He ran toward the robot, brandishing his sword and saying to himself, "I’m sorry, my son. I have failed you. I did not keep my promise. I hope you will forgive me one day, but you will surely remember your father as a hero who sacrificed his life for your future and the future of humanity."
Li Kang advanced and pressed a button on the suit. The suit began to inject him with painkillers and stimulants that stimulated his weakened body and increased his speed along with the suit’s speed. His sword clashed with the large robot’s two swords. He took an aggressive and violent attack stance, like an Asian lion hunting its prey, while the robot began to block his successive blows one after another. If someone had been watching them, it would have seemed that their swords had turned into ten swords from their speed. Kang increased his speed, and the robot pursued his blows, blocking them one after another, until Kang cut off the robot’s left hand. He was about to stab it in the chest, and he did, but the robot returned the stab as well. He spat blood from his mouth into his helmet, while the robot malfunctioned and its circuit went out. They both fell to their knees and leaned on each other, remaining in this position, two still, unmoving bodies.
The army continued its attack on the robots until they had eliminated all of them. They fell to the ground, exhausted, not believing that they had won this fierce battle.
The soldiers praised themselves and their comrades and exchanged jokes and laughter in joy for this victory. One of the soldiers stood examining the area and saw what had happened to Li Kang. He ran toward him to check on him and found that he had passed away. He said, smiling a smile mixed with sadness and sorrow, "What a great person you are. We will not forget you as long as we live, and we will immortalize your memory in all our hearts for what you have given us. If it weren’t for you, we would not have come out of this predicament alive." The source of thɪs content is 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝⟡𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕥⟡𝕟𝕖𝕥
One of the soldiers shouted loudly, "Our first victory over the damned machines!"
The soldiers cheered joyfully, but then they remembered their victims, and their joy quickly faded, and gloom took its place. They began to divide themselves into groups and search for any survivors or wounded. After a long search, they found only three wounded soldiers, while the rest had passed away. They carried them and collected their bodies to bury them, but they could not remove the suits from them. They began to try to figure out how to take them off, but to no avail.
"Is there a way to take off this suit from the outside?" one of the soldiers said with some anxiety. "I mean, we haven’t taken it off since we left Atlantis."
Another soldier looked at him with confusion. "I don’t know. Maybe it can only be removed from the inside. And since the person wearing it is dead, we can never take it off him. And I don’t like the idea of trying to take it off now. We don’t know if the air is suitable for breathing or not!"
Everyone was silent for a moment. All the bodies had been gathered in front of them, their suits completely shattered and destroyed, but the soldiers saw them regenerating slowly. They decided to bury the soldiers in them, as there was no other solution. And so they began to dig the graves to bury the victims. Their numbers had reached thirty soldiers. After they had checked their identities and they were all buried, one of the soldiers said in a sad tone, "We have lost more than half the soldiers, and we have lost the captain as well. I think we should go back to Atlantis and tell them what happened. Enough reconnaissance casualties."
Another soldier said in a reproachful tone, "And will we let their sacrifice go in vain? We must complete our mission."
"Isn’t what has happened so far enough for you? Many of us have been killed, and we don’t know what we will face next! It is possible that we will not reach our goal. The deeper we go, the more the danger increases. And we don’t even know what we will do if we reach our goal. The capsule is with the captain, and the captain has disappeared!"
"Then we will look for him until we find him."
"And what proof do you have that he is still alive?! His signal has been gone for a while, and there is no trace of him or those who went with him. Maybe they were all eliminated by the robots that attacked us just now. Don’t you see that despite our numbers, we were crushed? And we were almost destroyed if it weren’t for Li Kang. So what about the captain, who has only two soldiers with him? Just two soldiers! Don’t you think his death is certain?!"
"Don’t assume he’s dead. Maybe he went through another path and moved away from us, so his signal disappeared."
"And maybe he is dead. Also..."
And before he could finish his sentence, he was interrupted by the sound of metallic footsteps moving in the forest in large numbers. "It’s another batch of machines," one of the soldiers said in fear, his body trembling. "My God, we won’t survive this time."
Another soldier replied nervously, "We have to get out of here! We won’t survive this time! We have to escape now!"
All the soldiers agreed with his opinion and fled, moving away from the source of the sound quickly. They headed toward the forest that Ali had headed to before. Before they reached it, the robots came out into the clearing and began to fire at them. Some of the soldiers began to turn and return fire to give the others a chance to escape, but they were shocked by the large numbers of robots. They heard the sounds of their footsteps shaking the forest from every direction, and the sounds of large footsteps moving, and a continuous metallic screech, and the trees of the forest shaking, trembling, and quaking before these huge numbers.
"What in God’s name is happening here?" one of the soldiers screamed as he ran. "How many of them are there?"