Darius Supreme

There was no logical reason for Miranda to sit there and wait for the five Demi-Gods to come to her, especially not after the lesson she had just learned. 

While a fixed base couldn't be moved, troops could! 

This was something that the five invaders never expected from where they sat, as they didn't even have an inkling of an idea regarding the true scale of Miranda's expansion on Pokterr. 

If, as Theseus had suggested, they had parlayed and tried to sniff out information without coming off as threatening, they would have fared much better than what was to come. 

However, given the way they had acted the subroutine Miranda had left behind had been utterly triggered into war mode. 

Had it been the primary Miranda herself, she would not have responded with this type of hostility. 

After all, the girl in whose image the AI had been created had been a gentle soul who, while understanding what needed to be done, would still do things according to her father's will. 

As such, she would have first reported to Darius and found out how he would prefer for things to be handled before resolving it according to his wishes. 

This subroutine though, was not in possession of any of Miranda's typical traits. It was just a sentient child AI that was meant to manage things according to a certain script, making it no different from what most assumed a typical AI to be. 

Not to mention, just a few days ago, it had received a transmission from Darius warning it about a possible danger. 

Coincidentally, that was also why the five Demi-Gods had found the base so active and on alert mode. 

All the core assets of the bases had already been shipped away to secure locations and the source of Miranda's metals had been hidden beneath layers of midsections so that even if they were beaten to the ground, they could rise up once again. 

After suffering defeat at their hands the subroutine had dispatched all available fighting forces towards the five Demi-Gods as their threat levels had gone far beyond anything its script had accounted for. 

Were it a human, its emotion would be one of panic. 

After all, the material used for most bots had been a mixture of Holy Iron, Silver, and Gold, which all possessed the Indestructible trait. 

Even upon first encounter, Darius had been forced to spend almost two weeks devising a method to bore a hole through the Holy Silver long enough that he could teleport through to the other side. 

However, certain superior energies could directly negate the Indestructibility trait of this metal. One was obviously Source Energy, otherwise neither Miranda nor the Ancient Polito Race would have been able to make anything out of this metal. 

While Mana had not been enough to achieve this, Divine Energy had. The latter was on the same tier as Source Energy in this regard, and the 'Invincibility' of the mechanical troops had been compromised. 

Alas, Pokterr was far too large for all the troops to rush over in time, especially the heavy machinery like tanks, walkers (giant AI-driven mech robots from Darius' era), and like. 

However, this was where the nature of Miranda's expansion began to make sense. For one, she had practically 'wasted' tonnes of Holy Silver and other such precious metals paving every inch of the land she could reach. 

Would an AI really do such a thing purely for aesthetic reasons? Of course not! So what else could such a thing serve? 

Due to the rampant devouring of the Insects, Pokterr had been mostly a wasteland, but it would eventually heal over time or if special methods were used to revive it. 

And that was exactly what Miranda had done. Nothing conducted Source Energy as well as its native metals Holy Iron, Holy Silver, and Holy Gold. Source Energy was simply raw energy that was neither positive nor negative, just neutral and infinite. 

It was how one converted it that mattered! 

Miranda had inscribed each plate that was used in the ground with a special rune that the Politos had used to fallow their lands using Source Energy. 

Only, where the Politos had been careful and sensible in doing so for only small patches of farmland, Miranda had done it for as far as her robot army had and planned to do so for the rest of the continent. 

After a few years, the land of Pokterr should be revived and filled with so much raw energy, it should become a haven for materials and resources like Unyris. 

Heck, it was likely that new lodes of Holy Silver and the like would be nurtured with the infusion of such energy for a long time. 

A perfect plan, now put at risk by these invaders! 

However, this also served a second and more relevant purpose to the overarching situation. The entire stretch of Holy Silver had… let's, call them 'fallow' runes… on the underside, facing the ground. 

So what was on the topside? 

Well, we could call them 'electromagnetic' runes. This allowed all Holy Silver constructed machines and metals to glide along the already terraformed surface of Pokterr like bullet trains. 

Of course, maneuvering was difficult, but for an AI that could connect and communicate between each machine within the shortest possible frame of referable time, this wasn't an issue. 

The subroutine planned routes for each robot and they just zipped away towards it like a bullet fired from a sniper. They left electric blurs that would dazzle the eye of an onlooker. 

To someone with a birds-eye view, this would likely be the greatest special effects of a sci-fi movie he would ever see in his life, even for someone of Darius' era. 

Hundreds… thousands… no, hundreds of thousands of mechanical warriors were rushing towards a certain spot at a speed of 320 kilometers per hour.! 

The first batch were only two minutes out, and this time was spent by the five Demi-Gods searching through the rubble for anything of note. However, Miranda's bases were not manned by humans, so there were no terminals to communicate with software nor things like notes or documents for reference. 

Everything was stored in the Supreme Cloud, so the base was as minimalistic as one could imagine, with only the construction tools, the assembly line, and the storage station for inactive bots. 

Not to mention, the ones searching were not exactly tech-savvy. Gravitas had exclusive access to such things and they were extremely protective of it. 

The Gods had naturally tried to find excuses to lay their claws on Gravitas, but the xenophobic continent had never given them one. 

The Gods were a lot more humbled after witnessing the might of the real rulers of Faust, the True Lords. They still didn't understand how such existences could be so markedly more powerful than them. 

It was akin to humans who had already conquered Earth rushing to conquer the stars, only to find many planets inhabited by non-sentient, animal-like creatures. 

After being able to easily steamroll over them, it would create the illusion that they were invincible. Then, one day, they would discover that there was a civilization far more advanced than them out there, with much more military might, who had remained hidden and silent! 

Their arrogance would be curbed and they would naturally become extremely cautious in their next actions, thinking 'what if another super powerful civilization was hiding? If we provoke them, we might be exterminated!' and the like. 

However, such a fear would gradually fade away in time as logic took hold. After all, such powerful existences could not exist everywhere. The fact that these ones had been missed would just be deemed an oversight, an exception to the rule, which would be accounted for going forward. 

Besides, there was no need to downplay the power of humanity, they would think, they were very strong. As such, they would restart their conquering ways, just putting more caution into investigating who they were warring against and choosing their foes carefully. 

This was why the Elf race had yet to be invaded, among others. 

However, as seen from the recent meeting, the Gods had gradually lost that wariness and had begun licking their lips at taking more prizes and claiming faith through any means possible. 

In the end, this callous behavior was catching up with them. After all, such belligerence had been adopted by many Demi-Gods like Achilles, Odysseus, Jason, Hercules, and more. 

They were unlike their older generation counterparts who had existed in the days from the very beginning like Theseus, Perseus, Bellerophon, Cadmus, and the like, who were more level-headed and even when handling tasks. 

They never asked the crucial question of 'What am I doing?' when partaking in such Quests. After all, to extinguish races, and wage wars all the time would naturally lead one to question their purpose. 

Suddenly, the five Demi-Gods, who were casually searching the area all paled at once, their faces locked in grimaces of suffering. Sweat bore out of their foreheads and their knees felt weak. 

All of them had high Luck stats, with Medea's 50 being the lowest and Theseus' 200 the highest. As such, their Spiritual Senses were active and blaring at this moment that imminent death and demise was upon them. 

It was as visceral as what Darius had felt when he had sensed Beelzebub rushing towards him, and the five Demi-Gods could hear a crackling sound of electricity and wind meeting, heralding their imminent doom.