Episode-1045
Chapter : 2089
"Can we stop it?" Rosa asked, gripping her spear tight. She was a Sovereign. She could freeze a city. She could stop an army. Surely she could stop a piece of metal?
Lloyd looked at her. He saw the desperate hope in her eyes, and it broke his heart.
"No," Lloyd said. "Rosa, that thing weighs millions of tons. It’s moving at Mach 20. If it hits the ground..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
If it hit the ground, the Ferrum Estate wouldn't just be destroyed. The shockwave would flatten the entire province. The impact would crack the tectonic plate. The heat would turn the air into plasma for a hundred miles.
It wasn't a fight. It was an erasure.
"The ground battle is meaningless," Lloyd muttered. He dropped his arms to his sides. The sword in his hand felt like a toothpick. What good was a sword against a falling asteroid? What good was a strategy against gravity?
He had spent months preparing for this war. He had built the Aegis suit. He had trained the Titan Squad. He had recruited assassins and forged alliances. He thought he was playing chess. He thought if he made the right moves, he could win.
But the Fire Fly Corporation wasn't playing chess. They had just flipped the board over and set the table on fire.
"Run," Lloyd said. It was the only logical command left. "Everyone, run! Get to the deep bunkers! Maybe... maybe if you get deep enough..."
But he knew it was a lie. There was no bunker deep enough for this.
The sky was screaming now. A high-pitched, tearing wail filled the air as the Needle punched through the lower atmosphere. The red light grew brighter, blindingly intense. It washed out all the color in the world, turning everything into shades of blood and black.
Lloyd felt a wave of pure, unfiltered rage mix with his despair. It wasn't fair. They had fought so hard. They had survived so much. And now, they were going to be squashed like bugs by a company accountant in orbit who just wanted to clear the spreadsheet.
He looked at the burning house where his son was sleeping. He looked at Mina’s window.
"I failed," Lloyd thought. "I promised to protect them. And I failed."
He clenched his fists so hard his gloves creaked. He wanted to fly up there. He wanted to punch the falling mountain. He wanted to scream at the sky until it backed off. But he was just a man standing in the dirt.
And then, he heard the laugh.
It wasn't a human laugh. It was a glitchy, stuttering sound, like a broken record player grinding on a bad note.
"Ha... ha... ha... k-k-kill..."
Lloyd turned.
The PRIDE machine was moving.
________________________________________
The Exterminator-Unit, the cyborg shell wearing Lucifer’s face, stood up from the rubble. It was damaged. Smoke poured from its joints. One of its arms was hanging uselessly by a bundle of wires. The grey roots of Lloyd’s Void Wood attack were still sticking out of its chest, leaking energy.
But it was laughing.
The red sensor eyes of the machine flickered. The connection to the orbital server had told it the news. The AI inside the machine knew what was coming. It knew about the Solar Extinction.
"MISSION... UPDATE," the machine’s voice buzzed. It sounded broken, skipping syllables. "TARGET... ACQUIRED. HARVEST... IMMINENT."
The machine looked at the sky. It saw the burning red streak of the Needle coming down. To a human, that sight was terrifying. To the machine, it was just the end of the program. It was the final command.
The machine looked back at Lloyd.
"YOU... CANNOT... HIDE," the machine synthesized. "PROTOCOL... OMEGA... REQUIRES... WITNESS."
Lloyd took a step back. "You're going to die too, you piece of junk!" he shouted. "That thing is going to vaporize you!"
"IRRELEVANT," the machine replied. "UNIT... IS... EXPENDABLE. MISSION... IS... ABSOLUTE."
The PRIDE machine didn't care about survival. It didn't care about self-preservation. Its logic core had received a new instruction: Hold the target in the kill zone.
The orbital AI had calculated that Lloyd Ferrum might try to run. He might try to use his teleportation powers or his spatial inventory to escape the blast radius at the last second. The Needle needed a confirmed kill.
