The smell of scorched chicory and high-grade diesel cut through the stink of rotting flesh.
Sixty feet out from the slumbering cyber-troll, crouched behind an overturned slag-hauler, a skinny man in a grease-stained apron frantically pumped a brass lever. Steam whistled through a cracked copper pipe, threatening to draw the brute’s one glowing eye.
Tibor’s car battery buzzed softly. Dovjen touched the skeleton’s rusted collarbone, signaling him to halt, then approached the wreck with quiet, deliberate strides.
"The pressure valve is blown," Dovjen said, voice calm, low as a grease-pit whisper. "If that gasket gives out, the whistle will hit ninety decibels. It'll wake the beast."
The man jumped, letting a bent monkey wrench clatter into the dust. He looked up, terrified, dark rings bruising the pale skin under his eyes. His apron bore an embroidered name tag: *Bato - Shift Lead*.
"Don't sneak up on people!" Bato hissed, clutching a cracked portafilter to his chest like a holy relic. "Who even are you? And why do you have a walking medical-school display wired to an alternator?"
"This is Tibor," Dovjen said evenly. "I'm Dovjen. I fix things. Move aside."
Without waiting, Dovjen squatted beside the jury-rigged contraption. It was an Italian two-group espresso machine fused onto the exhaust manifold of an infantry drone battery. Dovjen reached into his coat, pulled a snippet of insulated copper wiring, and wrapped the blown gasket, fusing it with a pulse of necrotic spark from his fingertips. The brass stopped vibrating. The steam died into a gentle, aromatic hiss.
Bato stared. His chin trembled. "You... you fixed the bypass. I’ve been trying to balance the extraction pressure for three days. The milk won't foam right with pure vapor, but now—"
"Hey! Dirt-scrapers!"
A voice boomed from the iron gantries welded to the dreadnought rib overhead. Two men in polished composite chest plates leaned over the railing, long-barrel mag-rifles slung across their arms. The speaker, a man with a scarred jaw and the golden insignia of the Rust-Hammer Syndicate pinned to his collar, spit a glob of synthetic tobacco over the edge. It landed inches from Tibor's skeletal foot.
"Gate's closed to unverified vagrants," the guard sneered. "Especially clowns pushing scrap-heaps and baristas crying over spoiled powdered milk."
Bato scrambled up, bowing repeatedly. "Officer Janos! Sir! I brought three ounces of pre-fall Arabica beans. I just need entry into the outer ring—"
"Shove your beans up your exhaust port, froth-boy," Janos laughed, elbowing the sniper next to him. "Bastion Veszagrad isn't an orphanage. You want in? Pay the five-hundred Aegis credit toll. Each. Or you can walk up and knock on Grendel’s forehead over there. Maybe the troll will chew on your pathetic pile of dry bones first and give you time to run."
Janos’s partner chuckled, aiming his laser sight directly at Tibor’s skull. A red dot danced across the bare bone.
Dovjen’s hand went still. The chill in his chest—the quiet, dark furnace granted by his newly awakened class—sank several degrees colder. He didn't mind insults tossed at himself. But Tibor had protected him from the alpha hound. Tibor was family. And Bato, trembling as he clutched his machine, smelled like roasted coffee beans and quiet mornings before the sky fell.
Dovjen turned away from the gantry. He looked at the snoring mountain of rusted armor and scarred hide blocking the gate.
[ TARGET IDENTIFIED: AUGMENTED SLAG-TROLL 'GRENDEL' (LEVEL 18 - ELITE TERROR) ]
[ NOTICE: INTIMIDATION IMMUNITY ACTIVE. HOSTILE OVERRIDE PREPARED. ]
"Dovjen?" Bato stammered, grabbing Dovjen's greasy canvas sleeve. "What are you doing? Don't go near it. Those Rust-Hammer jerks feed stragglers to it when the gates get crowded. It tears armored trucks in half!"
"He's blocking our front door," Dovjen said softly.
"Our door?!"
Dovjen stepped into the clearing. His boots crunched against charred dirt. Tibor followed, battery cables swinging, rusted machete raised at a crisp forty-five-degree angle.
Up on the gantry, the guards howled with laughter.
"Look at this idiot!" Janos shouted. "Suicide by troll! Ten credits says he doesn't survive the backhand!"
