Chapter 407 - 396: Hammered!
Defense Sector 3.
Along the coastline, the Steel Legion stood like a silent, iron-colored dam, ready for battle.
After a moment of dead silence, the sea surface suddenly erupted about five kilometers from the shore!
A colossal black shadow, wreathed in tens of thousands of tons of seawater, shot into the sky like an awakened abyssal sea god.
The King of Heart-eaters!
It was over thirty meters long and covered in deep blue scales. Each scale was as large as a door panel, shimmering with a faint blue demonic light as if forged from water element crystals.
On its bone-spiked head, three pairs of deep red eyes swiveled. Two pairs burned with madness, but the topmost pair held a glint of intelligence.
"ROAR—!!!"
It opened its massive maw, large enough to swallow a fishing boat, and let out a roar unlike any sound a living creature could produce.
The sound waves formed a visible white shockwave that swept across the sea. The first to be hit were the hundreds of low-level Heart Eaters in front of it, attempting to make landfall.
Caught in their own king’s roar, the bodies of these minions exploded—POP! POP! POP!—like blood bags being squeezed. A mist of blood instantly stained the sea red before its throne.
The area was cleared.
A king’s might is absolute; the rabble must disperse!
At the front line, the formations of Spider Slayer IIs and Peacekeepers instantly focused their fire on Jarvis’s command.
Hundreds of searing Magic Beams crossed the several-kilometer distance, pouring down on the King of Heart-eaters’ body like a torrential downpour.
However, a translucent, water-blue shield flickered into existence over its scales.
Every attack landed on that thin shield, merely creating ripples before being completely absorbed and dissipated. They couldn’t even make it budge half a step.
The King of Heart-eaters glanced contemptuously at the "tin cans" on the shore. It strode forward on its thick hind legs, leading a regrouped elite guard of individuals far larger than the average, and crushed its way toward the coastline like a moving tsunami.
Meanwhile.
Directly in its path, the dark-red, statue-like figure that had stood motionless from the very beginning, moved.
"BOOM."
Cyclops Unit One took a single step forward, and with just that one step, the earth let out a heavy, mournful groan.
The Beast Tide seemed to part as if by an unseen force, voluntarily clearing a vast dueling ground for the two kings.
Outside the zone, cannon fire thundered as the Golem Legion clashed with the Heart Eater elite guard;
Inside the zone, it was king against king!
The two behemoths, now less than three kilometers apart, began to accelerate simultaneously.
Cyclops Unit One strode forward on its giant legs, each over six meters in diameter, leaving one-meter-deep footprints in the sand with every step.
Its fifty-four-thousand-ton weight gave it unparalleled kinetic energy. As it ran, it looked like a runaway, super-sized steel train.
The King of Heart-eaters, on the other hand, used all four limbs, its body nearly scraping the ground, yet its speed was unbelievable.
A deep blue afterimage trailed behind it. In its wake, the seawater recoiled and sand and stone were sent flying.
The earth and the sea cried out in anguish beneath the two colossal beasts.
On the walls of the second line of defense in Defense Sector 3.
Galvin, Commander of the Fifth Legion and a hardened veteran who had fought Heart Eaters for thirty years, was currently digging his hands into the battlements so hard his fingernails were about to embed themselves in the stone. His mouth was agape, wide enough to fit a fist, yet he couldn’t make a sound.
A dark-red Steel Giant.
A deep-blue King of Heart-eaters.
Charging head-on toward each other on the open coastal plain.
The scene was like two towering mountains that had been brought to life and were about to collide in an earth-shattering impact.
It was absurd, magnificent, and filled with a primal, adrenaline-pumping, violent aesthetic.
"Commander... that... that Iron Giant... Is it going to charge the King of Heart-eaters head-on?" the adjutant behind him asked, his voice trembling with a mixture of fear and excitement.
Galvin didn’t answer.
Because he was witnessing a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life.
Just as they were less than two kilometers apart, the charging, dark-red Iron Giant drew the ferocious, eighteen-meter-long great hammer from its back and leaped!
[Gravity Inversion]
In that instant, the fifty-four-thousand-ton steel body seemed to break free from the world’s shackles, soaring into the air in a completely unscientific manner.
It wasn’t a jump; it was flying! In the blink of an eye, it ascended to a height of three hundred meters, casting a shadow over the King of Heart-eaters.
Then.
[Hundredfold Gravity Amplification.]
’Earth-Splitting Hammer, smash it!’
The transition from weightlessness to hypergravity was instantaneous.
The terrifying kinetic energy fell from above like a kinetic bombardment from orbit!
