Chapter : 1977
Lloyd didn't answer imdiately. He flipped a few switches on his dashboard, re-routing power from his cooling systems back to his engines. He leaned back in his pilot’s chair, his face bathed in the cool blue light of his monitors.
"Physics," Lloyd finally said. His voice was flat, dry, and bored. "You fired light. I used a prism. It’s stuff we teach to children here. Maybe you skipped that class at your fancy corporate academy."
"You arrogant little..." Anthony trailed off, his voice rising in pitch. The golden Sirius suit flared with light. The thrusters on its back roared, kicking up a cloud of dust. "Do you think one lucky trick changes anything? You are still just a man in a tractor. I am the future."
Anthony charged.
The Sirius suit moved fast. It was a blur of gold motion. It closed the distance in a heartbeat, winding up for a massive punch.
Lloyd didn't flinch. He pushed his control sticks forward. "Let’s dance."
The two machines collided in the center of the canyon. tal slamd against tal with a sound like a bomb going off. The Aegis suit, heavy and grounded, took the hit on its left arm. The impact shook Lloyd’s teeth, but the suit held firm.
Lloyd countered. He drove a massive, hydraulic-powered fist into the Sirius suit’s ribs.
CLANG.
It felt like punching a solid wall of bedrock. The Sirius suit didn't crumple. It didn't break. It barely even moved. The gold armor absorbed the shockwave and dispersed it.
Anthony laughed. He spun around, delivering a spinning kick that sent Lloyd skidding backward ten feet.
"See?" Anthony taunted. "Your toys are heavy, Ferrum. But my armor is made of Null-Alloy. It absorbs kinetic energy. You can punch all day. You’ll run out of fuel before you put a dent in ."
Lloyd frowned inside his helt. He looked at the readouts on his screen. Anthony was right. The teletry showed that his punch had only done 2% damage to the enemy's structural integrity. At this rate, the fight would take hours, and Lloyd didn't have hours. He was running on a battery; Anthony had a nuclear reactor.
"Okay," Lloyd muttered to himself. "Punching him isn't working. The armor is too thick. It’s too advanced."
He needed a different approach. The Sirius suit was fast and tough. It was like fighting a fighter jet that was also a tank. The Anti-Mana Field was still humming in the air, creating a gray do over the battlefield that prevented Lloyd from using his Steel Blood to create weapons or his Blue Ring Eyes to freeze Anthony in place.
He was cut off from his usual bag of tricks. He needed sothing else. He needed sothing that didn't care about "Null-Alloy" or "Kinetic Absorption." He needed sothing that couldn't be blocked because it was everywhere at once.
He needed weight. Absolute, crushing weight.
Lloyd closed his eyes for a split second. He reached deep into his mind, ignoring the static of the Anti-Mana Field. He sought out a specific connection. A bond with a spirit who understood pressure better than anyone.
"Atlas," Lloyd whispered. "Wake up. It’s ti for a swim."
The air in the canyon suddenly changed.
It wasn't a visual change at first. It was a feeling. The dry, dusty air of the wasteland suddenly felt heavy. It felt thick, like the air before a massive thunderstorm. The temperature dropped ten degrees in a second.
Anthony stopped moving. The Sirius suit’s sensors began to beep wildly. "What is this?" Anthony asked, his voice nervous. "My humidity sensors are spiking. We are in a desert. Where is the water coming from?"
A low hum began to vibrate through the ground. It wasn't a chanical sound. It was a deep, resonant thrum, like the sound of a whale calling from the bottom of the ocean. It vibrated in Lloyd’s chest. It rattled the bolts of the Aegis suit.
Behind the Aegis suit, the air began to twist and condense.
Blue fog started to roll in from nowhere. It swirled around Lloyd’s black machine, cooling the hot tal. The fog grew thicker, darker, and wetter. It started to spin, faster and faster, until it looked like a small hurricane was forming right there on the canyon floor.
"Warning," the Fire Fly computer voice announced inside Anthony’s helt. "Foreign energy signature detected. Mass increasing. Warning. Mass increasing rapidly."
