Achoo!
Far from the chaos on land, a certain golden-eyed son suddenly sneezed so hard that D-29 paused mid-calculation.
"Brother! Are you alright?" came a panicked voice from the blonde trembling cozily inside another mecha.
"I’m fine!" Luca said, rubbing his nose.
But the concerned, marginally taller brother wasn’t convinced. Just as expected, it was really ideal to always hold it with his left hand!
"Brother, I have a revive pill! I think you should take one!"
Luca blinked. "Oh, it’s okay, brother, I’m not dying!"
"But—"
"Don’t worry," Luca said cheerfully. "D-29 says my vitals are all normal! Maybe someone just remembered me!" reassured the little money-grubber, who was certain that nothing could stop him from continuing his mission of exploration and enrichment.
He smiled innocently, utterly unaware that "someone" happened to be an entire battlefield full of soldiers who were either terrified, inspired, or praying to their ancestors because of one Duke Kyros.
Then again, Luca still managed to get it right.
Because somewhere far above, and definitely more than anyone else, one very frazzled father had been thinking about his son the entire time.
Only this time, it seemed Duke Leander Kyros had finally figured something out.
If only someone had told him earlier that the SS-grade Dreadcolossus Titan—the beast whose core now lay inside his greatsword—had been a creature that embodied pure dominance. One that lived for frontline devastation while existing as a fortress that could stand firm while flattening mountains.
Wouldn’t his life have been easier? Moreover, if he had been able to pilot this at least once before...
Instead, the Duke was learning all this the hard way.
But no matter. After all, his son had said he would definitely adapt the fastest!
He blinked once, twice, and then promptly blurred toward the shoreline, vanishing from his original position so fast that even the Marshal squinted in surprise.
"What—where did he—?"
The feed flickered, and there he was, right beneath the falling monster.
"Is he insane?!" someone yelled.
It wasn’t an unfair question. Because from where everyone was standing, it looked like Duke Leander Kyros had just volunteered to be flattened.
But how could a man who had survived the longing for his missing wife and son possibly give up now?
If he hadn’t surrendered to the worst parts of his life, there was just no way in hell that he would allow a giant corpse of a monster to be the one to take him down!
He straightened in his mecha, the sleek black and gold armor catching the dim light as the air itself seemed to vibrate around him.
And then he lifted his greatsword.
Even those who were watching from a distance and the safety of the reinforced shelter found themselves instinctively taking a step back.
The weapon pulsed with power, and even from afar, they could just imagine how the ground was probably humming over at the shore.
The Duke stood beneath the enormous shadow of the descending mass, every second making the scale of it clearer.
"Is he actually going to—"
He was.
He really was.
But something began to shift in the air.
A faint silhouette flickered behind the lone mecha—something massive, spectral, and shaped like a colossal beast. The image loomed over the Duke, its eyes glinting faintly as the two figures—mecha and phantom—seemed to merge in posture.
So now it looked like two giants about to clash.
Gasps filled every channel.
Even from afar, it was breathtaking. The aura surrounding the Duke hardened, his entire presence expanding until it felt like he was anchoring the battlefield itself.
The sea roared, but the shoreline held. The ground trembled, but it did not break.
And then the impossible happened.
The colossal body of the aberrant bloom slowed.
It didn’t crash. It didn’t flatten the land.
It stopped.
So, in the eyes of the innocent soldiers watching from below, the scene took on a far grander meaning.
One soldier, voice trembling with awe, muttered, "We were all so shortsighted. He had it planned from the very beginning."
Another nodded fervently. "Of course! Every movement was deliberate. All that destruction... He knew it would be fine!"
"Maybe it was all a show," someone else added, wiping at their face. "A display to remind us of the gap between mortals and someone like Duke Leander."
"No wonder they call him the War God," whispered another, reverently clutching the sides of his uniform.
"My parents used to tell stories about how he broke monsters with his bare hands when he was younger. But since he and his people mostly went into seclusion when I started my life as a soldier, I hadn’t really seen him in action."
"I thought that was just propaganda," the first soldier said weakly. "Turns out I’m the idiot."
They all nodded in grim agreement, their expressions serious as if they had just witnessed divine revelation.
Meanwhile, the feed zoomed in on the battlefield.
The shoreline was filled with drifting pieces of flesh instead of the catastrophic waves they had feared. And there, at the very center of it all, stood a single mecha—towering, golden-lined, and impossibly steady.
A lone warrior holding back calamity.
Someone whispered, "Holy shit. Who would even believe us if we told them what we just saw?"
Curtis, who had been standing nearby, heard that and exhaled slowly through his nose.
He didn’t answer.
But he was definitely thinking the same thing.
In fact, he had an even more pressing thought.
Wouldn’t it be better if this whole thing never made it into any report?
Because honestly, how many of them would end up in a mental hospital if they tried to explain this later?
He looked at the battlefield again.
The Duke was still standing there, sword raised, surrounded by chunks of falling monster meat and tentacles.
Curtis sighed. "Yeah... let’s just say it was a storm."

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