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The trespassers were still coming closer. Hector knew he'd have to make a decision sooner rather than later. Were they hostile? Were they not? If he gave them a chance to explain what they were doing here, he'd be giving up the element of surprise, which could lose him the fight. And by extension, all of Warrenhold. And all of Atreya. And Lorent, too, for that matter.

Yeah. Those stakes were a little too high.

Abolish or not, if these people didn't have ill intentions, then they shouldn't have been trying to sneak up on him like this.

Hector inched a bit closer without coming out from behind the last iron wall that stood in between himself and them. Technically, there was one more wall but it wasn't iron. It was Warrenhold's original wall, the old and dilapidated one made out of crumbling stone. In fact, once they passed that broken wall, they would officially be too close, Hector decided.

He put a few iron cubes into orbit around himself as he waited for them to cross that arbitrary line. He removed the Amir-10 from his back and fitted it over his left forearm.

It was a bit of a pain to carry the thing around with him all the time since he couldn't materialize it like he could with the Amir-9, but hopefully, he'd get used to having it there.

The first of the trespassers crossed the broken wall, Hector sensed.

Hmm.

Maybe he could test these fuckers before going all out. See how they reacted to a sudden noise behind them. A small clattering of iron pebbles.

Ah. The sound made them all stop and turn to look. The iron was already dematerialized, though. Nothing to see over there, guys.

They didn't immediately attack the noise, at least. That was something. Not much, but something. It meant they were calm. Not jumpy.

Experienced, most likely.