Chapter 366: The King Who Kills Others, The God Who Kills Himself (20) |
Hundreds of mounts raced across the desolate wasteland, kicking up a thick cloud of dust.
They only had one destination, the Golden Palace.
The ever-transforming Golden Palace now resembled a true fortress.
Thick, impenetrable walls surrounded the whole structure, which stood imposingly on the barren land. There were no visible openings along its high walls and atop its pointed spires, steel-winged birds circled the air.
The invincible fortress traveled with a speed comparable to the nimble Dholes despite its massive size.
“Faster! Step on it!”
Hector barked out orders, increasing the output of his machine.
Their goal was to create a diversion, but at this pace, even approaching the Golden Lord was proving to be difficult.
A different tactic was necessary.
Manipulating his Juggernaut, he deployed a massive cannon almost as big as his Juggernaut.
“Golden Lord! If you truly intend to abandon the Fallen Dominion—”
Hector’s Unique Magic allowed him to power his cannon without gunpowder, relying on pressure instead.
The longer the barrel, the more potent the force of the gun,
The barrel of Hector’s cannon extended for over ten meters and pointed straight towards the Golden Palace.
“Over my dead body!!”
- Thunk.
Instead of a deafening explosion, the sound was more like a drumbeat.
The shell shot forth and hurtled toward the Golden Palace but didn’t strike it directly.
The moment it made contact with the Palace, the shell was absorbed as if sinking into a body of water.
Though the attack was ineffective, it succeeded in drawing attention.
As if in response, something burst out from a shattered window.
It was a cannon, far larger and longer than Hector’s, so massive it dwarfed his own Juggernaut.
Something of that size shouldn’t exist—it should collapse under its own weight.
Yet, the Golden Lord, with his alchemy, had materialized this theoretical impossibility into reality.
If he could create it, surely he could fire it too.
“Everyone, dodge!!”
Hector yelled, yanking the controls of his Juggernaut.
He didn’t veer away because he saw the cannon fire. He moved preemptively, driven purely by an ominous instinct.
Moments later, he proved why he was still alive at such a ripe old age in the Fallen Dominion: the ground where he had stood shattered like glass as a massive impact rippled through the earth.
The projectile wasn’t just enormous—it was colossal.
A one-meter-wide steel bullet arrived faster than the sound of its own detonation, tearing through the unyielding earth and causing localized earthquakes.
The aftershock alone sent Hector’s Juggernaut reeling.
A direct hit would mean instant death for anyone.
Farther back, the Dholes following Hector wobbled from the shockwave, some toppling over and rolling across the ground.
Witnessing the overwhelming power of the Golden Lord, they screamed in terror.
“No one said anything about this!”
“This is madness! Run!”
The Dholes panicked and scattered.
Hundreds who had been charging toward the Golden Palace now fled in all directions.
A disorganized retreat, but it worked in their favor.
If they had approached too recklessly, both their mounts and their bodies would have been alchemized into other objects by the Golden Lord.
By spreading out, they diluted his focus.
Sure enough, the massive cannon wavered, its aim now uncertain.
But only for a moment.
The cannon’s muzzle flared open, revealing a black sphere similar to the one used in the earlier attack on the city.
It was buckshot—an iron storm designed to annihilate numerous people at once.
“HAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
Hector summoned every ounce of his strength.
His Unique Magic, which governed suppression and the hammering of steel, came into play.
He applied his power to the cannon’s interior, forcing the black sphere to stall.
The projectile, poised to exit through the barrel, was instead sucked back into the chamber by his suppressive force.
｢The Golden Lord never cared for the Fallen Dominion. His heart was always with the Golden Empire, but as someone who served him closely, I once thought—perhaps, just perhaps, the two could be one and the same. Though I had no reason to believe so…｣
Hector’s power had limits.
His Unique Magic could only hammer and mold metal to a certain extent.
Against the Golden Lord’s seemingly infinite power, he was insignificant.
The struggle between Hector’s suppression and the Golden Lord’s firing intent lasted only a moment.
The shell, poised to launch, wavered before being expelled back into the air.
The black sphere hovered precariously, seconds from exploding into lethal shrapnel.
“Grrr… Urrrgh!”
With every ounce of his might, Hector suppressed the shell at the brink of detonation.
The resulting explosion, though still loud, was significantly weaker than before.
The spray of fragments was limited in range, allowing even the slowest Dholes time to evade.
But that was just one shell.
Hector had spent all his strength, wits, and luck to neutralize a single projectile.
Yet, above and below the original cannon, nine more barrels emerged from the walls of the Golden Palace.
These terrifying cannons were now aimed at Hector and the remaining Dholes.
Even if hastily constructed, anything crafted by the Golden Lord could claim hundreds of lives with ease.
