Episode-810
Chapter : 1619
Atlas looked down. It saw the tiny, fleshy speck standing in its crater. It let out a sound that wasn't a roar, but the grinding screech of an earthquake. It raised a foot—a block of stone the size of a small house—and brought it down.
Lloyd didn't move. He didn't use his Void Steps to dodge. He didn't summon his spirits to block. He wanted to feel it. He wanted to know if he could take it.
"Steel Blood," he whispered.
His skin turned a dark, metallic grey as he reinforced his entire skeletal structure with Void energy. He raised his arms in a cross block above his head.
BOOM.
The impact was cataclysmic. The ground beneath Lloyd liquidated. He was driven into the bedrock like a nail. The shockwave blew the dust away for a hundred yards.
Darkness swallowed him. The weight was unbearable. It felt like the entire world was pressing down on his forearms. His bones groaned. His muscles tore. But he held.
He gritted his teeth, blood leaking from his nose. "Is that... all you got?"
He pushed. With a scream of effort that tore his throat, he surged upward. The giant’s foot shifted. Lloyd rolled out from under the stomp, gasping for air. He was battered. He was bruised. But he wasn't broken.
"He is durable," Fang Fairy noted, sounding terrified. "But Master, you cannot fight that with just your fists."
"Watch me," Lloyd spat.
He charged. He couldn't fly, and he couldn't jump high in this gravity. So he climbed. He latched onto the rough surface of Atlas's leg and began to scale the giant. Atlas swatted at him with hands like wrecking balls. Lloyd moved with desperate, jagged movements, dodging the blows that would have turned him into paste.
He reached the giant's knee. He activated his Steel Blood again, turning his fist into a solid hammer of steel. He punched the stone.
CRACK.
A small spiderweb fracture appeared on the granite. It was tiny. Insignificant. Atlas didn't even seem to notice.
"Again," Lloyd growled.
He punched again. And again. And again. His knuckles split. His blood mixed with the stone dust. He didn't stop. He turned off his brain. He stopped thinking about strategy. He stopped thinking about the Aegis suit or the Devil Race. He just focused on the simple, brutal act of hitting a rock until it broke.
Atlas roared and shook its leg, dislodging Lloyd. He fell twenty feet, slamming into the ground. He bounced, rolled, and immediately scrambled back up.
"I'm not done!" Lloyd screamed at the giant. "I'm not done with you!"
He charged again. The battle turned into a grueling loop of violence. Climb. Punch. Fall. Repeat. It went on for hours. Lloyd’s body was a map of bruises. His energy reserves were critically low. But his will had calcified into something harder than the giant’s armor.
He climbed back up to the knee. The crack was bigger now. It was a fissure.
"You think you're tough?" Lloyd shouted, tears of frustration and rage mixing with the sweat on his face. "You think you're hard? You're nothing! You're just dirt! I am Ferrum! I am Steel!"
He poured the last dregs of his Void power into his right arm. The steel coating glowed red-hot from the friction and pressure. He pulled his arm back and delivered a final, haymaker punch into the fissure.
KRA-KOOM.
The sound was like a gunshot in a cathedral. The fissure exploded. A massive chunk of granite sheared off the giant's leg. Atlas stumbled. The colossal spirit lost its balance. It tried to catch itself, but its own mass worked against it.
It fell.
The earth jumped ten feet into the air as the Titan crashed down. Dust billowed up like a mushroom cloud.
Lloyd stood there, swaying on his feet. His hands hung uselessly at his sides. He watched as the dust settled. Atlas was lying on its side, groaning with the sound of shifting gravel. It tried to rise, but its leg was shattered.
Lloyd walked over to the giant’s head. He looked into the glowing yellow eyes. There was no malice there. Just the slow, patient acceptance of the earth.
"You're strong," Lloyd rasped. "But I'm stubborn."
He placed his hand on the giant’s forehead. The spirit acknowledged his victory. It dissolved into a stream of heavy, golden-brown particles that flowed into Lloyd’s chest.
[SYSTEM ALERT: Spirit Acquired. ATLAS - The Earth Titan.]
