CHAPTER 61: METAL AND FLESH

He hadn’t seen it coming, but deep down, he already knew.

It had to be the Shadow Goblins. Gripping his sword tightly, he activated his armor. With his Kinetic Absorption ability at the ready, he felt a measure of confidence, it would soak up most of whatever impact was coming his way.

The chittering was deafening now. Tatehan stood his ground, tense but ready.

Paranoia ate at his mind, but it sharpened his focus. It kept him on edge, the kind of awareness where even the drop of a pin could set him off. A state of alertness that felt almost instinctive and automatic.

The chittering broke into a loud thud!

The thing— or things (definitely things)— was now at his back, ready to smash him.

He felt a hit before he could react. Tatehan fell to the floor, the Kinetic Absorption doing its work.

[70 percent absorbed]

[30 percent impacted]

Well, he’d been expecting to feel real pain, but there was only a slight pang in his body, and that was it.

He held his sword and faced what had hit him. But as soon as his eyes met what he was about to fight, he couldn’t help but go completely speechless.

’What the hell...’

Words flashed across his retina, so quickly a normal human wouldn’t have caught it, but he did and absorbed it instantly:

[Monster Name: Shadow Goblins]

When the first human colonies on Mars fell apart, countless machines were left behind, drones, harvesters, mining rigs, half-buried in red sand. Over time, a strange symbiotic organism emerged from the microbial layer beneath the Martian crust. It fed on the electrical residue those machines gave off: battery acid, oil, and lingering charge, and began fusing itself to the metal.

What crawled out of that fusion was no longer flesh or steel, but both.

Each Shadow Goblin was a malformed fusion of alloy and sinew, red-brown muscle married to scorched scrap metal. Plates of rusted armor grew directly from its back and limbs as natural exoskeleton. Wires hung from their spines like tendons, twitching when they moved. Their faces were almost featureless except for jagged, serrated teeth made of broken machine parts, shards of gear metal that ground when they bit.

Their eyes glowed faintly, not from biology but from tiny nodes of trapped circuitry still alive within their skulls, the light flickering erratically like dying bulbs.

They couldn’t shapeshift like the symbiotes Tatehan had read about in comics back on Earth. Whatever fusion process created them had locked them into this permanent, grotesque form. They moved on all fours, with scraping metal claws that left bright gouges in the rock. Despite their rough construction, they were fast— darting, unpredictable, almost animalistic, but they still thought before striking.

The symbiotic core that sustained them (the one Tatehan needed to power up the motorcycles) still fed off residual energy from machines. They stalked wrecks, crashed ships, and dead colonies, anywhere they could siphon the faint electric taste of life. When power was low, they went dormant, blending into the wreckage like broken parts until a vibration or energy surge woke them.

The nickname "Shadow Goblins" came from early scavengers who had stumbled upon these creatures half-buried in junk piles. At first glance, they looked like hunched silhouettes scavenging like goblins in the dark. Then the metal shifted, and screamed.

Tatehan didn’t know where all this information had come from. He was surprised when he just felt himself knowing things.

[Congratulations, host. You have absorbed information on the monsters.]

Tatehan’s grip on his sword had lost some of its earlier confidence.

But Tatehan wasn’t frightened by what they could do to him. He was frightened by how they looked.

How could things be this grotesque and disturbing to look at?

This was the most nightmarish thing he’d seen since arriving on Mars. The sight was one capable of spooking a child to instant death. And he’d thought the Brutenecks were worse.

Well, would you look at this... this nightmare of a sight.

The Shadow Goblins only stared at Tatehan, unmoving. It had been just four seconds since he saw them and began all these thoughts. That was how fast he could comprehend and analyze things.

Words now appeared across his retina:

[Name: Shadow Goblin]

[Type: Bio-Mechanical Predator]

[Threat Level: Moderate]

[Traits:]

- Symbiotic fusion of flesh and metal

- Razor-edged teeth and claws

- Hunts in coordinated packs

- Drawn to electrical and kinetic energy

[Abilities:]

- Energy Siphon

- Metallic Regrowth

- Chitter-Link (pack communication)

[Weaknesses:]

- Limited endurance

[Recommendation: Eliminate quickly. Targetchest core for optimal damage.]

Tatehan stared at the words and then at the creatures’ chests. He could see an outline of a core in the middle of each of them.

He nodded. No wonder the Spaceship’s AI had said they should be almost easy to defeat, even though it had never seen what they looked like before.

His system also placed them at "Moderate," meaning he would have difficulty fighting them but the odds of winning were significantly higher.

If they had been placed at "Easy," he would’ve fought them with one hand in his pocket, without the armor even.

But if they were placed at "Hard," then he would panic a lot and fight with precise caution.

If placed at "Extreme," that would mean running away. He couldn’t take that risk.

To his surprise, the Shadow Goblins still hadn’t made the first move. They didn’t even twitch or move slightly. Were they really this smart?

He decided to replay their profile in his mind before making the first move, and what caught his attention more than anything was the term Energy Siphon.

What exactly was an Energy Siphon?

His system quickly replied with words across his retina:

[ABILITY IDENTIFIED — ENERGY SIPHON]

[The Shadow Goblin entities are capable of extracting stored power from armor and weapons upon contact.]

[Effect: Gradual depletion of kinetic reserves and electrical output.]

[Recommendation: Avoid prolonged grapples. Maintain distance and be swift and precise with attacks ]

"The fuc—"

One of the creatures charged, teeth wide open...