Mama Knox's workshop wasn't a room. It was the beating heart of the apocalypse.
Half-dismantled war machines pulsed with captured dungeon cores. Arc welders shrieked like angry spirits.
And at its center, Mama Knox stood over a glowing forge, her crowbar driving rivets into a towering exoskeleton frame. Her eyes snapped up as Grudge burst in, fury radiating off him like heat haze.
"TRAITOR!" Grudge roared, slamming Razor's comms buoy and Ethan's diagnostic chip onto her workbench. "Razor's selling us to Solar Legion! Audio proof!"
Mama didn't flinch. She picked up the chip. Razor's voice, tinny and treacherous, spilled into the clangor: "—tell Thorne his package is ready… the Scrap Pile's location logs…"
Silence fell, thick and suffocating. The forge flames seemed to dim. Mama Knox's knuckles whitened around her crowbar.
"Where is he?"Her voice was a glacier scraping stone.
"Meeting Thorne now! East gully! Took the Stabilizer and…"
"The slaves?"
"Caged! Including Lena and the rat!"
Mama Knox's gaze swept toward Sector Zero's purple mist. "And the Waste Disposer?"
"Gone back to kiss the Geargrinder, probably!"
A flicker of something, calculation? Respect?crossed Mama's face. "Gather the loyal. Arm the shredders. Razor dies at dawn." She grabbed a massive, jury-rigged rifle humming with mana overcharge. "But first… we save our own."
Grudge's grin was savage. "Yes, Mama."
The East Gully was a scar in the earth, jagged cliffs of compacted cars under a bruised twilight sky. Razor paced beside a hover-crate holding the Dungeon Core Stabilizer, its blue light painting his melted face in ghastly hues. Four plasma rifle-wielding thugs flanked him.
"Where is he?"* Razor hissed into his Legion transmitter. "Thorne, if you're playing…"
Light detonated.
Not sunrise. Something purer, fiercer. It poured from the sky like liquid gold, coalescing into a figure that hovered ten feet above the scrap. Aris Thorne, Solar Knight, descended. No wings. No vehicle. He simply bent gravity to his will. His armor wasn't worn, it was fused light, radiating palpable heat that made the scrap metal groan. His greatsword, Sun's Judgement, floated behind him like a loyal star.
[ARIS THORNE - S-RANK SOLAR KNIGHT - LVL 45]
[AURA: DIVINE SCORCH - DMG/SEC TO UNWORTHY TARGETS]
Razor's thugs staggered back, whimpering as their skin reddened under the aura's passive burn. [HP -1/SEC].
"You're late," Razor forced out, sweat beading on his scarred temple.
Aris didn't look at him. His eyes, cold and gold as coins, scanned the Stabilizer. "Location logs first."
Razor tossed a data crystal. Aris caught it without moving. Light flared from his palm, scanning it.
"Verified." His voice held no triumph. Only boredom. "The Stabilizer?"
"Payment first! Five S-Rank mana cores!"
Aris finally looked at Razor. It was like being stared at by a supernova. "...Payment?" He raised one finger.
FWOOM!
A beam of concentrated sunlight speared Razor's right-hand thug. No scream. The man vaporized, leaving only scorched boots and the stench of ozone.
"I don't pay for what is already mine," Aris stated. "You merely delivered it. Poorly." He gestured. The Stabilizer crate floated toward him. "Kill the rest. Leave the traitor alive. He amuses me."
Plasma rifles rose…
RRRRRR-KRANCH!
A section of cliff face exploded inward. Not from weapons. From something massive tearing through compacted cars like wet cardboard. Dust and debris filled the gully.
"CONTACT!" a thug screamed, firing blindly into the cloud.
Aris hovered, unperturbed, light burning the dust away. "Pathetic scavenger tricks—"
The dust cleared.
Ethan Moore stood at the edge of the breach. Not alone.
Perched behind him on the shattered cliff, six multi-jointed limbs coiled like predatory snakes, its chest core pulsing violent violet, was the Geargrinder.
[SYSTEM ALERT: PRIMORDIAL ENTITY - GEARGRINDER - LVL ?? - STATUS: TERRITORIAL (ALLIED?)]
Ethan's eyes glowed toxic green. [ENTROPY: 0.40%]. Pathetic against a god. But he wasn't looking at Aris. He pointed at Razor's remaining thugs.
"Those ones," he rasped. "They bleed… loud."*
The Geargrinder's core flared. SKREEEEEEE—!
It moved. Not a charge. A teleport of rust and rage. One thug vanished into a whirlwind of sawblades. Another was crushed flat by a hydraulic press fist.
Aris watched, a faint, contemptuous smile on his lips. "A puppet dancing for a broken machine. Cute." He raised Sun's Judgement. "Cease."
Light gathered at the sword's tip, a miniature star forming. The air crackled. Ethan felt his skin blister at thirty paces. [HP -5/SEC]. The Geargrinder shrieked, its core dimming slightly under the radiance.
Ethan locked eyes with the ancient entity. "The bright thing… hurts your home. Your hoard." He poured his meager Entropy into the ground, feeding the residual decay of a thousand dead cars. [ENTROPY: 0.35%]. "Help me break its light… and I'll give you its core."
