility… that was not quite possible.
One of the armored soldiers stepped forward. He raised the rocket on his shoulder and fired without hesitation. Azrak dodged the missile at the last second; as the explosion bloomed into a black flower of fire behind him, he was already about to pounce on another soldier.
At that exact moment, the soldier blew himself up. Azrak hadn't expected this.
The pressure of the blast threw him backward. To avoid crashing on his back, he leaned on his arm and flipped in the air; the moment his feet touched the mud, bullets were already swarming him. He ran.
He lunged toward a soldier. As he swung his fist, he noticed that the metal plating on his arm had been torn off by the blast's effect. But it was too late. The punch sank into the soldier's stomach; the armored body was thrown meters away.
At that moment, another armored soldier closed in on Azrak. And delivered a powerful kick.
A hunter… Azrak was a hunter.
He usually tracked prey. He wandered the Terra planets, searching for space ruins. All the cybernetic enhancements in his body were meant to allow him to escape when he got into trouble. Incredible speed, advanced vision, and most importantly; that alien technology eye that allowed him to read the inside of robotic mechanisms…
But when fighting humans… especially when the enemies outnumbered him… Azrak was turning into just a useless piece of metal.
For a hunter, the war only began when the prey was noticed. And that war was always a one-on-one confrontation where Azrak made the first move. He was in control. Now, there was no control.
The advantage of the initiative would never belong to Azrak. He was in the middle of a chaotic war where everyone attacked at once, and no one waited their turn.
That was why he hadn't noticed that kick. The kick was so powerful that Azrak was thrown back meters. What stopped him were the sharp metal spikes at the edge of the metal barricades the soldiers had set up by hand.
Azrak was impaled on those metal spikes. As metal rods emerged from a spot on his shoulder, his leg, and his stomach, one of his sensory modules must have been damaged, for he began to feel pain in a way he hadn't felt for a long time.
Yes… Pain… This thing that allowed the humans before him to fight without any algorithm, the thing that kept them alive, was the fear they felt toward pain. Azrak was giving these people nothing but fear as the source of pain. That was why they were resisting him with all their might.
As his pain receptors kicked in, Azrak noticed his head beginning to spin. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't lose a fight this way. He would immediately pull his body out of that metal piece and continue fighting.
But the pain receptors… the moment they were damaged, he ceased to be a cybernetic and turned into a helpless human. His head began to spin. His body started to panic against the pain, and worst of all, he began to feel fear because of the pain.
As he slowly pulled himself off the metal rods, one of the armed soldiers came and fired his weapon. A net erupted from the gun, expanding and sticking to Azrak's body, entangling him like a mosquito caught in a spider's web. As successive electric shocks were delivered to his body, Azrak realized at that moment that this net stuck to him was a circuit diverter.
In short, while that damn net was on him, his cybernetic strength would not be with him. In short, what awaited Azrak was suffering in a body devoid of strength.