Episode-829
Chapter : 1657
"That's what you are, isn't it?" Lloyd continued, his voice monotone. "Society has chewed you up and spit you out. You are the gamblers who lost. The soldiers who were too weak. The workers who were too clumsy. You are the invisible people. The ones nobody misses."
Spirit Jasmin shifted slightly. The light refracted off her skin, creating a dazzling, dangerous prism effect. It was a silent reminder of the power in the room.
"I brought you here," Lloyd said, "because I have a problem. I have built a weapon. A weapon that costs more than this entire city. A weapon that can kill a Devil King."
A murmur went through the crowd. A weapon to kill a Devil King?
"But I have a problem," Lloyd repeated. "I can't put a knight in it. Knights are stupid. They think they are heroes. They try to tank hits. They try to be brave."
Lloyd sneered at the word 'brave'.
"If you try to be brave in my machine, you will die. And worse, you will break my machine. And I hate it when people break my toys."
He looked at them, his eyes flashing with a sudden, intense blue light.
Lloyd activated his [All-Seeing Eye].
The world shifted. The flesh and clothes of the recruits became translucent. He didn't care about their muscles. Muscles could be built. He didn't care about their mana cores. Their cores were pathetic, withered little things, F-Rank dust motes.
He looked at their nervous systems.
He saw Kaito's brain. It was firing rapidly, processing data, calculating threats. It was a hyperactive processor. Good.
He saw Vala's neural pathways. They were thick, highly developed in the motor cortex. Her signal transmission speed from eye to muscle was off the charts. She wasn't weak; she was just wired for speed, not torque. Excellent.
He saw Ren's hands. The fine motor control nerves were like a complex web of lightning. His brain had rewired itself to compensate for his legs, dumping all its processing power into his fingers. Perfect.
He deactivated the Eye. The blue light faded from his pupils.
"You are here because you are weak," Lloyd said, his voice hard. "In this world, you are prey. The Devils look at you and see food. The nobles look at you and see tools. You have spent your entire lives running, hiding, and cheating just to survive one more day."
He let the insult hang there. He let them feel the shame of it.
"But I am not looking for strength," Lloyd said softly. "I am looking for pilots. I am looking for the rat that steals the cheese from the trap and doesn't get snapped. I am looking for the cockroach that survives the boot."
He gestured to the wall behind him. A large metal door groaned open. Inside, illuminated by spotlights, stood the Aegis Mark II.
It was smaller than the Mark I. Sleeker. It didn't look like a suit of armor; it looked like a predator made of matte-black metal. It had no shield. It had thrusters. It held a rifle that looked like it could punch a hole in the moon.
The recruits gasped. It was the most beautiful, terrifying thing they had ever seen.
"This is the Aegis," Lloyd said. "It doesn't need your magic. It has its own heart. It doesn't need your strength. It has hydraulic muscles that can crush a boulder. What it needs... is a brain. A brain that is terrified of dying."
Lloyd walked towards the machine and patted its leg.
"A hero will stand and fight. A hero will die. I want the person who sees a fireball coming and thinks, 'I need to be somewhere else.' I want the person who panics, but whose panic makes them faster, not slower."
He turned back to the group.
"If you stay, you will go through hell. I will break you. I will reforge you. I will teach you how to interface with a machine that thinks faster than you do. Most of you will fail. Some of you might die in training."
He pointed to the door they came in.
"The door is unlocked. You can leave. If you leave, I will give you ten gold coins. That is enough to feed you for a year. You can go back to your gambling, your hiding, your small, safe lives."
He pointed to the machine.
Chapter : 1658
"Or you can stay. If you survive the next three days... you will never be prey again. You will be the hunters. You will be the Titans that protect this kingdom while the 'heroes' are hiding behind their walls."
Silence.
Ten gold coins. It was a fortune.
The dockworker stood up. "I... I can't do this. I'm just a guy who lifts boxes." He walked to the door.
A failed scholar followed him. "I'm afraid of heights."
Three more stood up and shuffled out, their heads down, taking the easy way out. Taking the gold.
Five people left. Forty-five remained.
Kaito looked at the door. Ten gold coins could pay off his debts. But then he looked at the machine. He looked at Lloyd. For the first time in his life, someone was looking at his cheating, his math, his desperate survival skills, and calling them a talent.
Kaito stayed.
Vala looked at the door. She could go back to her village. She could marry a baker. But she remembered the instructor laughing at her. She remembered the feeling of rolling under the carriage—the thrill of cheating death. She looked at the Aegis. It didn't have a shield. It was like her.
Vala stayed.
Ren gripped the wheels of his chair. He had no legs. The world saw him as half a man. But the machine... the machine had legs of steel. If he could connect to that... he wouldn't just walk. He would fly.
Ren stayed.
Lloyd watched the five leave. He didn't stop them. He didn't mock them. They were the control group. The ones who lacked the hunger.
He looked at the forty-five who remained. They were trembling. They were scared. But their eyes were fixed on him.
"Good," Lloyd said. A genuine, terrifying smile spread across his face. "Welcome to Titan Squad. First lesson: Forget everything you know about fighting. Fighting is for idiots. We are going to learn how to dance."
He clapped his hands. "Jasmin. Wake them up."
Spirit Jasmin stepped forward. Her diamond skin flared with light. She didn't attack. She just released a wave of pure, killing intent.
The underground facility beneath the Ferrum estate was not a place designed for comfort. It was a place designed for secrets. The air was cool and smelled faintly of recycled oxygen and cold stone. There were no windows to let in the sunlight, no decorations to cheer the spirit, and certainly no soft chairs to rest weary bodies. It was a concrete box buried deep within the earth, a place where the outside world ceased to exist.
Inside this concrete box, forty-five people stood in uneasy silence. They were a motley collection of humanity, the dregs that society had chewed up and spat out. There were men with scars that told stories of bar fights lost, women with eyes that darted around looking for exits that didn't exist, and youths who looked like they hadn't eaten a proper meal in weeks. They were the gamblers, the washouts, the cripples, and the thieves. Yesterday, they had been invisible. Today, they were standing in the heart of the most powerful territory in the North, waiting for a judgment they didn't understand.
They shuffled their feet, the sound echoing loudly in the stillness. They looked at each other with suspicion. Why were they here? Was it a mass execution? A forced labor camp? Or something even worse?
The large dockworker, a man named Bruno whose arms were thick as tree trunks, leaned over to the thin, nervous youth beside him. "Hey," Bruno grunted, his voice a low rumble. "You think they're gonna feed us? My stomach is making noises louder than a dying bear."
The youth, Kaito, clutched a deck of cards in his pocket as if it were a holy relic. "I calculate the probability of food being served before noon at less than twenty percent," Kaito whispered back, his eyes fixated on the strange metal door at the front of the room. "Usually, when you gather this many expendable people in a basement, the first step isn't catering. It's usually intimidation."
"Intimidation?" Bruno scoffed, flexing a bicep that threatened to tear his shirt. "Let them try. I can lift a wagon. What are they gonna do, yell at me?"
As if on cue, the heavy metal door hissed. It didn't creak like a wooden door; it slid sideways with a smooth, pneumatic sigh that spoke of expensive engineering. The room went deathly silent. Even Bruno closed his mouth.
Lloyd Ferrum walked in.