Samira went over the list of everyone and everything that went into the rift. This mission was recognized by the whole empire, deeming everyone that contributed as heroes of the empire.

  Propaganda set up by people high up. But despite everything that happened, there was no word from the emperor, Arthur Vulcan. A man that greatly detested war doing nothing as his people were suffering.

  “Something isn’t adding up,” Samira muttered.

  Going through the list of soldiers that went into the rift, Samira found one person of interest in the list. Elise Kortona, a soldier in the military that lost both her parents during the dimensional rift that opened in the western sector.

  A young woman with brown skin, dark brown hair, and cyan colored eyes. She wears her hair in a distinctive style: a high ponytail with two looped strands framing her face.

  She had top marks on her training and fantastic evaluations on her missions. She was noted to be a driven soldier full of vigor. A tough nut to crack.

  But from what Samira observed from the footage being shown to them, she barely had any will to fight. If the golems weren’t there, she would already be dead considering she didn’t even bother to take any cover as she fired her weapon.

  What caught Samira’s interest wasn’t her sudden change in attitude, but her recent track record. She had just come from a ruin exploration that was stated to be confidential.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Lucas watched in shock as the barrier blocked an attack from Percival while core break was active. Lucas’s attention zoomed in towards the three severiumites. The one with the staff was raising their staff into air with the orb on it glowing bright green.

  Going for a different approach, Percival called back its lance and charged up another attack. This time, Percival didn’t aim for the city directly, but underground.

  The lance tunneled through the ground, causing the land over it to collapse. The city over the tunnel began crumbling, while the golems continued their advance.

  The severiumite with a spear charged the army of golems, but Percival intercepted it.

  Both elites clashed.

  Samira returned to the observation room just in time to see the highlight of the battlefield.

  The battlefield was a roaring symphony of chaos—metal shrieking, smoke coiling in the air, and explosions lighting up the orange sky like false stars. Mechanized golems, towering constructs of brass and steel, clashed with serpentine humanoids with glistening scales and eyes like molten gold.

  Among the carnage, two figures clashed with each other.

  One—a towering knight in jet-black cybernetic armor. Samira recognized it as Percival, Lucas’s golem that wielded the strength comparable, or even greater than a king-ranked mage. In one arm, it wielded a jagged great sword that was shrouded with a purple aura. In the other, a lance swirling with aura.

  Across from him stood Thyssar, a serpent-headed warrior identified by the orbs. His forked tongue flicked as he tightened his grip on a barbed obsidian spear, inscribed with sigils of venom and pain. Silver-scaled, sinewy, and fast—his presence radiated cold, ruthless precision.

  The air between them snapped with tension as the battle muted around them, the world shrinking to this singular duel in the middle of the destruction.

  Thyssar darted forward first, slithering low across the cracked ground with terrifying speed. He spun his spear in a blur, aiming straight for the gaps in Percival’s armor.

  With a snarl of servos, Percival intercepted the strike with the haft of its great sword, sparks flying as metal clashed. The golem countered with a wide horizontal sweep, but Thyssar twisted mid-air, flipping over the blade and landing behind the golem.

  “Knight of rust,” the serpent hissed. “You are slow.”

  Percival didn’t respond. The golem spun its lance like a turbine and drove it backward blindly—direct hit. It pierced through Thyssar’s midsection, sending blood and venom splattering onto the scorched earth. But the snake-warrior coiled around the shaft, hissing, and thrust his spear downward into Percival’s shoulder joint.

  For the first time ever, Percival received damage.

  Reeling back, Percival shifted its stance, slamming the butt of its great sword into the ground to anchor itself. Steam hissed from its armor as the golem’s aura surged like wild flame. Percival let go of the lance, drawing its great sword fully with both hands.

  “Adapt. Overcome,” Lucas’s voice came from the golem.

  Percival lunged forward with brutal precision, each swing a calculated storm meant to crush, not just kill. Thyssar danced and ducked, agile as liquid shadow, until one feint caught him off guard—a downward cleave that embedded the great sword deep into the ground—a trap.

  Percival flared its aura into the sword once again.

  BOOM. A shockwave erupted, sending Thyssar flying through a pile of golem and tank wreckage.

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  Wounded but not defeated, Thyssar emerged, now gripping his spear with both hands. He began to chant—an ancient incantation. Green fire slithered along his weapon as it morphed, transforming into a double-ended glaive of venomous light.

  Percival’s eyes flared within the helm.

  They charged.

  Steel met sorcery in a whirlwind of strikes. Thyssar slashed, twirled, and thrust with supernatural finesse. Percival blocked, absorbed, and retaliated with earth-shaking blows. The battlefield itself seemed to buckle under their clash.

  Then, in a moment of perfect timing—Percival caught Thyssar’s glaive mid-spin with its arm-mounted clamp, locking it in place. With the golem’s free hand, Percival plunged the great sword into Thyssar’s chest, deep—through bone, scale, and soul.

  Thyssar hissed one final curse… then fell still.

  Samira watched as the golem stood over its enemy in victory. This time, the golem did not check if Thyssar had a core since the first powerful enemy it defeated did not. She could hear the people in the observation muttering, but she focused her attantion back at the footage.

