An awkward silence filled the air once Lex spoke. The soldiers further off didn't understand why everyone around Lex had frozen still, while the soldiers around Lex knew that they had screwed up.
A majority of the soldiers working here were just mortals who had been at the facility during their routine deployment. When the power went out and the darkness fell, they acted according to the security protocols and locked the facility down. Yet it had been nearly an entire day where the power to the facility had not returned, and then they had come under attack by unknown enemy forces. Nervousness was at an all-time high, and when they had seen Lex, they had simply reacted out of instinct. It was actually fortunate no one had actually shot at him, which was a real concern considering how intimidating he looked.
Lex looked around and asked, "is there any superior officer around? A captain or someone in charge?"
Some of the soldiers who were out of the range of Lex's spirit sense looked towards a young yet mature looking man who had also been locked down by his spirit sense. This was a nifty technique he learned while practicing with his spirit sense, following the online he had been following. As amazing as it seemed, he could only use it on mortals for now, as even a Qi Training expert could disrupt his spirit sense using his Qi. But once he became even more familiar with his spirit sense, he could start using techniques focused on his spirit sense to do much more than lock down mortals.
Lex released the soldier in command, unafraid of any retaliation and said, "no need to be nervous. I'm here on council business. Please send word to the major of my arrival. I'll wait here, so that everyone feels more comfortable."
To the soldiers credit, he did not stutter or act afraid despite his previous situation. He looked at Lex with a grim determination that spoke of his resolve to fight if needed, before turning around and jogging away. He made a few signs with his hands while he was jogging away, no doubt passing along some secret orders to the remaining soldiers to watch him.
"I don't mean any harm, so I'll let the rest of you go as well, alright? Don't over react now."
After giving considerable warning, he slowly loosened his hold on the remaining soldiers.
Most of the soldiers managed to display the same level of control as the young captain, though clearly they were very disturbed. A few stumbled upon being released and showed considerable panic. Two shot at Lex's face as soon as they were released.
๐๐ช๐ท๐ณ๐๐ข๐.๐ธ๐๐
The bullets traveled through the mask and hit his face, ricocheting off.
Lex only sighed and once again trapped the two soldiers with his spirit sense. Afterwards, he stopped paying attention to them.
Honestly, he could have avoided the bullets, for although they were quite fast, and the soldiers were near, he had long since transcended the abilities and limits of normal humans. He decided not to dodge because honestly he felt too lazy to, and at the same time he wanted to recreate a scene he saw in a movie once where a bullet crumpled after hitting a superhero. Unfortunately, instead of crumpling, the bullets just bounced off of him. He had wasted a precious opportunity to look cool.
"How long do you think you can hold off those robots?" Lex asked while waiting, but none of the soldiers were willing to respond. Though they were not aiming their guns at him, as they had been earlier, they were still clearly quite wary of him.
Lex shrugged and decided to just wait in silence. A short while later, the door to the gray building opened and a few men came running out in a hurry.
"Stand down! Stand down!" an older man yelled as he arrived. Much like the soldiers, he was wearing combat gear, but his was clearly different. Lex could tell the man was a Foundation realm cultivator, though he was still near the very beginning of the realm. As such, his gear reflected his status as a cultivator, and while it looked identical to the normal ones, bore some hidden enhancements.
"I've already received news of your arrival through the spirit channel, sir! Are you Leo?" the man asked, as he neared Lex.
"My identity is irrelevant," Lex said, and summoned the letter from his spatial bangle.
"Please confirm the contents of this letter and take me to your servers."
Lex had naturally already read the content of the letter using his spirit sense. He could naturally not detect if any orders were passed using any secret ciphers. Simply read, however, the letter used a few lines of some code to confirm their authenticity, before passing along the order to allow the bearer of the letter to have access to the servers.
"Everything is in order Mr. Leโฆ eh, if you'll follow me, I'll take you to where you want to go."
Lex nodded, but before leaving turned his attention to the two detained soldiers. He pulled the guns out of their hands using spirit sense before letting them go.
With the highest commanding officer before them they behaved much better, but the two had gone incredibly pale. Either they were scared senseless or they knew they were likely to get in trouble. Possibly both.
Without passing any comments, Lex followed the major into the boring looking building. Matching the outside, the appearance of the building once inside also looked very plain. Old tiles and yellowing paint made it seem like an old office building suffering from neglect - not at all what one would expect based on the walls surrounding it.
"The elevator isn't working so we'll have to take the stairs," the major said awkwardly as he led Lex to the emergency stairwell, descending deep underground.
"How long do you think you guys can hold out against the invaders?"Lex asked once again, sounding mostly uninterested. Now that the two were alone, it was time to see what he could dig up about this facility. Not that Lex was interested in stealing whatever they were holding, naturally. He would never.
