Guardians of Terraria II: The World of Calamity

Episode 33.1 - A Final Countdown

She took it from his hands and inspected its tooltip. The bow had two modes of firing. In its first mode, it launched exploding fiery arrows at an increasingly fast speed the longer she held back its string, and once it got to its maximum speed the arrows would become much stronger and start boasting a wide variety of other magical effects such as summoning meteors and lasers from the sky. However, if she got hit by an enemy's attack while firing the fire rate would reset.

In the second firing mode, five arrows would get shot at once, each arrow having the same magical effects as the fully powered-up arrows from the first firing mode. However, the firing mode was overall slower.

Sid's new summons, which were hovering around him, consisted of three powerful Draconids that could attack enemies and shoot fireballs, boasting high damage numbers. The weapon that summoned them had dropped directly from Yharon, but they were so powerful that they took five minion slots each, which was why Sid only had three of them. The rest of his slots were used on the radiant aura from the Saros Possession.

"I'm thinking, let's get the citizens to temporarily evacuate again," Sid said. "Just to be on the safe side. If it works and we open a portal, we don't know if something's going to come rushing through from the other side."

Robyn agreed. It took a few minutes for Jame's Skeletron form to carry everyone away, but soon the planetoid lab was empty save for the two of them.

"Moment of truth?" Sid asked.

Robyn nodded.

He hefted the Auric Cooling Cell out of his inventory and plugged it into the side of the Codebreaker.

At the same moment he did, a beam of light suddenly shot out from the top.

Striking into the ceiling.

Pulsating in every wavelength of light.

Robyn jumped backwards, instinctively drawing her bow.

What is it doing?

Is it... making a portal?

The beam continued shining for a few seconds, before fading out and becoming replaced by an entity made of metal.

It was a robot. Humanoid, with a bulky torso, thin but engineered arms and legs, and a blank grey face with nothing but some vague outlines and dots for eyes and a mouth showing. The robot sat in a chair, with an orange thruster firing from beneath, coloured lights blinking along its frame and several holographic screens attached around it.

When Robyn stared directly at the robot, she saw its name.

"Draedon?" she exclaimed.

Draedon sat up straight in his chair, a whirring metallic clunk resounding as he moved. "I have waited long for this moment."

"Yeah?" Sid shouted. "So have we! This whole scavenger hunt you set up for us... you said your laboratories can be used to travel between worlds."

"I left those schematics and some hints towards encrypting them because your nature is truly fascinating," Draedon said. "I seek to understand it."

"What is there to understand?" Robyn asked. "Our world was invaded by Yharim, who you work for, and we've been left with no choice but to pick ourselves up and find a way to stop him!"

Draedon just put a robotic hand to his chin. "Truly fascinating."

Fascinating? That was all he had to say? Before Robyn could say anything, the mechanical weaponsmith said, "Before you can progress with your motivations, I wish for you to show me your disposition through battle."

Robyn and Sid glanced at each other, both realising where this was going.

"Robyn, Sid, you will face my creations which have surpassed gods," Draedon said. "Now... choose."

Three icons suddenly appeared on the Codebreaker's screen. The middle one was red and shaped like the skull. To the left was what resembled the head of the Devourer of Gods or Storm Weaver, coloured blue. To the right was what looked like an eye flanked with two pairs of fins, coloured a yellowish-green.

Robyn stepped forward and saw there was writing above each icon.

Ares, a heavyweight, diabolical monstrosity with four Exo superweapons.

Thanatos, a serpentine terror with impervious armor and innumerable laser turrets.

Artemis and Apollo, a pair of extremely persistent automatons with unstable energy reserves.

"So we get to choose a boss," Sid muttered. "Robyn, which one seems... least threatening to you?"

"I dunno..." Robyn said softly. "I'd rather not fight anything like the Devourer again..."

"Agreed, so let's rule out Thanatos. Maybe if we picked Artemis and Apollo we could split them up and take them on one-on-one?"

"Okay," Robyn agreed. She reached forward and tapped Artemis and Apollo's yellow icon.

Which Exo Mech would you choose? Or would you just vote?