The cyclopean eye of the Augmented Troll snapped open. The furnace behind its vitreous lens flared blinding crimson. With an earth-shaking groan of tortured hydraulics, the six-meter behemoth pushed itself upright. Thick, tar-like drool dripped from iron tusks bolted into its lower jaw. Its drill-arm spun up with a deafening, shrieking whine, churning the air with dust.
It roared, a concussive shockwave of sound and diesel fumes that shook the steel ribs of the Dreadnought overhead.
Bato threw himself flat on his stomach, hands over his ears, whimpering into the gravel.
Dovjen did not blink.
He raised his right hand, fingers splaying outward. Black, oily static bled from his cuticles, crackling with necrotic data-streams.
[ SKILL TRIGGER: RUST BLIGHT - TOTAL HARNESS COLLAPSE ]
[ TARGET: AUGMENTED SLAG-TROLL ]
A microscopic beam of violet corruption leaped from Dovjen's palm, striking the central power-core welded to the troll's chest. For a second, nothing happened.
Then, the glow inside the beast's chest flickered green.
The roar died in the creature's throat. Rust spread along its steel plating like aggressive mold, blooming into flakes of crimson powder in milliseconds. The hydraulic lines hissed, curdled, and burst in showers of black sludge. The flesh beneath turned grey, then black, rotting away from the titanium armature inside.
The colossal drill arm seized. With a dull, wet crack, the creature's legs dissolved beneath it, buckling under hundreds of tons of scrap and meat.
It hit the dirt with a thud that rattled the perimeter scaffold.
Silence fell over the gate.
On the wall, Janos stood frozen, his cigarette tumbling from slack lips.
"Now," Dovjen murmured, his voice cutting through the thick dust. "Rise."
[ INITIATING RE-ANIMATION: HYBRID CORPOSE-MECH ]
[ BLUEPRINT APPLIED: SUB-ROUTINE 'COMPANION V1.2' ]
[ TARGET REFORGED. ]
The corpse did not rise with a terrifying roar. Instead, the skeletal frame, now reinforced with sleek black slag-iron, pushed itself up on all fours. Its drill arm was gone, replaced by a smoothed, rounded bumper. From its rear chassis, a thick cable of hydraulic braided wire whipped back and forth with frantic, joyous rhythm.
*Thump. Thump. Thump.*
The dreadnought-troll rested its plate-armored snout directly across Dovjen’s boots. It let out an engine-purr so deep it vibrated Dovjen's teeth. Two green camera-eyes blinked up at him with utter adoration.
"Good boy," Dovjen said, patting the cold iron of its brow. "Your name is Fluffy."
Bato slowly lifted his chin from the dirt, pupils pinpricked. "Fluffy?" he choked out.
Dovjen looked up at the perimeter platform. Janos and his partner scrambled backward on hands and knees, rifles abandoned, skin drained pasty pale.
"You," Dovjen called up, his voice mild, almost conversational.
Janos froze against the wall, clutching the rail. "P-please—"
"Apologize to Tibor," Dovjen said. "And apologize to Bato for threatening to ruin his beans."
"I'm sorry!" Janos shrieked down, voice cracking like dry wood. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Lord Necromancer, we didn't know! Gate clearance granted! Alpha-tier access! Take whatever you want!"
Dovjen nodded once, satisfied. He reached out and offered a hand to Bato, hauling the trembling barista to his feet with surprising strength.
"Can your machine make a flat white?" Dovjen asked.
"I... I can make anything," Bato squeaked, staring at the lumbering brute happily chewing on a piece of scrap rebar like a dog biscuit. "Anything you want, forever."
"Good. I like mornings to be orderly."
Before they could take a step toward the yawning blast doors of Bastion Veszagrad, the sky shattered.
A piercing, digital siren ripped through the clouds. The grey horizon twisted, turning a toxic, neon crimson as the atmosphere tore open in geometric fractals. Letters miles high burned across the vault of heaven, dripping red runic light:
[ CRUCIBLE AEGIS: CRITICAL PROTOCOL FAILURE ]
[ ANOMALOUS COMBAT PERFORMANCE DETECTED IN SECTOR 4 ]
[ SURVIVAL QUOTA RECALIBRATION REQUIRED ]
[ TUTORIAL BREACH IN PROGRESS. CULL-MASTER MARGIT DEPLOYED. ]