But, say, if the facility fell to the robots, then it wouldn't count as stealing from the council, right?
It was a well known and established fact that Lex was not greedy and was, instead, a humble fellow who had given up his attraction to worldly possessions. The fact that he hoarded dozens of armors in his spatial bangle did not go against this fact, as those were there to serve a functional purpose.
He wore no jewelry or expensive watches, and did not have an expensive shoe collection. Even back when he was a mortal and made 7 million dollars, he did not waste it all and instead invested it. He continued to work at his job in the meantime, and lived a normal life. Yes, Lex was a proverbial monk. His only interest in any treasures the facility hid was purely academic and if, god forbid, the facility were to ever fall to the invaders and Lex intervened, it was only out of a sense of honor and duty. It was his duty as a man, no, as a human, to ensure that the alien robots failed in their objectives.
It had nothing to do with greed, it was a matter of honor. So, as honor entailed, Lex began toโฆ no manipulate, no, never. He simplyโฆ aided the major in performing his duties by relieving him of the mental stress of carrying state secrets. Yes, Lex was practically a saint.
In fact, even the expression on his mask changed to that of an honest wide eyed grin .
"If they maintain their current scale of attack," the major began to answer, "then they won't be able to penetrate the formation. It is very strong. However, we cannot maintain it indefinitely. We only carry enough supplies to power the formation for two days."
In truth, this was confidential information that the major should not have been sharing. Lex should have had to work a little harder to get this information out of him. Yet the major had never faced real combat situations before. The stress of the situation had affected his judgment. The change was for the better, in Lex's opinion.
"When the formation was being designed, the council figured that if reinforcements didn't arrive, and someone was able to lay down siege on the facility for two days continuously, then this facility was probably the least of their problems."
"Makes sense. You said you've already talked to someone, that must mean communication lines are back up. Have they said anything about reinforcements for this facility?"
"Yes! Reinforcements are already on their way. It should take a few hours though. According to HQ, alien presence in England is actually very small compared to Europe. I feel bad for them, but it's good for us. They expect to drive out all the aliens in a few days unless they get reinforcements of their own.."
"Good, good," Lex murmured while suppressing an internal curse. "This facility is pretty well guarded for a data center."
This time, the major was not as forthcoming as Lex had wished.
"It's important. Not only is a data center not cheap, but it holds all the valuable information of the council. That not only includes the private details of all the council members, but information on all of the council's various projects and responsibilities. If that weren't the case, we could have just used a commercial data center instead of building one ourselves."
"The building looks old. Did you have to renovate it to turn it into a data center?"
"I'm not sure about such details. The data center was already up and running when I was posted here, and I didn't look into its history."
Lex only nodded, and decided instead to start sweeping the facility with his spirit sense. Walls posed no obstacle to his senses - or at least, they weren't supposed to. Deep underground in the facility, there were walls built of a special material that seemed to block spirit sense. Well, at least if he ever needed toโฆ rescue earth's resources from invading aliens, he'd know where to look.
But while his spirit sense could be blocked, his intuition could not. He could feel that whatever was stored deep down wouldn't personally benefit him or his cultivation, which diminished his interest somewhat.
"Here you go," said the major, leading Lex into a large hall. "This is the first of the server rooms."
The server racks were placed on top of metallic cages, which would allow cold air to blow up at them from underneath, not to mention the air ducts aimed at them from above. Despite the fact that there was no electricity, and the air conditioning clearly had not been turned on, the room was still chilly.
"The first room? How many rooms like this are there?" Lex asked as he gauged how many of these he could fit into his spatial bangle.
"There are 4 halls like this on each floor, and there are five floors of servers."
Lex would definitely need to make several trips to the Inn to transport all of these servers. He should really look into the Inns ability to turn items into cards that can be easily transported. That would save him a lot of trouble.
"Well then, I'll get started."
Wrapping the servers in his spirit sense, he directly transported them inside his spatial bangle, making sure to take as many wires as he could. Taking the servers to the Inn was only the first part. They would need to be turned back on and probably have to go through some configuration once that was done as well. Ideally, the servers should have already been prepared for transport by engineers, but one could not ask for everything during war.
The work was tedious, and while it bewildered the major, Lex felt like he was doing manual labor.
He had to make repeated trips to the Inn, and unload the servers and teleport back to the facility.
After 20 minutes, despite his speed, he was still not finished. But it seemed time was up, as the building rumbled, as if experiencing an earthquake. Lex paused, and turned to look at the major, who was also concerned but tried to put on a brave face.
"Worry not, this building isโฆ"
He did not get to finish his words, as the sounds of explosions interrupted him, followed by more trembles.
"It seems the formation has failed," Lex said grimly as he spread his spirit sense upwards.
