Michelangelo, Wallofwild, and Alator stood a hundred steps ahead of the walls whose height extended to the clouds wandering in the sky. Millions of orcs were behind them; everyone on the walls of the Golden City was watching them.
"I am Wallofwild, the First Centurion of the Orc Empire Armies and the general of the siege armies. Is there an opponent among the Mercenaries who can stand against me?"
When the words of the orc warrior hitting the shield in his hand on the ground ended, hundreds of thousands of people in the center of the siege army shouted his name at the same time. Wallofwild, one of the three orcs who entered the reward dungeon, was leading the greatest siege of his nation.
Seconds were passing, but there was no sound from the people he challenged, and ultimately he understood that no response would come to his call. He spat the saliva he gathered in his huge mouth to the ground; a well-crafted curse came out from between his two large fangs.
The Mercenaries Civilization didn't send a single member of theirs against him. Last night, the four surviving great generals had taken a joint decision; they wouldn't compromise their defensive stance. The orc warrior had taken his turn; Alator, tossing his light green cloak, took a deep breath.
"My name is Alator, I am a warrior of the Druids, the masters of true magic. Out of the insolent ones calling themselves mages, from the wretches who have become the Slaves of Light, can one person dare to stand against me?"
The target of the leader of the Elemental Ten was the mages belonging to the Lands of Light. He humiliated them and claimed that the titles they boasted so much about were fake. Everyone knew well that the disciples of the Companions of Light Society were the most arrogant mages; all eyes locked onto the bright light in the northern part of the walls.
The light grew, grew, grew, it almost reached the brink of explosion, but in the end, it faded away as if it never existed. The druid warrior's call was also coming to naught; this attitude of the Mercenaries, whose job was to fight, and the Lands of Light members, who seized the name of wizardry, was beyond belief.
Nevertheless, they had to accept the result; the two warriors of the Orc Empire army would return empty-handed. Finally, the young and handsome male warrior whose limbs were formed with an unidentified black metal stepped forward.
"I am Michelangelo, Master Leonardo's apprentice, and the person who will kill all of you one by one. Engineers of the Machine Empire, is there anyone among you who wants to pass through the door of death?"
His personal grudge had caused him to challenge the engineers protecting the southern walls. Among the forces inside the Golden City, he was expecting the engineers, who were the most reluctant force regarding direct combat, to respond to this call.
The silence wasn't broken; anyway, since no response came from the other two centers of power, the orcs didn't have much hope until they saw the thing that shot out from over the walls and formed a dust cloud where it fell. Along with the thing landing on the ground, images of people with golden-colored hair began to appear on the walls. All of their heads were held high, their gazes proud.
"Finally, some of you could dare to show yourselves!"
Michelangelo was laughing; in this place he came to with low expectations, he had really found an opponent in front of him, but a few seconds later the expression on his face suddenly changed. As the dust cloud surrounding the thing falling from the walls surrendered to the wind and shifted, a sight that unsettled the young man was revealed.
"How can it be? How can you do this!"
Michelangelo shouted; the number of veins appearing on his face was almost equal to the engineers on the walls.
"Why are you so surprised, former test subject? Did you think the procedures done on you were for nothing?"
The answer came from one of the engineers on the walls. While inside his V-neck black caftan, his golden blond hair was gleaming under the noon sun. Michelangelo was surprised, but he wasn't alone either; everyone on the battlefield was watching the machine that resembled a pile of metal at first glance.
The machine, whose height was twice as tall as an orc and whose arms and legs were built with thick iron pipes, stood upright just like a living human. In fact, inside it, in its torso protected by an energy field, there was a man who was in the state Michelangelo was in as a child.
The cables entering from his severed limbs were visible from hundreds of steps away. The man's eyes were closed; no matter how much Michelangelo wanted to reach him, he couldn't. A panel appeared in the hand of the engineer on the walls; it consisted of a stick a hand-span long and six buttons arranged around it.
"The Savage Swamp continent might have been the main base of the struggle to reach the Holy Tree inside the shield for the others, but for us, it was a wonderful opportunity to conduct research with unlimited test subjects. I prepared the blueprints of this machine by working on test subjects like you too.
I see that you have managed to make a completely different modification to yourself, but what I wanted was exactly something like the one down below. A perfect puppet that has no will of its own and moves only by my commands!"
When the engineer finished his words, he gripped the stick on the panel with his right hand and pushed it forward. The machine opposite Michelangelo took a step forward; when the engineer pressed the top left button, the pile of metal of which the unconscious man was the center extended its right hand forward, forming a fist.
There was no room for doubt; this machine was a new species the engineers invented for war. Even if they didn't yet understand the reasons for it harboring a living organism inside, Leonardo's apprentice had to fight it.
"Father! Father!"
Michelangelo, stopping at the child's voice coming from the Golden City walls just as he was darting forward, turned his gazes to the little girl standing next to the man managing his opponent, the machine. The person she called out to as father was the man inside his opponent machine, and the girl didn't look like she was going to stay quiet.
"Please don't kill my father? He didn't want it to be like this; everything happened because of you. If you hadn't invaded our continent, these monsters wouldn't have come to our city and tortured us!"
The blood inside the veins on Michelangelo's face stopped flowing; the little girl's words were hitting him in his most sensitive spot. The Machine Empire forces, invited to the continent along with the Orc Empire's invasion plan, had taken the southern part of the Golden City under their control and separated it from the other side with a giant wall.
The Mercenaries, in need of help, couldn't oppose this move, just as they couldn't speak up against the practices that followed. The engineers, whose facilities on the continent were destroyed, were now continuing the experiments they conducted on orcs upon living humans.
The south of the place called the Golden City, the capital of abundance, wealth, and magnificence, had now become the base of pain, agony, and brutality. The engineers, having free rein, freely realized all the studies in their minds over the last year and a half.
The return for this was the cannons positioned on the Golden City bastions, which were the largest energy weapons history had ever seen. These weapons, each attacking with the power of a different element, were one of the greatest trump cards, even the most important one, in the hands of the scientists with twisted mentalities.
The orcs possessing a population of billions created the need for such powerful defensive weapons, and the scientists who possessed this attained the freedom they desired. Michelangelo was a young man who came to the continent to take his revenge; he hated to death both the Mercenaries and the Machine Empire forces that slaughtered his family and left him limbless.
When he lifted his head and looked at the little girl on the walls, he went back to years ago. His childhood self, crying while his mother and father were taken away from his side, was now in front of his eyes. Even though the control of the machine that was his enemy was in the hands of an engineer, the human inside it was a father, a spouse, someone who had loved ones and was cried after.
Michelangelo was left in a dilemma; he was about to make the toughest decision of his short life. He was either going to retreat and make the Orc Empire lose face, or he would fight and sow the seed of a new hatred.