Chapter : 1620
Lloyd fell to his knees. He had won. He had the spirit. But it wasn't enough. He looked at his hands. They were still shaking. He was still small. He was still vulnerable. He needed to be more. He needed to be the mountain.
________________________________________
Lloyd sat in the dust of the Valley of Giants for a long time. He drank a stamina potion, the bitter taste grounding him slightly. His physical wounds were healing thanks to his passive regeneration, but the exhaustion went deeper than muscle. It was in his marrow.
"We should go back," Fang Fairy suggested gently. "You have acquired the Colossus. That was the objective. You need rest."
"No," Lloyd said. He stood up, his joints popping. "The objective wasn't to catch a pet. The objective was to become invulnerable."
"You can't be invulnerable, Master," Iffrit said, his voice surprisingly serious. "Even stars burn out. Even mountains erode. It is the nature of things."
"Then I will change the nature of things," Lloyd snapped.
He focused inward. He could feel the new presence in his soul. Atlas was vast. It felt like a desert, silent and immense. It was dormant, waiting for a command. Lloyd didn't want to summon it. Summoning it meant it was separate from him. If it was separate, it could be killed. If it was separate, he was still just a human standing behind a wall.
"I'm going to Merge," Lloyd announced.
"You can't!" Fang Fairy shrieked. "Master, listen to me! You barely survived the merge with me, and I am energy! Atlas is matter! He is mass! Merging with a physical Colossus spirit... your body will not be able to handle the expansion. You will be torn apart!"
"Then I'll hold myself together," Lloyd said. "Calculated risk."
It wasn't a calculated risk. It was madness born of grief. But Lloyd didn't care. He activated the bond.
Soul Merge: Atlas.
The reaction was immediate and violent. It didn't feel like power flowing into him. It felt like he had swallowed a planet. His insides turned heavy. His blood felt like mercury.
He fell to his hands and knees as his body began to rebel. His skin stretched, turning grey and rough.
"Expand," Lloyd gritted out.
He grew. The sound of his transformation was sickening—bones snapping and lengthening, muscles tearing and reknitting instantly into stone fibers. He shot up to ten feet. Then fifteen. His clothes disintegrated, useless against the expansion.
Layers of rock formed over his skin, creating natural plate mail. His face pushed outward, losing its human features, becoming a blank, stoic mask of granite. He grew until he was looking down at the boulders that had previously dwarfed him.
Thirty feet tall. A Titan of Rock.
Lloyd looked through his new eyes. His vision was different. He sensed vibrations in the earth. He felt the magnetic fields of the planet. He felt... solid.
"I am big," he rumbled. His voice was a landslide.
"You are ugly," Iffrit commented, though he stayed at a respectful distance. "Very dusty."
Lloyd took a step. BOOM. The ground shook. He felt powerful. But he looked at his arm. It was rock. Rock could be chipped. Rock could be drilled.
"Not enough," Lloyd said.
He reached for his Void Power. This was the dangerous part. He had to coat this massive surface area with his Steel Blood. It was like trying to paint a castle with a single brush in one second.
"Steel... Blood..."
He pushed his will outward. From the center of his rocky torso, a metallic liquid began to seep. It was silver and gleaming. It spread over the granite plates, filling the cracks, coating the rough stone. It hardened instantly into an alloy of organic steel and spiritual earth.
The grey giant turned into a silver monument. He stood in the valley, a thirty-foot-tall statue of chrome and power. The sun, piercing through the grey clouds, reflected off his armor with blinding intensity.
He was a Steel Titan. A walking fortress.
"System check," Lloyd rumbled.
He felt the drain. It was catastrophic. His mana bar was dropping by the second. Maintaining this form was like running a sprint while holding your breath. He had minutes, maybe less.
But for those minutes, he was godlike.
He looked at a cliff face. He walked over to it. He didn't wind up. He just thrust his fist forward.
The impact didn't just break the cliff. It sent a shockwave through the entire valley. The cliff face crumbled, thousands of tons of rock falling onto him.