"....." Adrian stared forward, his eyes unfocused, trembling faintly as though caught between fear and frustration. His teeth sank into his lower lip so hard that a thin line of blood began to bloom there, the metallic taste filling his mouth.

In front of him, within the vast echoing expanse of the shipyard, Her Highness Zara stood in person—an image of poise and command. She was clearing the area meant for ten Shapers and their resources, giving sharp orders for them to leave immediately. The clamor of metallic footsteps and shifting crates filled the air, yet Adrian remained motionless, lost in a mixture of disbelief and agitation.

Behind him, more than a dozen engineers, overseers, and handlers worked in anxious silence, each responsible for a crucial process in the manufacturing sequence.

"Heh~ you're taking this way too personally," sighed the dwarf foreman beside him, giving Adrian a weary pat on the back. "You're an employee, and she's the employer. Let her do what she pleases. That's the way of things."

Bam!

Adrian's patience snapped. His boot slammed into the dwarf's stomach, sending him crashing backward into a pile of supply crates with a muffled grunt. The others froze, stunned. Yet Adrian didn't even glance back; he just clenched his fists and kept staring toward Zara as if nothing had happened. "Why would she humiliate us like this?" he muttered through gritted teeth. "We've given her everything we have—every drop of effort, every hour of our lives. Wasn't that enough?"

"If you ask me," came a calm voice from behind—a woman covered in grease and metal dust, the one in charge of the raw-material conduits—"Her Highness just wants to feel like she's contributing. She knows the limits of what's possible, but if she sits in her office doing nothing, she'll feel like she's failing. So she's here, trying to make a difference with her own hands. That's all."

"True enough," grunted the chief painter, his hands still streaked with golden lacquer. "Her Highness is cultivating under the Fundamental Law of Life. Maybe she's trying to put it into practice somehow? The only use I can think of would be to create beasts that help transport the materials faster."

"But... don't we already have golems and treants for that?" another worker asked hesitantly.

"Don't ask me, I just paint the hulls!" came the irritated reply.

"Enough!" Adrian barked suddenly, his voice sharp as a blade. The chatter ceased instantly. "I won't allow anyone to speak ill of Her Highness—understood?" He turned on them one by one, eyes burning with the intensity of a man defending something sacred. "Listen to me, all of you. You will support her, you will cheer for her, and you will make her work easier however you can. Maybe even praise her every now and then. Understood?!"

"Understood!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Isn't that just kissing as—" Thud!

The speaker doubled over as a fist connected with his gut. He coughed, forced himself upright, and muttered in a breathless tone, "...Understood."

Gradually, everyone's gaze drifted back to Zara—

Clank... clank... clank...

A rhythmic hum filled the air as a small warship descended beside her, its metallic surface gleaming like liquid steel under the dock's pale lights. The vessel bore the markings of the Note Of Flood-3 series—an advanced, compact battleship model. The pilot disembarked swiftly, saluted with precision, and reported, "This is the newest ship produced as per your specifications, Your Highness. Do you have any further orders?"

"No. You may leave."

Zara's calm voice carried a quiet strength. She raised her gaze, her silver eyes scanning the vessel's twenty-meter frame with meticulous care, tracing every plate, every curve, every faint pulse of energy along its hull.

She herself had helped design this ship—indeed, she had contributed to all three iterations of the Flood series. Yet now, standing before her creation, she felt her heart racing in her chest. "Hoooh~" she exhaled softly, her breath trembling as she took several steps back.

Her mind drifted to an ancient memory—

Nearly half a millennium ago, her adoptive father had given her a gift. A gift so grand, so impossibly precious, it felt as if he were offering her a fragment of the heavens themselves. It was too much. Too magnificent. So overwhelming that she had felt small, undeserving—she had wondered if he saw something in her that simply wasn't there. The weight of that expectation had crushed her until she sank into despair.

But she had clawed her way out of that darkness because of one unshakable truth:

Her father was the greatest being in existence. His will defined the possible and impossible. If he believed she could achieve something, then she would. Otherwise, his faith in her would have been misplaced—

and that was something she could never allow.

Now, centuries later, she was finally standing at the threshold of that promise. Before her was the culmination of generations of refinement—her chance to prove that his trust had not been in vain. And this time, the test would be public, monumental, and irreversible.

"Please..." she whispered, her voice trembling like the faint hum of a storm engine, "I don't want to be the reason Father's belief falters."

Her hands were shaking; she stared at them for a moment before tightening them into fists until her knuckles turned white. Crack. Her breath steadied. Determination—fierce and luminous—settled over her face like a second skin.

