Episode-988
Chapter : 1975
"How does it feel, wizard?" Anthony taunted. "Your magic is gone. Your gods can't hear you. You are nothing but a man in a metal box."
Lloyd took a deep breath. He checked his physical vitals. His heart was beating. His lungs were working. Then he checked the suit’s diagnostics.
Fuel levels: 98%.
Hydraulic pressure: 100%.
Physical ammunition: Loaded.
A slow, cold smile spread across Lloyd’s face inside the helmet.
Anthony had made a critical mistake. He assumed Lloyd was a mage. He assumed Lloyd relied on the "primitive magic" of this world. But Lloyd was KM Evan. He had built the Aegis suit for exactly this moment. He had built it to be an atheist in a world of gods.
The Aegis didn't run on mana. It ran on oil, gears, pistons, and physics.
"You're right, Anthony," Lloyd said, his voice calm and deadly. "I am just a man in a metal box. But this box hits really, really hard."
Lloyd slammed the throttles forward. The Aegis suit didn't need magic to move. Massive engines roared to life, dumping raw power into the legs. The black suit launched forward, tearing up the ground beneath it.
Anthony was surprised. He tried to bring his cannons around, but Lloyd was already inside his guard.
CLANG.
The sound was deafening. Lloyd drove a metal fist the size of a beer keg into the gold chest of the Sirius suit. Metal screamed against metal. The impact didn't use magic; it used simple, brutal momentum. The Sirius suit was knocked backward, skidding through the dirt.
Lloyd didn't stop. He followed up with a hydraulic-assisted elbow strike, smashing into the enemy’s shoulder. Sparks flew like fireworks.
"Physics," Lloyd grunted as he landed another punch, "doesn't care about your anti-magic field."
________________________________________
Location: Northern Territory Wasteland – Sky Canyon
Time: Babylon Calendar Year: 2512, Month: Rain (May), Day: 27th
Characters: Lloyd (Aegis Mark I), Anthony (Fire Fly Alpha Team), Spirit Jasmin
The canyon had turned into a boxing ring for giants.
Dust and smoke filled the air. The ground shook with every step the two machines took. On one side was the Sirius—gold, sleek, and high-tech. On the other was the Aegis—black, bulky, and brutal.
Anthony was losing his cool. He had expected the fight to end the moment he turned on the Anti-Mana Field. He expected Lloyd to collapse, helpless without his magic. Instead, he was getting beaten up by a giant piece of construction equipment.
"Get off me!" Anthony screamed.
The Sirius suit fired its thrusters, blasting backward to create some distance. The gold armor was dented and scratched. The beautiful chrome finish was ruined.
Lloyd stood his ground, the Aegis suit venting steam from its joints. He felt good. He felt alive. For the first time in a long time, he wasn't worrying about spells or curses or ancient prophecies. He was just fighting. It was simple. It was pure.
"What's the matter?" Lloyd asked, checking his fuel gauges. "I thought you corporate guys liked efficiency. I'm being very efficient."
"You're a pest," Anthony growled. "A primitive, annoying pest. I’m done playing with you."
The Sirius suit stopped hovering. It planted its feet firmly on the ground. Panels on its shoulders and chest slid open, revealing cooling vents that glowed white-hot. The massive cannon on its arm began to shift and transform. The barrel extended, locking into place with heavy, mechanical clicks. The air around the weapon began to distort, creating a vacuum.
Lloyd’s warning sensors went crazy. The interior of his cockpit flashed red.
WARNING: HIGH-ENERGY SIGNATURE DETECTED.
WARNING: RAILGUN CHARGE DETECTED.
IMPACT IN 3... 2...
"This is the Plasma-Railgun," Anthony announced, his voice regaining its arrogance. "It draws power directly from my reactor. It fires a bolt of ionized gas at Mach 5. That’s five times the speed of sound, Ferrum. Your metal box can’t stop it. Your armor will vaporize. You are obsolete."
Lloyd’s mind raced. He knew the tech. He recognized the buildup. Anthony was right. The Aegis suit was tough, but it was built to withstand physical hits, not a point-blank shot from a starship-grade weapon. If that beam hit him, he would be turned into a cloud of hot gas.
He couldn't dodge. The suit was heavy, and the railgun locked onto him instantly. He couldn't use his [Steel Blood] to make a shield because the Anti-Mana Field was still active.