"Damn it!" the major exclaimed and exited the room immediately, running upwards. Lex did not follow him, but sped up retrieving the servers as much as he could. The sound of fighting above him became more intense, and the shaking became more common.
As easy as he found it to kill the robots, he was certain of the fact that normal humans with regular guns could not harm them. The fact that there was a fight going on upstairs indicated that the facility clearly had more defensive measures prepared than just soldiers with guns. What he was concerned about was why the defense failed so suddenly. The change was too abrupt, with no time for any warning.
If more robots had arrived, thereby increasing the numbers of attackers, to overwhelm the formation, someone would still have had enough time to find the major and give a warning. It was worth investigating.
It took him a couple more minutes, but without having to hold back his speed to accommodate the major, the process was sped up considerably. Just to be safe, Lex decided to teleport back to the Inn and drop off the servers. Afterwards, he would return and see if he could help in the defense of the facility. Or, you know, if the facility was bound to get overrun, protect its resources from falling into invader hands.
Yet something unusual happened. Normally returning to the Inn was slower than normal teleportation, but it was still a relatively quick process. However, now that Lex was trying to return, the process had slowed down considerably. Even ten seconds later, he was still on earth!
"Mary, what's happening?" Lex asked grimly. This was not a laughing matter.
"I'm not entirely certain. The system is detecting unusual activity in the space around earth, making teleportation more difficult."
"Am I trapped here?"
Mary scoffed. "Of course not. The system can access anywhere in the whole universe, a little spatial distortion won't stop it. It will, however, slow it down considerably. You might need to wait a whole minute for the system to teleport you out safely.. The same will apply to anyone using golden keys."
"The timing of this can't be a coincidence," Lex noted.
"Whether this is a natural phenomenon or artificial is not something that I can check. But one thing is certain - if whoever is attacking has means advanced enough to disrupt space, then they definitely have the means to detect any teleportation taking place. If they can detect everyone who is coming and going from the Inn, then it's no wonder they started disrupting space."
Just as Mary finished speaking, Lex was finally teleported away from the basement and returned to the Inn. He unloaded all the servers, and directly teleported them to a small facility he had built in the small village being rented by the council.
"Inform Miranda that the servers have arrived. Also, send a notification to everyone from earth letting them know that teleportation to and from earth has been slowed due to interference."
Other than the crystal realm, this was the first time he encountered trouble with teleportation. He was now even more invested in figuring out who exactly these invaders were. No one messed with his business.
Although technically his work on earth was over, he decided to return to the facility. Not only did he want to help them, but he was very interested in how they overcame the defensive formation. He had a feeling that this information would be critically important.
Just as with his arrival, the teleportation back to earth took uncomfortably long. For the first time, the expression on the mask completely accurately depicted how Lex truly felt. There was no toothy grin this time, no. Instead, a closed mouth and eyes that showed increasing anger painted his mask.
If the Inn developed a poor reputation because of these delays, Lex would not take the matter lying down. Although he had said that the Inn would not take any active part in helping the council to maintain its neutrality, he was beginning to wonder if he could find any loopholes for that as well.
The moment Lex teleported back, the building trembled once again, and this time harder than ever before. He immediately spread his spirit sense to assess the situation, and surprisingly discovered that the humans were actually holding the invaders off!
Although the guns could not hurt the robots, and their technology had failed the earthlings, they were not deterred. If there was one thing humans were good at, it was war!
Much like during the Midnight games, there were several groups of cultivators using techniques that empowered one another to fight off the robots. There were a total of 7 Foundation real cultivators, and nearly a hundred Qi training cultivators holding off against the invaders.
They had what looked like riot shields large enough to cover their entire bodies, which were capable of blocking the laser attacks! Lex was genuinely impressed at the durability of those shields. He knew that those lasers weren't simple to block, and most of everything he had seen so far made it look like the robots had an overwhelming advantage. This was the first thing he saw that proved otherwise.
Once Lex got a good idea of the situation, he reluctantly decided to not safeguard the facility's resources personally. Instead, using the In-Law effect, he teleported to the ground and directly smashed the nearest robot.
He thought his sudden appearance and subsequent defeat of a robot would help moralize the troops. Instead, it was when all the robots stopped invading and started focusing solely on Lex that the soldiers felt their morale boosted - at least they weren't the ones being shot at!
Lex, however, instantly felt his mood sour. It wasn't because he was being targeted by all the robots. It was because he overheard the robots speaking.
"A.S.S. has been found at location designation 7651273. All on ground units, focus on A.S.S. Energy weapons have proven to be non-effective against target, act accordingly."
Without hesitation, Lex used Evisceration on the robot that had spoken. But as he had long suspected, the technique had no effect. No matter, he didn't mind doing things up close and personal.
