Chapter : 1617

  "Test Three," Lloyd announced. "Long-range projection. Railgun."

  He looked at the far wall of the cavern. It was solid granite, fifty feet thick. Behind it was the mountain.

  He raised his right shoulder. The railgun barrels aligned. The coils began to hum. He could feel the magnetic field building up, a tingling sensation that made the hair on his arms stand up inside the suit.

  Charge: 100%.

  Projectile: Heavy Star-Metal Sabot.

  Target: The mountain.

  "Fire," Lloyd said.

  There was no explosion. There was no fire. There was just a sound like the sky tearing open.

  CRACK.

  The air in front of the barrel turned white from the friction. The slug left the barrel at Mach 7.

  It hit the wall instantly.

  The impact was catastrophic. The granite wall didn't just break; it liquefied. The kinetic energy transfer turned the rock into molten lava for a split second before it vaporized.

  The slug punched a hole ten feet wide through fifty feet of solid rock. It kept going. It punched through the earth behind it. It punched through the root of the mountain.

  Lloyd watched the telemetry. The slug traveled three miles through solid rock before it finally disintegrated from the friction.

  He lowered his arm. The barrel was glowing red hot. The cooling vents hissed, venting steam.

  "It works," Lloyd said. "It works."

  He had built a weapon that could kill a dragon from three miles away without using a single drop of mana. He had built a weapon that Lucifer couldn't turn off.

  Lloyd stood in the center of the ruined cavern. The air was filled with dust and smoke. He felt the heat radiating from the suit. He felt the power thrumming in his veins.

  For the first time in weeks, the crushing weight of grief felt... lighter. It wasn't gone. It would never be gone. But now, he had a place to put it. He could pour it into the fuel tank. He could fire it out of a gun.

  He raised his hand to the helmet. He pressed the release.

  Hiss.

  The seals broke. The faceplate slid up with a mechanical whir.

  Lloyd took a breath of the smoky air. He coughed. He looked around at the destruction he had caused. It was beautiful.

  There was a large mirror leaned against the wall, used for checking the suit's articulation. Lloyd walked over to it.

  He looked at his reflection.

  He saw the suit—the hulking, black nightmare of steel. And he saw his own face framed in the open helmet.

  He looked different.

  The boy who had arrived in this world wanting to sell soap was gone. The young lord who wanted to impress his father was gone. Even the grieving friend was fading.

  The eyes staring back at him were cold. They were flat. They were the eyes of a man who had seen the end of the world and decided to shoot it.

  They were the eyes of the Major General. The eyes of KM Evan.

  He remembered Earth. He remembered the wars. He remembered the feeling of command. He remembered the feeling of being the most dangerous thing in the room.

  He had tried to bury that man. He thought that man didn't belong in this new, magical world. But he was wrong. That man was exactly what this world needed.

  "Lucifer," Lloyd said.

  His voice was quiet, but the suit’s speakers picked it up and amplified it. It came out as a low, metallic growl that shook the dust on the floor.

  "You wanted to see the Line of Iron?" Lloyd asked his reflection. "You wanted to break us? You wanted to erase us?"

  He reached up and touched the rim of the helmet. He touched the spot where the Lilith Stones were embedded, pulsing with his own rage.

  "I am not Roy," Lloyd said. "I am not honorable. I am not a king. I am an engineer. And I have found the flaw in your design."

  He slammed the faceplate down. The world went red again as the sensors took over.

  "I am coming for you," the mechanical voice roared, filling the cavern. "I am going to find you. I am going to break your toys. I am going to burn your house. And then... I am going to turn you into dust."

  The Golem Heart pulsed a violent, agreeing beat.

  He turned and walked toward the elevator. The ground shook with every step. The Exterminator was ready. And God help anyone who stood in his way.

  Chapter : 1618

  Lloyd Ferrum stood in front of the shimmering, wavering portal that led to his private dimension, the Soul Farm. He looked like a man who had been dragged backward through a hurricane. His eyes were red-rimmed and hollow, sinking deep into his skull. His skin was the color of old parchment. He hadn’t slept. Not really. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw a spear of darkness. He saw a diamond shattering into a million useless, glittering pieces. He saw Jasmin dying.

