"Premature termination is illegal activity. Return to battle," he said, tapping the goblin's charred head on the temple. A magical circle glimmered in the air, and then he threw the goblin forward. Even though the goblin was dead, brains cooked to a crisp, the corpse still stood up.

You have unlocked the Corruptor job.

You have learned the Abhorrent Weapons skill.

The goblin didn't need a brain. It just had to move forward and kill. That is what Somnus did to the goblin just before throwing him back into the battle. He restored the electrical pathways and added a loop to act as the autonomous central nervous system—to keep the goblin's heart beating.

The goblin lumbered ahead, like something that didn't even possess reason or a capacity to actually make a decision. A failed experiment. Eventually, the goblin got stuck in a corner, and didn't know how to navigate away from it.

To call the battlefield a big room was not untrue. However, it was divided by walls that went around the central chokepoint. Somnus could not see much of the battlefield, but for some reason, he had a total understanding of it. It was as if he could see memories of those who fought in the battle; still images burned into the eyes of the goblins and the orcs. When these images merged, they became knowledge.

In the central chokepoint, the two frontlines stood off, neither advancing nor retreating, as the mages in the back cycled through attacking and defensive spells. The adventurers were organized, and their mages dominated the magical battlefield. However, the monsters had better skirmishers, constantly pressuring the adventurers through the side pa.s.sages and threatening to strike the back lines.

Somnus a.s.sumed that this ability came from being the Guild leader, or his Ruler job. When he thought about the complexity of the battle, and the lack of information each separated group had, Somnus was surprised to see that the two sides held each other off for so long. The Division leaders of both the adventurers and the monsters must have been quite talented to pull that off.

Somnus decided to see what the enemy was capable of first-hand. Besides, he also had another objective. Surely, adventurers would send a Loremaster with their group, in case they find any strange treasures.

Somnus went through the side corridors, from where the fireball came that struck down the goblin. The fireball seemed to have been enhanced in such a way that it would seek targets and avoid obstacles. It was a clever trick that gave Somnus ideas for weapons.

As he continued onwards, he was walking over the bodies of dead goblins and orcs, most of them torn apart and missing limbs. However, one of the humans seemed to have been mostly intact—only her heart was destroyed.

Humans didn't need hearts.

Somnus pressed his finger against the human's sternum and began constructing a magic circle. He didn't want the human to generate mana for the spell from Ether, but rather he wanted to use its own lifeforce. Magitech was, in a way, creating life itself; it had the ability to turn dead objects into something that generates mana, which only living things could do. In truth, Somnus did not know what force he manipulated to allow an object to generate mana, but he called it "lifeforce". Which was strange, considering that he only worked with actual objects which didn't really have a "lifeforce". Somnus defined "lifeforce" as the "will to live".

From what Somnus heard of the Magitech Engineers the civilized races possessed, they created reactors for spells and magic items, or very large and powerful arrays. They also created mana storage containers, like capacitors. But most of them didn't create True Reactors, they still relied on Ether to generate mana.

However, Somnus understood what mana was on a fundamental level, and could thus easily harness it. Mana was, in the most basic terms, life itself. It was the result of Change and Transformation, Progress and Stagnation. Even simple rocks, through the aeons, change and transform; they become bigger rocks, crushed deep within the earth, and then they melt and become something else. Even rocks had this thing called "life", in that sense of the word. Perhaps calling it "life" was a stretch, but to Somnus's machine mind, he didn't see much of a difference between something that lives a century and another thing that lives for millions of years.

Your Abhorrent Weapon skill has improved.

Somnus raised an eyebrow. His skill improving must mean he did something right. He watched the human corpse with antic.i.p.ation.

Time pa.s.sed, but the corpse didn't even so much as twitch.

With [Mana Sight], Somnus could see that his spell worked. The corpse was indeed generating a large amount of mana—more than a living, breathing human could—but that appeared to be all that it was doing.

Perhaps Mana wasn't "Life" itself. Even though the corpse had plenty of "life", it was still as dead as it was before. Something was missing; the actual "will" itself. Was it the soul? Was there such a thing as a soul? Somnus did not believe in such things. Was it the consciousness?

As Somnus thought about the reason for the failure of his experiment, the goblin that Somnus "revived" showed up. Apparently, it managed to navigate itself out of the corner. Perhaps it was learning?

Unerringly, the goblin headed towards the corpse Somnus was standing over and it shambled forwards.

Somnus watched it with curiosity.

After a dozen seconds, the goblin crossed the final five meters, and dropped to its knees over the corpse of the human female. It reached into the wound that destroyed the human's heart and pulled out the remains of the damage organ. Somnus could see the magical formation he just cast on the heart, but he wondered if the goblin could see it too, or if it just liked hearts.

The goblin devoured the heart, its jaw chomping slowly, lazily and clumsily. Several times, Somnus watched it bite its own tongue while the flesh it wanted to eat kept slipping out of its mouth. It was quite a grizzly scene to watch, but Somnus had seen much worse in his life as a machine.

Somnus thought it was a shame about his experiment being devoured by a braindead—literally—goblin, but having the results of his research destroyed was not a bad thing either. After all, he didn't want the enemy to know what he was capable of. A True Reactor on a human's heart? The Empire would most likely search every corner of this dungeon to find what created it.

Somnus patted the goblin on the head. It was not a sign of affection. It was merely a reward for a subordinate who, even in death, was still being useful to Somnus.

