Dreados soared through the shattered sky, leaping from invisible footholds of compressed air. His eyes burned with urgency—his comrades needed him. But fate had other plans.
A machine intercepted him.
With a shriek of light, it shot into the sky—faster than any beast, any spell. Its chest split open, revealing a charged core of swirling green.
FZZZZZRAAAAAAAM!
A beam tore through the heavens, colliding with Dreados mid-flight. The air exploded. The beam carved a canyon into the ground below, vaporising everything in its path. For six relentless seconds, it fired—a pillar of annihilation stretching to the horizon.
Then—BOOM.
Twin eruptions of blue fire burst from the soles of the machine's feet—jet-like, but far more intense, hotter, wilder. It blasted downward, descending at a diagonal like a divine spear hurled from the skies.
The machine landed with earth-shattering weight. Its impact cracked the battlefield, throwing dust and bodies into the air. With mechanical grace, it stepped forward—each stride slow, deliberate, final.
Without turning its head, it raised its arm and fired.
To the right.
To the left.
Two beams swept the field, eradicating every Raider and Unbound fighter in sight. They didn't scream. They didn't run. There was no time.
Only silence.
Then dust.
And death.
---
From the heart of the rubble—he rose.
Dreados.
Stripped bare.
His once-immaculate hair had been burned away. His skin—charred and peeling, blood dripping from exposed muscle. The left half of his face was a mess of scorched flesh and bulging veins. One eye, now red and furious, locked onto his enemy.
Yet still, he walked.
Naked. Unbowed. Alive.
The machine stopped.
It was unlike the others—shorter, broader, sculpted in the likeness of a man. Twenty metres of mechanical perfection. Unlike its black-armoured brethren, its shoulders gleamed white. Its body rippled with artificial musculature, every fibre carved in impossible detail: eyes, nose, ears, lips—even fingernails. It wore only white trousers, and its core was hidden—nestled inside its chest, which only opened to fire.
It was not just a machine.
It was an idol of destruction.
It spoke.
Its voice was deep, slow, metallic—but laced with something far more human. Emotion. Disgust.
>"The audacity to desecrate the land of our king…
Your actions are tantamount to courting death.
Your gross disrespect has awakened me from slumber.
And as such… I—will end—you all."
Dreados narrowed his eye, tilting his head. "I understood none of that gibberish."
The machine paused. Then—its voice shifted.
It now spoke Stern.
> "Cast away all thoughts of escape, Elf.
Escape is futile."
The battlefield held its breath.
The two stood before each other—one, a battered warrior, barely more than flesh and bone; the other, a titan of metal, the size of a palace gate.
Dreados raised his head, locking eyes with the giant.
"I see," he said. "Your timing is impeccable."
The machine looked down, green optics glowing with cold finality.
> "I commend you…
For surviving my cannon.
That shall be your last accomplishment in life.
As a reward…
I will fight you—with my fists."
Its arm lifted, servo-muscles grinding, fingers tightening into a metallic fist that gleamed in the ruin's light that shined from the 2nd floor.
Dreados said nothing.
He simply clenched his own.
The air between them thickened—charged with violence.
And the duel began.
The machine's fist came down like divine judgment.
BOOOOOOM.
Dreados barely dodged—his body twisting away as the earth detonated behind him. A crater, ten kilometers wide, opened beneath the impact. Stone vaporised. Mountains of ruin turned to dust.
And so the battle began.
The machine launched forward, fists swinging with terrifying precision—each blow collapsing the air, and cratering the ground. Dreados weaved between strikes, barely a blur, each miss sending shockwaves rolling across the landscape.
Damn it, Dreados thought, teeth clenched. How can something so massive be this fast?
He leapt into the sky, skipping off invisible footholds of air. His fists lashed out—one, two, three, four, five—striking the machine's jaw, its shoulder, its abdomen. Sparks flew. But the machine did not falter.
They soared higher.
Clashing above the battlefield like twin meteors. Their speed shattered the terrain. Their shockwaves cracked the foundations of the ruin. Walls buckled. The air screamed.
Then—CRACK!
The machine's palm collided with Dreados's entire body. A single slap.
Dreados was ripped from the sky, screaming.
BOOOOM!
He crashed through the second floor, then the third, forming a crater sixteen kilometres wide. The impact blew ancient walls apart and split the stone like paper. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he bounced, then slammed back down.
Far away, Omfry had just finished tearing through another machine—its core crushed as he burst through it —when he felt it.
That power.
That pressure.
That impossible clash.
His eyes narrowed. "What the hell is that…?"
Without hesitation, Omfry launched into the sky.
