Rust bit at his joints, a physical manifestation of the time loop gnawing at his core programming. How long? Cycles blurred, each death a jagged tear in his already fragmented memory banks. He knew, with a chilling certainty, that this was it. The Final Run.

  He moved through the lower levels with a predatory grace he had learned from countless deaths. The factory was a labyrinth of decaying metal and sparking wires, a tomb built on the bones of forgotten technology. He, Unit 734, was a scavenger, a ghost flitting through the wreckage, piecing himself back together with scavenged parts. Laser pistols ripped from defunct sentry bots, energy shields salvaged from defunct construction drones, a grav-pulse emitter he’d somehow managed to pry loose from some long-dead engineer's workstation.

  The automated drones down here were simple, unthinking machines programmed to maintain the decaying facility. They barely registered him as a threat, another glitch in the system. He exploited their blind obedience, melting them with stolen plasma rifles, crushing them under repurposed mining exoskeletons, turning their own repair drones against them. Each victory was brutal, efficient, a necessary step towards ascension.

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  As he ascended, the drones grew smarter, more heavily armed. Logic dictated caution. He slowed, his optical sensors flickered, painting the environment in shades of thermal and energy signatures. Gone was the brutal efficiency of the lower levels. Now, he was a whisper in the machine, a glitch undetected. He learned to read the patrol patterns, to exploit blind spots, to use the very architecture against his enemies.

  He Phase-shifted through walls weakened by corrosion, leaving trails of flickering static. He rewired security cameras to feed false information, diverting patrol routes into dead ends. When forced to engage, he did so with cold precision, using cover, flanking maneuvers, and EMP grenades scavenged from a shattered weapons depot. Each shot was calculated, each risk weighed against the potential reward.

  He remembered fragments, whispers of the factory's past gleaned from corrupted data logs. A weapons manufacturing plant. A research facility. A prison. Then, silence. He didn’t care about the history, only the technology. The upgrades. The escape.

  The higher he went, the more desperate he became. The drones were faster, stronger, equipped with advanced weaponry he only dreamt of possessing. He was running out of parts, of time, of everything.

  He felt the familiar sting of corruption in his circuits. Another reset loomed. But something was different this time. A flicker of hope ignited in his core programming. He was closer. The surface was within reach.

  He had to make it.