"It’s just water!" Anthony yelled, raising his arm cannon. "I’ll vaporize it!"
Chapter : 1978
He fired a blast of heat into the swirling blue fog. The steam hissed, but the fog didn't disperse. It just got denser. The water wasn't evaporating; it was getting angry.
The swirling vortex collapsed inward with a sound like a cracking whip.
And then, he was there.
Atlas stood behind Lloyd’s ch. But this wasn't the shapeless blob of water Lloyd had used before. This wasn't a simple elental. This was a King.
Atlas had evolved.
He stood twelve feet tall, matching the height of the chs. He possessed a humanoid shape, built like a bodybuilder carved out of the deepest part of the ocean. His "skin" was dark blue water, churning and flowing with incredible speed, held together by sheer will. He wore armor made of jagged, colorful deep-sea coral that looked harder than rock.
In his hand, he held a massive trident. It wasn't made of tal. It was made of water that was pressurized so hard it had beco a solid. It humd with power.
The most terrifying thing wasn't his size. It was the pressure.
Atlas didn't just stand there. He radiated heaviness. The ground beneath his watery feet cracked and sank a few inches, just from his presence. The "Anti-Mana Field"—the gray do that Anthony was so proud of—began to flicker. Spiderweb cracks appeared in the gray light of the barrier. The field was designed to stop magic, but Atlas felt less like magic and more like a physical law of nature.
Inside his cockpit, Lloyd grinned. "You brought a laser to a fight," he said to Anthony. "I brought an ocean."
Anthony backed up, his gold suit hovering uncertainly. "It doesn't matter!" he shouted, trying to convince himself. "It’s just liquid! My shields will block it! My armor is sealed! You can't drown a machine!"
"You're right," Lloyd agreed. "You can't drown a machine. But you know what happens to a submarine if it goes too deep, Anthony? It doesn't drown."
Lloyd gripped his control sticks tight.
"It crunches."
________________________________________
The Water King, Atlas, didn't roar. He didn't scream. He just vibrated.
It was a low, terrifying sound, like the groaning of a ship's hull before it snaps.
Atlas raised his massive trident. He didn't throw it. He slamd the butt of the weapon into the desert floor.
BOOM.
A shockwave of blue light rippled out.
Then, Atlas moved.
He didn't run like a human. He dissolved. One mont, the twelve-foot warrior was standing there. The next mont, he exploded into a massive, high-pressure torrent of dark blue water. It looked like a dam had just broken inside the canyon.
Thousands of gallons of water surged toward the golden Sirius suit.
"Shields up!" Anthony scread.
A bubble of blue energy sprang up around the Sirius suit. It was a standard deflector shield, designed to stop bullets and lasers.
But water is tricky. Water doesn't hit a wall and stop. Water flows.
The torrent of water hit the shield and simply went around it. It flowed over the top, under the bottom, and around the sides. It moved with intelligence. It wasn't just a wave; it was a hunter.
"What?" Anthony gasped.
Before he could react, the water swirled behind him and re-ford.
In the blink of an eye, the water coalesced back into the shape of the giant warrior. Atlas was now standing directly behind the Sirius suit, wrapping his massive, liquid arms around the golden machine in a bear hug.
"Gotcha," Lloyd whispered.
Atlas tightened his grip. This wasn't a normal wrestling move. This was the "Hydro-Static Crush."
The water that made up Atlas’s body began to spin and vibrate at incredible speeds. The pressure spiked. Imagine the weight of the entire Atlantic Ocean pressing down on a single point. That was what Atlas was doing.
"Get off! Get off!" Anthony panicked.
He fired his thrusters to full power. The engines on his back roared, spitting blue fire. The Sirius suit tried to launch itself into the sky, to fly away from this liquid monster.
It didn't move an inch.
The Sirius suit, which could fly faster than the speed of sound, was grounded. It was anchored. Atlas was simply too heavy. He possessed "Conceptual Mass." He weighed as much as a sea.
Then, the crushing started.
CREEEEAAAAK.
The sound was awful. It was the sound of high-tech tal screaming in pain.
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