Cora spotted the source of the noise almost immediately.

  A robot with only half its body left was still clinging to life long enough to yank the base alarm.

  She sighed, unimpressed, and fired a single beam. The broken machine collapsed into scrap.

  Too loud. She preferred quiet.

  Wildfire stood in the center of the Agriculture Base, huge and heavy, and turned in place. Its crimson sensor-eyes swept the compound. Across Cora’s cockpit display, a holographic blueprint bloomed into view—an interactive 3D map of the entire facility.

  She froze the image, zoomed in, and grinned.

  Two mech icons—both marked as Tiger units—glowed on the schematic.

  So that’s where you’re hiding.

  Stay right there. I’m coming.

  Cora’s eyes lit with an almost hungry excitement as she guided Wildfire forward. Devour, devour… Even if those Tiger mechs were antiques, they were still mechs. They’d better count.

  The two Tiger pilots had been knocked unconscious the moment the protective dome shattered. The low-frequency shockwave had taken them out before they could even reach their cockpits. With no human operators, the machines were inert.

  They did have onboard AI—but it was cheap, low-tier stuff. The kind that couldn’t fully boot combat systems without a pilot.

  So the two thirteen-meter, fifty-ton mechs crouched in their hangar like squat steel hills, motionless and waiting.

  Their armor plating was thick, seamless, and brutally efficient—built to shrug off ordinary weapons. At this level of local tech, you didn’t “break” a Tiger mech with a beam rifle or an energy cannon. You needed specialized equipment: a cutting laser, a magnetic line splitter—

  Or you did what the humanoid mech downtown had done.

  You got close, and you drove a high-frequency blade straight into the cockpit.

  Wildfire paced around the two inert Tigers, circling them. Every so often it tapped their plating with a heavy knuckle, as if testing melons at a market.

  Nothing.

  No weak point.

  No obvious “mouth” for this so-called devouring.

  The Tigers’ dim red optics blinked faintly, almost smug. Like seasoned masters surrounded by enemies, refusing to move.

  Cora stared at them, utterly stuck.

  How exactly was she supposed to devour a mech?

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Was Wildfire supposed to bite down—crunch, chew—swallow steel—then… what? Digest it and spit out a pile of scrap?

  The mental image turned her stomach.

  Disgusting.

  She shook her head hard, trying to fling the thought away.

  Then the system spoke.

  “System scan initiated: Primitive mech. No rank. Low-tier AI core. Equipped with beam rifle and energy cannon. Energy reservoir at full capacity.”

  “System analysis initiated: Primitive mech. Armor contains Violet Moon alloy—compatible for Wildfire’s structural repair. Power source: constant-light energy—compatible for Wildfire’s energy reservoir.”

  Cora’s eyes widened.

  Apparently she’d hesitated too long. The War-God System had decided to take over the explanation portion of the program.

  “System disassembly and absorption initiated.”

  Wildfire lifted both arms.

  Its massive hands settled onto the tops of the two Tiger mechs—palms pressing down, fingers splayed. Heat flared along its fingertips, a bright crimson glow like fire caught beneath glass.

  The moment Wildfire made contact, the Tigers began to shudder.

  At first it was subtle—a tremor that could’ve been written off as vibration.

  Then it intensified, rapidly, violently. The two “steel hills” that had been so calm a second ago now shook as if they were being ripped apart from the inside.

  Inside the Tigers, their AI cores panicked. Data streamed across empty cockpit screens, alarm code dumping in frantic cascades.

  An automated voice shrieked into the void:

  “Orange alert. Hull integrity compromised. Metal structure undergoing decomposition and extraction. Danger. Extreme danger.”

  No one was there to respond.

  Their pilots were unconscious elsewhere in the compound, bleeding from the ears. The machines could only scream warnings until their own power failed.

  “Orange alert. Hull integrity failing. Energy reservoir being siphoned. Danger. Extre—”

  The voice cut off mid-word.

  The Tigers’ lights went dark.

  Where their plating had once gleamed with cold, hard reflections, the shells now looked dull and lifeless—brownish and dead, like the barren soil of Nina Station.

  Cora stared, stunned.

  She’d driven Wildfire for over a decade in her old life. She knew every system it had—every quirk, every weapon mount, every hidden compartment.

  And she’d never—never—seen it do this.

  This wasn’t combat.

  This was predation.

  Wildfire didn’t destroy.

  It harvested.

  Like a parasite drawing blood from a body, it siphoned the very best parts out of another machine—armor material, refined elements, even the energy reservoir—taking the essence and leaving the husk behind.

  Cora could only watch, mouth slightly open.

  The system’s voice cut through her shock.

  “Refining alloy particles. Filtering impurities. Refining constant-light energy. Condensing usable power.”

  The alloy those Tigers were built with had once been valuable—an early-generation hull metal mined from the violet world everyone now called the Witch Moon. It had been coveted, fought over, and nearly exhausted before newer composites replaced it.

  Wildfire was extracting it—

  And then refining it again.

  Just to patch its own damaged plating.

  Cora’s excitement spiked so sharply it was almost pain.

  Back in her pirate years, she’d tried to identify what Wildfire’s armor was made of. She’d never cracked it. All she’d ever known was this: Wildfire’s shell was tougher than anything else she’d ever seen.

  And now she was watching it become even better.

  “Refining complete. Wildfire’s left wrist damage repaired. Energy condensed. Wildfire’s reservoir replenished. Remaining energy: 30%. Continue replenishment.”

  “Mission progress update: 0.1/100.”

  Cora froze.

  “…What?”

  Two Tiger mechs. Two full devours.

  And she got 0.1?

  A laugh almost burst out of her, except it would’ve sounded dangerously close to sobbing.

  So it wasn’t “devour a hundred mechs.”

  It was more like… devour two thousand.

  Cora’s vision swam.

  System, you absolute monster, she thought wildly. Where do you expect me to find two thousand mechs standing politely in a line, waiting to be eaten?

  And Wildfire—

  Your appetite is insane.

  In her head, one word surfaced—an insult the Alliance used for people beneath them.

  Glutton.

  Except right now, she had no hesitation using it on her own mech.

  A mech with a bottomless stomach.

  A true, unapologetic eater.