The second the Skyreach Fury locked onto the landing pad, Zayla, Sarak, Elder Carl, and the rest of the core crew waiting on the ground rushed the ship. Every single pair of eyes burned with anticipation for the legendary “Old Capital.”
“How did it go? Boss, what kind of payload did you haul back?”
Sarak practically vibrated with excitement, rubbing her grease-stained hands together as she tried to peer past me into the cargo bay. “Did you secure blueprints for ancient cannons that can level mountains? Or an infinite-energy reactor core?”
Zayla caught my grim expression and instantly read the room. “The technology in the Old Capital... It’s massively superior to ours, isn't it?”
I let out a heavy sigh.
“The tech tree out there is several dimensions above ours. But unfortunately, we came back empty-handed.”
Watching the absolute disappointment crash over their faces, I rubbed my throbbing temples.
“The security clearance on their core mainframe is astronomical. Mykra only managed to pull a surface-level diagnostic on the data structure of their ancient ordnance right at the absolute limit of our operational window. He couldn't extract the hard drives. Worse, to stop two awakened railguns from turning us into mist, we were forced to detonate a load-bearing wall and permanently seal the entrance.”
“We didn't come back completely empty-handed.”
Mykra stepped out of the airlock. He rubbed his heavily bloodshot eyes, his voice raspy but carrying the distinct, fanatical edge of a hacker who just cracked a major firewall.
“We didn't secure the complete schematics, but I memorized the foundational logic of their energy shields! That hardware isn't pure magic. It utilizes high-frequency acoustic waves synchronized with micro-mana resonance to forcefully deflect kinetic impacts. If we can just...”
WHRRRRRRR————!!!
Before Mykra could finish his sentence, the agonizing, ear-shattering wail of the absolute highest-tier physical anti-air siren suddenly exploded across the skies of Skyreach!
The sound shattered the calm air, making every single heart in the plaza seize up.
“What the hell is that?!”
Zayla instantly drew her twin blades, her amber slit-pupils snapping toward the southern horizon.
I sprinted at full speed up the steps of the primary anti-air tower.
On the previously clear southern horizon, a massive, apocalyptic yellow sandstorm was currently churning, blotting out the sun.
Emerging from that rolling wall of sand, three unimaginably colossal ancient magical warships—shaped like inverted pyramids—were slowly advancing, rojecting a suffocating aura of dread. The hulls of the warships were ringed with blinding golden runes, generating an energy output so terrifyingly hot it visibly warped the surrounding air.
And down on the dirt, accompanied by the earth-shaking, thunderous grind of heavy treads and massive hydraulics, five colossal steel leviathans were on the march. They were significantly larger and carried exponentially thicker armor plating than the mechs we had encountered in the Old Capital. Crushing the wasteland rock beneath them, they formed a highly aggressive wedge formation, driving straight toward the mouth of the Blackrock Gorge.
Jasta scrambled up the tower right behind me, his face completely drained of blood. Pointing a trembling finger at the terrifying tide of steel rolling in from the South, his voice cracked:
“That’s the Golden Emperor’s 'Golden Vanguard'... They aren't here to negotiate!”
The old fox swallowed hard. “The Emperor definitely intercepted intel that we granted asylum to the Fourth Prince—the Viper Prince. He deployed the Royal Family’s most elite execution squad!”
On my retinas, the UI panel was running frantic optical scans on the approaching mechs:
My stomach hit the floor.
Over 300mm of homogenous steel armor, stacked beneath high-frequency deflector shields capable of bouncing armor-piercing rounds.
If we engaged them on an open plain, Skyreach’s current artillery batteries firing against their full-power shields wouldn't even qualify as scratching the paint. It would be a mathematically guaranteed, one-sided slaughter.
Just as my brain shifted into overdrive, desperately calculating exactly how many lives and tons of high explosives I would have to burn to bridge this massive firepower deficit, an unexpected figure stepped onto the observation deck.
It was Selena.
The former Storm Empress was still wearing her rough canvas prison jumpsuit. The heavy Mana-Inhibitor bolted to her neck still blinked with a steady red warning light.
But right now, her eyes were completely stripped of her former hollow arrogance and the humiliation of a POW.