The Geargrinder's core cycled violet → red → obsidian black. It turned from the thugs, limbs reorienting… toward Aris.
The Solar Knight's smile vanished. "Insolent gnat."
Meanwhile
Back at the slave pen, chaos reigned.
"Stop fidgeting!" Lena hissed, elbow-deep in the Cage's control box, bypassing fried circuits. Plasma fire scorched the bars as Razor's guards panicked.
"They're shooting at us!" Kai yelped, dodging a stray blast that vaporized a pile of moldy blankets. "Rude! We're valuable hostages!"
"Almost… got it…" Lena twisted wires. Sparks flew. The cage lock clunked. "Go!"
Kai phased through the bars like smoke. Lena scrambled after him. The Dungeon Core Stabilizer glowed on Razor's table just ten feet away,guarded by one panicked thug.
"Distraction!" Lena snapped.
Kai sighed, then stood tall, hands on hips. "HEY! UGLY! Your face looks like a melted Picasso! Did your mama cry when she first saw it? Or just laugh?"
The thug gaped, then roared, charging.
Lena lunged for the Stabilizer, just as a plasma bolt meant for Kai seared past her head and hit the Stabilizer's housing.
ZZZZZZZ-VOOM!
The device didn't explode. It overloaded, releasing a cascading pulse of distorted gravity.
The charging thug floated off his feet. Kai yelped as he pinwheeled sideways into a stack of crates. Lena grabbed the Stabilizer, now spitting angry sparks.
"Grab the core! It's destabilizing!"she yelled.
"Which part's the… WOAH!" Kai snatched a violently vibrating crystal from the device's heart just as the rest of it melted into slag. He stuffed it into his cloak. "Got the shiny! Now run!"
They bolted as the gravity pulse intensified. Behind them, crates, tools, and a very confused thug tumbled through the air in silent, weightless chaos.
In the gully, the standoff crackled.
Aris's miniature sun burned brighter, pushing back the Geargrinder's entropic aura. Ethan gasped, skin cracking. [HP: 20/60].
"A broken toy and a F-Tier cockroach," Aris mused, Sun's Judgement steady. "You delay the inevitable. This scrap heap burns tonight."
The Geargrinder shrieked, blades spinning—but didn't advance. Aris's light hurt it, Ethan realized. It needed an opening.
"Razor!"Ethan shouted, voice raw. "He's got the real prize! Location logs? He gave you copies! The originals are on his transmitter! He's playing you both!"
Razor's melted face paled. "LIES!"
Aris's golden eyes flickered—the first hint of true emotion, annoyance. "Is this true, worm?"
"N-no! He's desperate! Kill him!" Razor shrieked.
Aris didn't move. The sun at his sword tip pulsed. "Transmitter. Now."
Razor fumbled at his belt
WHUMP!
A high-velocity rivet the size of a finger slammed into the ground between Aris and Razor. Then another. And another. Sniper fire. From the cliffs.
Mama Knox's voice, amplified by scrap-metal speakers, boomed across the gully:
"THAT'S MY TRASH, GOLD BOY. PISS OFF."
Grudge and a dozen heavily armed Scrappers erupted from tunnels, shredder-cannons whining to life.
Aris sighed. A sound like a dying star. "Vermin multiplying." He raised his free hand. Light gathered…
The Geargrinder struck.
Not at Aris. At the cliff face above the Solar Knight. A hydraulic press fist the size of a car smashed into weakened metal.
CRRRRRRRACK-BOOM!
A thousand tons of compacted cars sheared off the gully wall, avalanching down onto Aris's position in a deafening roar of collapsing scrap.
Dust swallowed the gully. Silence fell.
Ethan collapsed, coughing, Entropy nearly drained. [0.10%]. The Geargrinder crouched beside him, core pulsing a wary indigo, watching the dust cloud.
Mama Knox's forces froze, weapons trained.
Slowly, impossibly, light pierced the settling debris.
Aris hovered, untouched, within a perfect sphere of golden energy. Not a speck of dust marred his armor. The avalanche lay piled harmlessly around his shield, already beginning to melt into slag from the heat of his aura.
He looked at the Stabilizer crate, buried under tons of metal. At Mama Knox's forces. At the Geargrinder. At Ethan.
His expression held no anger. Only profound, icy disappointment.
"This… irritates me," he stated. Sun's Judgement flared. "Scrap Pile. Sector Zero. Geargrinder. F-Tier anomaly. You have until dawn to evacuate or perish." His gaze locked on Ethan, seeing through him like x-ray. "Your borrowed power is a flicker in a hurricane. Run while you can."
Golden light enveloped him. He vanished, leaving only scorched earth and a terrifying ultimatum.
Razor whimpered in the sudden silence, trapped under rubble.
Mama Knox lowered her rifle, face grim. Grudge spat on the ground.
Ethan pushed himself up, meeting the Geargrinder's core. It rumbled, a sound like grinding continents.
Run?
He looked at the rising moon, then at the mountains of scrap .
[ENTROPY: 0.10%]
Not yet.