Slicing the metal beasts in half hadn't been enough to kill them, even when he saw – with his own eyes – both of their massive bodies fall apart with a single use of Dismantle. Somehow, their mechanical innards crawled towards and grasped each other, mending the perfect slash he'd carved upon their bodies. And, within moments, the metal giants were healed and had resumed their battle, completely ignoring his presence. He wasn't sure if they were ignoring him or if they simply hadn't noticed him at all; both possibilities were similarly amusing. With a grin, however, Sukuna rent both beasts asunder with Dismantle, but – this time – activated a thousand fold for a thousand slashes across their massive bodies.

The mountain behind them disappeared, undone by the ferocity of Dismantle. And the mechanical beasts themselves fell apart into heaps of cackling metal and arcing energies. Walking towards the automatons, Sukuna let loose a slow stream of Cursed Energies unto them and, through that stream of Curse Energy, he noted the complexity of the mechanical beasts, the tiny parts that fit so perfectly together and were so intricately crafted they couldn't have been made by human hands, but someone or something definitely created these. Machines didn't just pop up in the woods. They were designed, created for a specific purpose and that purpose was likely... well... violence.

At the center of their bodies, which was something he noticed only now, was a core of sorts, spheres, now reduced to tiny shreds of what they'd once been, that probably held the energies that kept them running – their fuel, a golden liquid substance that was no seeping into the soil, emitting a pungent odor that was unlike anything he'd ever known.

Fascinating.

Were there more of these things running around the surface of the entire world? That would make things exciting, he supposed, until he found a way to get to the humans who were underground. He was more than capable of just boring a hole through the earth with Dismantle, but he also didn't want to risk collapsing whatever structures they'd built under there. After all, if the humans all died because the ceiling fell on top of them, then he'd be very upset and very bored, and he really didn't like feeling either of those things. The faintness of their Cursed Energy signatures also indicated that they must've been at least twenty kilometers down, which meant... yeah... no.

So, Sukuna figured he'd just have to find the long way through, because there just had to be an entrance somewhere.

Hmm... considering the absolute lack of any form of infrastructure, finding an entrance to a subterranean human kingdom of some kind might actually be rather difficult and, frankly, time consuming, like looking for a single thread of hair in a field of grass; oh, he'd find it eventually, but finding it would be an absolute slog.

Once, long ago, when he still hadn't attained his title as the King of Curses, when Ryomen Sukuna was not yet a name that inspired fear and terror to all who heard it, he'd been given the task of finding a single shrew, one that was marked with a particular symbol, that'd been released into a great and thriving forest. The task took him nearly a year, but he found it, eventually. And by then he'd been forced to live in the woods, foraging and hunting to survive.

Fun times.

Eh, whatever, he wasn't in any hurry anyway. Now that he knew that the surface was, indeed, inhabited by massive, violent beasts of metal, he wouldn't be bored for a while, that and all the mysteries that'd suddenly cropped up in his mind, questions that needed to be answered in due time.

Sukuna bent down and picked up a curious mechanical piece that'd drawn his attention, but not his curiosity. It was a claw, he mused, massive and curved, easily sharp enough to cleave through even the toughest forms of armor, though – to be entirely fair – the forms of armor that he was familiar with weren't exactly sturdy. No amount of bronze, copper, or iron could stand up to the claw he was holding now. Shrugging, Sukuna walked up to the nearest bolder and ran the sharpened tip of the claw against its surface. Miraculously, the claw sunk incredibly easily into solid stone, like a heated knife against soft bean curd. "Heh, I'm keeping this thing."

It'd make for an interesting weapon when his Cursed Techniques became dull. After all, when facing against mortal armies with no sorcerers, Sukuna almost never made use of his Cursed Technique for two reasons: it killed humans way too quickly and that was just boring, but also because humans already didn't stand a chance against him, which made it somewhat pointless. Why use Cleave or Dismantle when a single normal punch from him was enough to shatter a human's entire skeletal system into dust?

A weapon, a mundane one at that, made things more exciting, even if only by a little bit. The claw in his grasp was about fifteen inches long, though it might've been even longer when it was still attached to the feline-shaped mechanical beast. Yeah, it definitely used to be a lot longer. Still, it'd make for a fine melee weapon, despite its lack of a proper handle or hand guard, like holding a sword that was all-blade and no grip. Definitely a fun little handicap for when he encountered the humans underground... just as soon as he actually found a way to get to them that did not involve a whole lot of digging.

Smirking, Sukuna spun the weapon in the air, before catching it. He then looked down and frowned. He had no clothes and, thusly, nowhere to actually put the blade on. He'd never been one for propriety and there had been plenty of times when he'd strolled around in the nude, but, in this case, a strap would've been nice. But, eh, whatever. It wasn't as though he didn't have hands to carry it with. And he couldn't exactly make use of his true form without the husk of his former corpse; for all intents and purposes, the body that he had now, the inhuman child he'd awoken in, was his permanent form. "Oh well, you win some and you lose some."

