Episode-807
Chapter : 1613
The alchemists looked at each other. They were terrified of him. The man who had made soap and jokes was gone. In his place was a machine made of flesh, driving them toward a horizon they couldn't see.
"Go!" Lloyd barked.
They scrambled away. Lloyd was left alone with the hum of the Golem Heart and the ghosts in his head. He looked at the railgun prototype. It was ugly. It was blocky. It was perfect.
"Physics," Lloyd whispered to the empty room. "The only law that doesn't care who your father is."
The offensive systems were finished. They were brutal, loud, and effective. But Lloyd knew that offense wasn't enough. Roy had offense. Roy had Sovereign spirits that could crack the sky. And Roy had lost because he had no defense against the conceptual cheating of the Devil King.
Lloyd stood in front of the chassis of the suit. It was hanging from heavy chains in the center of the lab. It looked like a skeleton made of midnight.
"Defense," Lloyd muttered, circling the hanging metal bones. "Armor isn't enough. Lucifer crushed fifty men with gravity. He ignored a mountain falling on him. I need a shield that isn't a shield."
He walked over to a blackboard covered in frantic scribbles. In the center was a diagram of the "Soul Catcher"—the forbidden artifact Jager and Kael had used to trap him.
"The Soul Catcher created a field that negated spiritual connections," Lloyd said, tracing the lines of the diagram. "It created a dead zone. A vacuum where magic couldn't exist."
He tapped the chalk against the board. Tap. Tap. Tap.
"If I can invert that..." Lloyd mused. "Instead of a field that traps me, I create a field that pushes everything else away. A 'Null-Field.'"
He grabbed a fresh sheet of paper. He began to draw a generator. It would sit in the chest of the suit, right next to the Golem Heart.
"It will project a short-range frequency," Lloyd mumbled, his brain firing neurons like a gatling gun. "Anti-mana. It disrupts the waveform of external spells. If a fireball hits the field, the mana binding the fire destabilizes. It doesn't block the fire; it deletes the magic keeping it burning. The fire just... goes out."
He looked at the chassis. "But the suit itself... if I use standard steel, Lucifer can rust it. If I use standard magic alloys, he can suppress them. I need a material that is spiritually inert. Something that has no soul, no connection to the earth, no resonance."
He went to the materials stockpile. He found the crates from the North. Star-Frost Ore. It was a rare metal found in meteorites that had crashed into the frozen wastes.
"This stuff fell from space," Lloyd said, picking up a chunk of the jagged, cold metal. "It doesn't belong to this planet. It doesn't answer to the Lodestone. It has no magnetic signature."
He carried the ore to the furnace.
"But it's brittle," Lloyd noted. "I need to temper it. I need to bind it."
He activated his own Void Power. The Steel Blood. Usually, he used it to manipulate existing metal. Today, he was going to use it to forge.
He tossed the ore into the crucible. He cranked the heat. As the metal turned to liquid silver, Lloyd extended his hand. He didn't use tongs. He used his will.
He poured his own energy into the molten metal. But he didn't push his spirit into it. He pushed the concept of emptiness into it. He used the cold, dead calm he had found in the crypt.
"Be nothing," Lloyd commanded the metal. "Be a void. Be a wall that nothing can pass through."
He poured the metal into the molds for the armor plates. As they cooled, they didn't shine. They turned a matte, light-absorbing black. They looked like holes in the world.
He touched one of the cooled plates. It felt cold, even though it had just come out of the fire. He tried to push a small pulse of mana into it. The mana slid off like water off a duck's back.
"Perfect," Lloyd whispered. "Spiritually inert armor. Immune to sealing. Immune to rust. It's just... stuff. Hard, cold stuff."
He moved to the final, most dangerous step. The Golem Heart.
It sat on a pedestal, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic light. It was the battery. It was the brain. But it was also a wild variable. It had belonged to Anubis's daughter. It had a will.