His body cracked the sound barrier a dozen times over as he soared toward the source of the devastation. The air bent around him—then, just as he prepared to strike—
The machine vanished.
"What—!?"
Before Omfry could react, a colossal foot came down from above. The sole slammed into his back with cataclysmic force.
The scream that left his throat was devoured by their impossible speed—his voice couldn't even catch up.
He was hurled down like a comet.
BOOOOOOOM.
He tore through the second floor, then the third, his body carving another sixteen-kilometre crater. He struck the ground, bounced, then slammed down again—flesh cracking, bones groaning.
Omfry lay still, coughing blood.
The machine floated in the air.
Its voice echoed across the ruin, mechanical and cold, but full of quiet scorn:
>"Your Bravo cannot contend with me."
The entire ruin trembled.
---
Ziraiah, curled on the floor, lifted her head as the tremor passed through the stone beneath her. Her breath caught in her throat.
"What now…?" she whispered.
Gustein stared wide-eyed at the growing fissures across the battlefield. "Don't tell me… something else is coming."
Cracks snaked outward like veins of doom.
They reached the man who held Valerius aloft—unmoving, unaffected, calm.
The ground gave way beneath him.
He fell—still holding Valerius by the head.
Valerius screamed.
The man did not.
They descended together, vanishing into the abyss between floors. The man landed without effort—standing beside a black chasm on the third floor, still holding Valerius as if nothing had changed.
---
On the second floor—
Ola and Omria were sprinting across broken stone when the tremor hit.
A deafening gust of wind—shrapnel and sound—blew through the battlefield. Ola raised her arm, clutching a glowing scroll tightly. The blast tore at her fingers.
Her thumb scraped a crimson symbol.
Click.
A flash of light engulfed her.
"OLA!" Omria shouted, reaching for her.
Too late.
Ola vanished in a blink.
---
She reappeared.
Gasping.
On grass.
The wind was real.
The sky was blue.
Trees surrounded her.
Birdsong.
Freedom.
Her breath caught in her throat.
She looked down—the scroll was gone.
Her hands shook.
"No," she whispered. "No, no, no—"
She stood.
Looked back toward the ruin entrance—toward the gaping hole in the distance.
She clenched her fists.
Then spat.
"Fuck."
---
The ruin trembled again.
From above—the colossal machine plummeted through the gaping hole in the ceiling, a smoking silhouette against the ruined sky. Just before crashing into the ground, twin bursts of searing blue plasma erupted from the vents beneath its feet.
FWOOOOOM.
The thrusters flared like miniature suns, halting its descent with a violent hiss of superheated air. The ground beneath it cracked from the redirected force, dust swirling around its towering form as it landed like a god of judgment.
THOOM.
Its steel feet touched down—slow, deliberate.
The shockwave rippled outward.
---
Not far from the impact crater, Dreados limped toward a broken figure slumped in the dust—Omfry.
His hair was scorched away. His eye burned red, veins crawling up the side of his face. Blood seeped down his charred body. His skin peeled in places. His clothes were gone. Only his Solstice gloves remained—glimmering and pristine.
"Omfry…" Dreados rasped.
Omfry stirred, blinking through the haze of pain. "Damn, man…" he muttered, his voice rough but alive. "What the hell happened to you?"
Dreados looked past him—at the giant, walking slowly toward them. "That… happened."
Omfry followed his gaze. The machine's sculpted, inhumanly perfect body glistened in the half-light. Its glowing green eyes locked onto them.
Omfry exhaled. "Yeah… I don't think I can take that thing down alone."
Dreados shook his head, the corners of his mouth twitching. "Neither do I."
Omfry chuckled, despite the blood. "You look like shit, but…"
He raised his hand.
"Tag team?"
Dreados paused.
Then grinned.
"We've never fought together."
"First time for everything, old friend."
SMACK.
Their hands clasped together in a solid dap—the crack of contact echoing like thunder. Red sparks danced where their palms met, surging outward in twin waves of force. They stepped forward, side by side. One slow step. Then another.
Fists clenched.
Auras ignited.
Omfry's essence burst out in a ripple of heat—deep crimson, flickering like wildfire. Dreados's aura surged as well—darker, heavier, thick with coiled pressure like a supernova about to detonate.
To the naked eye, nothing changed.
But to those who could see Bravo—to those attuned to power—both men now glowed with a scarlet light visible only to turned eyes. Energy warped around them. The air vibrated. Their combined presence cracked the nearby walls.
The machine halted.
It watched.
It spoke—voice deep, resonating, metallic, yet disturbingly calm:
> "If you think your combined attacks are enough to best me… perish the thought.
You have no idea what I'm capable of.
Your very Sentinel… Bravo… was named after me."
The words echoed through the ruin.