Just as he took a single step forward, however, the sky rumbled. Sukuna's head snapped upwards, his senses, honed from hundreds and hundreds of years and thousands of battles, roared like blazing flames. And from the dark clouds descended a smooth, featureless black disc, massive in size, larger than even a castle and just as silent as stone. Sukuna whistled and smiled. Amazing. Simply amazing. What a wondrous machine. For it couldn't be anything other than a machine, could it not? This was no natural occurrence. Fascinating. Did that mean that everything in this planet was mechanized in some way? In his lifetime, the most advanced technological thing he'd ever seen was a wooden puppet that kind of mimicked a person's movement with a series of joints and locks and levers. But this... and the metal beasts... all of this was something else entirely.

Just where was he?

And how did he get here?

"Intruder alert!"

Sukuna raised a brow as an emotionless and toneless voice thundered from the sky. Damn. If the peasants saw this sort of thing, they'd get on their knees and bow and think it was some sort of god. But he knew better. He was a sorcerer, after all. And supposed miracles and acts of divinity were usually just some random asshole making use of sorcery to make himself feel special or look cool. In a similar vein, the thing before him was nothing more than a machine – impossible advanced, true, but a machine, nonetheless.

"And?" Sukuna grinned. "What are you going to do about it?"

He couldn't underestimate this thing and treat it like a mortal enemy. No, he was going to fight it as he would another sorcerer. Cursed Energy flooded his form as he augmented his already superhuman body. It might've been far stronger than he ever was, Sukuna mused, but no amount of physical superiority could hold a candle to Sorcerous Augmentation.

"Inhuman Intruder Detected! Anti-Invasion Protocol initiated! Iron Legions Activated!"

"Hoh... Iron Legions, huh?" Sukuna raised a brow as the ground rumbled and trembled beneath his feet. In the distance, entire mountains began to collapse into rubble, shattering like brittle glass as the quaking intensified. But, aside from that, nothing was happening just yet; so, Sukuna waited. Based on the terminology used, Legion implied numbers, which meant an army would probably be sent after him. Iron implied the use of metal, which likely and very simply meant that the individual units of said army would be comprised of the same metallic beasts that he killed earlier or something similar to them. What really caused his attention, however, was the alert. Inhuman Intruder as opposed to a human Human Intruder? It implied something, but he wasn't entirely certain as to what it meant; it was possible that it simply detected his status as a Sorcerer, but that didn't sound quite right. After all, no matter what they claimed and how superior they felt, Sorcerers were really just humans with the ability to manipulate Cursed Energy; rip the skin away and the insides were the same.

A great cloud of gray dust surged out of the crumbling and shattering mountains, blanketing a large area around him. But Sukuna could only grin. For hidden behind the veil of smoke and dust was army that was marching towards him. He heard them, their metallic footsteps echoing against the ground, the rumbling of the earth as thousands and thousands walked as one. It almost reminded him of that final battle he fought against an army of sorcerers, weaklings and fools, who believed that superior numbers was enough to challenge the King of Curses. Well, they were wrong. And he'd slaughtered plenty of armies.

Red eyes appeared in the smoke. And Sukuna barely had time to move as a barrage of hateful crimson beams reduced the spot he'd been standing in into a crater of boiling rock. The beams moved faster than he did. It was only his instincts that allowed him to move before they were ever fired. But, damn, those beams were blindingly fast. If he hadn't reacted preemptively, then he would've been toast. The required temperature to reduce stone to lava immediately was immense, enough to just burn people into hot dust.

Sukuna's eyes narrowed as the red-eyed figures finally emerged from the smoke. Immediately, he noted that these ones were not in the shape of beasts. In fact, if he squinted his eyes, he could almost mistake them for freakishly tall humans in misshapen skeletal armor. For they were, indeed, borne in the shape of humans, but also... different in many ways. Obviously, their bodies were hewn entirely of some dark and matted metal – not quite steel nor any metal that he knew of, though Sukuna would readily admit that he didn't really know much about metals. And each of them looked identical to each other, even the weapons they carried looked exactly the same.

And, when they attacked, they did so in perfect synchronicity that, admittedly, Sukuna found strangely beautiful. They raised the smoking, tube-shaped weapons – for the implements couldn't be anything else – and, very briefly, took aim. Sukuna grinned as he surged left, right, up and down, his body moving faster than it ever could've. The crimson beams of scorching light zipped past him, each one mortally dangerous in a way he'd never encountered before. As soon as his feet met the nearby wall and he bent down, ready to jump right off once more, one of his legs disappeared in a shower of smoking blood and gore and ashes. Sukuna's eyes widened.

That... had never happened before.

He'd never been injured to this extent before; at least, not on purpose.

He still jumped off, however, as a single missing leg hardly counted as an obstacle. And it wasn't anything he couldn't fix with Reverse Cursed Energy. Sukuna spun and, with a tiny gesture with his pointer finger, bisected hundreds of the humanoid machines with Dismantle.

The key here, it seemed was to keep moving.