Chapter : 1614
"I need you to listen to me," Lloyd said to the stone heart. "I need you to know who you are fighting for."
He picked up a scalpel. He didn't hesitate. He slashed his own palm. A thick line of red blood welled up.
He held his hand over the Golem Heart. He let the blood drip onto the ancient stone.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
This wasn't science. This was old magic. Blood binding. It was dangerous. It linked the user's life force to the artifact. If the artifact was destroyed, the user died.
"I am binding you to my DNA," Lloyd said, his voice shaking slightly from blood loss and exhaustion. "We are one organism now. You pump the power. I steer the ship. We share the rage."
The blood hit the stone and hissed. It didn't run off. It was absorbed. The pulsing light of the heart changed. It shifted from a soft white to a deep, angry crimson.
The Golem Heart beat faster. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
It synced with Lloyd's own heartbeat. He could feel it in his chest, a second rhythm, heavy and powerful.
He staggered back, wrapping a rag around his hand. He felt dizzy. He felt sick. But he also felt... powerful.
He looked at the suit. The black armor plates were being bolted on by his automated Echoes. The railgun was mounted on the shoulder. The Vibro-Blades were sheathed in the forearms.
It was ugly. It was brutal. It was a desecration of the elegant, magical aesthetics of this world.
"It's a monster," Lloyd said, a grim smile cracking his dry lips.
He slumped into his chair, his vision blurring. He had been awake for four days. His body was shutting down.
"Just a little longer," he whispered, closing his eyes. "Just a little longer, Jasmin. Then we go hunting."
He passed out in the chair, his bandaged hand hanging limp, while the red light of the Golem Heart pulsed in the darkness, watching over its creator like a loyal, mechanical dog.
________________________________________
Three weeks. It had taken three weeks of blood, sweat, and absolute obsession.
The manufactory lab was silent. The alchemists—Alaric, Borin, and Lyra—stood against the far wall. They were silent, their faces pale mixtures of awe and terror. They had helped build it, but looking at the finished product, they felt like they had committed a sin against nature.
In the center of the room, suspended by heavy industrial chains, hung the Aegis Mark I.
It was eight feet tall. It was too big to be a man, too small to be a giant. It was a humanoid shape, but distorted, bulked up with layers of matte-black Star-Frost armor. It didn't reflect light; it swallowed it. It looked like a shadow that had been given weight and mass.
The shoulders were massive, housing the recoil dampeners for the railgun mounted on the right side. The arms were long, ending in articulated hands that looked strong enough to crush a diamond—a thought that made Lloyd wince every time he had it. The legs were thick, piston-driven pillars designed to absorb the impact of falling from the sky or landing a jump capable of cracking the earth.
There were no glowing runes. There were no elegant golden filigrees. There were exposed hydraulic hoses, cooling vents, and exhaust ports. It looked industrial. It looked like something built in a factory to destroy a city.
Lloyd stood before it. He had shaved his beard. He had washed his face. He wore a simple, tight-fitting black bodysuit woven with silver threads—the interface suit.
"It's finished," Lloyd said. His voice was quiet, but it carried in the silence.
"It's... terrifying," Lyra whispered.
"Good," Lloyd said. "It should be."
He walked around the machine, inspecting it one last time. He checked the ammo feed for the railgun—a belt of depleted Star-Metal slugs. He checked the coolant lines for the Vibro-Blades. He checked the seals on the cockpit.
"This isn't just a suit," Lloyd said, running his hand along the cold, black metal of the leg. "It's a coffin for my enemies. And maybe for me, if I messed up the math."
He looked at Borin. "Is the fuel mixture stable?"
"Stable is a strong word, Master," Borin said nervously. "It's... contained. But that mixture is potent enough to launch a castle into orbit. If the containment field breaches..."
"I know," Lloyd said. "I explode. I accept the terms."
He looked at Alaric. "The Null-Field generator?"