  He hated closing his eyes. So, he decided to stop doing it.

  "You look terrible," a voice echoed in his mind. It was Fang Fairy. She materialized next to him, her silver hair crackling with static electricity. She usually floated with a kind of divine grace, but today she hovered low, her golden eyes filled with worry. "Your heart rate is erratic. Your cortisol levels are through the roof. You are statistically likely to collapse in the next forty minutes."

  "I am fine," Lloyd said. His voice was a flat, gravelly rasp. "We have work to do."

  "Work?" Iffrit’s voice boomed from the air as he manifested as a small, angry ball of flame on Lloyd’s shoulder. "We killed ten thousand goblins yesterday. We wiped out the boars. There is nothing left to kill, Master. You broke the ecosystem."

  "Not everything," Lloyd said. He adjusted the gloves on his hands. They were trembling slightly. He clenched them into fists until the trembling stopped. "We are going to the Valley of Giants."

  The two spirits went silent. The air in the room seemed to drop a few degrees.

  The Valley of Giants was a zone Lloyd had avoided. It wasn’t because he was scared. It was because it was inefficient. The monsters there were too big, too slow, and took too long to kill for the amount of coins they dropped. It was a bad investment of time. But Lloyd wasn't looking for coins today. He wasn't looking for efficiency.

  "That is a high-pressure zone," Fang Fairy warned. "The gravity is three times the standard. The atmospheric density crushes lungs. You are not in a condition to—"

  "I said we are going," Lloyd interrupted. He stepped through the portal.

  The transition was instant. The cool air of his study was replaced by a suffocating, hot, dusty oppression. The gravity hit him immediately. It felt like an invisible giant had just decided to sit on his shoulders. His knees buckled, cracking audibly, but he forced them to straighten. The air tasted like iron and crushed granite.

  He looked around. The landscape was desolate. There were no trees, no grass, no rivers. Just rocks. Rocks the size of dogs, rocks the size of houses, and rocks the size of castles. The sky was a bruised, heavy purple, hanging low over the jagged peaks.

  "Welcome to hell," Lloyd muttered. "It’s cozy."

  He started walking. Each step was a battle. He had to consciously force his legs to lift against the crushing gravity. His lungs burned, struggling to pull oxygen from the thick, heavy air. But the pain was good. The pain was loud. It drowned out the memory of Jasmin’s face. It drowned out the guilt.

  Small earth elementals, vaguely humanoid shapes made of mud and sharp gravel, rose from the ground to stop him. They were the pests of this zone. Lloyd didn't even slow down. He coated his boots in a thin layer of Void Steel and kicked through them. They shattered into dirt clods. He didn't care about them. He was hunting the king of this wasteland.

  He walked for hours. His sweat turned to mud on his skin. His muscles screamed in protest, begging him to stop, to lie down, to quit. He ignored them. He was looking for a specific energy signature. He was looking for the heaviest thing in the world.

  Eventually, he found it. In the center of a massive crater, a mountain decided to stand up.

  The ground shook violently, knocking Lloyd off balance. Dust and boulders cascaded down the side of a massive cliff face as it rose. Two glowing yellow eyes, each the size of a carriage, cracked open in the stone.

  It was Atlas. The Ancient Earth Spirit.

  It stood nearly forty feet tall. It didn't look like a man. It looked like a walking fortress made of tectonic plates. Its shoulders were jagged peaks. Its arms were pillars of solid granite. It didn't possess speed. It didn't possess magic. It possessed mass. Overwhelming, undeniable mass.

  "That," Iffrit whispered, "is a very big rock."

  Chapter : 1619

  Atlas looked down. It saw the tiny, fleshy speck standing in its crater. It let out a sound that wasn't a roar, but the grinding screech of an earthquake. It raised a foot—a block of stone the size of a small house—and brought it down.

