Chapter 646: Breaking Through on All Fronts

A doll?

Old Joe stared in surprise at the dark object on the floor, at first thinking he had misjudged it—it looked like a doll only a few dozen centimeters tall, the kind a child might carry as a “plush toy,” but exquisitely crafted, its face incredibly lifelike, even… like a miniature living person scaled down many times.

The doll wore a gorgeous black dress and was quite beautiful, but it was filthy all over, as if it had just crawled out of some dusty place. It lay on its side on the floor not far away, motionless, and naturally had no signs of life such as breathing or a heartbeat.

But it had body heat—the sensors detected a temperature close to that of a human.

A red flash flickered in Old Joe’s eyes. Without a moment’s hesitation, he raised his arm. The triple-barreled hand cannon hidden in his forearm deployed instantly, and three scorching balls of light slammed into the doll.

There was no way such a childish thing could be in the base, especially now during an invasion. Any strange object appearing in the hallway was a danger signal in itself—regardless of where it came from, opening fire was the right call. Cautious as he was, he wouldn’t foolishly go closer at a time like this.

The moment Old Joe fired, the other soldiers opened fire as well. The air around the doll seemed to twist for a split second, but before anyone could register what had happened, the blast of the explosions swallowed the spot where it had stood.

Yet almost at the same instant, a sharp premonition surged up. The dreadful intuition of being aimed at jolted Old Joe and the gene-engineered clone soldiers around him!

The next second, a scorching flash appeared at the edge of Old Joe’s vision. A high-energy beam punched through the ventilation duct paneling in the corridor ceiling and shot straight toward the nearest clone soldier.

The soldier’s shield deflected the first beam, but that was only the beginning—a torrent of heat rays shredded the entire ceiling along the ventilation duct in an instant. Countless flashes filled everyone’s vision. The beams sizzled as they tore through the air, burned shields, and melted steel!

The clone soldiers reacted swiftly, raising their guns and firing the moment the first ray struck. But the rain of beams pouring down from above clearly overwhelmed their defenses. Amid the continuous screams, the number of people around Old Joe dropped by a third in an instant. Then, the riddled ceiling collapsed in sections, and countless small, black figures dropped from the ventilation shafts into the corridor.

They were small dolls—black-haired, black-dressed, delicate-featured, identical in appearance. An army of dolls.

“Fire, fire!” Old Joe shouted in a flustered voice. The fact that he had been ambushed in his own base filled him with shock and fury. The sight of the ceiling opening up in a series of holes and dolls continuously falling through them stirred an unspeakable… numbing sensation in his heart. He quickly led the soldiers around him to retreat behind the relatively safe corner of the corridor while firing continuously. At the same time, immense shock washed over him—why hadn’t the base’s intrusion detection system reacted? How had these dolls crawled into the ventilation shafts completely undetected?

The roar of gunfire filled the corridor, flashes of gunfire flashing without pause. Dolls kept dropping from the ceiling, and even the vent openings on both walls started disgorging their forms. These delicate little monsters had hollow eyes, felt no pain, and were so agile they were hard to target. Light rays shot from their fingertips could easily cut through steel. No matter how many fell, new dolls kept emerging from all sorts of unexpected places, quickly filling the gaps.

The scene was chaotic and eerie.

A clone soldier nearby cried out. Old Joe spun around in alarm and saw more dolls crawling out of a vent in the corner wall—a few were shot to pieces as soon as they appeared, but the rest nimbly dodged through the hail of gunfire while firing beams in all directions and frantically climbing onto the soldiers!

One soldier was a beat too slow. The strange doll climbed onto his leg. He hastily drew a beam dagger, trying to get the terrifying little monster off him, but in his frantic swings, he only managed to cut off half of its lower leg—the next second, the doll had scrambled onto his shoulder, and its tiny hands suddenly clamped around his head.

“Hel—”

The soldier only managed a short, terrified cry before a scorching flash erupted between the doll’s hands. At point-blank range, the heat ray easily pierced the power armor helmet and roasted the brain inside.

Even though the doll was blown to pieces by the other soldiers a moment later, by then fewer than half of the soldiers who had been standing around Old Joe remained.

At the same time, in another connecting corridor a few hundred meters away, another “Old Joe” was leading his soldiers rapidly toward the core area.

“Shit! Damn it! It all started when that bitch returned to the Dark Meteor Domain…” The steel giant muttered curses under his breath, red light gleaming in his eyes as fury burned in his logic modules.