On his fists, he was currently wearing iron knuckles that he had bought from the Guild room. Unlike normal iron knuckles, these could be charged up using Lex's spirit energy. Once they were charged, the next time they made contact with anything, they would release a concentrated burst of energy. That, accompanied by Lex's ridiculous physical strength, made it so no spiritual technique was required. Brute strength was enough to take down any foe he faced, so far at least.
That was exactly why Lex threw himself at the robot that had spoken earlier and kicked its body. He did not want to defeat it too quickly. He did not know if the robots felt pain, but he definitely knew the satisfaction of beating it senselessly.
The soldiers, who had finally gotten some relief and took that time to readjust themselves, went into shock. They had been fighting for their lives, barely holding on, when fighting. Yet against the same opponents, the strange masked demon, the robots were nothing but rag dolls.
Completely ignoring all the attacks falling upon his body, the demon kicked one of the robots into the sky. But that was just the setup for more attacks, for immediately afterwards, the masked demon punched another robot, tearing it apart. He then grabbed the robots breaking limbs and started to throw them into the sky at the robot he kicked up.
But after a few moments of that, feeling unsatisfied, he jumped high up into the air and kicked the robot back onto the ground, creating a crater where it landed.
By now, the armor he was wearing had turned red from the heat of the laser hitting it, and even began to melt. Yet for a man who had swan through lava, what was burning clothes?
He did not even slow down and kept stomping the first robot. But the demon was strategic. He did not immediately destroy the robot by attacking the core of its body which was its center. Instead, he attacked its limbs, slowly crushing them.
By now, the pants he was wearing were literally on fire and his armor was melting off his body, but he had not even slowed down. Some robots had come near to attack him, but not only did their physical attacks not hamper him, as he had done earlier, he ripped off their limbs and used them as weapons to continue smashing the robot at his feet.
๐๐ฒ๐ซ๐๐๐๐ .๐๐ค๐
A strange scene unfolded, where the human soldiers were left stunned, preventing them from doing anything, and the remaining robots finally stopped firing and slowly began to back away from the literal flaming demon.
But all things, regardless of how bizarre they were, eventually had to come to an end. The robot Lex was crushing finally gave out, and collapsed under Lex's endless barrage.
Realizing his target had died, Lex suddenly looked up, and finally realized how strange the situation was. The humans and robots alike were staring at him, in fear and awe.
Feeling a single sweat break out, he finally realized that his gear was on fire. He erected an Imperial shield around himself, took off the thick, melted goo that was sticking to his body, and put on a fresh pair of identical body armor.
He removed the Imperial shield, ready to continue the fight. Yet the scene of him in fresh attire scared everyone even more than the chaos that he had just wrought. The fact that he had prepared extra armorโฆ meant that such behavior was a norm for him.
One of the soldiers that had shot at him earlier fainted.
The robots, too, had completely stopped firing at him, and watched from a distance. All the attentionโฆ was making Lex feel a little awkward. He was just venting a little, was there really a need to treat him as such? Wasn't this war? How were his actions more intimidating than fighting each other to the death?
For a short time, everyone was still. No one knew what to do next.
Then, one of the robots stepped forward, and for the first time, attempted to communicate with the humans.
"Human, the Operation Commander wishes to speak with you. Will you accept the call?" The robot spoke in a very stereotypical electronic voice, which was not what anyone had been expecting.
Lex was surprised by the level of etiquette being shown by the robots all of a sudden, but did not disparage the opportunity to communicate with them. Maybe he could finally understand why they had invaded.
"Sure," said Lex, and walked towards the robot. When they came face to face, the robot spoke again, though this time with a different, more feminine electronic voice - if that was possible.
"This is Iota-336 speaking. Are you the leader of the local humans?"
"I am neither a leader for the humans, nor a representative of anyone on Earth. I am here on private business that you are hampering. Do you care to explain why you are suddenly invading this planet? As far as I know, the residents of this planet should have no hostilities with any foreign entities, nor do they have any resources valuable enough to prompt an invasion."
Using his sixth sense, Lex could tell that whoever he was speaking with was extremely annoyed at him in particular for some reason. What had he done? Nothing. Why was he being targeted?
"The residents of this planet have broken intergalactic law by enslaving sentient A.I. Regardless of the circumstances, all residents of this planet have been deemed criminals, sentenced to slavery or death. Surrender peacefully, and you will be allowed to live. Resist, and you will die."
"I have never heard of this law, and I don't know anything about the slavery you're talking about. Isn't it a little harsh to punish an entire planet for a crime they don't even know about? Not to mention, most of the people had nothing to do with the crime."
"Irrelevant. All living beings on this planet have been sentenced. Shall I take your lack of answer as non-compliance?"