Chapter 1277: The Blessing Had Eyes
Andona spread all her wings again.
Bright motes of light rained down from above.
They slipped through the ice and sank into every mechanical body. At the same time, a pale-gold barrier closed around the group again, sealing them off from the energy about to erupt.
Inside the machines, those light-motes kept stretching.
They threaded along internal lines and conduits, then condensed into golden blades.
The first sword punched out through a Rhazek’s chest.
The second speared straight through a Neisemann’s head.
Then more and more light-swords bloomed at once—out of joints, cores, and weapon systems across the mechanical army.
Silver-white bodies split from the inside out.
Ataneya also hurled the two tiny infernal fireballs in her hands, one to each side.
They skimmed low over the frozen floor.
The moment they reached the center of the mechanical ranks, both infernal forces detonated.
BOOM—!
A violent sonic blast expanded from both ends of the palace toward the middle.
Fire slammed into ice, and the clash of heat and cold exploded together. The frozen mechanical army was first pinned through by golden blades—then shredded apart by the infernal shockwave.
The palace roof couldn’t take a blast like that.
An entire section was ripped up and flung away.
Metal framework, gold ornamentation, and the remaining turrets all spun into the air, exposing the desert and open sky beyond.
A beam of sunlight happened to fall through the gap.
A golden column washed over everyone.
All the unprotected mechanical constructs were gone—nothing left but scattered ice chips, melted metal, and white mist still spreading outward.
Only two "lucky" ones were still alive: the pair Andona had sealed.
The Rhazek and the Neisemann were trapped inside the pale-gold barrier, unable to move—but their mouths didn’t stop. Two rows of metal teeth kept gnawing at the shield, clacking nonstop.
Ethan walked up to the seal.
White lightning extended from his palm and seeped slowly into both machines.
The instant it touched their cores, the Rhazek and Neisemann reacted at the same time—almost like they’d gotten excited.
Their internal energy surged violently.
Their metal shells bulged outward, and their body temperature climbed fast.
If Ethan so much as hesitated—if he pushed even a little deeper into the core—they’d probably explode right in his face.
He had no choice but to pull his power back for the moment.
Then he turned to Queen Elowen.
"Give me a hand."
Elowen stepped in. Icy-blue energy flowed from her fingertips.
The chill passed through Andona’s pale-gold barrier and slipped precisely into the brothers’ cores. The red glow inside those mechanical cores cooled, fading bit by bit into a cold, wintry blue.
The agitation inside them weakened.
The risk of detonation was finally suppressed.
Ethan raised his hand again.
White lightning infiltrated along the frozen pathways, slow and careful—first into the Rhazek’s brain structure, then splitting off to enter the Neisemann as well.
He didn’t rush to seize control.
This time, Ethan wanted their memories.
Maybe those mechanical minds still held something useful about the Golden Kingdom.
Everyone else watched the invasion process closely.
Only Elira started getting bored.
She stood behind the group for a while, then finally unfolded a pair of dazzling Divine Sovereign Moth wings.
Colorful patterns lit up across the wing membranes.
With a gentle flutter, Elira lifted into the air.
The roof had already been completely torn away by Ataneya and the earlier explosions, so there was no risk of her slamming into anything.
She flew past broken walls and climbed higher.
The eye-like markings on the Divine Sovereign Moth wings pivoted as she scanned the ruins and the desert beyond. Even the smallest movement wouldn’t escape those "eyes."
Elira was focused—until a dull impact sounded above her.
Bang!
Like something had slapped her from overhead.
Her body rocked downward. Startled, she looked up.
In the sunlight, a ring of white ripples spread outward.
Where the ripples passed, the air shimmered with transparent waves. Only when the sun hit it at a certain angle did everyone finally see it—
A white shield covered the sky overhead.
It had been hanging there the whole time.
Because it was transparent—and blended into the harsh sunlight—none of them had noticed it before.
That shield felt... wrong.
Like it was alive.
Its surface actually contracted on its own where Elira had touched it, and the ripples pulsed with a rhythm that felt disturbingly like breathing.
Yet the power it gave off was incredibly weak.
So weak that the people below hadn’t paid it any attention.
Elira’s reaction was the complete opposite.
The instant she saw the shield, her body started backing away uncontrollably.
Her Divine Sovereign Moth wings snapped shut at the same time, every eye-pattern sealing closed.
She clapped both hands over her eyes, like she’d seen something she couldn’t endure.
But she was in midair.
The moment her wings stopped beating, her body lost all support.
