Welcome to yet another episode of season 1 of god emperor saga.
Hope you guys enjoy.
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The Foreman's hydraulic arm hissed, steam venting from his shoulder joints as he recalibrated his targeting sensors.
To him, Han Jin wasn't a hero or an emperor; he was a defective unit causing a bottleneck in production.
"Anomaly identified," the Foreman boomed. "Resource waste detected.
Initiating: Scrap Metal Protocol."
The Foreman's massive press slammed down.
Han Jin didn't dodge.
He stood his ground, his feet magnetized to the catwalk, and held the golden marble aloft.
"Old Man," Han Jin's voice was a low rumble.
"Clock in."
The marble shattered.
A pillar of pure, radiant gold erupted from Han Jin's palm, tearing through the industrial smog of the factory.
The magnetic field pinning Han Jin's feet snapped like a brittle thread.
Out of the light stepped a figure that made the Foreman's steel chassis creak in phantom fear.
The Grand Marshal was no longer the corrupted, green-flamed ghost from the Archive.
He stood tall in phantom jade armor, his cape billowing in a wind that shouldn't exist in a sealed factory.
In his hand was a spear made of solidified lightning.
[BING! Battle Spirit Summoned: The Grand Marshal (Restored Version)]
[Level: 105 (Limited by User's Level)]
[Skill: Heavenly Tactical Oversight - All allies within 100 meters receive a 200% boost to Attack Speed.]
"Jin," the Marshal said, his voice now clear and resonant.
"This workshop is... remarkably ugly.
Where is the craftsmanship? Where is the soul?"
"They're being stuffed into tin cans, Old Man," Han Jin said, gesturing to the assembly line.
"The Foreman here thinks we're just raw material."
The Grand Marshal leveled his lightning spear at the Foreman.
"Material? I have forged stars into shields and rivers into blades.
You, construct, are nothing but a poorly oiled toy."
The Foreman roared, his internal furnace glowing a violent orange.
He swung his hydraulic press in a wide arc, aiming to crush both the Emperor and the Spirit.
"Lin Xi! Wei! Get to the control booth!" Han Jin commanded.
"I'm going to provide a distraction. Sabotage the soul-binding sequence!"
As Lin Xi and Fatty Wei sprinted across the vibrating catwalks, Han Jin and the Grand Marshal moved in perfect, practiced synchronicity.
It was a dance they had performed across a thousand battlefields in the Ninth Heaven.
The Marshal took the front, his spear a blur of light that deflected the Foreman's heavy strikes with mocking ease.
Every time the hydraulic press landed, the Marshal was elsewhere, leaving behind only the scent of ozone and the sound of distant thunder.
"My turn," Han Jin whispered.
He didn't use the cleaver.
He pulled out the Rusty Paperclip and the Cosmic Whetstone.
He didn't sharpen the blade; he sharpened the Paperclip.
[BING! Item Evolution: The Logic Needle (Temporary)]
[Description: A tool capable of piercing the Source Code of physical objects.]
Han Jin leaped, his Agility stat making him a streak of gold.
He didn't aim for the Foreman's head.
He aimed for the main power conduit...the Heart of the factory that fed the assembly line.
The Foreman saw him.
"Unauthorized access to Power Core! Security sub-routines: ACTIVATE!"
Dozens of the robotic Student soldiers , the ones who had been successfully re-skinned and detached from their hooks and swarmed Han Jin mid-air.
"Don't hurt them!" Lin Xi screamed from the control booth.
"Their souls are still inside!
If you break the shells, you delete them!"
Han Jin gritted his teeth.
He couldn't slash, and he couldn't burn.
He had to be surgical.
"Old Man! Keep the Foreman busy!" Han Jin yelled.
"Consider it done, your Majesty!" The Marshal laughed, his spear erupting into a cage of lightning that pinned the Foreman against a cooling tower.
Han Jin landed in the middle of the robot swarm.
He didn't fight back.
He spun the Logic Needle in a complex, 5th-dimensional pattern.
"Link," Han Jin commanded, "the '
Power Source of these drones to the Internal Battery of the Foreman!"
[BING! Feedback Loop Initialized!]
Suddenly, the robotic soldiers froze mid-air. They weren't being powered by the factory anymore; they were sucking the energy directly out of the Foreman.
The massive Auditor began to sputter, his glowing orange furnace dimming to a sickly yellow.
"System Error!" the Foreman wheezed. "Energy leak... Efficiency dropping... 40%... 20%..."
"Lin Xi! Now!" Han Jin shouted.
In the control booth, Lin Xi slammed the Retract lever on the soul-binding sequence.
The conveyor belts reversed.
The mechanical arms began to gently pull the glowing orbs out of the metallic chassis instead of shoving them in.
Thousands of souls...the "deleted" students of Earth floated free, drifting like fireflies in the dark factory.
"NO!" the Foreman screamed, his hydraulic arm falling limp.
"THE HARVEST... THE DEVELOPER... WILL NOT..."
"The Developer isn't here," Han Jin said, walking up to the dying machine-god.
He placed the Logic Needle against the Foreman's central processor.
"But I am.
And I'm declaring this factory permanently closed."
Click
Han Jin pushed the needle in.
The factory didn't explode.
It simply unravelled.
The steel walls turned back into raw data, the conveyor belts dissolved into green mist, and the Foreman vanished into a cloud of rusted pixels.
[BING! Floor 3 Cleared (The Factory of Souls).]
[Bonus: 5,400 Souls Liberated!]
[Reward: Soul-Weaver's Cloak, 1 Universal Restore Token.]
As the factory disappeared, they found themselves standing on a bridge of pure light, looking up at the final floor of the Tower.
But there were no more stairs.
There was only a single, massive door made of obsidian, with a small, glowing sign that read:
ADMINISTRATOR OFFICE - KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING.
"This is it," Lin Xi said, her voice shaking. "The top of the Tower."
Han Jin looked at the Universal Restore Token in his hand.
He looked at the golden spirit of the Grand Marshal, who was slowly fading back into his marble form.
"Old Man," Han Jin said.
"Stay close.
I think the Developer is finally ready to show his face."
Authors Note:-
That's the wrap of 17 th chapter,still not much readers.
I hope in the future when I came to see this there will 100s of comments.