Upon reaching the desolate expanse of Everwinter Peak, Welt finally re-established contact with the Astral Express. He had barely finished his report when he heard Hiko's voice crackle over the comms, detailing her readiness to deploy the orbital cannon against the colossal machine before them.
"Hold your fire, Hiko," he urged, his voice calm but firm. "Don't bombard the Creation Engine." It would be an imnse sha to destroy such a magnificent piece of ancient technology.
"That's an ancient machine from the era of the city builders!" Bronya's warning cut through the biting wind. "Everyone, be careful!"
As if on cue, a gigantic chanical arm swept across the snowfield with a deafening whistle, kicking up a blizzard in its wake. The mountain-like automaton finally revealed its full, towering form, a relic of a bygone age. Cocolia hovered serenely in the air before it, the ancient engine that had slumbered for centuries now awakened by her will alone.
"A robot… a robot ten thousand tis bigger than Svarog!" A gasp escaped March 7th, her eyes wide with disbelief.
"Engine, crush them!" At Cocolia's command, the ancient colossus stirred, its massive limbs groaning to life.
"We have to stop it!" Seele shouted, a blur of motion as she dodged its ponderous, ground-shaking strikes.
"Level the peaks!" Cocolia commanded, pointing her ice spear forward. A blazing beam of destructive energy erupted from the ancient machine's head, lancing straight toward Seele. With reflexes honed by a lifeti of battle, Seele moved like a phantom, the beam searing the ice where she had stood a fraction of a second before.
"A giant like this… how are we even supposed to destroy it?" soone muttered, their voice laced with despair.
The ancient machine raised its giant arm again, a grim, crimson light flickering in its optical sensors—
But in the next instant, Welt's figure materialized silently at the massive shoulder joint of the Creation Engine. He calmly raised his hand and tapped the machine's tallic hide with the tip of his cane.
A violent shudder coursed through the entire colossus. Its movents, once so nacing, froze completely. Disabling the Creation Engine with minimal cost—this was, by far, the best possible outco.
"Mr. Yang is so reliable!" March 7th cried out, her voice a mixture of surprise and adoration.
Seizing the opportunity, Stelle and Caelus charged up the length of the fallen ancient colossus, their sights set on Cocolia at its peak.
"I'll cover you."
"Hold on to ."
With the combined support of Seele and Bronya, the Trailblazer twins smoothly and stylishly scaled the chanical behemoth, arriving at the very top to face the Supre Guardian.
A ruthless glint entered Cocolia's eyes, and then a massive, overwhelming power enveloped her. Before the stunned onlookers, her form began to warp and change. Crystalline ice spread across her body like a second skin, and razor-sharp icicles constructed from pure frost energy materialized behind her back, fanning out like malevolent wings. Wind, snow, and mist swirled around her, coalescing into a barrier that was almost a domain unto itself.
Though she retained a vaguely humanoid silhouette, her size had swelled to inhuman proportions. The aura she now radiated was no different from the monsters that clawed their way out of the Fragntum.
Of course, this too was part of the script Leon had long since written. If she hadn't placed her absolute trust in him, Cocolia would never have dared to let the Stellaron's power consu her so completely.
"This is its power!" Cocolia's voice beca hollow and distorted, echoing as if multiple voices were whispering in unison. "This power is surging, singing… The promise given to by the Stellaron is the only hope for this world."
Her voice grew colder, more distant. "Hundreds of years ago, it drove away the Antimatter Legion… Today, it will also erase your existence."
She raised an arm now encased in jagged ice, and the frigid currents of the blizzard intensified with her every movent. "Let's end this quickly."
At this mont, she had fully transford into the "Mother of Deception"—cold, massive, and seemingly devoid of all humanity.
Yet Stelle and Caelus showed no fear. Gripping their baseball bats tightly, they charged forward to engage her in a two-on-one "righteous beatdown."
"Humans are always so weak and foolish… always overestimating themselves," Cocolia's voice echoed through the snowstorm. "I shall grant you despair."
Aha: @Nanook, three Stellarons are fighting. What do you think?
Fuli: Recording. 'Light Cone: A War of Stellarons'… Scratch that. Changed to 'Light Cone: A Battle for Favor.'