BOOM—!!!!
No sound could describe the terror of this strike.
For a moment, all sound seemed to vanish, followed by a world-shaking tremor!
With Cyclops’s point of impact as the epicenter, the earth shattered like glass struck by a divine hammer. A terrifying web of cracks spread madly in all directions. The ground within a two-kilometer radius sank a full three meters!
Faced with absolute physical law, that seemingly indestructible water-blue shield didn’t even last a second before shattering like a bubble.
The King of Heart-eaters didn’t even have time to react before it was struck head-on by this devastating force from above.
Its enormous body was thrown to the ground by the massive shockwave, along with a thousand of its elite guards behind it. Like pebbles caught in a storm, they were sent flying hundreds of meters away, screaming.
Amidst the swirling dust and smoke, Cyclops slowly stood up straight.
Then, it began to walk toward the King of Heart-eaters, which had been left dazed and confused by the impact, its scales cracked and broken.
Each step was like the swing of Death’s pendulum—heavy and rhythmic, heralding the enemy’s doom.
"ROAR!"
The intense pain and humiliation sent the King of Heart-eaters into a frenzy.
Though heavily wounded, it still struggled to its feet. Its three pairs of red eyes locked onto the advancing Steel Giant as a tsunami of deep-blue Magic Power surged from the gaps between its scales.
Dozens of massive ice pillars, each over two meters in diameter and shimmering with bone-chilling frost, materialized around Cyclops. Then, from all directions, they shot forward with air-rending shrieks!
The attack, powerful enough to freeze and shatter a mountaintop, bombarded Cyclops’s body.
A pale yellow Super AT Force Field flickered into existence.
The vast majority of the ice pillars disintegrated into a cloud of ice crystals the moment they touched the Force Field.
Only the two most powerful ice pillars pierced the Force Field, slamming heavily into Cyclops’s chest plate.
"CLANG! CLANG!"
It sounded like two popsicles hitting an anvil.
On the dark-red armor forged from Earth Vein Tempered Steel, only two shallow white marks were left behind.
The King of Heart-eaters’ intelligence told it that something was wrong.
This hunk of iron before it was harder than anything it could comprehend.
For the first time, it felt fear. It turned, wanting to escape into the sea.
"Trying to run?" Allen chuckled from within Cybertron.
[Gravity Control, Hundredfold Amplification.]
HMMMM—
An invisible force field descended in an instant.
The King of Heart-eaters, which had just turned, suddenly sank as if a mountain had been dropped on its back.
Its massive body was pinned to the ground, every inch of flesh and bone groaning in agony. It couldn’t move.
Cyclops walked up to it and swung the Earth-Splitting Hammer with all its might.
On the hexagonal head of the hammer, the "Mass Amplification" Runes lit up one by one.
The King of Heart-eaters raised its arms in a desperate block.
"CRACK—!!!"
Before the mass-amplified Earth-Splitting Hammer, its arms, strong enough to shatter city walls, snapped like brittle cookies, suffering compound fractures.
Its entire body was sent flying by an irresistible force, crashing through three temporary earthen fortifications and tumbling for over three hundred meters before coming to a pathetic halt.
It let out a shrill, unwilling howl, trying to summon the seawater to heal its wounds.
But Cyclops was before it once again, its single massive eye looking down on the "king" writhing on the ground.
"The Boss has given an order."
A heavy voice echoed across the beach.
"Your time is up."
Cyclops raised the Earth-Splitting Hammer.
[Gravity Inversion.]
It leaped once more.
It became a dark-red meteor, falling with the force of a collapsing mountain.
The hammer fell.
BOOM—!!!!!!!!
This time, it was as if the entire coastal plain had been struck by a tactical nuke.
A white, tangible shockwave spread madly across the ground, sending everything standing within a five-kilometer radius—be it Heart Eater or Golem, reef or fortification—flying and tearing it to shreds!
At the center of the impact, a terrifying crater over three hundred meters in diameter and twenty meters deep was formed.
The thermal-fusion core inside the hammerhead was fully activated by this earth-shattering blow.
A super-high temperature capable of melting anything spread wildly outward from the point of contact between the hammer and the crater floor.
The rock strata melted with a scream, and the sand and soil vaporized under the intense heat.
And just like that, a small lake of lava was born on the coastline of Defense Sector 3.
At the lake’s center, Cyclops slowly pulled out the Earth-Splitting Hammer. Its dark-red armor, illuminated by the lava, made it look like a Demon God returned from Hell.
As for the once-invincible King of Heart-eaters, not even a single complete bone was left behind.