Legion deployment adjustments were complete.

Allen had Jarvis compile a comprehensive force overview for Zone 18.

[Combat Order of Battle Overview]

[First to Fifth Golem Legions: Full strength. Sixth Legion: In production, 11% completion. Seventh Defense Legion: Reorganization complete.]

[Total Active Combat Golems (excluding mine garrison units): 1,438. Includes: 250 PX-1B models, 116 Inferno Launch Platforms, 28 PX-1 and PX-1A models combined, 8 Freedom Gundams, 660 Spider Slayer II models, 84 Storm Falcons, 64 Demon Eye II Sky Fortresses, 39 Demon Eye III Reconnaissance Command Nodes.]

[Jumping Spider Self-Destructive Golems: 4,000 units.]

[Ammunition Reserves: 248 Crystal Armor-Piercing Bullets, 42 Micro-Dust Bombs, 200 Conventional Crystal Bombs, 5 "Big Boy"s, 12,400 Red Lotus Type-1 Magic Missiles, 1,200 various aerial and earth-penetrating bombs.]

[Calculated based on the entire army’s full combat expenditure rate, current ammunition reserves can sustain operations for: approximately 90 days.]

[Available Liquid Assets: 25.65 million Low-Level Magic Stones. Raw Ore Reserves: Abundant.]

Ninety days.

Allen stared at the number.

It sounded like a long time, but what was bearing down from the west was a tide of Magical Beasts at least one hundred thousand strong, all under the command of a high-level will.

They were incapable of having their morale shattered; they would simply fill every inch of the battlefield with their flesh and blood.

In that kind of meat grinder, a three-month supply of ammunition was likely just an optimistic theoretical value. And he still had to be on guard for the possible appearance of Black Wizards.

"What’s the current load on the production lines?"

[Two ammunition production lines are operating at 100%. Four Golem production lines have a daily output of 4 PX-1B models or 16 Infernos.]

"Keep producing." Allen stood up, his voice cold and hard. "Don’t hold back any of the Low-Level Magic Stones in the warehouse. Use the ore reserves without limit. Before the beast tide arrives, push that number as high as it will go."

[Command confirmed.]

Allen turned and walked toward the Meditation Room.

The heavy doors closed behind him. His consciousness sank, entering his Sea of Spirit.

The construction of the fifth Core Matrix was still ongoing.

Allen’s consciousness regularly switched between his Sea of Spirit and reality, like a precision pendulum. Eighteen hours of Meditation, six hours of handling affairs, over and over.

The workshop’s production lines ran day and night. The inventory of Red Lotus Magic Missiles jumped daily. PX-1B models rolled off the line at a rate of three per day, forming the framework of the Sixth Legion.

Everything was proceeding according to plan.

...

「Afternoon, on the fourth day.」

Jarvis received a communication unlike any it had seen before.

[Military transit notification received.]

"What kind?"

[Airspace signal. A friendly identification code has been detected approaching from the northeast of Zone 18. Callsign: ’Iron Star 6th Legion’. Altitude two thousand meters, speed... extremely fast.]

Iron Star. That had to be one of his mentor’s Golems.

"The Demon Eyes didn’t give an early warning?"

[All Demon Eye IV models on the western front and at high altitude detected no Magic Power fluctuations. Radar scans show no physical object.]

A second later, Jarvis added a second piece of data.

[Optical observation module has captured a single target. The unit is projected to pass over the workshop in three minutes.]

Allen could no longer sit still.

He opened his eyes, stood, and pushed open the door to the Meditation Room, striding toward the workshop’s exterior.

It was a rare opportunity. He wanted to see his mentor’s Golems with his own eyes.

Arriving on the open platform outside the workshop, a blast of hot volcanic wind hit him head-on.

Allen raised his head.

Reflected in his eyes was a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life.

The sky was blotted out.

That wasn’t a Golem. It was a mountain range of steel, suspended in the heavens.

A flying mountain, built of metal and Runes. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

It flew in from the northeast, streaking through the clouds at a speed that defied its sheer size. At an altitude of only two thousand meters, it was so low he could almost make out the countless, intricate Rune Arrays flowing across its belly.

