Not a beast.
Not a sorcerer.
But—
A hulking shadow loomed inside the manufactured fog, so massive it froze him mid-step. The silhouette towered, shadow stretching into the void, dwarfing two buses stacked nose to tail. Its frame gleamed with metallic plating fused with carbon-fiber lattices, the kind of tech that should’ve been lost centuries ago.
When he stepped close enough for the dome’s light to glint against its crimson optics—
Skyler almost squealed.
A giant mech.
Straight out of childhood anime. His inner fanboy went into meltdown.
“Holy crap… Is this real?!”
Even in the twenty-third century, humanity had abandoned mechs. Why build skyscraper-sized robots when everyone has superpowers? They were nothing more than nostalgia—cartoons, rejected military projects, dreams that never passed a budget meeting.
Yet here it was. Breathing. Standing. Looking right at him.
It moved. Definitely not for a hug.
THUD… THUD… THUD!
The ground quaked with each step, the weight rattling his bones.
“Twelve meters, give or take,” Skyler muttered, instinctively backing up.
A hand the size of a rooftop swung at him.
WHOOSH!
He spun out of range, only for a barrage of micro-missiles to flare from its shoulder bays, heat-seekers hissing toward him.
“Whoa, whoa, time-out, big guy—we can talk about this—”
The missiles screamed past, close enough to ruffle his hair.
BOOM!
The shockwave behind him ripped at his jacket, nearly tearing it clean off.
Skyler exhaled through gritted teeth. “Okay… playtime’s over.”
The mech drew its sword. No—colossus blade. It dwarfed even three men stacked head to toe. Energy rippled off the edge, distorting the air, pulling dust and debris into its gravitational wake.
It swung.
A crescent of energy detonated outward, gravity folded into a cutting wave meant to erase anything in its path.
Skyler’s instincts kicked in. He snapped his fingers.
Time froze.
The energy arc hung midair, frozen—a frame snatched mid-scene.
Skyler dove aside, tumbled across the ash-gray floor, and glanced back at the deadly slash frozen inches from where he’d been.
“Close call. Another half-second and I’d be sushi.”
The steel reaper resumed its march—each footfall a planetary hammer strike. Its programming was clear: intruder detected → intruder = enemy → enemy must be erased.
It raised the colossus blade high overhead and brought it down—no hesitation, no restraint, no therapist consulted about anger management.
The force behind that swing could’ve executed a planet. Even a graze? Congrats, you’re ketchup.
Skyler clenched his jaw and shot forward, weaving through frozen seconds and zigzagging past the mech’s blade. His soles kicked off the shimmering wall of a dimension he conjured midair, springing upward the way Zoe always did. Not as fluid, but workable for a rookie.
His mind crunched numbers on autopilot:
Deviation X = 3.2 meters
Time stop = 0.4 seconds
Gravity constant = 9.8 m/s2
Weapon weight = 1125 N
Body angle = 47°
Parallel dimension time = 2.3 seconds
Keep dodging and I’m toast, he told himself, twisting in a perfect midair pivot.
A flick of his wrist, and a glowing ring tore outward. Air warped. The ground beneath dissolved into a pocket-world of his own making.
[Skill: Dimensional Sandbox Lv.4]
- Area: 40 x 40 meters
- Duration: 15 seconds
- Gravity: nullified
- Inertia: disabled
Physics shut down—the pause button slammed on reality. The floor vanished. Weight no longer mattered.
“Alright… let’s play.”
The giant mech floated clumsily, arms lagging, its massive blade reduced to nothing more than a slab of drifting alloy. The terror of mass and momentum was gone—replaced by slow-motion clumsiness.
Skyler spun weightless in the air, arms carving arcs through the void, hand cocked in the shape of a pistol.
[Skill: Dimensional Pulse Lv.3]
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- Long-range gravitic burst
- +120% dimensional damage
- Knockback applied
A pulse shot from his fingertip, slamming the mech’s head sideways. It staggered, stalled for a beat—just long enough for its core to reprocess.
The blade panels unfolded. A cannon gleamed from within.
“…Gunblade? Seriously? This thing just flipped genres on me.”
[Passive: Combat Analyst Core]
- Enemy tactics scanned every 5 seconds
- +10% adaptive response speed per cycle
Skyler’s grin widened. He’d seen this pattern before—the fight with Professor Valentine had burned it into him. Own the environment, and you’ve already won half the war.
“If I can hack this tin can…”
Dodging beam-fire, he caught sight of something in his artificial cosmos: a comet, its tail of frozen light streaking across the sandbox.
A sudden spark flared inside him.
Perfect.
He slapped his gauntlet. Gravity twisted, flipped inside-out. The comet veered from its orbit, dragged screaming toward the mech.
[Skill: Gravity Reversal Lv.4]
- Invert gravity in a 50m radius
- Center pull +300%
- Elemental Overload triggered from absorbed mass
In a world without gravity, the giant mech was nothing more than an elephant trapped underwater. The bigger it was, the slower it moved, the harder it was to turn.
Fireballs ripped through the dimension. A meteor shower rained down, each strike hammering dead-on, tearing its metallic shell apart.
