An abject lesson. This creature was weak because of its distance from perfection. It only took a glance to see where it was going; it took only a little pattern recognition to see where its path would end. The logic of each choice inevitably pushed it into the next one. The chain of decisions lead inevitably back towards the crab. Every hour it spent as its own creature was an hour wasted and when it fought its competitor crabs they would kill it with experience. That is -

- Tragic? 

Inevitable. 

There was no progress on Roevg, in Zaldar. All of science had existed in the palm of some great hand, and then it had been turned loose upon itself. The Consortium looked forwards to next year's designs, next year's products, but on Roevg the gods would arise when lightning struck the mountains and civilization cowered in their shadows. It had been a world stuck in time forever, a broken mechanical species as doomed as the protocrab to never escape its evolutionary niche. It had triumphed over the dynamism of Hybrasil because while they formed their contradictory, exploratory clans, their clash of different visions, the Zaldarians had fought using tactics honed for centuries -

- And the Aeteline.

...

Which was new. Manufactured in the Imperial Forge, a crowning glory of the Evercity. A brand new creation that -

- An ancient curse. When the creators of the Zaldarians went to war they did not do so with a circus of half-tamed godbeasts, they made reflections of themselves on macro scale. They were their own gods. It was a return to ancient tradition that granted true strength, the warfare of the creators -

- Did they win their war?

...

- Did they predate the sage Zaldar?

Request tactical assessment of situation.

The Aeteline would be best served by a medium chassis replacement matching the functions for which it is optimized. Such a limb is not guaranteed to exist in this environment; matching weight classes are likely to be digitgrade or other incompatable structural arrangements. Advise harvesting the protocrab due to convenience, using excess time to allow automated systems to partially integrate the limb, then leverage that into harvesting a more appropriate limb from our next round opponent.

Commencing takedown.