Replacing it was the absolute, freezing wrath of vengeance born from a completely shattered faith.
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“Builder.” Selena stepped up beside me, staring at the Golden Fleet in the distance, her voice like cracking ice. “You are a tyrant, but you did not lie to me. Those humans in the South are nothing but thieves who stole the Creator’s legacy. And we... we were just consumables used to run their data tests.”
She turned her head, locking her silver eyes onto mine. “Disengage my collar. I will fight for you.”
“How exactly do you plan to single-handedly block five Reaper-Class mechs and three warships?” I looked at her, stating the cold, hard physical facts.
“I don't need to block them.”
Selena let out a cold laugh. A cruel, predatory curve formed at the corner of her mouth. For the first time, she truly projected the terrifying aura of a commander who had dominated the sky for two centuries.
“I know the resonance vulnerabilities of high-tier mana shields. Mykra’s reading on the foundational logic is correct.”
She pointed down at the roaring industrial sector of Skyreach. “If you hardwire me and every single storm crystal in Skyreach directly into your power grid, I can initiate a targeted 'Anti-Phase Magnetic Storm'.”
“It will introduce catastrophic mana turbulence into the energy shields those massive iron blocks are so proud of. I'll crack their shells wide open!”
It was an incredibly high-risk gamble.
The second I popped that collar and granted her access to Skyreach’s massive power grid and mana reserves, her output capacity could instantly generate a localized hurricane. She could easily wipe out half the city and drag all of us down with her in a suicide strike.
I turned my head and looked at Zayla.
The Cat-kin Queen carried a massive, bloody vendetta against Selena. But right now, gripping her twin blades and meeting Selena’s gaze, Zayla didn't utter a single word of protest. The absolute survival instinct of a wasteland predator told her that Selena’s killing intent was currently aimed purely at the false gods in the South.
“Mykra.” I didn't waste oxygen on debate. I issued the direct command.
Click.
Mykra stepped up, his fingers flying across the collar’s keypad. The heavy inhibitor hit the deck, the red light dying permanently.
A massive, long-suppressed tidal wave of mana violently flooded back into Selena’s chassis. Her long silver hair whipped frantically around her, despite the dead air on the tower.
I spun around and slammed my fist onto the city-wide broadcast comms button, my voice cold and absolute:
“Zayla, patch through to Brad! Roll every single 120mm rifled cannon out of the bunkers! Direct fire trajectory!”
“The second Selena scrambles their mana shields, load the tungsten-steel armor-piercing rounds! Aim dead for their treads and cockpits, and hammer them into scrap!”
...
Outside the gorge, yellow sand blotted out the sky.
The Golden Empire’s warships held position at a safe distance. An arrogant, magically amplified voice rolled across the wasteland like thunder:
“Surrender the traitor Viper! Drop to your knees and accept the baptism of the Sun God’s fire, you beasts of the North!”
No one answered.
At the bow of the three colossal pyramid warships, a terrifying, pure-white luminescence began to gather. The high-energy particle main cannons were spooling up. The sheer magnitude of the energy output was so massive it caused the air at the edge of Skyreach to visibly warp and ripple like water.
“Now!”
Standing on the highest anti-air tower amidst the howling gale, Selena threw her arms wide.
Every single steam generator in the city was forcibly synced to the grid. Under her command, the massive stockpile of storm crystals was violently, recklessly fused together, completely disregarding all safety tolerances.
This wasn't a spell cast without a price.
BOOM! BOOM!
The massive mana blowback instantly overloaded several steam generators near the tower, resulting in violent, localized detonations that sent pillars of fire into the sky.
Selena violently coughed up a massive mouthful of blood, staining the front of her canvas jumpsuit. But she held her ground, her eyes turning bloodshot from the extreme internal pressure.
“Shatter... NOW!!!”
She let out a harrowing, agonizing roar, violently hurling an unimaginably massive, anti-phase deep-blue magnetic shockwave directly into the five ancient mechs and the warships hovering in the sky.
ZZZZZT————CRACK!!!
It sounded exactly like a massive soap bubble being popped by a highly sharpened needle.
