JIEHONG SMILED AND SAID, "Sure thing. I was about to say, I should take lead," he spoke as he unfurled his buckler. Zan watched as its size increased several times over.

  "Strategy, then. We enter the room. Carefully observe the enemy's movements. Respond in kind. I am going to be glued to that room. We aren't moving ahead until we know what we're dealing with. Slow and full, go?" he said.

  "Right!" "Right!" came back to him twice. With Whiskey at his back, they entered the room, making sure no new Poison Needle fae infested the door.

  "None. Good," he observed as he held onto Jie's back -- his exosuit cage, specifically -- and rapped with his finger thrice. They advanced three paces. Perhaps a meter in total? He was not good with math and distance, so he did not know.

  The space they entered looked hardly different from any of the other spaces they had found while in the few dozen odd room structure. Terminals like tombstones dotted the room. A pathway leading from the entrance to the center of the room dominated one's attention encouraging them forward. With the machinery in the room interspace from each other at intervals, moving between the 'tombstones' -- whatever the machine blocks were -- would be difficult. Not impossible to move between them, though, he said under his breath, then loudly to his team.

  "I wouldn't be able to follow you," Jiehong said.

  "Shet. That's true. You're way too bulky with your suit on... probably too bulky out of it, too," Whiskey said. "What even is this place? What are these things taking up the space?"

  Per the norm, a Screen Master had the answer. Although it was Simulacrum, this time, who answered. "The machines you are referring to are called 'Data Slabs.' Their function is to store and encode so-called 'Virtualities' within their magically crafted hard drives. It is difficult to explain without your understanding of basic coding principles."

  "I think I get it. Data-memory--coding, it's all part of the machine stuff you Wardens' use, and which let you create things like our bikes and my headset?" he asked point blank.

  "Correct. It would be preferrable for them to not be damaged during the fight," Simulacrum said.

  Noted, he thought.

  Ignoring the gravestone-like 'data slabs,' he returned his full attention to the centermost point of the room and carefully led his team. Until he gained perspective of the enemy, and his headset could see, scan, and recall the fae-constructs they were to face, he did not know what lay in wait for them. 'Would new fae enemies present themselves?' which he would have to learn and counter on the fly, or would the foes ahead be variants of already faced fae, such as the Poison Needles and Space-Fillers?

  Several steps later he had his answer. His headset went off.

  [Fae Detected: Fatal Graze x4, Space-Filler x 3, Unfun Gas x 2, Combat Drone x 2]

  He stared at the enemies ahead then back to the notifications. He couldn't believe it. Eleven enemies!

  "Guys, you seeing this?" he asked his teammates.

  "Yeah. We see it," Jie said, ahead of him. "Yup," Whiskey also replied at his back. "There's so many," he said, ending the chain of remarks.

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  Around the central pillar, a block, square beam, the eleven enemies congregated in a tight formation. Unfun Gases could be seen to the left and right of the beam respectively. According to his HUD, the four Fatal Grazes stood one to a corner. While of the three Space-Fillers, two were to the far left and right respectively, flanking, even, two Combat Drones. The final Space-Filler stood directly ahead of the group, facing them, as though it knew them personally and wanted to personally deck them out. 'Any more steps will probably engage these fake monsters. Are we ready?'

  He knew they were ready. "Jiehong? You ready? Straight up go ham on the Space-Filler there, at the formation's tip?"

  "That sounds good, but how about this? We take it together, quickly destroying it, and then we lob our grenades at the rest?" Jie proposed.

  "Crap! I nearly forgot! We have grenades! Whiskey, you remember how to use the grenades, right? It's been a while since we practiced..."

  "Yeah. I remember. I will hold my barrage in check until we can assess the damage from Jiehong's assault. If that's fine with you," she said.

  "Yeah. Fine by me. Okay, Jiehong. Keep an eye to the enemies to see if they come at us, but let's take that Space-Filler out!"

  He and his brother charged the first Space-Filler. What they expected to happen was the Space-Filler dying instantly from a single blow of Jiehong's war-axe. Instead, the Space-Filler pushed itself ahead and, for lack of a better word, tackled Jiehong's chest, shoving him back multiple paces, of this despite his exosuit. Glimpsing the fae closely, he was happy to see the tackle came with a toll: at its own bodily expense, he realized, the fae had tackled Jie as he watched a patch of hardened refuse fall away from the Space-Filler's body and to the floor.

  However unexpected the Space-Filler's tackle had been, that did not stop him from jabbing his sword, almost by reflex alone, into the Space-Filler. It did not do much damage, he knew, but it broke its defensive layer. Which was the important bit as the penetration would not go unnoticed by the fae, which would give Jiehong time to recover and launch his assault anew.

  Which happened exactly as he thought a breath later when Jiehong -- missing not even a step -- recovered before he could topple backward and used a twirling spin to redirect the momentum from the Space-Filler's tackle back into the Space-Filler, his axe a tornado of doom as he performed his impromptu hurricane whirl. Dashing to the side and into the data-slab sprawl, he took care not to disrupt the delicate wiring coming out the sides of the slab. He evaded his brother's spin-attack with a glancing margin of error. But evading it, period, was all that was important.

  Reclined in safety some steps away and to a crouch, he saw the axe tear into the Space-Filler. Then, balancing firmly in front of the fae with both his legs like a staunched oak in an ancient wood, Jiehong withdrew his axe then slammed it down twice into the Space-Filler, destroying it totally.

  Seeing his opportunity open, Zan fingered his grenades and withdrew one, thumbing the pin. "Ready?" he shouted to Jie.

  Seeing his brother thumb a grenade as well and seeing the many remaining fae-constructs now turn their attention to the interlopers, it was now or never! He pulled the pin and lurched it ahead with a flick of his wrist. Jiehong did the same. With his fingers in his ears and his face away from the blast site-to-be, he still was not prepared for the chaos which two exploding grenades unleashed.

  Everything broke. His sense of smell, orientation, vision -- everything which made him navigable broke.

  The next thing he realized was being pulled out of the room by Jiehong. He tried to stand up but his ears ringed like an angel chorus telling him to fall flat on his ass like a chump. "W-what...?" he stuttered.

  How long passed he couldn't say. He saw Whiskey guard the doorway, firing arrows toward the remaining fae.

  He saw his teammates speaking. He heard a rumble in his ear. But he still couldn't -- a bright and warm glow to his side, he felt suddenly.

  "There? You better, mate?" Jiehong asked. "I used some healing magic on you. You good?"

  Slowly coming to a stand, least he did so too quickly and fell yet again, he did feel better. "Slight ringing still. Otherwise, I feel not bad? Anxious, maybe?"

  "Good, we still have a good number of those to destroy, it looks," Jie replied.

  "Oh? Really? That sucks. Lemme see," he said, creeping his head toward the messy, chaotic room. Only a little smoke remained in the room; although the grenades were powerful weapons, they did not leave much in the way of smoke or fire. Once he got a good look, he saw it was exactly as Jie told and his HUD confirmed -- the majority of the fae remained alive and well.