Sergeant Gabriel Hipper checked and cleaned his rifle as he sat on the deck of the lab room claimed by his unit.
No one was in a good mood right now. They had lost numerous good brothers and sisters after they fought against their foes. He stared into a wall and imagined that his gaze could pierce right through every obstacle until he was able to observe his opponents.
Just like him, his enemies must be taking a breather as well. The two sides had sparred against each other across multiple floors. Somehow, the balance never tilted, but the bodies kept piling up. If not for the strange conditions of the pinnacle lab, the struggle between the two sides should have produced a decisive outcome by now. Yet because everyone inside was forced to follow the rules left behind by the Supreme Sage, their battle continued to be strung out across several weeks.
“When will this hell ever end?” Corporal Peter Cardin despairingly asked.
Sergeant Hipper snorted. “It’s only over until we kill the entire rebel force and take control of their teleportation portal. Our mission won’t end until that happens, so don’t waste your time moping around.”
To be honest, Hipper also felt worn down by the frequent intervals of fighting. He would much rather fight a single all-out battle than prolong his torture by abiding by the restrictions set by the pinnacle lab.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Back before the Supreme Revolution broke out, Sergeant Hipper and Corporal Cardin were just guards assigned by the dominant conservative faction to patrol the pinnacle lab.
Ever since the Supreme Sage died, the remaining researchers largely lost access to all of the lab rooms.
Fortunately, they weren’t locked out entirely. As long as they retained at least some permissions, it was always possible to expand their rights and gain access to the core research that the Supreme Sage always withheld from everyone else.
In the past one-and-a-half years, the researchers along with numerous specialists from the conservative faction sought to take over the systems of the pinnacle lab step by step. Their biohackers had made steady progress in circumventing the security systems that prevented the conservatives from retrieving the valuable research data from the isolated local databases.
Yet just as they started to work on trying to access the core research rooms where the Supreme Sage stashed his most prized projects, the opposition got wind of what was happening!
Sergeant Hipper blamed one of the biohackers for the leak. Because the pinnacle lab boasted the best security systems in the LRA, it took exceptional skill to undermine their functioning.
After many failed attempts, the conservatives learned that many of their own personnel were completely outmatched. THey had no choice but to hire the services of the best biohackers of the LRA!
Even though the conservative faction did its best to ensure the biohackers they employed did not leak any information, how was it possible for anyone to stop biohackers from doing what they did best?
It didn’t matter if there was any proof. Hipper simply knew for certain that one of those nerds informed the opposition faction of the goodies the conservatives were salvaging from this facility!
From the moment the Supreme Revolution broke out, another teleportation portal quickly came online. The opposition faction managed to gain access to another entrance!
When hundreds of heavily-armed infantry soldiers poured into the top floor of the pinnacle lab, the two sides immediately competed to gain more spoils from the pinnacle lab!
They destroyed a lot of good research labs over the course of their uninhibited destruction.
The latecomers were far too behind when it came to hacking their way deeper into the pinnacle lab. If they attempted to follow the same route as the conservatives, then they would be more than a year behind their opponents!
This was why the rebels who intruded into the lab chose to bull their way through!
They boldly breached every gate and destroyed every active security system by force. In fact, the rebels had a much easier time in forcing their way deeper because the biohackers in the service of the conservatives had already deactivated a lot of security systems months ago!
Due to the methods they used to deactivate the security systems, it was very hard to bring them back online. This gave the opposition faction a great opportunity to rely on unrelenting destruction to exceed the progress of the conservatives!
Naturally, the powers that be who monopolized the lab for a long time weren’t happy with what the rebels were doing. The conservatives intensified their attempts to push back the rebel forces.
The fighting rapidly escalated until the combatants somehow triggered an emergency contingency command.
Hipper remembered the day the lab had enough. Alarms rang throughout the facility and the gravity around them rose by three times. No one expected the gravity to grow so heavy all of a sudden, so the fighting immediately stalled.
Ever since then, a new set of rules came into force.
First, the teleportation portals forcibly limited the amount of people that could enter at any time. The portals controlled by both the conservative faction and the opposition factions only allowed ten soldiers to enter the lab at a time.
Second, weapons that were heavy enough to threaten the integrity of a lab room were no longer permitted to be used. The soldiers had to discard a lot of cannons and powerful explosives.
Third, the soldiers were only allowed to fight 20 minutes per 12 hours. This sounded quite generous at first, but the two sides later found out that this was a difficult restriction.
It was hard to defeat a large and entrenched force of enemy soldiers when neither side could make use of heavy weapons!
Small arms wasn’t enough to wipe out a large force of well-armored soldiers within the given time limit!
In fact, the losses during every round of fighting mostly hovered between five to twenty soldiers at a time.
While this meant that both sides were slowly losing soldiers even accounting for the reinforcements pouring in every day, both sides still had hundreds of soldiers left!
It would take a long time before one side gained the upper hand.
Still, strictly speaking, the conservatives and the rebels didn’t have to abide by these rules.
It was just that the consequences were far too dire!
The soldiers might not care a lot, but their superiors were different!
This was because the pinnacle lab issued a very stern warning. If the two sides didn’t abide by the rules and limited the amount of destruction they inflicted on the facility, then the core research rooms would all self-destruct, preventing anyone from salvaging any data or valuable products from the most important research projects!
