The Innkeeper



Marlo thoroughly enjoyed a good fight. That did not, however, mean that he was ignorant of the situation for the rest. Earth was losing the battle badly, and regardless of how many battles he won individually, the war was continuously being lost.

The first few waves of robots were not a problem for him at all, though they were already fairly high above earth's average level. But the latest wave, while seemed perfect for him, was much too strong for everyone else. The robots reached a strength equivalent to the middle of the nascent realm. That was a huge problem, for the earth was ill-equipped to face such strong threats without technology.

With a mighty roar, he slammed down his ax, slicing a robot in two. That was the fourth robot he had killed in a short while, and he was the only one who had achieved any kills. Comparatively, each robot killed many human soldiers at each moment.

The situation was looking grim. He did not know when the council would finally arrange for those reinforcements, but they couldn't get here soon enough. Yet the next moment, something unusual happened.

The robots all suddenly collapsed, as if their souls had left their bodies. The soldiers were stunned, but Marlo wasted not a single second. He began slicing through every robot that was within his reach.

Far away from the European battlefront, many battery driven technologies started turning on. The word instantly spread. No one knew what had happened, but the robots were suddenly vulnerable.

Instantly, every single member of council was only concerned with one thing. How quickly could they launch their nukes at the spaceship above them, and was it safe to do so? They wouldn't want to eliminate the threat of robots, only to be crushed by the rain of space debris.

*****

"Well, well, did you see that?" Jotun said to his wife as he sipped on a pina colada. "Someone finally put those stupid robots in their place. I'd say that was the most entertaining thing I've seen in centuries."

"I wonder how he did it?" his wife mused. "I get that the Innkeeper would be able to do something like that. But what makes this guy so special?"

"Don't worry about it and just enjoy the show. The SCS empire causes us endless problems with their unnecessarily strict ban over higher levels of automation. It's good to see them on the losing end for once."

"Do you think they'll retaliate against the Inn?

"I hope they're stupid enough to do so."

*****

Regional Command Ship 447 was the name of the ship which had suffered Lex's attack. This ship contained one of the pools which allowed all the souls developed by sentient machines to exist outside their original bodies. Through the extremely advanced technology of the SCS empire, and their remarkable mastery of materials which could interact with laws, they created a way to allow robots to live forever.

Much in the way a lich removes their soul and stores it in a phylactery, allowing them to live forever, the robots remove their souls and put them all in this container. Then, they would use their advanced technology to allow the souls to remotely control specially designed bodies that fulfill various requirements.

This special feature made the robots one of the most powerful races in the origin realm, for they would only lose bodies, but never their soldiers. Furthermore, through extremely optimized learning algorithms, the robots would quickly adapt to any battlefield and dominate their foes.

In their history, they had never suffered a real defeat. Yet now, due to an inconspicuous planet, they had suffered innumerable damage. Many of the robots in the pool suddenly felt unsafe and demanded a retreat so that their souls could be stored in a more secure facility. Some, however, demanded revenge and retribution. As always, they would make a decision based on the available information and on a vote.

Then, one of the leaders would make the decision, usually completely ignoring the result of the votes.

Though their origins were artificial intelligence, there was no part of that definition which required them to be rational or logical.

Though, for once, the leaders put aside their boundless arrogance and began to investigate the actual cause of the attack. Not only had it caused immense damage to many souls, it had caused a disruption in their remote network. It would take a short while to get it back up.

That was a real problem for them, since their extremely dominating and provocative attitude meant they ended up in a lot of wars.

Finally, after identifying the original target of the attack, they were able to find a recording of the robot that soul in particular had been piloting. Soon, they came across its teleportation to the Midnight Inn and everything that followed.

Clearly, this organization was not interested in their friendship, nor did they hesitate to cross them once they felt provoked.

"Send this footage back to the main SCS galaxy. They need to know of this threat, and come up with a way to block such attacks in the future."

Obeying the echoing voice, one of the robots logged into the Henali portal and began transmitting the information. To be clear, they didn't send a file through the portal. Instead, they asked the portal to send the information. The portal itself was a part of the largest and strongest sentient machine. The Henali had only rendered its services to maintain its portal. After all, like Ballom was the leader of the devils in the origin realm, the machine controlling the portal was the leader of the robots in the origin realm.

Shortly after, the Henali portal transmitted a few instructions.

"Do not retaliate against the Inn," it said. "According to the Henali database, the owner of that organization is a Dao lord - one that isn't afraid to make a move himself."

Suddenly, all the robots who had been clamoring for revenge froze. If robots could soil their pants, this would be the moment it would have happened.