NOVEL WEB Chapter 256 – Dreadnought
Inside the Ents Forest, Ren was sitting on one of the branches of Allfather's actual body. She looked like she was just enjoying the warm sunlight, but all of her senses were focused inwards, inspecting her own freshly formed core. A demigod would try his best to try and fill it with energy, turning it into a God Crystal. If she wanted to, she already had a rough estimate of how she would do that and how much time she would need to succeed… but that was not the correct choice. Knowing the way of Immortals, the fact that they slowly destroyed their own core, breaking off parts again and again, fusing it into their body and soul, she already had a rough idea of how to do it.
"But it would be best to wait for those rascals!" she opened her eyes, sighing a little with a smile, deciding to not touch it for now.
"Ren." Kai's message arrived while she stood up on the thick branch. "I felt their presence returning. But they were gone when I arrived close to the location."
"So they met up with the dwarfs again… tsk! Sneaky bastards! It is hard to find them under the mountain range; it is too vast to search blindly. Even if we start blasting it into pieces, we would just bury our leads…" she bit onto the end of his thumb, nibbling on it.
"I'll wait here and keep an eye out on the area. We would have a lead on where to look for the underground people if they show up."
"Do that! Allfather is already preparing the perimeter defenses in case of an attack, and Thunder Valley is ready to assist if needed. But…”
"But?"
"I don't know if they would need to step in," she said, watching the thousands of bird demons amongst the trees, coming and going, sometimes flying up in such huge flocks they cast a giant shadow below them, right on the army of gathering corpses, controlled by the ents, marching towards the north in hordes.
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When Erza and Targas returned with the second round of resources, the dwarf who welcomed them invited the duo into their city. None of the demigods thought about refusing or even suspecting it to be a trap. They believed that these deformed, changed people, without proper cultivation, posed as little a threat to them as an ant. Yet their natural arrogance and experience as demigods were useless when they first laid their eyes upon the vast cavern filled with buildings and millions of souls. At that moment, even their mouths opened up a little. They were used to seeing huge cities, capital cities of kingdoms and empires, and the different treasure lands of sects. Yet never before they saw a city made out of the blend of rocks and so many precious metals.
"Are they really using all these materials to build… bridges? And homes? Yet they walk around in rags?!" Targas asked with a somewhat annoyed voice, sending it over to Erza.
"Seems like it." he nodded, following the small, multi-legged human before them as he introduced their capital city proudly while walking over a suspension bridge above it all.
"Look at that!" Targas's voice arrived once again, almost making Erza's ears ring. What he was surprised about was a long, six-wheeled cart that had a golem's torso attached to the front of it. It was made entirely of gold, with a bald, eight-armed dwarf driving it, while behind him, rolling around on the flatbed, was a pile of gemstones, just twinkling there as he was going through the streets. Yet no others even tried to steal any of it; no other came and tried to rob him… Yet if he did this in any other city outside, he would not make it through the first corner. If not bandits, the ordinary people would rush him down and grab as many gems as possible.
"They are… mining out… the whole world's wealth here?" Erza gawked, shocked, not because of the precious metals but because of what was used as fuel for the golem; it was CC. That… contraption was eating it up like nothing, burning it to move around. Seeing a big clump of CC being thrown into it and melting into a liquid energy source almost made them cry.
"That one brick… was enough to make a weapon and a full set of armor for anyone in the Harmony realm!" Targas gritted his teeth. "Even have some leftovers for cultivation!"
"Tell me about it!"
They were wealthy. They could afford most of the things they came across in the outside world. They even saw how meaningless any artifact was in front of a Demigod. Not to mention before a God. But still... it was hard not to consider wasting such a precious resource as a sin. They could still use them and could entice others with them! No matter if someone was without cultivation or a demigod, wealth was always something one had to have. Even the geniuses, who rarely used artifacts, relying on their own powers most of the time, would not deny that they would be nothing without resources provided by their sects! If CC was not used to craft weapons or armor for themselves, all of the facilities inside a sect would still be using it! The training rooms, their dwellings with energy-gathering formations, their flying ships, their comrades' equipment, and almost everything a cultivator could use and find useful were made with CC. If nothing else, you could use it to consume it while cultivating!