Dreados turned his head slightly, eye twitching. "Did you hear that?"
Omfry cracked his neck and grinned. "Oh, I heard him."
They both faced the machine again, their power rising—crimson waves flickering like hellfire across their skin.
And then—
WHOOM.
Their combined energy exploded outward.
The entire battlefield quaked.
The machine tilted its head, scanning the auras. Its mouth twitched—not in a smile, but in what could only be described as mechanical disappointment.
> "If this is the limit of your strength…" it said, stepping forward, voice heavy with disdain,
"…I pity you."
Dreados and Omfry said nothing.
They just raised their fists—glowing red, trembling with barely restrained force.
The real fight had begun.
The colossal machine marched forward—its sculpted humanoid body gleaming beneath the ruin's broken ceiling. Each step cracked the ground. Each breath of its mechanical chest released a low hum like thunder brewing in a black storm.
Across from it, Dreados and Omfry stood shoulder to shoulder, fists clenched, eyes blazing. Their combined aura surged—red, blinding, untamed. The ground quaked beneath their feet.
Then, without a word—
They moved.
Dreados grabbed Omfry by the forearm and spun once, twice—then hurled him like a javelin toward the towering foe.
Omfry twisted mid-air, legs drawn back.
CRACK!
His feet smashed against the machine's jaw. The blow rang like a bell, sending the mechanical giant skidding backward, its heels carving a trench hundreds of meters long.
Before it could recover, Dreados was already leaping, pushing off the crater's edge.
Omfry raised his foot as Dreados soared past—sole-to-sole contact.
BOOM!
Omfry pushed off Dreados's foot, propelling him like a cannonball. He twisted and came down with both fists—slamming into the machine's chest.
The machine stumbled, arms flaring as it braced.
But Dreados wasn't done.
He dropped behind it, grabbed the machine's massive forearm, and spun—using the titan's own weight against it.
"NOW!"
He flung the machine toward Omfry, its body twisting like a thrown mountain.
Omfry ran up a falling slab of stone—then drop-kicked the machine's ribs mid-flight.
KRA-KOOOOM!
The strike shattered bones of beasts caught in the crossfire. The shockwave leveled a forest of obsidian trees nearby. A 16-kilometre-wide crater formed beneath the machine's crash site.
The titan rose slowly, dust and smoke cloaking its silhouette.
Its foot smashed the ground.
The entire floor buckled.
Chunks of reinforced rock—city-sized debris—rose into the air.
With a swipe of its arm, the machine fortified the falling rubble, coating it with energy.
Then it hurled them.
Hundreds.
Each a missile.
Dreados and Omfry split, weaving between the projectiles.
They dodged three—then four—
BOOM!
One slammed into Dreados, launching him sideways through a beast's skull—collateral carnage—and into a boulder, forming a deep impact pit.
Omfry raised both arms to shield himself—then a chunk of debris blasted his shoulder, sending him tumbling. He crashed into the ribcage of a leviathan beast that had dared approach, splitting its spine in two.
More beasts surged toward the noise.
A mistake.
Omfry rose, bloodied, furious—and punched straight through one beast's chest, then hurled its corpse at another, crushing both.
Dreados emerged from the rubble, his glare locked on the machine.
"Again," he growled.
They leapt together.
Omfry landed on Dreados's back.
Dreados leapt.
Omfry pushed off his back mid-flight, flipping toward the machine with a spinning heel strike to the head.
Dreados followed close behind—grabbing the machine's leg mid-recovery and swinging it like a flail, slamming it into the cliffside.
BOOM.
The wall cracked. The ceiling above fractured.
The machine flipped upright, steam hissing from its shoulders.
"Do not mistake your successful attacks for strength, you're yet to leave a scratch on me," it said slowly, "you cannot overcome my design."
Its elbow drove toward Dreados—but Omfry intercepted, catching the strike with both hands, he fortified the ground to brace himself, feet sliding back across the fortified stone.
Then—
"Switch!"
Dreados leapt—
Omfry caught his hand and, with a grunt of power, hurled him skyward.
Mid-air, Dreados twisted—then pushed off the air itself, a burst of red force flashing beneath his feet.
He dropped like a thunderbolt—
and smashed an axe-kick down onto the machine's head.
CRACK!
The impact echoed like a collapsing mountain. Metal groaned beneath his heel.
The floor gave way.
They all crashed to the forth floor, the air split by wind and fury.
The machine landed on its feet. Its knees bent. Steam shot from its spine.
Dreados and Omfry crashed through the dust together, side by side.
The beast army watched from afar—and fled.
Even monsters understood what they were witnessing.
Monsters wearing the flesh of men.
To Be Continued...