Neither side wanted to trigger this final contingency!
Hence, this was the reason why Sergeant Hipper and the rest of his comrades were resting instead of continuing the fight.
Just as Corporal Cardin was about to open his mouth, an alarm suddenly rang throughout the occupied research room.
“To arms! Unknown enemies are incoming! They’re very big and they’re approaching very rapidly in our direction! Suit up and man the defenses!”
The soldiers knew better than to question this sudden command. They all stood up and wore their suits of combat armor. They picked up their weapons just in time for the approaching enemies to appear into view.
“What the hell are those?!”
“It’s a cyclops!”
“Damn! It’s barging straight through our defenses!”
The lone cyclops roared as it smacked its enormous, gorilla-like arms across the defensive lines. Infantry soldiers on guard screamed as they were punched away. The force of the impacts were so strong that their combat armor practically caved in from the force!
“Shoot this cyclops!”
A lot of soldiers opened fire against this monster. Much to their dismay, the damage they inflicted on the tall and heavy brute was largely shallow. Even the big eye enjoyed a lot of protection!
“There’s more!”
A dozen more cyclopes followed after the initial one. Once they barged into the research room, they completely went mad and tore into the tiny soldiers that were attempting to shoot them down!
“We need backup!”
“Why the hell is the lab allowing these monsters to fight? This isn’t fair!”
“Screw the rules! Get the rocket launchers! I don’t want to lose my life against these big bastards!”
As Sergeant Hipper ran to the nearby armory and attempted to pull out an explosive mine, a battle-scarred cyclops had reached his position and grasped his armored body with its meaty hand.
“Let go!”
The soldier’s feeble attempt to escape barely registered to the humanoid monster. After giving its victim a toothy grin, the cyclops mercilessly brought the captive forward and bit into its torso!
The cyclops’ hard teeth crunched straight through the bone armor and bit Sergeant Hipper’s body in half!
The monsters turned out to be maneaters!
Elsewhere, Ves and Dr. Perris both reflected on what they just unleashed.
Project Cyclops was an attempt by the Supreme Sage to create a monstrous army that would take over some security duties from his human personnel.
Perhaps the great researcher increasingly lost more trust in his subordinates. Maybe he already predicted that some of the Lifers would pursue selfish objectives and make a mess out of his pinnacle lab once he wasn’t around to restrain his successors.
The Cyclopes he came up with was a derivative of Special Project ‘U’. Smaller and more compact than a typical biomech, these humanoid monstrosities were the equivalent of mechanical battle bots.
They were anything but disposable, though. Though their smaller size limited their combat power, much of their design principles were identical to that of high-quality biomechs!
This meant that they were incredibly powerful in indoor situations where conventional biomechs couldn’t fit or possessed too much destructive potential.
After all, mechs and biomechs were infamous for inflicting a lot of collateral damage. While that might not matter that much if they rampaged in a typical city district, it was another story entirely if they inadvertently breached a lab room and ruined a critical experimental procedure!
That didn’t mean that the cyclopes were perfect, though. One of the persistent problems of battle bots and similar products was the risk that they might get hacked by the enemy.
There was no better way to screw someone over by taking over their battle assets and turning them against their original owner!
Though this was a lot more difficult to accomplish with organic battle bots, a biotech expert who specialized in manipulating beasts could still take over control in the right circumstances!
This was one of the reasons why Project Cyclopes remained unfinished. If the fifty one-eyed monsters cultivated by the Supreme Sage were mature enough to serve as his new lab guards, then they wouldn’t have been left in their cultivation tanks.
From what Ves was able to figure out from the research notes, the Supreme Sage had already solved the various problems related to their physical properties. Only a handful of very stubborn issues remained unsolved, including the control aspect.
To be honest, the Supreme Sage had already readied a possible solution. That was why it took some time to unleash the monstrosities. It turned out that the great researcher borrowed the results of one of his other projects and combined it with Project Cyclops!
“What a novel attempt to solve the control problem. Is it really useful to inject a small quantity of substance derived from expert pilot brains into a cyclops?”
He hadn’t noticed any significant spiritual activity from the monsters when he released them from their tanks, but he felt a bit strange when they started to roar in unison.
That single collective action not only buffeted his Unending Regalia with loud noise, but also caused his mind to shake a little bit!
Was it an illusion? Ves wasn’t sure, actually. It could be that he was just awed by their primal roar. When fifty elephant-sized humanoids cried out at the same time, it was hard not to take notice!
Shortly after the army of rampaging humanoid monsters left the lab, Ves soon heard sounds of distant fighting.
This time, he heard a lot of roars as well the sounds of lots of physical smacking on top of the sounds of weapon discharges.
“Let’s take a look.” He suggested.
The Larkinsons left the lab and approached the location where the cyclopes had encountered a lot of opposition. Strangely enough, the soldiers in the distance still put up a lot of resistance against the unleashed monsters. This vindicated his decision to avoid confronting the other parties!
“Stop.” He spoke over their communication channel. “If we go any closer, we risk getting detected.”
He could hear plenty of screams and sounds of desperate fighting up ahead. He doubted that the soldiers had any attention to spare on intruders, but Ves wasn’t in a hurry to advance.
“Let’s wait until the cyclopes do their jobs.”
