Upper Yard, Trial of String Area.
Ancient, towering trees intertwined in a thick canopy, allowing only mottled, skeletal shadows to reach the cloud-covered forest floor.
"Hand over my weapons and Dials?"
High above, the Priest Shura, mounted on his giant three-zhang bird, Fuza, let out a sharp, condescending laugh. He looked down at the silver-haired giant with the massive iron hammer as if looking at a particularly stubborn insect.
"A mindless Blue Sea reptile. You step onto God's land without knowing the laws, yet you dare to bark orders?" Shura leveled his flame-engulfed spear at Jeno's brow. "Under my Mantra, every spark of thought, every twitch of your muscle is an open book. Now, accept Divine Judgment!"
Fuza shrieked, spitting a glob of liquid fire from its beak. Shura dived in tandem, the heat-javelin whistling through the air like a falling star.
"Too much talking," Jeno grunted, spitting out a spare screw he'd been chewing.
The steam valves on his right arm roared. He didn't sidestep. He swung the Hydraulic Power Hammer—a weapon literally forged from a warship's main cannon—in a brutal, one-handed upward arc to meet the fireball head-on.
But as Jeno braced his legs for the impact—SNAP!
Several transparent, ultra-tough cloud strings tightened in mid-air, snaring Jeno's ankles and his mechanical arm like a spider's web. His momentum died instantly. The massive man lost his balance and crashed to one knee.
"Invisible strings?" Jeno strained against the bindings. Even with the monstrous torque of his exoskeleton, the wires held firm, vibrating with high-tension resilience.
"Welcome to the Trial of String. Survival rate: 3%," Shura sneered. He twisted his mount at an impossible angle to bypass Jeno's defensive arc, thrusting the white-hot spear toward Jeno's exposed, unarmored back. "This forest is a loom of death. You are already meat on the hook!"
The burning spear struck home. CLANG!
Sparks erupted, and a plume of fire engulfed Jeno's torso. Shura's lip curled in a cruel victory, already preparing to pull back for another pass.
"Hey, bird-man. You call that fire?"
A low, metallic voice rumbled through the smoke. Shura's smirk froze. He pulled at his spear, only to find the tip lodged firmly against something indestructible.
As the soot cleared, Jeno turned his head. His work vest had burned away, revealing a thick plate of Stellar Obsidian bolted directly to the spine of his exoskeleton. The black metal didn't even have a scorch mark. It was the "junk" armor Jeno had hammered together on a whim during their last island stop.
"Divine punishment? My grandma hits harder than that."
A predatory red light flickered in Jeno's goggles. He ignored the cloud strings cutting into his skin.
HISS—!!
The boiler on his back vented a burst of superheated steam. Under the sheer, industrial brute force of the engine, the "indestructible" cloud strings snapped one by one with the sound of pistol shots.
"GET DOWN HERE!"
Jeno's left hand shot out like a hydraulic claw, seizing the shaft of Shura's spear. With a violent twist of his waist, he swung Shura and his giant bird out of the sky, slamming them into the dirt with tectonic force.
BOOM!
"Cough!" Shura spat blood, his eyes wide with terror. His Mantra had predicted the counterattack, but the raw power was so overwhelming that knowing it was coming didn't matter—he simply lacked the physical mass to resist the trajectory.
Shura scrambled toward a tree, but Jeno was faster. The mechanic ignored the priest entirely, instead planting a heavy boot on the head of the dazed giant bird. He reached into the bird's open beak, which was still sparking with embers.
"I knew it. Stupid birds don't breathe fire. It's a shell."
With a rough, heat-insulated glove, Jeno pried the bird's jaw open and ripped out a large, crimson-red Flame Dial that radiated intense heat. "Sky Island specialty! Hahahaha! Finders keepers!"
A fanatical light filled Jeno's eyes. He kicked the unconscious bird aside and, right in the middle of the battlefield, sat down on a fallen log. He pulled a wrench, a screwdriver, and high-temp metal zip-ties from his belt.
"What are you doing?!" Shura screamed from the branches, utterly bewildered.
"Are you blind? I'm upgrading."
Jeno didn't look up. With the practiced speed of a Scrap Street veteran, he jammed the Flame Dial into the exhaust vent of his hammer's head, lashed it tight with metal ties, and rerouted a steam bypass from his arm to the Dial's activation trigger.
It took forty-five seconds.
"You lunatic! Don't look down on a Priest!!"
Shura abandoned his spear and pulled a master-trigger for the cloud strings. Invisible nets converged from every direction, seeking to mince Jeno into cubes.
"Mantra is great for seeing where I'm moving," Jeno said, standing up. He lifted the modified hammer. The once-cold iron head was now glowing a dull, lethal red. "But if I blow up the entire area, where exactly are you going to hide?"
The exoskeleton let out a deafening whine. Gears shrieked. Jeno raised the scorching hammer and brought it down on the center of the trap.
"STEAMPUNK ART: FLAME-BURST CRUSH!"
BOOM—!!!
As the hammer hit, the steam pressure triggered the Flame Dial at point-blank range. A violent pillar of fire, mixed with a kinetic shockwave that shattered the bedrock, erupted in a massive fan-shape.
The invisible strings were vaporized like cobwebs in a furnace. Ancient trees were uprooted and turned to charcoal instantly.
"NO! THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE! LORD ENEL—!!"
Shura's scream was cut short as the blast wave engulfed him. His Mantra had shown him the landing zone, but the blast radius was so vast that escape was a physical impossibility.
When the smoke cleared, Shura lay in a scorched crater, charred and broken.
"Hoo..." Jeno exhaled a cloud of sparks. He patted the hammer, satisfied. "These shells are literal cheat codes. If I get my hands on more, the Eclipse is going to be a flying fortress."
Jeno shouldered his weapon and stepped over the priest's body, continuing his "resource gathering" expedition into the heart of the forest.
Elsewhere in the jungle.
THUD. A massive Sky Wolf collapsed. Leona flicked the blood off her Stellar Obsidian cleavers, her slit pupils tracking the bubbles rising from a purple swamp ahead.
In the center of the mire, a man with slicked-back hair and sunglasses (Gedatsu) was rolling his eyes and biting his lip in a bizarre, silent trance.
"Priest of the Trial of Swamp, Gedatsu, right?" Leona's grin was dangerous. "I just finished skinning a wolf. Now, I'm going to show you what real dissection looks like."
30+ chapters are available now and daily updates! @patreon.com/Authorzero