Caeden should have expected this. The Revolution was obviously pulling out all the stops in this attack. Bringing in their ethertech abominations was perfectly in line with everything they had done so far. More than that, this one was a step above Kevin. Kevin's body had maintained a human profile so that holograms could cover his body and hide his monstrous appearance.

This machine-man was on a whole other level. It was much bigger in every sense, both taller and wider than a normal man. It's body bristled with weapons and ethertech of all kinds. This wasn't an infiltration unit, meant to hide among humans. This was a weapon of war wrapped around a man. Without Forged Infinity, Caeden would have already been cut in half by a dozen thermal lasers. They were orders of magnitude stronger than anything Kevin had produced when they fought, excluding the massive attack that nearly ended Caeden's life.

This absurd spawn of an unsound mind had stepped out of the Core Seat the second Caeden's breach team had subdued all the revolutionaries outside. They hadn't known what hit them with a dozen teachers and Caeden himself blasting past their defenses and closing into melee range faster than they could fire. All their heavy-duty ethertech was useless when they couldn't respond fast enough to get it working.

That shoe had ended up firmly on the other foot once the abomination arrived. It announced itself by nearly cutting a teacher in half with a six-foot-long cleaver that constituted the end of one of four 'main' arms out of the couple dozen that bristled off its immensity. At the same time, it blasted out with these thermal beams at random until Caeden charged forward and took its focus.

He had Forged Infinity expanded into a tower shield, 025. It covered even his enhanced golden body. Luckily, it seemed that whatever add-ons this abomination had over Kevin, it wasn't as intelligent. It seemed content to keep Caeden pinned down under its lasers rather than try for a more effective attack. Then again, It had a dozen other weapons to fight the rest of their force, so maybe it didn't need to do anything else.

Gritting his teeth and pushing forward, Caeden activated a mnemonic. "Strength Form." The least used of his form mnemonics, Strength form, caused his muscles to swell and bulk up, the tendons highlighted in purple as they grew. It was a rare occasion where Caeden found his golden body too weak for the fight at hand. But the pressure of so many beams slamming into his shield was enough to push him back.

With his further increased strength, Caeden pushed forward. At the same time, Sky and Snowball fired blasts of their unique flames from above and to the side. Caeden hoped it would force the abomination to dodge, but it simply raised two of its myriad extra limbs and created glowing force shields. The blasts washed over them, only making the shimmering hexagons dim slightly.

It raised one of its main arms, one with a set of six rifle barrels, and pointed upward toward Sky, flying overhead. The barrels started to rotate, and a moment later, a stream of supersonic metal blasted out with an ungodly brrrrr the likes of which Caeden had never heard. He could feel that sound in his bones. Caeden could see the practically solid line of bullets ripping through the air, chasing after Sky.

But the Stellar Roc was incredibly fast. In fact, she slipped around the fire, dipping, and diving around it, almost dancing with the deadly line following her every move. Nothing about the situation seemed to bother her in the slightest. Of course, the abomination wasn't done there. It aimed another thick, stubby arm at Snowball, which started to glow with visible heat waves rolling off it.

Caeden didn't have access to his aura to confirm anything, but he would guess that the attack it was preparing was similar to the one Kevin hit him with. Despite being a big lovable fluffball that liked to sleep, Snowball wasn't stupid. Thick swathes of ice started to cover his entire front from his torso and forelegs to his face until a massive wedge had completely engulfed his front half.

The shot came, and it was even stronger than the one that Caeden barely survived. It was a dense, dark red ball of raw heat that slammed into Snowball's ice shell, causing a massive steam explosion that completely obscured the giant monster bear. Caeden worried for a brief moment before the fog condensed down into a short-lived rain cloud and fell to the ground. Snowball was fine, shaking his snout and huffing in annoyance.

Both of Lily's bonded had done admirably to handle the attacks aimed their way, but Caeden knew neither of them could sustain that indefinitely. He was slowly creeping forward, pushing against the dozen arm-thick beams of thermal energy pushing him back. With the power of Strength Form, Caeden could have taken this pressure at a sprint, but he didn't want to reveal that just yet.