Hector quickly assessed the situation.
｢Ah… This is where my journey ends.｣
It was impossible.
Against the Golden Lord’s casually deployed cannons, his abilities were woefully inadequate.
Hector and his Juggernaut would be smashed to pieces.
｢I should run while I can… save myself… my life…｣
For a fleeting moment, Hector hesitated.
Alchemy and metallurgy were inseparably linked.
Even if the material composition changes, some degree of physical intervention is necessary to shape it into the desired form.
After all, not every alchemist was like the Golden Lord.
Hector was a craftsman who excelled in such tasks.
Though he was born without legs, his arms became extraordinarily strong from walking with them throughout his life.
With his strength and skill, he hammered and folded steel plates, assisting even the most renowned alchemists in crucial moments.
He took pride in his work, even looking down on alchemists at the peak of his career.
One day, the Mouldarch, who had been observing Hector’s arrogance, brought him before the Golden Lord to humble him.
There, Hector witnessed a god—a deity who shaped the world alone within the Fallen Dominion.
｢Whether it’s the Sky God or Mother Earth, they’re just grand titles without proof, but in the Fallen Dominion, a god truly exists—greater, mightier, and more human than any other “god”.｣
With newfound enlightenment, Hector ascended to the rank of Primarch.
Succeeding the Mouldarch, he was chosen as the Golden Lord’s guardian and dedicated his life to serving him.
Alongside the Goldenarch, he cared for the Golden Lord, guiding him to create the tools necessary for the nation.
Objectively, the Golden Lord was a mere puppet for the two Primarchs, but Hector genuinely revered him.
In his final moments, instead of retreating, Hector removed the limiter from the Steel Heart.
The moment he unleashed it, his Juggernaut entered a state of self-destructive overdrive.
The engine screamed and trembled, while the rapidly spinning wheels skidded on the ground.
Hector used his Unique Magic to press the Juggernaut against the earth, forcing the wheels to dig deeper into the soil, accelerating further.
“…Here I come.”
The Overdrive Mode, created by the Golden Lord as a casual experiment, was now unstoppable.
The Juggernaut would continue accelerating until it collided with something and shattered into pieces.
Hector had turned himself into a massive bullet, charging straight at the Golden Palace.
Dozens of barrels and cannons emerged from the palace, aiming at him, but he only gripped the shaking controls more tightly, undeterred.
Whether they fired or not didn’t matter—once the Juggernaut went into overdrive, his fate was sealed.
It didn’t matter if he lived or died.
His mission was already completed.
Hector’s reckless charge was not a direct threat to the Golden Lord, but it was loud and intense enough to divert his attention from the moving mound of earth in the distance.
Still, the Golden Lord could not have anticipated what emerged from that mound as it split open—a ship bursting forth from the ground.
“OPERATION SUCCESSFUL! WITHERARCH, CHARGE!”
The Golden Ark glided over the undulating ground, surging forward.
Standing on its deck, where a figurehead should be, the Regressor held Jizan aloft.
At the critical moment when the Golden Ark collided with the Golden Palace, the Regressor swung Jizan with all her might.
In an unprecedented strategy in human history—a ramming assault by an ironclad ship against a fortress—the Regressor executed her attack.
“Terra Firma Art: Mountain Cleave!”
Just before the two massive entities collided, the Regressor cleaved through the Golden Palace’s walls.
Even the sturdiest fortifications couldn’t withstand Jizan, which carried the weight of the world itself.
The crack left by Jizan split the walls in two and the Golden Ark drove into the gap.
- *Crash, scrape.*
The Golden Ark turned into a giant blade, gouging the Golden Palace at its core.
Rubble rained down and twisted steel folded into grotesque shapes.
Amidst the overwhelming clash of forces, the infantry caught in between them suffered unimaginable tragedies.
Two titanic constructs bit into each other.
Shards from the ruined structures, corroded by Wither, scattered like bloody mist.
Having never encountered anything larger than themselves, the two Juggernauts roared fiercely at the presence of a rival.
The walls surrounding the Golden Palace, sturdier than steel, were also constructs of alchemy, but the Golden Ark crushed and melted everything in its path.
Bit by bit, the Golden Ark consumed the Golden Palace, burrowing ever deeper.
From the heart of the chaos, balancing precariously atop the Golden Ark, the Regressor turned and shouted.
“Good! Witherarch, keep it up!”
The Golden Ark surged forward in response, digging even deeper into the palace as if trying to enter its core.
Half the ship was already embedded within.
“Father?”
“Yes?”
Hilde, who was driving for me, pointed ahead with her finger.
“That… is that how it’s supposed to work? It looks like the ark is being swallowed whole~”
“Well… putting it nicely, it’s making progress.”
And putting it bluntly?
It was indeed getting swallowed whole.
***
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