So, the machine had to make sure he stayed put.
With a screech of over-stressed metal, the PRIDE unit lunged.
Chapter : 2090
It moved fast, burning the last of its reserve power. It didn't use its weapons. It didn't fire its gravity lance. It just opened its arms wide.
Lloyd tried to react. He tried to summon his [Steel Blood] to create a shield. But he was distracted by the sky. He was distracted by the end of the world. He was a fraction of a second too slow.
The metal body of the cyborg slammed into him.
It was like being tackled by a car. The impact knocked the wind out of Lloyd. He fell backward onto the cracked stones of the courtyard.
Before he could scramble away, the machine was on top of him.
It didn't punch him. It grabbed him. The machine wrapped its good arm around Lloyd’s chest. It locked its legs around Lloyd’s legs. It clamped its metal fingers onto Lloyd’s shoulders, digging into his flesh.
It hugged him.
It was a bear hug of death. The hydraulic servos in the machine’s limbs locked into place with a heavy clunk. The gears ground to a halt. The machine became a rigid, immovable cage of steel.
"LET GO!" Lloyd roared. He panicked. He thrashed, kicking and punching at the metal chest of the cyborg. He summoned his Void power, trying to push the machine off.
But the PRIDE unit was heavy. And it was powered by the stolen core of a Devil King. It held on with a strength that defied logic.
"NO... ESCAPE," the machine glitched, its face inches from Lloyd’s. The dead skin mask of Lucifer was peeling away, revealing the chrome skull underneath. "WE... WAIT... TOGETHER."
Lloyd looked into the red eyes of the machine. He saw zero empathy. He saw zero doubt. He just saw a timer counting down.
"Rosa!" Lloyd screamed, turning his head to the side, his cheek pressed against the cold gravel. "Eun-ha! Run! Get away from me!"
He knew what was happening. The machine was the anchor. The Needle was the hammer. If they stayed near him, they would die too.
Rosa took a step forward, raising her ice spear. "I am not leaving you!" she cried, her voice breaking.
"Get back!" Lloyd yelled, desperation tearing at his throat. "You can't cut it off! It’s locked! Run! Save the others!"
The sky was getting brighter. The red light was turning into a blinding white glare. The heat was becoming unbearable. The leaves on the trees in the garden spontaneously burst into flames. The water in the fountain hissed and boiled away into steam.
The roar of the falling Needle was deafening now. It sounded like a freight train screaming directly into his ear.
Lloyd stopped fighting. He realized he couldn't break the grip. His energy was gone. His body was broken. He was pinned to the ground, staring up at the face of a smiling, dead robot, while the sky fell on top of him.
He looked past the machine, up at the burning atmosphere.
"So this is it," Lloyd thought, a strange calm settling over his mind amidst the panic. "This is how the math ends."
He thought of his first life on Earth. He had died old, in a bed, surrounded by family. It had been peaceful.
This death would not be peaceful. It would be an erasure. A deletion.
"I'm sorry," Lloyd whispered, closing his eyes. "I'm sorry, Mina. I'm sorry, son."
The machine laughed again—a stuttering, mechanical sound that mixed with the roar of the apocalypse.
"GAME... OVER," the machine said.
The Needle broke through the cloud layer. It was visible now—a massive, glowing spike of metal, trailing fire and smoke. It filled the entire sky. It was falling straight down, aimed perfectly at the Ferrum Estate.
The noise of the falling metal mountain filled the sky. It was a roar that vibrated in the teeth and bones of everyone on the ground. The Needle was seconds away. The heat was already baking the ground, turning the moisture in the air into instant steam.
Lloyd Ferrum lay pinned in the dirt. The heavy metal arm of the PRIDE machine was locked around him, crushing his chest. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. He stared up at the red sensor eyes of the cyborg that wore Lucifer’s face. The machine was smiling that horrible, dead smile, satisfied that it had completed its mission. It was just waiting for the fire to erase them both.