The abomination was a bundle of mysteries. Revealing his full potential right off the bat was a recipe for disaster, especially when Caeden was certain the machine-man had more secrets of his own.

"Cae, I think I have an idea." An almost invisible cloud next to him spoke. Caeden hadn't known where Lily was once the fight started, but it seemed she had spent the time well if she had an idea how to beat this monstrous Revolution weapon. He was stumped.

"Lay it on me." He grunted, settling Forged Infinity against himself.

"It seems to automatically respond to every threat equally. I don't think it delineates between the slightest attack and the most threatening one. If we can hit it over and over from different angles at different times, it'll spread its damage over a wider area. Enough that you can slip through and finish it. If you can take it out." The last sentence was more of a question.

Caeden flexed his newly reconstructed left hand. "...If you get me an opening, I'll take it out. Though I don't think It'll survive like Kevin did."

"What exactly do you need?" Lily, lovely as she was, didn't even question his certainty.

"I just have to get close without worrying about it pulling some bullshit super attack from nowhere."

"I'll get everyone moving." And she was gone.

It wasn't long before Caeden saw the plan in action. Suddenly, the abomination was pelted by attacks on all sides. Except it was being hit with a barrage of pebbles, sticks, and other small debris. Things that would never harm the mostly metal creation. Its response was both disproportionately violent and exactly what Lily had predicted.

Every single arm spun, firing its own weapon out toward every possible attack. Dozens of hatches and hidden patches opened to release a hundred projectiles that exploded, burned, melted, and pierced. Everything from gouts of flame to massive arcs of electricity scoured the surroundings. It gouged up the grounds and burnt the air. At the same time, several of the beams holding Caeden back peeled off to aim in other directions.

Seeing the opportunity, Caeden crouched, bracing against his shield. He needed to close the remaining fifty feet before the abomination had time to react and re-focus on him. He took a deep breath. Golden-purple mist leaked from the corner of his mouth. "Break."

Power surged, rough and uncontrolled, down Caeden's legs and through his muscle. With a muffled boom, he launched forward, crossing the distance in a blink. Forged Infinity slammed into the abomination's bulk, causing it to stagger under the impact. It was only a momentary lapse but more than enough.

Caeden flexed, manipulating his momentum through sheer strength. He levered himself over his shield and plunged his left index and pointer finger into the nearest bit of flesh he could see.

What happened next was the culmination of Caeden's exploration of his newly formed body parts. When he achieved his Embodiment, all the damage he had suffered from fighting Jawrule and Kevin was restored to perfect health, along with the missing portion of his left hand.

But those sections weren't just restored back to normal. Instead, aspects of his Embodiment remained in the flesh. Most of the fleshy parts of his left arm and leg, as well as his entire left hand, were coated in red scales. The same color as Sharp's manifestations. Additionally, his index and pointer fingers, the previously missing digits, ended in long, sharp points.

Originally, Caeden thought they were talons or claws. But his Embodiment was a couatl, which didn't have claws. And the aspects his adapted flesh gained had to come from his Embodiment. He wouldn't randomly get wings if his Embodiment was a Cerberus, so he couldn't have talons if his Embodiment was a Couatl. So they had to be something else.

Some critical thinking and a small test were enough to figure it out. They were fangs. Fangs with venom. So when Caeden's fingers punctured the abomination's flesh, he injected a small dose of it into the machine-man. The effect was immediate and just as terrifying as Caeden would have guessed from the results of his small test.

Right around the puncture wound, thin slices of flesh sloughed off, falling to the ground. The effect spread, coursing through the abominations' own veins and causing its form to unravel like a ball of yarn, falling into wet, fleshy confetti. Even the metal sections weren't spared, shavings filing off bit by bit as more and more of the Revolution creation was torn apart from the inside. Soon, all that was left was metal shavings, thin stripes of flesh, and buckets of blood all in a pile.