He had less than a second to come up with a plan.
Physics, Lloyd thought. Think like an engineer. What beats a laser?
Chapter : 1976
You can’t block a laser with metal. It melts. You can’t block it with rock. It explodes. You need something that doesn't absorb the heat. You need something that moves the light.
He needed a mirror. But not just any mirror. He needed the hardest, clearest mirror in the universe.
"Gambling time," Lloyd whispered.
He reached deep into his soul, bypassing his own blocked mana channels and pulling on a specific bond. The Anti-Mana Field stopped him from projecting energy outward, but it couldn't stop him from summoning a contract that was already signed. It could be different for everyone, but not for Lloyd, because he has multiple powers and spirits.
"Jasmin," Lloyd commanded. "Front and center."
In a flash of light, Spirit Jasmin appeared in front of the Aegis suit.
She didn't look like a ghost or a cloud of smoke. Because she was a Spirit Reconstruction based on physical diamond geometry, she was solid. She looked like a statue carved from the clearest, hardest glass imaginable. Her body was a complex lattice of crystal facets.
The Anti-Mana Field washed over her, but it did nothing. She wasn't made of flowing mana; she was made of hard, cold structure.
Anthony pulled the trigger.
CRACK-BOOM.
The sound was like a thunderclap right next to Lloyd’s ear. A blinding beam of purple and white plasma erupted from the Sirius suit. It tore through the air, burning the oxygen and leaving a vacuum trail behind it. It slammed directly into Jasmin’s chest.
Lloyd braced himself, squeezing his eyes shut behind his helmet visor.
But the explosion didn't happen.
Instead, there was a sound like a thousand church bells ringing at once. A pure, high-pitched ping that vibrated through the canyon.
Jasmin had activated her ultimate defensive art: "Prismatic Mirror."
Her diamond skin didn't melt. It didn't crack. It caught the beam. The light entered her crystalline body and hit the internal angles of her diamond structure. Instead of going straight through, the light bounced. It refracted.
The massive beam hit her chest and split apart. It shattered into a dozen smaller, super-intense lasers that shot out from her body in a starburst pattern.
"What?!" Anthony shouted, blinded by the sudden light show.
The reflected lasers screamed outward in every direction. They didn't hit Lloyd. They hit everything else.
Above the battlefield, Anthony had deployed a dozen small surveillance and tactical drones—little flying robots that were helping him aim. The refracted beams sliced through the air like scissors. They cut through the drones instantly.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
The drones exploded in tiny fireballs, raining burning metal down onto the desert floor. The "Geometric Laser Grid" created by Jasmin cleared the sky in an instant.
The main beam faded. Jasmin stood there, her diamond body glowing with residual heat, but completely unbroken. She was the perfect prism.
Lloyd opened his eyes. He saw the smoking wreckage of the drones. He saw the shocked stillness of the Sirius suit. And he saw his little handmaiden, standing like a wall between him and death.
"Good job, Little Squirrel," Lloyd whispered, a genuine note of pride breaking through his monotone. "Now, it's my turn."
________________________________________
The smoke from the explosion slowly drifted away in the desert wind. The air still smelled like burning ozone and hot metal.
Lloyd Ferrum sat inside the cockpit of his black Aegis suit, watching his gauges settle down. The warning lights that had been flashing red a moment ago were now blinking a steady yellow. His heat levels were high, but manageable.
In front of him, Spirit Jasmin—his diamond shield—gave a small, silent nod. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. She had done her job perfectly. With a soft shimmer of light, she faded away, returning to the safety of Lloyd’s inner spirit world to recover her energy.
Now, it was just Lloyd and Anthony again.
Across the cratered battlefield, the golden Sirius suit was hovering a few feet off the ground. The machine looked angry. The sleek, shiny gold armor was scorched in places, and small arcs of electricity were jumping across its shoulders. Anthony, the pilot inside, was clearly furious. He had fired his best shot—a weapon meant to destroy fortresses—and a maid made of glass had just brushed it aside.
"Impossible," Anthony’s voice crackled over the radio speakers. He sounded confused, like a man who had just seen a dog fly. "That was a high-density plasma beam. That should have melted anything on this primitive planet. How? How did you stop it?"