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  Lloyd didn't move. He didn't use his Void Steps to dodge. He didn't summon his spirits to block. He wanted to feel it. He wanted to know if he could take it.

  "Steel Blood," he whispered.

  His skin turned a dark, metallic grey as he reinforced his entire skeletal structure with Void energy. He raised his arms in a cross block above his head.

  BOOM.

  The impact was cataclysmic. The ground beneath Lloyd liquidated. He was driven into the bedrock like a nail. The shockwave blew the dust away for a hundred yards.

  Darkness swallowed him. The weight was unbearable. It felt like the entire world was pressing down on his forearms. His bones groaned. His muscles tore. But he held.

  He gritted his teeth, blood leaking from his nose. "Is that... all you got?"

  He pushed. With a scream of effort that tore his throat, he surged upward. The giant’s foot shifted. Lloyd rolled out from under the stomp, gasping for air. He was battered. He was bruised. But he wasn't broken.

  "He is durable," Fang Fairy noted, sounding terrified. "But Master, you cannot fight that with just your fists."

  "Watch me," Lloyd spat.

  He charged. He couldn't fly, and he couldn't jump high in this gravity. So he climbed. He latched onto the rough surface of Atlas's leg and began to scale the giant. Atlas swatted at him with hands like wrecking balls. Lloyd moved with desperate, jagged movements, dodging the blows that would have turned him into paste.

  He reached the giant's knee. He activated his Steel Blood again, turning his fist into a solid hammer of steel. He punched the stone.

  CRACK.

  A small spiderweb fracture appeared on the granite. It was tiny. Insignificant. Atlas didn't even seem to notice.

  "Again," Lloyd growled.

  He punched again. And again. And again. His knuckles split. His blood mixed with the stone dust. He didn't stop. He turned off his brain. He stopped thinking about strategy. He stopped thinking about the Aegis suit or the Devil Race. He just focused on the simple, brutal act of hitting a rock until it broke.

  Atlas roared and shook its leg, dislodging Lloyd. He fell twenty feet, slamming into the ground. He bounced, rolled, and immediately scrambled back up.

  "I'm not done!" Lloyd screamed at the giant. "I'm not done with you!"

  He charged again. The battle turned into a grueling loop of violence. Climb. Punch. Fall. Repeat. It went on for hours. Lloyd’s body was a map of bruises. His energy reserves were critically low. But his will had calcified into something harder than the giant’s armor.

  He climbed back up to the knee. The crack was bigger now. It was a fissure.

  "You think you're tough?" Lloyd shouted, tears of frustration and rage mixing with the sweat on his face. "You think you're hard? You're nothing! You're just dirt! I am Ferrum! I am Steel!"

  He poured the last dregs of his Void power into his right arm. The steel coating glowed red-hot from the friction and pressure. He pulled his arm back and delivered a final, haymaker punch into the fissure.

  KRA-KOOM.

  The sound was like a gunshot in a cathedral. The fissure exploded. A massive chunk of granite sheared off the giant's leg. Atlas stumbled. The colossal spirit lost its balance. It tried to catch itself, but its own mass worked against it.

  It fell.

  The earth jumped ten feet into the air as the Titan crashed down. Dust billowed up like a mushroom cloud.

  Lloyd stood there, swaying on his feet. His hands hung uselessly at his sides. He watched as the dust settled. Atlas was lying on its side, groaning with the sound of shifting gravel. It tried to rise, but its leg was shattered.

  Lloyd walked over to the giant’s head. He looked into the glowing yellow eyes. There was no malice there. Just the slow, patient acceptance of the earth.

  "You're strong," Lloyd rasped. "But I'm stubborn."

  He placed his hand on the giant’s forehead. The spirit acknowledged his victory. It dissolved into a stream of heavy, golden-brown particles that flowed into Lloyd’s chest.

  [SYSTEM ALERT: Spirit Acquired. ATLAS - The Earth Titan.]