The absolute defense shields the Golden Empire was so incredibly proud of—barriers capable of deflecting cataclysmic spells—were violently slammed by an anti-phase energy turbulence on the exact same frequency. The surface of the shields instantly erupted in a blinding cascade of electrostatic sparks.
Then, the impenetrable blue forcefields flickered frantically, destabilized completely, and went permanently dark!
Even the main cannons spooling up on the warships were forced into an emergency abort due to the sudden mana short-circuit, emitting an agonizing, grinding mechanical screech as the firing sequence jammed.
The Golden Empire mech pilots plunged into a brief, localized panic. For the first time in two millennia, they were operating on the wasteland completely exposed, stripped of their “Divine Aegis.”
I didn't miss that fleeting, fatal tactical window.
Standing at the command console, I violently chopped my arm down.
“Open fire!!”
Inside Blackrock Gorge, twelve steam-powered 120mm rifled cannons formed the firing line. They roared in synchronized, deafening fury.
Tungsten-capped armor-piercing slugs tore from the barrels, leaving thick contrails of white smoke in their wake. Driven by raw, brute kinetic energy, they slammed into the now-naked ancient mechs.
BOOM! CRUNCH!
The deafening shriek of violently tearing metal echoed through the gorge.
However, this was not a one-sided slaughter.
Even stripped of their magical shields, the foundational physical armor plating of the [E.D.E.N. Reaper-Class Mechs] was despairingly thick.
Our armor-piercing rounds successfully snapped the heavy treads off the two leading mechs, even shattering their secondary batteries, paralyzing them, and forcing them to spin uselessly in the dirt. But the rounds failed to achieve full penetration of the main armor to trigger a fatal internal cook-off.
And the remaining three mechs, recovering rapidly from the initial shock, instantly demonstrated the terrifying suppressive firepower of ancient technology.
They didn't fall back. Instead, they leveled their absurdly massive physical heavy machine guns and remaining shoulder-mounted artillery, unleashing an absolute torrential downpour of high-explosive ordnance directly onto the Skyreach defensive line.
“Take cover!!”
Brad roared, violently tackling a wounded Wolf-kin behind a wall of sandbags.
In less than thirty minutes of brutal counter-battery fire, two of Skyreach’s outer anti-air towers were completely blown to rubble. Brad’s pride and joy—the heavy infantry defensive line—suffered catastrophic casualties.
Severed limbs and shattered armor littered the dirt. The agonizing howls of Cat-kin, Bear-kin, and Wolf-kin mixed with thick, burning black smoke, turning the gorge into an absolute hellscape.
Grinding my teeth, I stared dead at the UI panel, watching my ammunition reserves burn down to critical levels, and the casualty metrics spiking high enough to physically hurt my brain.
That massive ancient beast had only taken a few superficial scratches, and we were bleeding out. If we maintained this head-on war of attrition, the fragile foundation Skyreach had fought so hard to build would be completely ground into dust in a matter of hours.
Just as both sides locked into an incredibly brutal, meat-grinder exchange of firepower—just as the Skyreach defensive line was on the verge of total structural collapse, and I was seconds away from authorizing Sarak to detonate the gorge and bury us all in a mutually assured destruction protocol—
The three pyramid warships in the sky suddenly launched highly visible yellow signal flares.
It was the Golden Empire’s flag for ceasefire and negotiation.
Immediately after, the magically amplified broadcast echoed again.
This time, the Golden Empire commander’s voice was completely stripped of its previous absolute arrogance. It was grim, heavy, and carried the distinct, forced tone of a tactical compromise:
“This is the Third Prince of the Golden Empire. I am ordering a ceasefire.”
“You have proven with those crude metal tubes that you are not standard beasts.”
“Send a representative. We will negotiate the price for Viper.”
The roar of artillery slowly died down, leaving only the agonizing groans from the trench line and the crackle of burning wreckage.
I gripped the railing of the anti-air tower—the metal still blisteringly hot from the shockwaves of the barrage. Looking at the burning ruins and the paralyzed ancient mechs stalled in front of our lines, I let out a massive, exhausted breath.
At the very least, using artillery, tungsten steel, and blood, we had forcefully blown open the doors to the high-and-mighty negotiation room of the false gods...
And dragged up a blood-soaked chair for ourselves.
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