Lucas rubbed his chin in thought as he looked over Percival’s schematics. He couldn’t help but scratch his head in confusion since Percival had undergone a significant change in appearance.

  Towering at nearly ten feet tall, the hulking cybernetic knight is a blend of scorched black steel and dark chrome, with segmented armor plates that hiss and lock with every movement like the shifting of tectonic plates. Its frame is heavily reinforced, resembling the bulk of a golem but laced with futuristic machinery—hydraulic joints, glowing circuits, and runes etched into its plating.

  Its head is shaped like a jagged, demonic helm with a glowing red visor, scanning its environment with eerie precision. Wielding a massive great sword slung across its back, the blade appears to be forged from blackened steel, with glowing red glyphs etched into its blade. In its primary hand, it grips an elongated lance, bristling with crackling energy and serrated edges capable of piercing magical and armored targets alike.

  Surrounding the entire knight is a menacing dark purple aura, like warped gravity or condensed despair. The aura distorts the air, giving the illusion of heat shimmer, and leaves a faint trail of violet sparks in its wake.

  A cape made of living smoke flows from its shoulders, shifting shape constantly—sometimes taking on wraithlike forms, sometimes disintegrating into mist before reforming. The cape emits no sound, but its presence chills the air around it, as if death itself lingers behind the knight.

  Its footsteps leave scorched imprints, and every move it makes is punctuated by a chorus of servo whines and low, metallic growls—half machine, half monster.

  Percival now leaned more towards its former appearance as a monster lord, than a cybernetic golem.

  “How is this even possible?” Lucas muttered.

  “Well, at the end of the day. It’s a golem,” Wanda pointed out. “A magical construct. Obviously, it could undergo changes through its connection to its creator. And must I remind you that you used my soul control rune on it? Your connection to it is even deeper than normal golems.”

  “I’ll need to do a field test with it to find what this upgrade can do,” Lucas stated as Percival took its sphere form. “Any progress on your end?”

  “I’m currently working on a soul rune that binds others to a contract,” Wanda replied.

  “From what I’ve read through history books, any deal that involved something like that didn’t end well,” Lucas mentioned.

  “They should have thought about it better,” Wanda added. “By the way... has anybody contacted you about me?”

  Lucas raised an eyebrow. “You mean like a relative?”

  “I’m an orphan,” Wanda said. “I mean like people just looking for me? Like trouble...”

  “That’s unlikely,” Althea stated as she came out of the elevator. “Iris industry currently holds a terrifying reputation for military power,” Althea mentioned.

  Both Lucas and Wanda turned to Althea in confusion. “Since when?” Lucas asked.

  “Since the footage of the Severium raid was made public,” Althea showed a video of Percival fighting the snake-headed monsters on her phone. “It’s public knowledge that Percival is under your control and there’s more than one golem with equal power here.”

  Lucas looked up in thought as he counted his monster lord golems in his head. “I only have four.”

  “That’s not what they believe,” Althea replied. “As far as they know. You have an army.”

  Lucas pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Tell me the bad news.”

  “The emperor wants to meet you.”

  Macey stands calmly, eyes glowing pale blue, forming a crystalline staff in her hand. The ground beneath her ices over with each breath. Rose, on the opposite end, surges forward in a blur, her red aura flaring and wind spiraling around her legs to boost her movement.

  Macey reacts swiftly, slamming her staff into the ground—shards of ice erupt in a wave. Rose vaults over it, a spin-assisted kick leaving a trail of flaming wind, singeing Macey’s shoulder.

  Score: Rose 1 — Macey 0

  Macey narrows her eyes. She forms a ring of hovering ice blades, launching them toward Rose like missiles. Rose activates aura shield, spinning rapidly to create a vortex of wind and fire, melting most of the shards.

  But Macey isn’t done—she flash-freezes the ground. Rose slips, losing her footing for just a moment. Macey capitalizes, sending a wave of frost up Rose’s leg, trapping her briefly.

  Score: Rose 1 — Macey 1

  Rose breathes deeply, entering a focused state. Her aura flares golden now—Speed Form: Gale Blazing Mode. She blinks behind Macey, landing a powerful elbow to the back. Macey stumbles—but she expected that.

  With a twist of her hand, an ice clone shatters, the real Macey appearing from behind, launching a freezing spear at close range. Rose blocks it, but it slows her aura briefly giving Macey time to encase Rose’s hand in ice, stopping her punches.

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  They break apart, both panting.

  Score: Rose 1.5 — Macey 1.5

  Rose decides to go aerial, launching herself high with wind bursts, gathering a cyclone of flame around her. Macey raises her staff, drawing moisture from the air, creating a massive glacier spike, aiming it upward.

  The two attacks clash midair—firestorm vs glacial storm—exploding in a dazzling light show.

  When the smoke clears, Rose has landed, one knee down, aura flickering. Macey is standing, frost clinging to her limbs, but still conscious. Neither can go further.

  “Let’s call it a draw,” Rose said in between pants.

  “That works for me,” Macey replied. “You’re an incredible fighter.”

  As the two were heading back, they saw a group of people entering the mana vein base. Macey mostly ignored it since Leona was leading the group and they had to pass by Chief. However, Rose had a different reaction as her eyes zoned in on one of the people in the group.