Aha: Battle for favor? That's a good one. Fuli, you're quite interesting.
Leon quietly observed the battle from his vantage point, a faint smile on his lips. Suddenly, he felt as though sothing was missing.
'Oh, right,' he thought. 'Where's Topaz?'
Hadn't she arrived yet? If she waited any longer, she'd miss the grand finale.
With a simple thought, his perception expanded, stretching across the void of space.
Hmm… Topaz had indeed set out with a retinue of IPC employees aboard an ecological survey ship. But it was clear that at conventional speeds, she wouldn't make it in ti.
On second thought, it made sense. Jarilo-VI had been cut off from the galaxy for over seven hundred years; its coordinates had long since vanished from the IPC's common interstellar routes. Topaz had only managed to learn its specific location thanks to her brief contact with the Astral Express. It was understandable that she couldn't make it on such short notice.
However… that wasn't a problem.
Leon nonchalantly traced a line in the air with his fingertip. A spatial rift silently tore open beside him.
On the other end of the rift, Topaz was sitting on the soft bed in her private quarters, organizing docunts. Suddenly, a shimring crack appeared out of thin air right before her eyes.
She was instantly on high alert, her finger already pressing the topaz stone pinned to her chest. At the slightest sign of danger, she would activate her abilities without hesitation.
But in the next instant, an irresistible force surged from the rift. Topaz didn't even have ti to react before she was unceremoniously sucked inside.
"Squeak!"
Seeing its master vanish, Numby, her loyal Trotter companion, leaped into the rift without a mont's hesitation.
"You are… Mr. Xu?"
Topaz stumbled as she landed, quickly steadying herself. She scanned her new surroundings and her eyes soon fell upon a familiar face, recognizing Leon almost imdiately. She was still a bit dazed—one second she was in her room, the next she was here. How had he pulled her across such a vast distance?
"Squeak!"
Numby popped out of the rift and affectionately began rubbing against Topaz's calf.
"That's right, little Topaz," Leon said with a nod. "Welco to Belobog."
"Please stop calling little Topaz…" Topaz said with a hint of helplessness. "Just Topaz is fine." She was quite troubled by his overly familiar attitude.
"What… is the situation?" she asked, her gaze sweeping over the frozen wasteland around them and the towering, motionless colossus in the distance. Her confusion was plain to see.
"I saw you were moving a bit too slowly and was afraid you'd miss the key scenes, so I brought you over first," Leon explained with a slight smile. "You can get a proper recording in a bit."
Topaz was speechless. "…"
Just for that reason?
She didn't say anything further. The fact that this man could so easily and forcibly pull her from her private quarters was more than enough proof of his unfathomable strength. In that mont, she hadn't even had a chance to resist.
Following Leon's gesture, Topaz turned her gaze toward the battlefield below. A fierce battle was underway.
"Actually, I set out quite quickly…" Topaz whispered to herself, a little defensively.
On the battlefield, Cocolia seed to be handling the joint assault from Stelle and Caelus with ease. Seizing an opening in their attacks, she suddenly hurled the massive ice spear in her hand. Caught completely off guard, Stelle and Caelus were pierced clean through the chest, skewered together like a pair of candied haws on a stick. They fell from the top of the colossus, plumting toward the icy ground below.
Topaz was stunned.
If she rembered correctly, Stelle and Caelus were both mbers of the Astral Express and had featured prominently in the videos Leon had released.
They've… been dealt with just like that? And he wasn't going to help? This developnt was simply too abrupt.
Topaz's eyes widened in shock.
What she couldn't see was that in the Gap Between Paths, Stelle and Caelus had once again fallen into that strange, ethereal space.
"Is this… the universe?"
"Weren't we just fighting Cocolia?"
"Why are we here again…?"
"The last ti we were here, Nanook glanced at us. Could it be this ti…"
Stelle and Caelus awoke one after another, looking around at the boundless, starry expanse. They soon realized where they were. But unlike the last ti, when the gaze of the God of Destruction had fallen upon them, this ti their consciousness was drawn toward the most dazzling source of light in the sea of stars.
Countless shards of mory erged like snowflakes, swirling around them. It was the frozen past of Belobog, the scars of this city buried deep beneath centuries of wind and snow.
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