  Things weren’t over yet.

  The wind howled through the craters and torn metal as Percival stood over Thyssar’s lifeless body, aura still shrouding its armor. The battlefield trembled with distant detonations, but something closer stirred… something worse.

  From the shadows of a toppled golem’s hull, two new figures emerged—both of the Severium.

  One strode forward with elegance and menace: tall, draped in robes that shimmered like oil, serpentine tattoos glowing faintly on their arms. In one clawed hand they gripped a black staff crowned by a green orb, swirling with sickly light. The orbs quickly identified them as Zael’neth.

  Beside them, lumbering with heavy, deliberate steps, was a brute nearly as massive as Percival himself—Korr’Vaag. His weapon was a fusion of arcane and mechanical, a hulking shoulder-mounted cannon shaped from bone and steel, glowing faintly with pressurized venom mist.

  Zael’neth’s eyes narrowed as they beheld Thyssar’s corpse.

  “You desecrate the chosen of our blood, metal husk. Now, you shall be unmade.”

  Percival simply turned to face them fully.

  He gripped his great sword tighter.

  “Then come,” Lucas spoke.

  Zael’neth raised the staff and slammed it down. Green lightning exploded outward, causing shattered golem parts to rise into the air, reanimating as twisted metal thralls. They screeched as they lunged at Percival.

  Korr’Vaag took aim with the cannon—BOOM.

  The blast struck the ground beside Percival, hurling the golem through debris. Metal scraped as its armor split at the hip joint. Percival rolled, stabbed its sword into the ground to stop, and pushed up just as a resurrected golem lunged at Percival.

  Slice. One clean swing removed its head.

  But more came.

  Flaring up with aura, Percival activated its ability—a telekinetic skill that yanked Zael’neth’s staff off target just as the mage prepared a spell. Percival hurled its great sword at them like a harpoon—it struck, sending Zael’neth sprawling, green ichor spilling.

  But the price was high.

  Korr’Vaag charged, cannon shifting into a pile-driver mode. He brought it down—Percival blocked with its arm, the limb crumpling under the force.

  Alarms screamed. Armor cracked.

  But he was in range now.

  With a flare of aura, Percival reached for the fallen great sword, slammed it into Korr’Vaag’s knee, shattering it. The brute dropped to one side, hissing in agony, and Percival—using the cannon’s own barrel as leverage—snapped it in half. Then, with the broken end of the cannon, jagged and glowing faintly from its own residual energy, Percival rammed it upward beneath Korr’Vaag’s ribcage, punching through heart, lung, and spine.

  Korr’Vaag’s gold eyes went wide in silent shock.

  He tried to speak, but only blood and vapor escaped his fanged mouth.

  And then… the brute collapsed, the shattered cannon still embedded in his chest, his own weapon the instrument of his doom.

  Zael’neth rose, bloodied but furious. With a shriek of wrath, they lifted both hands and began an incantation. The green orb on their staff glowed furiously, summoning a spiraling vortex of poison magic meant to dissolve matter at the atomic level.

  Percival, barely standing, looked at the war-mage—and launched its last contingency.

  From its chest cavity, a concealed a marble that materialized into another golem that resembled a severiumite.

  The golem charged and exploded.

  Zael’neth’s magic sputtered out. The orb cracked. The mage froze, momentarily stunned.

  And in that window, Percival lunged.

  Percival drove the broken end of the cannon straight through Zael’neth’s chest, pinning them to a burning piece of wreckage. They gurgled once—and fell limp.

  The observation fell silent as they witnessed the strongest forces of severium lose to a single golem.

  Lucas was puking into a bucket once again before collapsing to the ground.

  “You need to go to a hospital?” Maxwell asked.

  “I’m good. Just give me a moment,” Lucas replied from the floor.

  “I must admit. I don’t know if I should be amazed or scared at what your golem is capable of,” Maxwell mentioned. “A normal king-ranked mage wouldn’t be able to do what it just did and stay standing.”

  Lucas chuckled. “I literally built them different.”

  After the siege of another city, they obtained more information about the severiumites. It turns out that they had a group of powerful elites called the Six coils. In terms of power, they were stronger than average king-ranked mages from their dimension.

  Four of them were already dead.

  All from the hands of Lucas’s golem, Percival.

  Samira didn’t know how to take that information. She herself was a king-ranked mage with four stars. She's strong enough to face a monster lord in equal ground, the thing that Percival was supposed to be based on. But she wasn’t sure if she could take down three of the elite severiumites that the golem faced.

  This just proved how much of a valuable ally Lucas Atican was to the empire and how potentially dangerous an enemy he could be.

  What concerned her the most was that the golem wasn’t alone. There were at least four more golems around the same level as Percival, and likely more to come.

  Considering his contribution to this mission, an appropriate reward is only fair. Samira went through the list of areas under their surveillance that had a similar situation as the fog he encountered before their first meeting. That seemed to be something that would be useful to him.

  There was also the news regarding someone that came from another universe and seemed to staying with the Atican family. The matter wasn’t related to Samira since a difference department was on the case, but it wouldn’t hurt to check things out.

  She might even be able to get a glimpse of the other universe.