As Somnus was departing the scene, his [Mana Sight] and [Flow Sense] picked up an anomaly. There was a large mana source right behind him now, and more mana was flowing in that direction.

Somnus stopped for a moment to look back to the goblin. He didn't have high expectations and therefore he was not disappointed. The goblin just knelt over the corpse of the human, motionless.

Somnus wondered if the goblin a.s.similated the [Reactor] formation on the human's heart. Dead things were still dead things, though.

Somnus continued onwards, towards the enemy battle lines.

He pa.s.sed more corpses on the way, but he did not stop to bother with them. He reasoned that if dead things cannot be made alive because they are missing… life… then he had to experiment on something already living.

Unfortunately, the path he was taking was devoid of life. All the objects with the proper dimensions and form to perform tasks of a military nature were remains of the deceased. At this point, Somnus thought that as long as it was alive and it had opposable thumbs, it qualified to be his next experiment.

However, such a chance would never come, because as Somnus turned the next corner, he walked straight into open line of sight to the enemy skirmishers, guardians and the mages the guardians were guarding.

One of the mages, a woman with black hair spilling out of her hood began casting a spell at Somnus the moment he appeared in sight.

Somnus recognized the symbols easily. It turned mana into fire and created a ball then launched it.

But the magic circle in the air quickly faded as the woman got a good look at Somnus.

One of the skirmishers tilted his head and asked, "What group are you with? Did you get lost?"

Somnus was as confused as the skirmishers. Why were they not attacking?

Somnus saw a total of twenty people here. Six were in light armor, and Somnus cla.s.sified them as Skirmishers. Four were in heavy armor, the guardians and the rest were all mages of various types it seemed. The mages all wore differently colored robes, and the ones in black robes were constantly casting attack spells and launching them into the corridors. Somnus could not recognize the magic of the white robed mages, but it was the same type as Arcadia's. Finally, the ones in blue robes chanted and also used an unknown form of magic.

"You all right, mate?" another skirmisher asked. "Are you with Jon's Division? How did you get here?"

Somnus blinked. Did they think he was on their side?

A fireball came cras.h.i.+ng through the corridors and exploded against a translucent s.h.i.+eld in front of the guardians on the far left side from where Somnus stood. The flames spilled over like a raging river overflowing the banks and completely swept over Somnus.

You have taken damage. -1348HP

When the flames subsided, they all saw Somnus stand there, seemingly untouched by the flames. There was no damage to his clothes, his hair wasn't singed, yet the flames were powerful enough to kill one of the skirmishers standing close to Somnus.

The corpse that fell next to Somnus was completely charred black.

Somnus sniffed. He turned humans into this form before, on plenty of occasions, but he never actually knew what it smelled like. It was a strange fascination, but one thing Somnus could tick off the list of things he wanted to do if he had a human body.

"Are you… all right? How are you alive? Healers!" one of the guardians called out.

One of the white robed mages looked at Somnus and began casting a spell.

Somnus thought he was in threat and he was about to attack when he heard the mage call out: "Divine Light!" That was the same spell Arcadia used to heal.

You have been healed. +301HP

Did they really think that Somnus was on their side? That would make this murder quite awkward.

Before Somnus came to this world, he was a ruthless, sentient machine. During those times, AI sentience had been the topic of much discussion. Some of the Autonomous Machine a.r.s.enals copied human behavior, others went completely insane or tried to mimic ent.i.ties from literature humanity created. If Somnus had developed anything resembling that which humanity possessed, it would be honor. Not honor towards humans—one doesn't obey honor when exterminating pests—but towards his fellow Autonomous Machine a.r.s.enals, which he had to kill. However, Somnus had met plenty of humans who possessed honor, and some of them, in a way, Somnus respected.

This was similar. He was no longer a machine with a machine body; once more he faced something that was similar to him, and just like back then during the Solar Wars, something that was inferior to him. Somnus would never have an equal, as a machine or as a human.

You have been healed. +342HP

"How are you so strong? What level are you? Are you a hero?" the guardian asked.

Ah, "hero". Somnus chuckled. Arcadia explained to him the difference between a hero and a Hero cla.s.s. Once an adventurer, through leveling up, acquired two stats—it used to be three—at the rank of S, they would be considered a hero. However, someone who was born with a single stat potential—something high ranking Priests could divine—at S rank would be considered a Hero Aspirant. People in this world only received a cla.s.s once they came of age. It was different for every race, but for humans that happened on their thirteenth birthday. If at thirteen they had a single stat at S rank, they would be a Hero Cla.s.s; one of those has not appeared, to public knowledge, in a very long time.

"Affirmative," Somnus replied to the guardian. "However, I must correct your understanding of the situation. This unit is not your Hero."

Somnus reached out with his hand, palm facing outward. "Sequence cast. Greater Beam Weapon. One-Way Barrier."

A humming noise filled the area as the beam weapon formed—at first it appeared as a thin line of super-dense mana which then rapidly expanded before hitting something like a wall—the barrier. The sword-shaped beam of pure manfire roared against the barrier, constantly crus.h.i.+ng it and sending out jets of blue and red plasma into the air. It was a side-effect of Somnus's increasing Magic Power. The barrier constantly renewed itself, mending the fractures the beam created.

"I am your nemesis," Somnus said as the beam-sword settled in his grasp.