[The Royal Plaza]

"The Master does not tolerate failure."

The Cultist's voice was a dry rattle that cut through the noise of the riot.

Regent Thrain, kneeling on the marble steps, looked up at the hooded figure in horror.

"Wait! No! I am the Regent! I gave you the city! I gave you the forges!"

"You gave us scraps," the Cultist sneered. He raised a hand wreathed in green necrotic fire.

"And now, you will give us… your life!."

SQUELCH.

The Cultist plunged his hand into Thrain's chest.

There was no blood. Thrain screamed, a sound that morphed into a gurgle as his body began to wither.

His skin turned grey, then black. His life force, his mana, and his soul were ripped out in a violent stream of purple energy.

"Sacrifice Accepted."

The Cultist threw Thrain's husk down the stairs. The crown clattered onto the cobblestones, rolling to Zero's feet.

Zero looked at the corpse.

"You killed your own person," Zero said, gripping the Pantheon Sword. "That's bad management."

"Everything for our God!" the Cultist replied.

He raised both hands to the sky. The purple energy he had harvested from Thrain shot upward, hitting the clouds.

"Mana Formation: Dead Zone."

RUMBLE.

The ground of the plaza shook, not from the Ironclads this time, but from something deeper.

The bodies of the fallen.

The hundreds of Iron Legionnaires were destroyed by the rebels. The City Guards were shot by the mob. The civilians caught in the crossfire.

Their blood didn't sink into the ground. It began to flow toward the center of the plaza.

The scrap metal of the destroyed cyborgs began to rattle and float.

"What… what is happening?" Leona shouted, smashing a cultist aside. "The dead are moving!"

"Necromancy," Lyra hissed, her face paling. "Mass fusion! These Damn cultists! They are about to do something crazy!"

The blood, the flesh, and the black steel swirled together into a massive, gore-slicked tornado in the center of the square.

It grew taller than the palace.

A skeletal snout formed. Then massive wings made of scrap metal and bone. Then, a ribcage glowing with a green Void Core the size of a house.

ROAR!

A Colossal Bone Dragon (Tier 6) burst from the gore-nado. It was a monstrosity of fused souls and iron, dwarfing even the Ironclad Mechs.

Its roar shattered windows for miles.

The rioting civilians froze. They looked at the monster. They saw faces in its armor, the faces of their dead sons and brothers who had been turned into Legionnaires.

"No…" A baker dropped his pistol. "That's… that's my boy."

"No..! That's my husband!" a wife said as she looked at her husband's grieving face on the abomination before her

In an instant, feelings of loss, pain, hatred, and unwillingness all filled the hearts of the surrounding dwarves.

Despair washed over the city. How could they fight their own dead kin?

….......

[Meanwhile - The Deepest Dungeon]

Far below the screaming and the chaos, in a chamber where the silence was heavy enough to crush a man, a lock clicked.

Click.

Alfred pushed the heavy door open. He stepped into the room, his shoes making no sound on the pristine floor.

Barnaby followed, holding a lantern, his hands shaking.

"Is he… is he here?"

The room was cold. In the center, a glass stasis pod hummed with faint machinery.

Inside lay a dwarf.

He was old. His beard, once fiery red, was now snow-white and thin. His skin was grey, translucent, showing the black veins of Abyss Poison.

Tubes ran from his arms, draining his mana into the floor, feeding the very barrier that had protected the Palace.

King Durin.

"He's alive," Alfred whispered, placing a hand on the glass. "Barely."

"We need to get him out," Barnaby said, looking at the tubes. "If we disconnect him, the shock might kill him."

"If we leave him, the Cultists will consume him next," Alfred corrected.

He reached into his coat and pulled out a small vial of golden liquid, a diluted drop of the Tears of the Goddess Damien had given him "just in case."

"Young Master prepares for everything," Alfred noted with a faint smile.

He smashed the glass of the pod.

CRASH.

The King gasped, his body seizing as the stasis broke.

"Who…" Durin rasped, his eyes fluttering open. They were milky with blindness. "Who disturbs… my sleep?"

"Friends of Theron Voss," Alfred said gently, lifting the frail King. He poured the golden liquid into the King's mouth.

"And we are here to take back your crown."

….......

[The Plaza]

The Bone Dragon inhaled. Green fire gathered in its throat.

It aimed not at Zero, but at the crowded streets of the Lower District.

"It's going to wipe out the civilians!" Isabelle screamed.

"Hephaestus!" Zero yelled into his comms. "Do you have it?!"

From the Royal Foundry, a massive section of the Palace roof blew off.

KABOOM!

"I HAVE IT!" Hephaestus's voice screamed over the speakers.

From the smoke, a fifty-foot-tall giant of gleaming Mithril and Gold jetted into the sky.

The Royal Guardian Titan.

It was sleek, majestic, and armed with a sword the size of a tower.

A special construct Hephestus had made and hidden ever since the guardian project was launched.

Although created as a last resort to protect the kingdom if anything went wrong, he never imagined he would use it so soon.

So soon, that it was currently incomplete, it was moving sluggishly.

Every movement, a huge struggle for the giant behemoth

"The Neural Link is unstable!" Hephaestus yelled. "My mana isn't strong enough to pilot it against a Tier 6! I need a battery!"

The Titan landed in the plaza with an earth-shattering crash, standing between the Bone Dragon and the civilians.

Hephaestus opened the cockpit hatch.

"Zero!" The Prince shouted, pointing at the empty pilot seat.

"Get in!"

Damien looked at the Titan. He looked at the Bone Dragon.

He sheathed the Pantheon Sword.

"Finally," Damien grinned under his mask. "Now let's even the odds!"

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