Elira dropped.
Faster and faster.
Seraphine had been watching the sky the whole time.
The instant Elira folded her wings and fell, Seraphine raised a hand.
She didn’t fly up to catch her.
Soft, gentle light gathered in her palm and spread beneath Elira into an upward-curving sheet of radiance. When Elira hit it, the impact pressed a deep dent into the light—then the spreading golden ripples bled off the force layer by layer.
Elira’s speed dropped sharply.
In the end, the light held her steady, lowering her along that golden arc until she drifted down toward the ground.
On the other side, Ethan had finished breaking into the Rhazek and Neisemann.
White lightning pushed deeper and deeper along their internal circuitry, entering brain structures and pulling stored images, sounds, and command strings. Massive waves of memory rode back along the current into Ethan’s mind, one segment after another unfolding.
What he didn’t realize—
The brothers were recording the entire process too.
How the white lightning entered.
How it slipped past their defenses.
How it searched for the memory-storage locations.
They transmitted every detail, perfectly intact, to a distant endpoint.
The first image Ethan saw was of a land that still had green fields and cities.
The Golden Kingdom had once been a prosperous human nation.
Ordinary people walked the streets. The palace hadn’t been a mechanical arsenal. Between the pyramids, order was stable—population, wealth, and power all climbing steadily.
Until a "blessing" descended from the sky.
That power from above completely changed everything.
The memory was about to continue—
When the Rhazek and Neisemann inside the seal suddenly began to spasm.
Their connection to the terminal was forcibly cut.
Their limbs trembled uncontrollably. Their internal lines crackled with chaotic noise. Even their ice-blue cores began to flicker—bright, dim, bright again—like something far away was rapidly shutting down every information channel.
The Rhazek forced its head up.
Through the pale-gold barrier, its mechanical eyes locked onto Ethan.
The Neisemann opened its mouth too.
Their voices were shredded by static, broken into fragments, but everyone still caught the words.
"Run..."
A screeching grind came from the machine’s throat.
"Fast..."
The next instant, a red warning light flared inside the seal.
Red flashed again and again, washing everyone’s faces in shifting shadows. An urgent alarm sounded from inside the brothers’ bodies, the rhythm accelerating.
No one around them really cared.
This level of self-destruct?
Seriously?
Andona’s seal had completely isolated them, and Queen Elowen had frozen their cores. Even if they did explode, the force shouldn’t be able to breach the pale-gold barrier.
Then the alarm cut off.
The red light died with it.
No explosion.
A thin thread of white smoke seeped from a seam in the Rhazek’s shoulder.
Then from the Neisemann’s chest, arms, and head. More and more white smoke poured out from all over both bodies. It hit Andona’s barrier and couldn’t disperse, so it just swirled and churned in the cramped space.
The smoke thickened.
At first, everyone could still make out the brothers’ blurry outlines.
A moment later, the inside of the barrier was nothing but rolling white.
Right then, Seraphine’s light finished lowering Elira back to the ground.
The golden sheet of radiance slowly faded.
Elira lay flat, eyes closed, unresponsive.
She’d passed out.
Ethan had just started to move toward her—
When dense mechanical sounds rose again from the surrounding ruins.
From behind broken walls, one strange-shaped construct after another stepped out.
Humanoid forms were still the most basic—and the most numerous—but the weapons in their hands were no longer ordinary guns and cannons.
Tiny mechanical bugs crouched in their palms.
Some unfolded thin wings. Some extended sharp spikes. Even more mechanical snakes coiled around their arms and shoulders, metal eyes flashing red, jaws opening and closing again and again.
The ground changed too.
Every time a construct took a step forward, a new gun-bearing mechanical snake formed beneath its feet. The snake bodies slid low across the floor, weapons rising from their backs, muzzles snapping onto the group.
Some of the snakes even had smoking metal tubes clenched in their mouths.
They spoke in garbled voices no one could understand, and as their gears turned, black machine oil kept drooling from the corners of their jaws.
Red light burned in pairs of mechanical eyes.
And then the attack began.
The Green Dragon army surged to meet them.
Frontline soldiers raised their weapons and slammed into the humanoid machines head-on. Blades struck silver-white shells, sparks spraying in all directions—while the mechanical bugs sprang off enemy arms, slipped around the line, and burrowed for the seams between the soldiers’ armor plates.
The mechanical snakes fired from the ground.
Dense beams sliced through the formation from below, forcing the Green Dragon army into a rapid retreat.