Episode-1052
Chapter : 2103
Location: The Ridge
The dust on the ridge was still settling from the last fight. King Liam stood calmly near the edge of the cliff, dusting off his hands after turning the time-manipulating soldier into a pile of rust and ash. A few hundred yards away, Lloyd Ferrum was sitting in the cockpit of his massive Aegis Mark IV-Beta mech, the metal cooling down after he had literally punched a ghost sniper out of existence.
It was quiet for about three seconds. Then, the panic set in for the bad guys.
On the far side of the ridge, the Fire Fly team was falling apart. They had arrived with a full squad of elite "Praetorians"—super-soldiers designed to kill gods and topple kingdoms. They had a Heavy Gunner, a Shield-Bearer, a liquid assassin, a time-traveler, and a phase-shifting sniper.
Now, they were all gone.
Only two soldiers were left standing next to their leader, Commander Marcus. One was the Demolitionist, a bulky figure covered in heavy yellow armor plating, carrying a weapon that looked like a grenade launcher designed by a madman. The other was the Psychic-Screamer, a slender figure in a helmet that pulsed with weird, purple brain-waves.
The Demolitionist looked at the empty spots where his teammates used to be. He looked at the pile of rust that used to be his friend. Then he looked at King Liam, who was currently checking his fingernails for dirt.
Something inside the Demolitionist snapped.
"They're gone," the Demolitionist shouted, his voice cracking over the external speakers of his suit. "You deleted them! You just erased them like files!"
"They were in the way," Liam said, shrugging. He didn't even look up. "You guys came here to blow up my planet. Don't get mad when the planet hits back."
"You want to see something blow up?" the Demolitionist screamed. "Fine! I'll show you!"
He didn't aim his weapon at Liam. He didn't aim at Lloyd. He aimed at the ground. Specifically, he aimed at the bedrock foundation of the ridge they were all standing on.
"Protocol: Scorched Earth!" the soldier roared.
He slammed a massive, black canister into the breach of his launcher. This wasn't a normal bomb. It didn't use gunpowder or plasma. The canister was marked with a symbol that looked like a mouth eating a planet.
It was a "Matter-Eater Bomb."
It was a weapon of last resort. When it detonated, it didn't push things away with a shockwave. It created a localized field of anti-matter that simply chewed through everything it touched. It would eat the rock, the dirt, the trees, and the air. If he fired it, the entire mountain range would collapse into a hole of nothingness.
Commander Marcus, standing nearby, didn't stop him. Marcus was too busy recalibrating his own suit, his face twisted in a mask of pure fury. He didn't care if the mountain vanished. He just wanted the natives dead.
"Fire in the hole!" the Demolitionist yelled.
Thump.
The launcher fired. The black canister arched through the air. It moved slowly, heavy with the weight of the destruction inside it. It spun lazily, heading right for the center of the ridge.
Lloyd saw it on his sensors. His computer screamed a warning.
"Liam!" Lloyd shouted over the radio. "That's a black-hole grenade! If that goes off, we're all going to be deleted!"
Lloyd tried to move his mech, but he was too far away. His thrusters were still recharging from his last attack. He couldn't intercept it in time.
But King Liam didn't move. He didn't run. He didn't even flinch.
He just looked at the bomb sailing through the air.
"Matter-Eater," Liam said, a small smile playing on his lips. "Nasty stuff. Very expensive. You corporate guys really hate cleaning up your messes, don't you?"
Liam raised his right hand. He snapped his fingers.
"System," Liam said calmly. "Deploy Super Spirit Number Three."
The sky above the ridge suddenly changed. It didn't turn black with clouds or bright with sun. It turned into deep space.
For a moment, the blue sky of Riverio was replaced by a window into the cosmos. Stars twinkled. Nebulas swirled in clouds of purple, pink, and gold gas. The silence of the vacuum descended on the battlefield.
From that cosmic window, a hand reached down.
It was a hand made of starlight.
A giant pulled itself out of the sky. It was massive—easily fifty feet tall. It didn't look like a person or a beast. It looked like a constellation that had decided to stand up and walk. Its body was composed of swirling galaxies and cosmic dust, held together by gravity and will. In its hand, it held a hammer.
The hammer wasn't made of steel. The head of the hammer glowed with a blinding, dense white light. It was made from the core of a neutron star. It weighed as much as a moon, but the spirit held it like a toy.
This was "Aether, the Nebula Titan."
Chapter : 2104
The Demolitionist watched in horror as the giant cosmic spirit floated between him and the bomb.