This was Caeden's true gain from reaching Embodiment. His Couatl form, and his finger fangs by extension, had a virulent, devastating venom. A Sharp poison that caused whatever it came into contact with to sharper drastically, beyond all natural limits. If someone were to touch the metal and flesh in that pile, it would be like a bed of razors. Caeden's poison caused the abomination's body to literally cut itself apart as the unsharpened flesh came into contact with the magically altered parts.

It was horrifying, and Caeden was loath to use it on another person. But the living weapon had been strong enough to threaten their entire group in their aura-less state. Sparing whatever mind was left would risk everyone else. It was an awful choice, but one Caeden felt he had to make, and one he'd make again if necessary.

Caeden took a brief moment of grim satisfaction over his success, only to look toward the Core Seat and see another abomination in the lobby, weapons pointed squarely at him. He didn't have time to think before a blue blur passed by him and slammed into the machine-man.

It was Asherta. She grabbed ahold of what passed for the abomination's head and gripped it in her dragon claws. Unlike the last time she used her shroud, only the head froze while the rest of the living weapon kept moving. A dozen arms were pointed at the dragon-woman.

Caeden wasn't about to let her pay for saving his life, so he shoved as much shroud as he could into Forged Infinity and rapidly shifted it into form 448. Launching it forward with all his strength, a red-tipped javelin tore across the distance. The abomination wasn't blind to the threat, despite its head being affected by Asherta's shroud. It fired several weapons to deflect Caeden's.

It was only partially successful. Instead of hitting center mass, Forged Infinity caught one of the machine-man's primary arms, the heart cannon. Stabbing deep, the javelin wasn't done. 448 was one of Forged Infinity's temporary effect triple-digit forms. The javelin expanded, growing to double its original size and warping the arm beyond usability.

Despite the damage, most of the abomination was unaffected. But the attack had succeeded in redirecting its attention. Once more, a multitude of weapons focused on Caeden. But Asherta and his attempts to play hot potato with the abomination's attention had bought enough time for the rest of the team to step in. Two teachers, one formshifted into a type of luminescent crystal and the other made of molten glass, stepped in front of Caeden to take the hits.

The barrage slammed into them, but both the teachers were hardly affected. They were blown apart and melted but replaced the lost mass by generating more material to fill the gaps. A privilege Caeden did not have with his shrouds. Object shrouds truly had some amazing benefits of modifiers.

Finally, Asherta completed her work. She de-aged the abomination's head out of existence, taking it back to before it was a head. The loose metal and portions of a human skull fell to the ground. And the second abomination fell. Asherta collapsed with it, sighing and flashing a few hand signals.

"She says she's empty for now. Affecting living things is hard for her." Lily appeared next to her, letting go of her formshift. She had spent some of the week it took to get back to Central City creating a basic sign language to communicate with the dragon-woman.

"I'm not going to begrudge her a nap; she saved my life." Caeden shrugged. "Thank you as well." He nodded toward the teachers.

"It's supposed to be our job to teach you and keep you alive to the best of our abilities. This isn't a ranking day, and these aren't other shrouded. As far as I'm concerned, we're just doing our jobs." The crystal man shrugged.

"Still, thanks." Caeden entered the familiar lobby he had been through so many times. It was amazing how much this hall had become familiar to him in just a few months. "Well, shit. It's supposed to be below, right?"

Another teacher, this one a humanoid beehive, stepped forward. "I wasn't directly involved, understand. But I'm aware of the general location of the ether engines for this Seat. They're supposed to be essentially directly below the elevator banks."

"How are we supposed to get down there?" Another teacher asked. Not everyone had been looped in on the plan.

Caeden held up his hand, Forged Infinity flying back into it. He clicked another button, and the dial rolled to 048. Portions of the lance expanded or contracted, and Caeden was holding a spear with a spiral head. Almost like a drill. It even had a crank in the handle to spin the head. Another click, and the dial read 488. The drill head expanded massively, portions around the hand crank growing and shifting. Two handles emerged.

"This is how we do it." Caeden revved his personal drilling rig.