Episode-1043
Chapter : 2085
"ERROR," the machine buzzed, its voice distorted and slow. "TEMPORAL... SLIP... DETECTED. TRAJECTORY... RESET."
Rosa had created "Anchor Points" in the timeline—frozen moments that acted like hooks. She had dragged the cyborg back into the present moment by sheer force of will.
"It’s back!" Lloyd shouted. "It’s synchronized with our time!"
"I can't hold it forever," Rosa gasped, her skin turning pale as the mana drain hit her. "It is fighting the ice. It wants to slip forward again. I need help!"
"You have it," Eun-ha said.
Eun-ha, standing behind Lloyd, raised her hands. Her eyes were no longer human; they were streams of cascading green code. She wasn't fighting with magic. She was fighting with data.
"If we can't stop it from processing," Eun-ha said, "then we give it too much to process."
She initiated a Cyber-Warfare assault.
Inside the PRIDE machine’s digital brain, a storm erupted. Eun-ha hacked into its targeting sensors. She didn't try to shut them down—Fire Fly security was too good for that. Instead, she fed them lies.
"Phantom Data flood," Eun-ha commanded.
Suddenly, the machine’s vision went crazy. Where there had been three targets—Lloyd, Rosa, and Eun-ha—there were now three hundred.
The machine saw a Lloyd attacking from the left. It saw a Rosa attacking from the sky. It saw an army of Eun-has surrounding it.
"TARGET... MULTIPLICATION..." the machine stammered, its head twitching back and forth. "UNABLE TO VERIFY... REALITY."
Eun-ha didn't stop there. She hacked the thermal sensors. She projected "False Heat Signatures" everywhere. To the machine, a random rock on the ground suddenly looked as hot as the sun. A piece of debris looked like a nuclear missile.
The machine fired its cannon wildly. It blasted a hole in a stone wall, thinking it was Lloyd. It swung its plasma claw at empty air, thinking it was decapitating Rosa.
"It’s blind!" Eun-ha shouted, sweat beading on her forehead. "It’s hallucinating! Its logic circuits are overheating trying to figure out which target is real!"
The combination was perfect. Rosa was holding the machine in place, preventing it from skipping through time. Eun-ha was blinding it, drowning it in a sea of fake data.
The god-machine was confused. It was vulnerable.
"Lloyd!" Eun-ha’s voice rang in his head. "The joints! The armor is too thick for a direct kill, but the joints are exposed when it vents heat! You have a two-second window!"
Lloyd didn't hesitate. The "Major General" inside him took the wheel. He didn't need to be told twice.
He raised his hand. The air shimmered as he accessed his Spatial Inventory.
He didn't summon the Mark III suit. That suit was trash now, melted and broken. He reached deeper, into the unstable section of his inventory.
"Deploy," Lloyd whispered. "Aegis Mark IV-Beta."
It was a risk. The Mark IV wasn't finished. It was a prototype, a beast of a machine that ran too hot and moved too fast. It didn't have safety protocols. It didn't have comfort. It was just an engine strapped to a cockpit.
The suit materialized around him in a flash of black steel and raw wiring. It didn't look sleek like the previous versions. It looked angry. It looked like a cage made of guns. Steam hissed from the unpainted joints as the Golem Heart roared to life, syncing with Lloyd’s nervous system with a violent jolt.
"Neural Link: 100%," the system screamed. "Warning: Core instability at 40%."
"Hold together," Lloyd growled, his hands gripping the controls. "Just for a minute."
The machine, the PRIDE unit, was flailing, slashing at the ghosts Eun-ha had created. It exposed its left knee joint, a bundle of hydraulics and cables glowing red with heat.
"I see it," Lloyd said.
But a simple sword wouldn't be enough. He needed something that would hurt a machine. He needed a poison.
Lloyd activated his [Steel Blood] power, but he combined it with something else. He reached into the strange, parasitic power he had unlocked in the Devil realm—the [Void Wood].
Grey, metallic roots erupted from the wrist of his mech, wrapping around the blade of his Vibro-Sword. The wood pulsed with a hungry, dark light. It coated the steel blade in a thick, sticky sap.
"This isn't just a cut," Lloyd whispered. "This is an infection."
Lloyd fired the thrusters on the Mark IV. The unstable suit exploded forward, moving with a reckless speed that rattled Lloyd’s teeth.