"What is that?" the soldier whispered. "That's not magic! That's... that's astrophysics!"
"It's Aether," Liam introduced the spirit like he was introducing an old friend at a party. "And he's very good at changing his mind."
The bomb was halfway to the ground. It was about to arm itself. The black light of the anti-matter was already starting to leak from the canister.
"Aether," Liam commanded. "Atomic Rewriting."
The Nebula Titan swung the hammer.
It wasn't a violent swing. It was graceful, like a blacksmith tapping a piece of hot iron. The hammer moved through the air, leaving a trail of stardust behind it.
The neutron-star hammer hit the Matter-Eater Bomb.
Usually, when you hit a bomb with a hammer, it explodes. That's just how bombs work. But Liam’s power wasn't about destruction. It was about "Rewriting." He had the power to access the source code of reality—the atoms and molecules that made up the world—and tell them to be something else.
CLINK.
The hammer touched the black canister.
There was no explosion. There was no fire. There was no black hole.
Instead, there was a flash of soft, pink light.
The bomb stopped moving. It hovered in the air for a split second, vibrating. The black metal casing dissolved. The anti-matter core unraveled. The atoms that made up the weapon were pulled apart, shuffled, and put back together in a completely different pattern.
The bomb burst.
But it didn't burst into flames. It burst into flower petals.
Millions and millions of pink cherry blossom petals exploded outward from the point of impact. A shockwave of flowers rolled across the ridge. The wind picked them up, swirling them around the terrified Fire Fly soldiers. The smell of sulfur and ozone was instantly replaced by the sweet, gentle scent of spring flowers.
The Demolitionist stood there, his mouth open, as pink petals rained down on his heavy yellow armor. A single petal landed on his visor.
"What..." the soldier stammered. "What did you do? Where is the earth-shattering kaboom?"
"I changed the recipe," Liam said, brushing a petal off his shoulder. "Matter cannot be created or destroyed, right? That's the law. But nobody said matter can't be edited. I took all that nasty energy and turned it into something nice. You should thank me. I just saved you from blowing yourself up."
The Demolitionist dropped his launcher. His mind couldn't process it. He was a soldier trained to fight wars with physics. He knew how to blow up bridges and bunkers. He didn't know how to fight a man who could turn a nuclear grenade into a flower garden.
"This isn't real!" the soldier screamed. "This is a trick! It's an illusion!"
"It's real enough," Liam said.
The Nebula Titan raised its hammer again. This time, it didn't look gentle.
"Aether," Liam said. "Dismiss him."
The Titan swung the hammer down. It hit the ground right in front of the Demolitionist. The shockwave wasn't flowers this time. It was pure gravity.
The yellow-armored soldier was lifted off his feet. He flew backward, tumbling through the air like a ragdoll. He crashed into a boulder fifty feet away, his armor crumpling. He slid down the rock and didn't get up.
Liam dusted off his hands again. "That's the heavy weapons guy gone. Who's next?"
He looked around. The battlefield was covered in pink petals. It looked peaceful, almost beautiful, except for the broken mechs and the angry Commander standing on the other side.
But the fight wasn't over. While Liam was busy gardening with the laws of physics, Lloyd was dealing with his own nightmare.
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Date: Year 2513, Month of Sun, Day 18 – 06:48 AM
Location: The Ridge
Lloyd Ferrum turned the massive head of his Aegis mech. The sensors whined as they swiveled. He had just watched Liam turn a bomb into a bouquet, which was impressive, but Lloyd didn't have time to clap.
His warning alarms were going crazy again.
"Warning," the suit’s computer buzzed. "Psionic spike detected. Mental intrusion imminent. Shields are ineffective against this frequency."
"Where?" Lloyd asked, scanning the rocks.
Fifty yards away, the last of the Praetorian soldiers stepped out from behind a crag. This was the "Psychic-Screamer."
He didn't carry a gun. He didn't wear heavy plating. His suit was sleek and purple, covered in strange, glowing nodes that pulsed like a heartbeat. His helmet was shaped like a tuning fork, designed to amplify brainwaves.
The Psychic-Screamer didn't run or shout. He just pointed both hands at Lloyd’s mech.
"Die," the soldier whispered.
It wasn't a sound. It was a thought, projected with the force of a cannon.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEECH.
The noise exploded inside Lloyd’s head. It bypassed the armor. It bypassed the cockpit. It went straight into his skull.
It felt like someone had stuck a blender into his brain and hit 'puree.'
"ARGH!" Lloyd screamed, clutching his helmet.