The latter was especially true for demigods. They found artifacts less and less helpful as they grew stronger, but fighting meant spending energy. The oh-so-precious energy… the quickest way to refill it was to consume a large amount of CC in the process. Because of this, its value was even higher in their part of the world because if something was desirable for a demigod, its worth was guaranteed.
"I want to puke…." Erza said, almost stumbling forward, trying not to overthink what he saw. No wonder, as on their side of the Western Desert, CC was everything. Most of it was under the sects' strict control, and all known deposits were tightly guarded and excavated. The flow of CC was heavily regulated and was the heart of their civilization. Yet now they were witnessing another part of the world where they simply used huge stacks of money as fuel in their strange machinery.
"We have arrived!" their guide said, cutting the duo's thoughts short, smiling at them, standing before two elevators. "Let me introduce you to my colleague Jitta," she pointed at the other bald male dwarf standing in one of the elevators. "He will take one of you to see one of our Sages and his manufacturing plant. The other esteemed guest, please follow me; I'll take you to our other Sage, who is waiting to welcome you, the honored apostle of our Goddess!" she bowed respectfully.
"You go, see their… things! I'll speak in the name of our Goddess with their other leader!" Erza stepped forward immediately, not in the mood to relinquish his role as Nilier's voice.
"Tsk." Targas clicked his tongue but did not start to argue as it was true; Nilier did speak to Erza. When they stepped into the elevators, Erza's started to lower downwards while Targas's went up, soon disappearing inside the ceiling.
Arriving into a white, sterile corridor, as Targas's guide led him through multiple doors and gates, stopping and fiddling with the strange locks every time, Targas got really bored. Especially because this new guide spoke no words at all. Targas was not bothering to pay attention to anything, already feeling all of this was useless. Nothing could match up to them being cultivators of the highest order as machines will be just that; machines.
Just as this thought crossed his mind and he flashed a smirk, another 6 meters tall and wide door opened up before him, revealing an empty, spacious, arena-like hall with smooth white tiles everywhere. In the middle of it stood a 4 or 5-meter-tall golden machine, standing on two sturdy legs. Its torso was bulky, filled with weird images and heraldry. It was humanoid in form and had two hands, but one ended in a giant, claw-like contraption, while the other was a strange tube with six different, smaller tubes around it. It was looking utterly alien to anything he ever came across. Even he had to admire the peculiar machine as it was shining in a golden hue, and the blood-red decorations were eye-catching and pleasing to the senses. As Targas was dwarfed by its size, it looked even bigger before Otto, who was standing under it, holding a strange disk in hand, fiddling with it. As Targas was walking closer, he failed to notice that his guide had already left, sealing the two inside.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Otto spoke up, not looking at Targas.
"I would call it strange instead."
"Because you do not understand it." he smiled, sounding slightly annoyed at his comment. "I call it Dreadnought."
"Dread what?"
"Its name comes from the simple fact that it brings dread to my enemies, and I have nothing to fear while sitting inside of it!" Otto exclaimed proudly as the machine's torso then opened up, rolling down a small ladder that he grabbed onto, being lifted up. He slowly sat into a golden sarcophagus inside the thing's chest, letting out a satisfied sigh. Targas felt nothing from it, so he just crossed his arms calmly, watching the little, weird man do his thing, taking it as a demonstration of force, trying to please him. "It is made of a new material we came up with. More precisely, it was made possible by the work of Marian; her metallurgy skills are better than mine!" his voice resonated loudly, only now it sounded deep and mechanical, coming from the Dreadnought as it closed up around him. Inside its head, looking like an ancient knight's helmet, two red eyes lit up as it started to move, taking up a new stance, shaking the whole arena as it moved.
"It is still nothing but a big, slow toy," Targas said, still looking down on him no matter how impressive he thought these small, deformed humans' work was.
"Maybe. But I am confident."
"In what?"
"That it is capable of killing a demigod," Otto replied, literally looking down at him as the tubed-like hand aimed at Targas.
"Ahahaha! Yeah, sure!" Nilier's priest laughed heartily, even as the 'arm' started to spin up loudly, and soon the earth-shattering cacophony of the buzzing melody of destruction echoed inside their arena.