Chapter : 2086
He ducked under a wild swing from the confused PRIDE machine. He slid across the frozen ground Rosa had created. He came up right next to the exposed knee.
"Open wide," Lloyd said.
He swung the sword.
The Vibro-Blade, coated in the parasitic sap, bit deep into the metal joint. It didn't spark. It squelched.
The [Void Wood] sap acted instantly. It didn't attack the metal; it attacked the energy inside the metal. The sap was a "Life-Eater." It latched onto the mana cables inside the machine's leg and began to drink.
"ENERGY DRAIN DETECTED," the machine shrieked, stumbling. "BATTERY LEVELS... DROPPING."
Lloyd ripped the sword free and jumped back as the machine swiped at him.
"It works," Lloyd said, a grim smile hidden behind his helmet. "It bleeds."
The battle had shifted. They weren't just surviving anymore. They were fighting back.
________________________________________
The PRIDE machine stumbled, its left leg dragging. The grey, parasitic rot from Lloyd’s attack was spreading, turning the shiny chrome of its joint into dull, rusted iron. The battery drain was working. The machine was getting slower.
But it was still a god.
"ADAPTING," the machine roared. The voice sounded like grinding gears.
The red lights in its eyes flashed. It realized its sensors were lying to it. It realized the ghosts weren't real.
"PURGE SENSORS," the machine commanded itself. "SWITCH TO SONAR."
The machine closed its optical eyes. It emitted a high-frequency pulse of sound—a sonar ping. The sound wave bounced off the real objects in the room—the walls, the floor, and the three humans. It ignored the holographic decoys Eun-ha had created.
"It found us!" Eun-ha shouted, her hands flying in the air as she tried to rewrite the code. "It switched to echolocation! The hallucinations are useless!"
The machine turned. It ignored the ghosts. It locked onto Lloyd.
It raised its hand. The Gravity Lance charged up. But this time, it didn't fire a beam. It fired a pulse. A shockwave of pure gravity slammed into Lloyd.
The Aegis Mark IV groaned. The metal plates buckled. Lloyd felt the impact in his own ribs. He was thrown backward, crashing through a stone pillar.
"Lloyd!" Rosa screamed.
She tried to freeze the machine again, but the PRIDE unit had learned. It activated its thermal vents, surrounding itself in a superheated aura of fire. The ice melted before it could touch the metal skin.
"TEMPERATURE REGULATION: ACTIVE," the machine stated. "TIME DRIVE: REBOOTING."
It was trying to jump into the future again. It was trying to cheat.
"No, you don't," Rosa hissed. She clapped her hands together. "Absolute Zero Domain: Whiteout."
She didn't try to freeze the machine directly. She froze the air around it. The humidity in the atmosphere turned into a dense, blinding fog of ice crystals. It was a physical wall of cold that clogged the machine's intakes and frosted over its sonar receivers.
The machine flailed, blind and deaf for a second.
"Now, Lloyd!" Eun-ha yelled. "The back! The heat sink on the back!"
Lloyd pulled himself out of the rubble. The Aegis Mark IV was sparking. His left arm servo was dead. But his right arm—the sword arm—was still live.
He looked at the machine. It was distracted by the fog, thrashing around, trying to clear its vents.
Lloyd pushed the throttle to the max.
"Warning: Engine critical," his suit whispered. "Explosion imminent."
"Hold together," Lloyd begged the machine. "Just one more hit."
He launched himself. He didn't run; he used the last of his fuel to fly. The thrusters screamed as he arced over the confused machine.
He came down behind it.
The heat sink was glowing cherry red on the machine’s back. It was the only vulnerable spot, the place where the reactor vented its excess energy.
Lloyd raised the Void-Wood coated sword.
"Eat this," Lloyd grunted.
He drove the blade down.
CRUNCH.
The sword pierced the heat sink. The sap exploded into the reactor.
The machine stiffened. It let out a sound that wasn't mechanical or human. It was the sound of energy dying.
The Void Wood roots expanded instantly inside the reactor. They drank the power. They sucked the gravity magic, the fire magic, and the time magic out of the core.
The PRIDE machine fell to its knees. The red lights in its eyes flickered and dimmed.
Lloyd landed on the ground, rolling to absorb the impact. His suit finally died, the power completely drained. He popped the hatch and climbed out, gasping for air.
He stood there, flanked by Rosa and Eun-ha.