  Macey quickly noticed it. “Something wrong?”

  “I know... well... I knew the version... you know what I mean,” Rose pointed to the woman with tan skin at the front of the group. “That’s Elise. In my universe, she’s a regressor.”

  “Oh...” Macey didn’t know how to react to that. “That’s big news.”

  “Yeah, but going by the timeline, she will awaken as a regressor around a year later. I don’t know the exact date.”

  “How do you know this?” Macey asked.

  “She was one of the people who fought my brother,” Rose revealed.

  Macey nodded with a grimace. “Did she win?”

  Rose shook her head. “She lost pretty badly. My brother broke her. He raped her... he raped her girlfriend till they both broke and was reduced to mere slaves until they...”

  “Sheesh... I didn’t expect a version of Lucas to be that horrible.”

  “I don’t want to defend him. But in his defense, Elise tried to defend the people that killed our mother.”

  Macey gulped. “I always wanted to ask. What happens to me?”

  Rose shrugged. “I don’t know. Most of the chaos happened at the Central sector. Once the empire fell, the other houses just made their own factions to deal with threats.”

  “Your brother?”

  “He just became a dark king that nobody sees very much.”

  “He’s feared?”

  Rose nodded. “Pretty much since nobody on the same level could beat him because of his strange ability to just keep fighting. It didn’t matter how many they were. If they’re not stronger by a large margin, my brother would always be the last one standing.”

  Macey rubbed her chin in thought.

  Lucas went up to the rooftop of the building to do some testing and found the three demons working for him training. Ruth, Marge, and Cassidy were in the middle of an intense sparring session with each other, using weapons Lucas never saw them hold before.

  They immediately stopped when they noticed him.

  “What’s the occasion?” Lucas asked.

  “We just need to get stronger,” Ruth answered.

  “You guys are on the level of king-ranked mages,” Lucas mentioned. “You’re strong enough.”

  “We can feel it,” Marge spoke up, making Lucas raise an eyebrow in confusion. “Through our contract. We can feel how much stronger Katarina is.”

  “The three of us couldn’t even supply you with enough demonic energy to be felt,” Cassidy added. “She gave you enough to form two circles.”

  “Have you tried?” Lucas asked. “Cause Katarina was pretty obvious about shoving her power into me.”

  The three demons looked at each other.

  “Anyways, if you want someone to spar with,” Lucas flicked Percival’s sphere with his thumb and materializing the golem.

  “Is it just me... or is that thing bigger...” Cassidy commented.

  “Not just you...” Marge agreed.

  “Go.”

  With a blaring hiss, the cybernetic knight surges forward, lance raised. It aims first for Marge, who flips over the strike, blades clashing against the shaft in a shower of sparks. Her movements are a dance—slashes and feints designed to probe the knight's defenses. She spins behind it, but the knight’s great sword swings from its back in a swift arc, nearly cleaving her in half. She skids backward, grinning.

  Cassidy enters, whip blazing. She spins in a wide arc, lashing toward the knight’s flank. The crack of fire rings out, but the knight twists—its armor blackened but intact. In response, it drives its lance into the ground, sending out a shockwave that cracks the tile and disrupts Cassidy’s footing.

  Ruth chants in the background, strings of soul energy lashing around the knight’s limbs like glowing violet chains. For a moment, the colossus slows. It drops to one knee, systems grinding. But then—a blast of red energy erupts from its chest sigil, vaporizing the bindings and blowing Ruth back, her barrier flaring just in time.

  The knight rises again. This time, it moves with terrifying precision—its visor scanning each opponent, calculating. Its cape of living smoke erupts, transforming into shrieking wraiths that dive toward the demons, disrupting their rhythm.

  Marge cuts through two with her blades, but the third slips past and grazes her mind, slowing her thoughts. Cassidy retaliates with a whip spiral that engulfs the knight in flame, but its plating only grows hotter—absorbing the energy and redirecting it into its next strike.

  It lunges, sweeping the great sword upward—a tide of kinetic and magical force crashing into all three demons, knocking them into the air.

  As they recover midair, Ruth shouts a command in demon tongue, and the trio dives in unison, combining magic, fire, and blades into a coordinated strike.

  The knight braces, cape flaring, systems whirring to their peak. The rooftop lights up with the clash—steel on steel, fire on shadow, soul on circuitry.

  The battle continues for several brutal minutes, a spectacle of grace versus overwhelming might—until a blaring horn rand through the rooftop.

  Percival straightens, its weapon disengaging with a hiss. The three demons regroup, panting, bruised but smiling.

  Marge smirks, licking blood from her lip. “You’re getting stronger, tin man.”

  The knight responds with silence—but the red visor pulses once. Almost… amused.

  “I didn’t expect the three of you to be good fighters,” Lucas commented.

  “Demons are natural born fighters,” Marge responded. “Every day in hell was a battlefield.”

  “Well, I can confidently say that you’ll be fine as long as someone as strong as Katarina doesn’t show up. But if you want to keep training. You can borrow my golems.”

  “Thank you,” Ruth bowed, while the other two just nodded in appreciation.

  “Are there other ways for you to get stronger?”

  “Absorbing the vitality of living things,” Cassidy answered.

  “How?” Lucas asked.

  Cassidy smirked.