Episode-996
Chapter : 1991
Lloyd frowned beneath his helmet. He recognized the technology instantly from the classified archives of his past life.
It was a "Reincarnation Orb."
It was a fail-safe device used by high-ranking corporate agents. If they died, this device would record their memories, their data, and their soul, and transmit it back to the headquarters via a subspace burst.
"He triggered it," Lloyd realized, his blood running cold. "In the last millisecond. He backed himself up."
If that orb survived, the Fire Fly Corporation would know everything. They would know about Lloyd’s powers. They would know about the planet's defenses, the spirit magic, and the exact location of the mana well. They would come back, and next time, they wouldn't send a scout. They would send a fleet.
"No," Lloyd hissed. "You don't get to report back. You don't get to tell them anything."
The orb began to glow brighter. It was charging up for a transmission. The air around it began to warp, creating a low, humming sound that vibrated through the hull of the Aegis.
Lloyd grabbed the manual control sticks. They were heavy, dead weight in his hands.
"Move," Lloyd growled at the machine. "Move, you piece of junk."
He bypassed the safety protocols. He diverted life support. He drained the last, flickering embers of the Golem Heart’s reserve energy.
The Aegis suit shuddered. With a groan of tortured metal, the massive black machine pushed itself out of the rubble. It stood up, swaying unsteadily, oil leaking from its joints like black blood.
"One percent," Lloyd whispered. "That's all I need."
He stomped forward. Thud. Thud. Thud.
The mech moved slowly, every step a struggle against gravity and friction. Lloyd ignored the warning sirens screaming in his ears. He focused only on the black sphere.
He reached the center of the crater. The orb was pulsing faster now, the hum rising to a shriek. A beam of data was starting to form, pointing toward the sky.
"Stay dead!" Lloyd shouted inside the cockpit.
He didn't fire a weapon. He didn't have any ammo left. He used the only thing he had: twelve tons of Star-Frost Ore.
Lloyd slammed the right pedal forward. The Aegis lifted its massive, hydraulic right leg. He put the entire weight of the suit, the force of his Void Power, and the last drop of the battery into a single, world-shaking stomp.
The Star-Frost boot—a metal forged to ignore the laws of magic—slammed down onto the high-tech Reincarnation Orb.
CRUNCH.
The collision of 22nd-century corporate technology and ancient soul-engineering created a "Logic Fail" that the universe simply couldn't calculate.
The orb didn't shatter; it imploded.
A sound like tearing fabric filled the air. The black sphere collapsed in on itself, but instead of disappearing, it created a vacuum. A sudden, violent pull grabbed the leg of the Aegis suit.
It wasn't gravity. It was suction. Ancient, raw mana from the space between worlds reached out and grabbed the metal.
"Oh no," Lloyd whispered, his hands flying across the controls to reverse thrusters.
But there was no power left.
The vacuum was stronger than iron. It was pulling him in, dragging the entire mech downward toward the tiny black hole he had just created.
The world twisted. The sky above him stretched into long lines of color. The ground beneath the Aegis dissolved into static.
"Not like this," Lloyd gritted out, bracing himself against the console.
But physics didn't care.
With a final, sickening lurch, the Aegis suit was ripped off the ground. The heavy metal plates screamed as they were sucked into the purple rift. Lloyd felt the G-forces slam him back into his seat as the machine crossed the threshold.
The desert vanished. The crater vanished.
There was only the cold, dark silence of the void, and the man trapped inside the falling metal giant.
There was no sound. There was no light. There was only the feeling of falling, but not falling down. It felt like falling sideways, through a tunnel made of ice and static electricity.
Lloyd Ferrum didn’t know how long he was in that tunnel. It could have been a second. It could have been a hundred years. His body felt heavy and numb, like when you sleep on your arm wrong, but all over. This was the "Cold Sleep." It was the feeling of being pulled apart by the universe and stitched back together in the wrong order.
Then, the silence broke.
It didn't break gently. It shattered.
CRASH.
Chapter : 1992
The impact was brutal. It wasn't the clean, hard hit of metal on stone. It was a wet, heavy thud, followed by the sound of snapping wood and tearing leaves. The world spun violently, and then stopped with a jerk that rattled Lloyd’s teeth inside his helmet.
For a long time, Lloyd didn't move. He sat in the darkness of the Aegis cockpit, breathing hard. The air inside the suit was stale and hot. It smelled like burnt wires and ozone—the smell of the battle he had just finished. His heart was hammering against his ribs, trying to make sense of the sudden stop.
"Damage report," Lloyd rasped. His throat felt like he had swallowed sand. "System check."
Silence.
The usually calm, synthetic voice of the System Administrator didn't answer. The screens in front of him were dead black. There were no flashing red warning lights, no scrolling data streams, no targeting reticles. The machine was dead. The Golem Heart, which usually hummed with a deep, rhythmic thrum, was silent.
Lloyd tried to move his arm. The heavy hydraulic joystick was stiff. Without power, the Aegis Mark I was just twelve tons of dead metal. It was a coffin in the shape of a giant.
"Great," Lloyd muttered. "Just great."
He reached up and fumbled for the manual release latch for the faceplate. His fingers felt clumsy, his gloves thick and unresponsive. He found the latch and pulled.
Nothing happened. The seal was jammed.
Lloyd gritted his teeth. He couldn't use his [Steel Blood] power to force it open. He could feel it immediately—the "emptiness." In Riverio, the air was thick with mana. You could feel it on your skin like static. Here, the air felt empty. It was hollow. There was no magic to grab, no spirits to call. His internal battery was dry.
He was just a man in a broken can.
"Open," he grunted, bracing his feet against the pedals and pushing against the helmet with his back. He used pure, angry muscle. "Open, you piece of junk!"
With a screech of tortured metal, the latch gave way. The faceplate popped open about three inches.
Immediately, the world rushed in.
It wasn't the dry, dusty heat of the Sky Canyon. It was water.
Water was everywhere. It wasn't just raining; it was like the sky had opened up and was trying to drown the earth. Rain hammered against the metal hull of the Aegis with a sound like a thousand drumrolls. It hissed as it hit the hot armor plating.
Lloyd pushed the faceplate up further and took his first breath of the new world.
He gagged.
The air was thick. It was heavy and wet, like breathing through a warm, damp towel. It didn't smell like the desert. It smelled of wet mud, rotting leaves, crushed flowers, and life. It was an overwhelming, organic smell. It smelled like a greenhouse that had been left to grow wild for a thousand years.
"Where..." Lloyd coughed, wiping rainwater out of his eyes. "Where am I?"
He unbuckled his harness and squeezed through the opening of the cockpit. It was a struggle. His body was sore, bruised from the fight with Anthony and the trip through the void. He pulled himself up onto the top of the ruined mech.
He looked around, and his heart sank.
He was in a forest. But this wasn't like the Shadowfen Forest or the woods near his estate. This was a jungle.
Massive trees towered over him, their trunks thick and twisted, covered in green moss. Vines as thick as a man’s leg hung from the canopy like snakes. The leaves were huge, broad, and dripping with water. The rain was relentless. It came down in sheets, turning the ground into a churning river of brown mud.
The Aegis suit had crashed through the canopy and landed half-buried in the mud bank of a swelling river. Steam was rising from the black metal, mixing with the rain to create a thick, white fog around the crash site.
Lloyd slid down the side of the mech, his boots sinking ankle-deep into the sludge. He almost lost his balance. The gravity felt... normal. That was a good sign. At least he wasn't on a planet with crushing gravity.