His several bodies were each leading squads from different directions to reinforce the core area. At this moment, three units had already been attacked in the corridors and hangars. The attackers were all those eerie living dolls—a few dozen centimeters tall, each one seemingly harmless when considered alone, even a bit cute and comical. But when they poured out of vents and grilles in dense numbers, shooting scorching beams everywhere while frantically climbing onto the soldiers, even dismantling their power armor barehanded and cooking them through the armor… then they were anything but cute.

Yet more unsettling than the dolls of unknown origin was the state of the base’s core area—

The alert system had suddenly gone dead a while ago, and then sensors across the base started reporting errors one after another. The surveillance system was going offline from the core outward, as if an invisible black hole was slowly expanding from the center of the base.

At this moment, Old Joe suddenly regretted moving all the living defense forces outside the core area for the sake of “security”—but then again, who would have thought the intruders could go straight into the main hall of the core area? Who would have thought the base’s own defense systems would be the first to “betray” him?

Anxiety and anger churned in his mind. Old Joe had to divide his attention to sense the surroundings, tuning this body’s detection functions to maximum, staying alert for nearby vents and the maintenance passage exits meant for autonomous robots.

The base’s own security system was no longer reliable. He was on his own now.

Those dolls had no breath or heartbeat; standard life-detection radar was useless against them. But they had body heat similar to living humans, and when moving in groups, they made faint sounds—both were detectable.

Oddly enough, despite the attacks in every area, this connecting corridor was eerily quiet. Not a single doll could be detected.

A sense of wrongness arose. Old Joe instinctively slowed down, scanning the surroundings.

This should be a good place for an ambush—narrow terrain with only one exit… Had the dolls failed to find this place?

The thought had barely crossed his mind when he noticed one of the clone soldiers in front of him suddenly sway, then silently topple to the side.

“What are you—”

He barely got a few words out before he saw a fine crack in the soldier’s power armor—running from the head down half the body, as if sliced by something incredibly sharp in an instant.

Another soldier on the flank seemed to sense something and hastily raised his gun to fire. The muzzle flash illuminated the dim connecting corridor. In that brief burst of light, a faint black shadow flickered past nearby.

The soldier who fired, along with two of his comrades nearby, immediately collapsed.

But they had at least slightly slowed the attacker’s momentum—in the instant his alertness peaked, Old Joe finally caught a shadow hurtling toward him.

Mechanical joints overloaded in an instant. Extra shields activated. Armor charged. Old Joe’s steel frame exploded with speed and power far beyond imagination. In the blink of an eye, he somehow parried over a dozen fierce slashes and thrusts. Under the terrible impacts that nearly shattered his arms, he staggered back a dozen steps, and almost purely by luck, he caught a sharp blade aimed at his chest with his wrist joint. Only then, in his shock, did he fully see his opponent.

A smiling pale face appeared before him. The elegant gynoid tilted her head slightly, then vanished and reappeared, withdrawing her blade and retreating before lunging again—in between, she casually cut down two clone soldiers who had tried to rush forward to protect their master.

Old Joe’s shock knew no bounds. Finally, he couldn’t hold back and cursed: “…Is that a fucking Artificial Saint?!”

The Hermit Order was making a move against him? Why?!

…

In the last connecting hall leading to the central area, the steel giant leading a heavy firepower squad suddenly halted.

He had lost one of his bodies—the attacker had been an Artificial Saint.

First the bizarre dolls in massive numbers infiltrating the base, then the Artificial Saint ambushing him in the connecting corridor, plus the steadily failing sensors and the “perception black hole” slowly expanding from the base center.

The impulse brought on by full-blown rage quickly cooled. The cold warnings from his logic chip’s crisis detection and assessment programs kicked in. Old Joe suddenly calmed down, realizing that the situation seemed to have slipped out of control.

Something was wrong. Everything had gone against his expectations ever since that “little animal” appeared on Gray Dwarf planet—as if some inexplicable “interference” had been affecting his judgment all along. Now, he could finally sense the noose that had been tightening around his neck.

The clone soldiers exchanged glances, waiting for their master’s command.

Old Joe clenched his teeth. But just as he was about to say something, a bizarre… “thing” suddenly floated out from a side door in one corner of the hall, cutting him off.

It was a fluffy, enormous tail…

“What is—”

“Boom!!”