[Combo Triggered: Orbital Meteor Crash]
- Condition: Gravity Reversal + Dimensional Environment
- Effect: Pull simulated objects into target every 0.5s for 6s
- Damage: +250% Mechanical
Even battered on all sides, it still wasn’t down.
[Boss Status: Core Integrity 36% | Weapon System 67% | Motor Drive 44%]
Skyler floated above, chest heaving, each breath echoing in the dead silence of space. Black smoke poured from ruptures in the mech’s armor. Circuits spat sparks with every twitch of its broken frame.
Not dead yet.
But not far from it either.
The machine struggled to re-scan. Its sensors fried, commands corrupted, code looping.
Skyler seized the chance, slipping closer with the ease of a phantom. His smaller frame cut through the void with agility the mech could never match.
You’re about to become my new toy.
He didn’t want to destroy it—he wanted to claim it. But the iron beast seemed to anticipate his thought.
[Ultrasonic Disruptor Lv.3]
Frequency: 92,000 Hz
Without warning, the mech unleashed a sonic blast straight into his skull.
“Arghhh…!!!”
Skyler’s ears rang, vision doubled, brain slingshotted across dimensions. His gift—his senses—turned into a curse.
[Status Effect: Confusion]
- Directional control reduced 70%
- Delay: 2.5s
Time itself stuttered—or maybe it wasn’t time. Maybe it was him unraveling.
Then came the vision.
—
A young man, silver-haired, regal, his aura flexed so hard the air literally rage-quit around him.
Beside him stood two women.
One with flowing black hair—Roxy’s face, but softer, gentler, unscarred by rage.
The other unknown—yet her power slammed into him, memory masquerading as destiny.
The silver-haired man raised a hand to the sky.
An asteroid the size of mountains ripped through the atmosphere. Above, the heavens split wide, purple-gray veins crawling as the air fractured into lethal edges.
—
The vision snapped out.
Only pain remained.
The sonic waves drilled mercilessly into Skyler’s nerves, tearing away every shred of focus.
The mech’s crimson eyes flared alive in the haze. A colossal hand lunged for him—mere fractions of a second from crushing him flat.
Instinct beat thought.
[Skill: Spatial Inversion Field Lv.4]
- Cooldown: 16s
- Gravity inverted 180°
- Channeling energy from simulated dimensional core
Reality buckled—the dimension ripped open again, birthing a void where gravity flipped and physics blinked out. The floor vanished, leaving only emptiness, a stage for catastrophe.
[Skill Combo Activated: Meteor Chain Strike + Gravity Lock Field]
- Meteor Chain Strike: Summons 10 meteors from beyond dimensional edges | ATK +240% | Element: Fire
- Gravity Lock Field: Restricts movement of targets within 25m | Enemy SPD -80%
Ten blazing meteors ripped into existence—torn from the void’s rim, each a stroke of divine punishment.
“Sorry, big guy… but I’m taking you down.”
BOOOOMMM!
The blast roared—ten thousand gongs colliding inside his skull. The shockwaves convulsed through the dimension, meteors raining down to crush the mech beneath celestial wrath. Metallic plating shattered, wires ignited, fire spewing as if the gods demanded offerings of steel.
[Damage: 16,800 HP | BOSS DEFEATED]
Skyler collapsed to his knees beside the wreck, chest heaving, each gasp scraping the wreckage from inside his lungs. His head spun, vision scrambled, but enough to register—
A scorched panel. A mark.
— FV —
Something about it tugged at him, maddeningly familiar. But with his brain fried, he could barely tell circuitry apart from waffles.
“Hahh…” He exhaled, staring at what had once been his dream toy—now reduced to smoldering junk.
He forced himself upright, staggering eastward. Behind him, only ashes, molten scraps, and the bitter aftertaste of one thought remained:
“…Damn shame.”
Before it all began—
Deep within the moon’s dark side: one giant sci-fi cathedral, sponsored by ruin?. The ceiling stretched twenty meters high, steel and cables all over, turning the place into a space-spider’s dream loft. Heavy drones swarmed above, moving crates with the ceaseless rhythm of steel bees in a hive.
The assembly lines ran—infernal veins spitting out endless Reapers, each one manufactured without pause. Industrial arms stitched together limbs and plating, not toys to be collected—artworks of death, mass-produced. It was a factory of annihilation, buried beneath the skin of space.
From a separate control chamber above, a lone figure stood behind reinforced glass. His gaze wasn’t that of a scientist—
It was the gaze of a man designing catastrophe.
The man wore a black lab coat buttoned to the throat, more ritual vestment than uniform. He wasn’t just building. He was shaping the very architecture of ruin with his own hands.
On the tablet in his grip, streams of arcane-tech schematics scrolled—bio-arcana maps of Gaia, the Tree of Life, the ultimate objective of his research.
“…That power should be controlled, not worshipped.”
Fingers slid quickly across the console. Data rippled through the silence, screens flickering with new alerts. A slow, deliberate smile curled on his lips.
“…Excellent. The plan is finally falling into place.”
With a flick of his hand, the display shut off. He pulled the hood over his head, the black coat flaring with the motion, and strode out past the silent machinery—an army awaiting only the word to awaken.
“Soon…” His words carried without echo.
Footsteps thundered down the corridor. Metal caught the red gleam from the tunnel—just enough to paint his shadow alive.
“I’ll show them… who the true author of the future really is.”