The Mech Touch

What the hell did the Supreme Sage make?!

When Ves hesitantly decided to send out a tiny stealth drone in order to scope out what was happening up ahead, he and his team became shocked at the carnage taking place up ahead.

The fifty humongous humanoid monsters had seamlessly split into two separate mobs before they barged into the fortified research labs occupied by the two different groups of soldiers.

Then, the monsters started to murder the recuperating soldiers with absolute dominance!

Ves had already figured out that the humans who had entered the lab long before he came along had developed a pattern of sorts.

From their fortifications and the way they retreated instantly after a certain amount of time suggested that they were operating under some sort of unknown rules.

Regardless of what was going on, neither side expected to be assailed by a band of marauding one-eyed giants!

"The timing is especially bad for them." Ves observed with a grim expression. "We happened to unleash the cyclopes just as they were removing their suits of combat armor and taking a well-deserved break."

Under normal circumstances, soldiers would have never let down their guard that quickly. This was why Ves could tell that they had developed a pattern of sorts over time. Just like how he had trained the ultralifers to obey the instructions of the living statues of Lufa without question, the pinnacle lab somehow trained the soldiers to fight each other on a regular basis without venturing any deeper into the facility!

"How brilliant!"

Though Ves still lacked a lot of information, that didn't stop him from using his own perspective to judge the overall situation.

The Supreme Sage was not an absent-minded thinker. That was for sure. He had to have foreseen at least some parts of the scenario taking place today.

If he truly performed an experiment that could theoretically allow him to escape his looming mortality, then he should have taken failure into account. As long as the situation was salvageable, it became paramount to preserve as much of the lab as possible from the hungry locusts who sought to devour everything that was necessary to bring the Supreme Sage back to life.

Yet something had gone obviously wrong. The soldiers had been stalled but not stopped. Ves had seen no signs that anyone or anything was actively working to restore the Supreme Sage to life.

In the end, the living gem that managed to capture a remnant of the Supreme Sage's spirit had to rely on a foreigner of all people to get the ball rolling!

"What the hell is going on?" He asked for the umpteenth time.

Loud roars rang through two different spaces as the human-like monstrosities shrugged off every form of small arms fire while they mauled their puny human opponents with their prodigious raw strength!

Ves, Lucky, Dr. Perris and his honor guards watched on with horror as they observed the ongoing massacre via projection.

They never realized that the one-eyed monsters they had ignorantly released from their cultivation tanks were this powerful!

Having briefly studied the research files on Project Cyclops, Ves already had an expectation on how well they would perform in combat, but the invincibility and brutality these biological products displayed at the moment surpassed anything he imagined.

Their thick, muscular bodies resisted both kinetic and energy attacks with the resilience of actual biomechs. Even if someone managed to penetrate the thick and leathery skin layer, the flesh underneath was extremely dense and could take a lot of pounding before they started to break.

Their large size and stature gave them a decisive scale advantage over the human soldiers. Perhaps these cyclopes might not fare well against actual biomechs, but as long as they were confined in spaces that were just large enough for them to maneuver comfortably, they were in their element!

One cyclops furiously kicked a soldier armed with a hefty machine gun. The victim launched into the distance and collided against the far wall! The kick had already caused the front of the combat armor to get crushed, so the poor sod had already died by the time his body soared away!

Another cyclops cruelly picked up a pair of soldiers that had failed to suit up in time. Their unarmored bodies got squashed as the giants squeezed their soft flesh into mush.

A hungry expression appeared on the humanoid monster's face. The creature stopped and ignored all of the fire pouring in its direction in order to bite and chew the bodies as if he was enjoying a well-deserved break!

Copious amounts of human blood splattered from the monster's mouth. Red dyed the humanoid beast's chin and chest.

Another group of soldiers managed to retrieve a bunch of plasma grenades and rocket launchers from an armory. Under the direction of an officer, they all unleashed their arsenal at the nearest cyclops!

"WHUAAAAAAA!"

The enormous lab room shook as the giant beast in question was the first to suffer a severe injury!

The rocket launchers hadn't hurt the beast that much. The creature's dense but cushy flesh was so resilient that it was easily able to withstand explosive damage.

The plasma grenades accomplished more. The superhot matter that splashed over the arm of the cyclops burned so hot that the arm began to grow limp!

The soldiers finally saw hope of winning this battle!

"These beasts can be beaten!"

Unfortunately for the human soldiers, it took over a dozen plasma grenades to disable a single limb.

Before the troopers could throw a second batch of plasma grenades, the injured cyclops went mad! Though one of the monster's arms turned into a burned and blackened mess, that didn't stop the cyclops from charging forward and bowling in the loose formation of soldiers!

A lot of armored and unarmored figures were flung away. Some even had the misfortune of getting crushed under the monster's feet!

The cyclops grabbed one soldier by the feet before subsequently using it as a floppy club to batter against any human within reach!