  Chapter : 1620

  Lloyd fell to his knees. He had won. He had the spirit. But it wasn't enough. He looked at his hands. They were still shaking. He was still small. He was still vulnerable. He needed to be more. He needed to be the mountain.

  ________________________________________

  Lloyd sat in the dust of the Valley of Giants for a long time. He drank a stamina potion, the bitter taste grounding him slightly. His physical wounds were healing thanks to his passive regeneration, but the exhaustion went deeper than muscle. It was in his marrow.

  "We should go back," Fang Fairy suggested gently. "You have acquired the Colossus. That was the objective. You need rest."

  "No," Lloyd said. He stood up, his joints popping. "The objective wasn't to catch a pet. The objective was to become invulnerable."

  "You can't be invulnerable, Master," Iffrit said, his voice surprisingly serious. "Even stars burn out. Even mountains erode. It is the nature of things."

  "Then I will change the nature of things," Lloyd snapped.

  He focused inward. He could feel the new presence in his soul. Atlas was vast. It felt like a desert, silent and immense. It was dormant, waiting for a command. Lloyd didn't want to summon it. Summoning it meant it was separate from him. If it was separate, it could be killed. If it was separate, he was still just a human standing behind a wall.

  "I'm going to Merge," Lloyd announced.

  "You can't!" Fang Fairy shrieked. "Master, listen to me! You barely survived the merge with me, and I am energy! Atlas is matter! He is mass! Merging with a physical Colossus spirit... your body will not be able to handle the expansion. You will be torn apart!"

  "Then I'll hold myself together," Lloyd said. "Calculated risk."

  It wasn't a calculated risk. It was madness born of grief. But Lloyd didn't care. He activated the bond.

  Soul Merge: Atlas.

  The reaction was immediate and violent. It didn't feel like power flowing into him. It felt like he had swallowed a planet. His insides turned heavy. His blood felt like mercury.

  He fell to his hands and knees as his body began to rebel. His skin stretched, turning grey and rough.

  "Expand," Lloyd gritted out.

  He grew. The sound of his transformation was sickening—bones snapping and lengthening, muscles tearing and reknitting instantly into stone fibers. He shot up to ten feet. Then fifteen. His clothes disintegrated, useless against the expansion.

  Layers of rock formed over his skin, creating natural plate mail. His face pushed outward, losing its human features, becoming a blank, stoic mask of granite. He grew until he was looking down at the boulders that had previously dwarfed him.

  Thirty feet tall. A Titan of Rock.

  Lloyd looked through his new eyes. His vision was different. He sensed vibrations in the earth. He felt the magnetic fields of the planet. He felt... solid.

  "I am big," he rumbled. His voice was a landslide.

  "You are ugly," Iffrit commented, though he stayed at a respectful distance. "Very dusty."

  Lloyd took a step. BOOM. The ground shook. He felt powerful. But he looked at his arm. It was rock. Rock could be chipped. Rock could be drilled.

  "Not enough," Lloyd said.

  He reached for his Void Power. This was the dangerous part. He had to coat this massive surface area with his Steel Blood. It was like trying to paint a castle with a single brush in one second.

  "Steel... Blood..."

  He pushed his will outward. From the center of his rocky torso, a metallic liquid began to seep. It was silver and gleaming. It spread over the granite plates, filling the cracks, coating the rough stone. It hardened instantly into an alloy of organic steel and spiritual earth.

  The grey giant turned into a silver monument. He stood in the valley, a thirty-foot-tall statue of chrome and power. The sun, piercing through the grey clouds, reflected off his armor with blinding intensity.

  He was a Steel Titan. A walking fortress.

  "System check," Lloyd rumbled.

  He felt the drain. It was catastrophic. His mana bar was dropping by the second. Maintaining this form was like running a sprint while holding your breath. He had minutes, maybe less.

  But for those minutes, he was godlike.

  He looked at a cliff face. He walked over to it. He didn't wind up. He just thrust his fist forward.

  The impact didn't just break the cliff. It sent a shockwave through the entire valley. The cliff face crumbled, thousands of tons of rock falling onto him.