Once they arrived at the base, Lanmar spotted the blue cattle that Elena kept ntioning many tis. "Dammit! You even ended up with a big herd of the Terakos!"
"The Tera what?!!" Elena cleared her throat, "Listen, we call these the blue cattle!"
"..."
Lanmar didn’t know how to respond to her weird naming, but the next minute, he was destined to receive another surprise, way longer this ti.
His earlier curiosity was instantly satisfied—and replaced by a cold, hollow dread—by the sight of the thousands upon thousands of shimring, bright pieces of chanical debris scattered like a silver sea on the other bank of the river.
"Damn! How many of those did you kill?!"
Lanmar’s voice cracked as he stared across the river. The sheer volu of broken machine parts covering the landscape on the other bank was staggering. Twisted limbs, shattered alloys, and cracked white plating lay in heaps, forming a tallic graveyard that stretched for hundreds of ters.
Seeing this, it wasn’t just Lanmar who felt a chill; the other ten Bulltors realised a singular, terrifying fact: their own defeat hadn’t been a fluke of negligence or underestimation. These humans were fundantally different from the stories told about the fallen race.
Just from their distance, they could easily tell this battle wasn’t by any ans close to theirs against these humans. The debris scale spoke of a brutal fight against thousands of the machines.
"There are still close to eight hours until night falls," Luke said, his voice thick with excitent. They had just crossed the underwater stone bridge, the river water lapping at their boots.
"We can salvage everything we need before the darkness cos! If each of these things has even a fraction of what Lanmar’s group had, we’ll be well ard and prepared for anything!"
John’s friends already grasped his aning earlier. The mont he asked about the machines, they thought of the thousands thrown to rust on the other bank of the river.
Just imagining such a crazy harvest lying in silence next to them all this ti without knowing it made all feel a bitter taste of regret down their throats. Yet all this changed the mont they crossed the river, replaced by endless excitent for the loot waiting there.
"First," Elena said, turning toward the group’s expert, "John, how do we even know what the storage device looks like for a machine? They don’t exactly wear bracelets or necklaces."
John scanned the wreckage, his brow furrowed. He had no clue. He turned to Lanmar, but the giant simply shook his head, his face a mask of weary confusion.
"No one, and I an literally no one I know, has ever managed to open a storage device of a deceased race mber ever before since the trials started," Lanmar admitted.
"The Source Code World locks them tight by blood. So dying ans losing access to these riches forever. Don’t expect to know how the machines stored their items. Plus, I’ve never fought these machines before."
"At least you heard stories about people from your world fighting against them, right?" Ricky pressed, refusing to let the giant off the hook. "If they’re the fifth rank, there must be lots of data on how they store their logistics!"
Yet, sothing in Lanmar’s earlier phrasing caught John’s attention. "Wait a minute," John said, stepping over a crushed D-1000 unit. "You said you never fought against them?"
Lanmar nodded firmly. "I told you already, this pocket trial has only four races—Bulltors, Drogers, the chanical Hivemind of Beasts and Insects, and Humans. These machines you killed... They aren’t part of the official roster for this designated trial. They shouldn’t be here."
The five friends exchanged silent gazes filled with a thousand questions. If the machines weren’t part of the trial, why were they here in such overwhelming numbers? John motioned for Ricky, Luke, and Elena to keep pressing Lanmar, trying to squeeze out any theory that would explain the machines’ unauthorised presence.
"Let’s search the wreckage," John said to Cissel. The two of them began to pick through the sea of tallic debris.
John tried touching every piece he found—limbs, heads, torsos—waiting for a system notification, but he got nothing. He thought perhaps the storage devices were hidden deeply in specific body parts. He even dragged a relatively intact D-1000 body out of a pile and conducted a thorough inspection, but his hands t only cold, unresponsive steel.
"I’ll see if I can find a unit with a broken chest piece," Cissel suggested, clearly disappointed by the lack of any effect from John’s magical touches. She began to explore the wider area of the battleground.
The most fortified part of any D-1000 was the chest area, housing the core energy cell. The plating there was thick, layered with composite alloys that were immune to normal weapon attacks. She hoped that by finding a unit where the armour had already been breached, she might see what lay inside.
As they searched, Lanmar’s voice drifted over from where Ricky, Luke, and Elena were interrogating him. "...I told you before, the chanical hivemind of beasts and insects uses a program embedded in their running systems to store things inside! Yet, I don’t know if the machines from your world would do the sa or not..."
That was it. Lanmar’s tired explanation gave John a sudden spark of inspiration, the one he needed the most right now!
John realised he had been looking at the problem from a physical perspective. He had been looking for a box or a bracelet. But these machines ran on digital programs. They didn’t need a physical container if they could store items and objects within their operating systems.
"Let try this," John whispered. He was certain now that these machines didn’t have storage devices attached to their bodies. In the past half hour, he and Cissel had inspected hundreds of pieces, including the most armoured chest plates, and found nothing but wiring and hydraulics.
He realised he didn’t just need a touch; he needed a bloodied touch. He wounded the tip of his finger using the sharp edge of his sword, drawing a fresh bead of blood. He pressed his hand onto the shattered, white-chest plated remains of a D-1000 unit.
The mont the blood made contact with the chest piece, a familiar window flickered into existence.
[Ding! System Handshake Established!]
[Ding! You have successfully synchronised with Storage Program 0784211113!]
[Ding! The Storage Program 0784211113 is protected with mid-grade encryption!]
[Ding! You cannot gain access to its content by simple handshaking!]
"Bingo!" John’s eyes shone with a fierce light.
The word acted like a magnet. His friends stopped what they were doing and rushed over, surrounding him. Even the Bulltors shuffled closer, sensing a shift in the atmosphere. They all knew it—a magic show was about to start.
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