The one-sided butchery unfolding in front of everyone's eyes was so terrifying that the soldiers simply couldn't take it any longer. Many of them had stopped firing their weapons as their fears took over their senses.

Some ran away screaming, only to get caught by the giants who were blocking the only way out.

Others collapsed to their knees, becoming completely unresponsive until a giant hand lifted them up in order to serve as snacks for the voracious monsters.

The smarter ones pressed their weapons against their heads, deactivated the safety settings and pulled the trigger. These people were at least spared from spending their final moments in agony.

So much blood poured out of the brutality taking place in the two research rooms that they began to resemble a charnel house.

Despite the fact that both groups of human soldiers had quantity on their side, the power disparity was simply too great. They needed at least four times as many soldiers as well as favorable terrain in order to resist the cyclops invasion!

The two battles ended quickly and without any chance for the defenders to mount a comeback.

"Project Ammit."

"What?" Ves briefly turned to Dr. Perris.

"Project Cyclops is a derivative of Special Project 'U'. It is a lesser product that nonetheless incorporates many powerful innovations, if to a lesser degree. Project Ammit is supposed to enable high-speed regeneration and energy absorption through consumption of high-density bionutrients."

Ves remembered reading something like that. Still, the sight of artificial monsters snacking on human bodies as if they were snacking on barbecue meat generated a lot of revulsion in his heart.

Humans weren't food! This was one of the most fundamental principles of human civilization. Neither humans, aliens or artificial species should ever have human flesh in their diets!

"I don't think these cyclopes can derive any useful nutrients from human bodies." He frowned. "Unless they are heavily augmented, those soldiers can't contribute much to those monsters aside from providing simple elements and a marginal amount of energy."

There was little to no rational reason for these cyclopes to engage in maneating. The controversy this act generated would generate so much backlash if done in public that not even a figure as great as the Supreme Sage could remain unaffected!

Dr. Perris looked more and more sickened at the sight. "I don't think the Supreme Sage deliberately programmed them to devour human flesh. Project Cyclops has never been finished and the bioprogramming of these humanoid giants still needs more refinement."

As Ves glanced at the projection of a cyclops roaring like a maddened lion in front of a cowering group of soldiers who had lost all of their fighting will, he felt that there was something profoundly wrong about Project Cyclops from the beginning.

Battle bots simply didn't act like primal beasts and eat the opponents they were instructed to kill! What was happening was completely beyond the pale and should never have been allowed under normal circumstances!

Ves didn't know what to make of the creator of these dangerous creatures.

On one hand, the Supreme Sage exhibited excellent research capabilities and was capable of making thorough plans.

On the other hand, he willfully engaged in reckless experimentation and showed a complete disregard for the intrinsic rights of human beings.

To the Supreme Sage, nothing was inviolable! Even the remains of honored expert pilots were nothing but another source of experimental material in his eyes!

Was this the end state of every researcher who delved into the field of biotechnology?

Ves no longer had to wonder why the Life Research Association was such a depraved state. Though it was ostensibly well-run on the surface, the renowned biotech experts that the people willingly accepted as their rulers were all immoral bastards at heart.

While it was true that politicians and administrators also had their flaws, the temptations they faced were relatively mundane. Ordinary corruption was far less severe than experimenting on expert pilots and creating humanoid organic products that ate human bodies for fun!

"What do we do now?" Dr. Perris asked.

"I don't know. I'm not sure it would be a good idea for us to go forward. Let's just sit here and see what these one-eyed giants will do next."

Many of the cyclopes started to move around in order to eat the bodies on the ground. They did not miss any opportunity to consume flesh. In fact, some of the cyclopes started to compete against each other for the opportunity to take a bite out of a body. The creatures seemed to have forgotten their bioprogramming and roared against each other before they came to blows!

The punches and other violent moves they unleashed caused the lab room to become more disordered! The fighting humanoid beasts exerted a lot more strength against each other than they did against the humans. To them, their own kind was much stronger and more difficult for them to overcome.

Fortunately, not every cyclops had lost its sense. A handful of them had stepped out and began to scour the remaining corridors and lab rooms for any other humans.

A small number of soldiers and scientists were stationed elsewhere and had managed to escape the initial massacre for that reason. However, that didn't stop the cyclopes from hunting them down and killing them anyway!

"Aaaahh! Get away!"

"Don't eat me! I don't taste good!"

Out of safety considerations, Ves and the rest of his team withdrew all the way back to the lab room where Project Cyclops was housed. Ves and Dr. Perris accessed the terminal yet again and began to study the research documents with much more care.

"What is the purpose of these creatures?" Ves wondered. "Are they simply meant to serve as lab guards, or is there more to them that I'm missing at the moment?"

Yet no matter what document they skimmed through, they never found anything that explained the full purpose of these hungry human beasts. The Supreme Sage simply treated their creation as a side project!