Targas was not expecting it, but he was still able to teleport behind the machine, dodging the strange attack, yet when he appeared, the clawed hand was already swinging toward him. It did it without the Dreadnought having to turn backward. Inside it, Otto was surrounded by a 360-degree virtual viewing angle and dozens of data streams, feeding right into his brain as fast as the thoughts of a demigod. His skull was opened up, same as his spine, and long tubes and needles connected him right into the suit's mainframe, fusing the two into one, controlling it with his thoughts.
"Hmf!" Targas snorted, raising his hand and punching against the metallic claw.
"Fool." echoed the mechanical voice of the Dreadnought as the claw lit up with dark, blackish lightning, meeting his fist.
"What?!" Targas screamed out, teleporting backward just as his hand made contact with the machine, but it was already too late. Even after teleportation, the black lightning followed him through it, blasting his wrist into pieces and leaving him with a disfigured arm. "What is this?!" He gawked, stunned by the injury as it was centuries ago when he last bled.
"This is progress." Otto turned the whole torso of the walker towards him, doing a 180 effortlessly, walking forward, shaking the room with every step as its tubed hand started to spin up loudly again. "I need to finish this quickly, so goodbye, Mr. Demigod," he said as inside the suit, an artificial, baritone voice confirmed his thoughts.
"Energy reserves at 55%. Loading Null-rounds complete. Firing."
When its arms roared, a hail of hundreds of bullets rained upon Targas, who found himself horrified. He wanted to teleport, yet he could not. The energy around him was drained, consumed, and dispersed. Even worse, when he used his own, as soon as it was about to come out, the rounds hitting his sturdy body instantly consumed it. He realized they were made out of CC and something else he had no knowledge about, giving them the property of energy consumption. They nullified everything around them, making it impossible to use spells or teleportation. The Dreadnought's arm was already heating up, turning bright orange before finally stopping the rain of terror, letting the barrels slowly wind down, stopping the otherworldly screeching, releasing white smoke from their ends.
"Impressive," Otto exclaimed, watching the still-standing Targas. Even though he could not use any skills, relying on his own body's sturdiness, he survived. His clothing was shredded, he was bleeding from dozens of wounds, and he was gasping for air, feeling fear for the first time in centuries.
"You are dead! Your whole species is dead!" Targas roared in response, like a beast. He was now feeling he could use his core again, instantly fusing it with the blessing of Nilier, feeling rejuvenated immediately. Teleporting once again, he aimed to smash this accursed weapon into pieces, but just as he appeared, the Dreadnought's torso swirled towards him before he even materialized. Targas's only thought was that this machine could read his thoughts as its claw, surrounded with black lightning, grabbed his body in the air. Even as he was trying to pry it off, the black lightning was interfering with his energies, and the metal was as hard as a demigod's body.
"Predictable," Otto said in the mechanical voice of his suit. His enhanced mind already knew Targas's next move by reading and analyzing his gaze and body language, reacting to his movements perfectly.
"Energy reserves are at 22%." the suit's voice came inside. "Usage of continuous Void Claw is ill-advised. Energies at 20%. 18%. 14%."
What echoed in the arena next was Targas's screams as the black lightning-filled arm of the Dreadnought crushed his body, squishing him like a tomato and shredding him into chunks of bloody flesh, organs, and broken bones. Only a bloody, smoking chunk of meat and a small crystal remained in the Dreadnought's claw.
"Energy reserves are at 2%."
"It depleted faster than I expected." Otto sighed inside. Still, he was wearing a smile, watching the splattering gore around him with a proud expression "No matter! With this, It can go on far longer! Demigods… they are nothing! Give me enough time, and I can kill Gods!" He laughed happily inside his precious invention.
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Nilier was crouching outside her little house, watering her flowers, when a sudden twitch assaulted her pinky finger. Standing up, she took a deep breath, feeling one of her priests had just died. Again.
"I told you to stay out of their ways." She murmured, thinking about the strange girl as she recalled the last moments of her priest's memories, yet what she saw was not what she thought she would. "Oh." she opened her eyes with surprise. "That… what was that?" Nilier blinked her eyes, feeling surprised, which was such a weird and old emotion. "What is going on on that side of the world? Everything is going to be madness! Mad… ness…!" She gasped before disappearing, leaving behind her watering can and teleporting away from her home instantly.