Allen’s brain instantly calculated its dimensions, using the area of the sky it obscured and the scope of its shadow on the ground as reference points.

This thing was approximately five hundred meters high and over two thousand meters long.

The shadow swept in from the northeast like a man-made eclipse, swallowing Zone 18’s workshop, mines, and patrolling Golem Legions in darkness.

The temperature dropped by two degrees the moment the shadow passed over.

Only when the colossus passed directly beneath a Demon Eye IV did it finally manage to capture any data.

Its hull was a composite layered structure of at least three unknown high-grade metals. Allen’s materials database had no matching records.

It simultaneously detected the characteristic ripples of three large Magic Power furnaces in operation, their total output dozens of times greater than the sum of his four volcanic Magic Power furnaces.

Optical sensors identified over four hundred independent cannon arrays on the colossus’s surface. The caliber and energy signatures of at least sixty of them far surpassed any weapon he had ever seen.

Their power was incalculable.

Above the workshop, a Freedom Gundam was on a routine patrol. An eighteen-meter-tall Steel Giant, it was the most powerful decisive-battle weapon in his arsenal.

At this moment, under the shadow of the flying fortress, it looked as tiny as a figurine on a desk.

And the First Golem Legion, composed of hundreds of Steel Slayers arrayed in formation near the workshop, looked like a pile of Lego bricks scattered across a sand table.

’That Level 3 Golem with a Magic Power fluctuation of four thousand that Victor was talking about? In front of this thing, it probably wouldn’t even withstand a single shot.’

The sunlight was completely blotted out. The massive shadow fell like an eclipse, engulfing the entire main workshop area.

There was no roar of engines, no howl of rushing air.

Utter silence.

This profound, physics-defying stillness carried a suffocating sense of pressure.

Even the volcanic ash on the ground was pinned down by some kind of invisible Force Field, unable to stir a single speck of dust.

Allen’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

He didn’t feel fear, nor did he feel shame that his proud legions had been reduced to looking like scrap metal in comparison.

But his breathing grew heavy, his pupils contracting violently.

In those black eyes, a flame called "fanaticism" had ignited.

It was pure longing. A covetous yearning for truth, for higher-dimensional technology, for absolute power.

A pure, searing desire that seemed to seep from the marrow of his bones.

’An Anti-Gravity Rune Array driven by three Magic Power furnaces simultaneously... how is that structure stabilized? How are the power supply Rune Circuits for four hundred cannons allocated? What kind of framework supports a two-thousand-meter body to keep it from collapsing under its own weight in flight?’

Jarvis’s recording modules ran frantically, trying to capture the layout logic of the colossus’s Anti-Gravity Rune Array and the paths of its Rune Circuits in the few short seconds it took to pass over. Even a one percent fragment of that data would be a priceless treasure to Allen.

The colossus didn’t slow down, nor did it send any communications.

It paid no mind to the ants on the ground.

In a crushing silence, it flew straight toward the west.

There, a black tide of one hundred thousand Magical Beasts had gathered.

There, was a Morning Star-class Rock Armor Earth Dragon with a Magic Power fluctuation exceeding twelve thousand.

The shadow slid past Allen, and sunlight fell upon him once more.

He stood frozen in place, watching the silhouette of the steel mountain vanish over the western horizon.

After a long moment, he finally spoke.

"How magnificent..."

"Jarvis."

[Present.]

"Take all the data you just recorded and create a separate, encrypted file."

[File created. Designation?]

Allen was silent for two seconds.

"Call it ’Objective’."

The wind, at last, began to blow again.

He turned and walked back to the Meditation Room, his pace much faster than when he had come out.

Meanwhile, a thousand kilometers to the west, atop the spine of a walking mountain, a figure in the gray mist seemed to have also spotted the enormous silhouette approaching on the horizon.

He stood up.

His scarlet, crystalline eyes lost their smiling expression.

"We have a guest. You go ahead and play for a while!"