Then she raised her hand toward the vessel and declared in a low, resonant voice that rippled through the shipyard like thunder:

"Crucible of Greed!!"

KRRRRAAAAAK!

The earth beneath the warship convulsed violently, as though something ancient and titanic had awoken beneath the surface. Deep fissures tore open in the smooth ground, and from within them, four colossal walls of metallic stone erupted upward—each one engraved with living runes that shimmered faintly with green light. They rose in unison, enclosing the vessel like the jaws of a beast.

Then—

SHHHHHH!

From the edges of those towering walls, a ceiling unfolded and sealed the structure shut, locking the warship completely inside a cube of shimmering energy and stone. The ground groaned under the weight of the spellwork; dust spiraled through the air like smoke from a dying volcano.

"...?!?" Adrian and the others froze in disbelief. They could only watch as the ship vanished into the heart of that living fortress.

For what felt like an eternity—half an hour at least—nothing happened. Zara stood motionless at the center of it all, eyes closed, her breathing shallow, her presence expanding until even the air trembled with restrained force.

Adrian's gaze softened, a flicker of pity leaking through his frustration. She doesn't even know where to begin... or what to do.

It was the only explanation he could think of.

But then—something shifted.

Without warning, Zara's eyes snapped open, their emerald light cutting through the shadows like twin blades. She raised her arm sharply, and the air behind her howled as an invisible current began to churn.

CLAAANG! CLAAANG! CRACK!

The ground beside her bulged upward, bubbling like molten glass before bursting into shape—a massive, amorphous creature of translucent clay and mud. Its skin pulsed like liquid, its body wobbling with every movement. Two hollow eyes blinked open on its head, and an enormous mouth stretched across its torso.

Then, with a deep, throaty rumble—

WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!

Hundreds of long, elastic arms shot outward from the creature's body, snatching at the heaps of raw materials scattered across the yard—steel, crystal, plasma cores, woven mana threads. Each arm changed size depending on its burden: some grew thick as trees, others thin as rope.

The arms hurled their cargo into the creature's cavernous mouth.

GULP. GULP.

The monster devoured everything with gluttonous enthusiasm. Its body swelled, layer upon layer of stone and liquid earth fusing and hardening. Then—

"Baaaaaaghhh!"

It let out a booming burp that shook the scaffolding, rubbing its belly with almost human satisfaction before it began to chew—its internal layers grinding like mills of thunder.

The next moment defied reason.

The enormous creature started collapsing inward, compressing itself as if an unseen gravity was crushing it from within. Its form condensed, its features disappeared, and its glow became sharper, steadier—until it solidified into a giant cube of smooth stone and metal, exactly the same dimensions as the structure surrounding the warship.

Then, silence returned—thick and heavy.

"....."

The workers stood with mouths agape. "Did... anyone get what's going on here?" one whispered.

"Obviously she's trying to do something!" another replied nervously.

THWACK!

"Alright I will shut up!"

Adrian clenched his jaw. He wanted—needed—to see what was happening inside that strange cube, to understand what Her Highness was attempting. His soul force gathered instinctively, ready to probe. But he stopped himself.

If she wanted this to be private, prying would be an insult beyond forgiveness. Zara didn't tolerate eyes that saw what she didn't reveal.

Time crawled.

An hour passed. Then two.

The initial awe turned to unease. One by one, the supervisors and engineers left, returning to their stations. Adrian remained, still and drenched in sweat, his fists trembling as he fought the urge to look.

By the fourth hour, his patience was all but gone. The tension had wrapped around his chest like chains.

By the fifth, the day's shifts were nearly over. Department heads returned, holding their reports, only to find Adrian standing in exactly the same spot—his eyes locked on the same unmoving cubes... or perhaps on the lone figure beside them.

"Hm? Still no change?"

"Her Highness is... really pushing herself."

"Should we... maybe talk to her?"

"Quiet!" Adrian hissed, veins rising on his temple. "...I'll see for myself what's happening."

He let his soul sense flow outward, drifting like a mist toward the cubes—

—but before it could reach—

KRRRRR! KRRRRR!

The two massive cubes shuddered violently, then crumbled, collapsing inward before being swallowed back into the ground. The tremors subsided, the dust cleared—

—and in their place stood two identical warships.

"....?!?!"

For a long, breathless moment, no one spoke. Then Zara's calm voice broke the silence, carrying a soft but commanding tone:

"Phew~ It passed safely. Someone come and tow one away... I'm starting the next."

Adrian blinked several times, his mind a storm of disbelief, awe, and confusion.

"..........?!?!!?!"

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