The crude propulsion system roared to life, spewing torrents of fire and overwhelming thrust. Pillars of flame burst sideways from its frame, trailing thick streams of black smoke as the engines devoured their fuel.
"A technological breakthrough, Lloyd. Remember the oil refinery in the north?" Merlin said, watching the battle below. "We discovered that this substance may be difficult to control, but it stores an astonishing amount of heat. It makes an exceptional fuel. We still understand very little about it, yet after a series of alchemical refinements, it has begun to reveal its true potential. I believe this will change the future of industry."
Below them, the armored giants slaughtered one another.
Lloyd, however, had no attention left for Merlin's explanation.
Night Owl was frighteningly dedicated. Their blades had crossed for only a heartbeat, yet Lloyd had already realized one thing.
The man was genuinely trying to kill him.
Who knew how long Night Owl had trained in secret? Every strike flowed seamlessly into the next, relentless and merciless.
The Sword Dancer's normally clumsy frame had become unnaturally agile beneath the crude propulsion system. Lloyd found himself wondering exactly where Merlin had seen any trace of "bulkiness."
The Black Angel retreated swiftly, but compared to the Sword Dancer's rocket-assisted acceleration, it was painfully slow. At the critical moment, Lloyd made the only rational choice. He forced the Black Angel to lean violently sideways, narrowly slipping out of the Sword Dancer's charging path.
The propulsion system was clearly an experimental creation born from the researchers' whim. Steel plates had been crudely riveted together without elegance or precision. This was more than a trial between two Godframes—it was equally a field test for every newly attached device.
Like a maddened bull, the machine possessed terrifying acceleration, but only in a straight line.
Lloyd seized upon that weakness.
The Black Angel swept into a wide arc, circling behind its opponent. The Sword Dancer struggled to change direction. This was his chance—
Until flames erupted once more, illuminating his vision.
"Oh, come on!"
He cursed.
Still charging forward, the Sword Dancer suddenly pivoted sideways. Every mechanical joint throughout its body shuddered violently beneath the impossible lateral force. By all logic, the frame should have torn itself apart.
But demonic flesh, serving as the perfect connective tissue, held every fragment firmly together.
Columns of fire erupted from launchers mounted along its shoulders.
Those lunatics had anticipated the flaw in its maneuverability from the beginning. Small thrusters had been mounted across nearly every angle of the machine, allowing it to compensate through sheer brutality.
The craftsmanship, however, remained crude.
Each thruster was disposable.
After a brief burst, they burned themselves empty. Red-hot casings and spent fuel canisters peeled away from the Sword Dancer's body like a knight shedding pieces of his armor.
Then came the descending blade.
Steel shrieked.
Iron feathers surged together, weaving themselves into an immense shield that met the sword head-on. Sparks exploded outward as fragments of metal scattered across the workshop.
The accelerated strike proved far heavier than Lloyd had anticipated.
The Black Angel was hurled backward. Most of its iron feathers shattered instantly, while the remaining force crashed through the frame into Lloyd himself. His chest tightened painfully beneath the crushing impact.
The Black Angel skidded several meters before barely regaining its footing. Its iron wings slowly unfurled, revealing a noticeable dent carved into the once-impenetrable breastplate.
The Sword Dancer turned around as well.
It did not rush to continue its assault.
Such violent acceleration placed tremendous strain upon the pilot. Even Night Owl needed a moment after enduring the previous impact.
Within both Godframes, demonic flesh served as a living stabilizer and shock absorber. Lloyd and the Black Angel were completely enveloped by it, rendering blunt-force impacts far less effective than they should have been.
Lloyd refused to grant his opponent any respite.
Empowered by the Perpetual Pump, the third-generation Godframe was fully armed.
The Black Angel swept its wings outward.
The broken iron feathers detached all at once, transforming into a storm of flying blades that screamed toward the Sword Dancer.
The Sword Dancer did not even attempt to evade.
Countless steel feathers slammed against its enormous external armor, producing only showers of sparks and dull impacts.
Nothing more.
To compensate for its inferior performance, the third-generation Godframe possessed extraordinarily thick outer plating.
And that was merely its first layer of protection.
Another suit of plate armor lay beneath it.
"Come on, Lloyd!" Merlin shouted cheerfully from above. "Don't lose too badly!"
Lloyd was beginning to grow irritated.
For a brief moment, he even considered climbing out of the Black Angel altogether.
If he fought the Sword Dancer as a Witch Hunter instead, the enemy might be unfamiliar—but at least his own body wasn't.
This bizarre Godframe certainly wasn't.
Night Owl, in truth, shared the same thought.
Old Century Godframes had always stood as the Purging Bureau's greatest weapon, created solely to exterminate demons.
Never once had one Old Century Godframe fought another.
Every technique, every instinct, every movement had to be discovered through battle.
So far, his approach seemed to be working.
The Sword Dancer raised its Godframe hand cannon once more.
Judging by the racks mounted behind its back, it still carried two disposable launchers.
Their true purpose had always been slaughtering flesh.
Shrike had once carved a blazing path through endless tides of demons with these very weapons.
Against Old Century Godframes, however, their destructive power was limited.
Much like Lloyd's Dragon's Breath shells, their greatest value against armored opponents lay in blinding and disorienting them.
The trigger clicked.
Dragonfire swept across the workshop.
The unbearable heat instantly reddened the gauntlet holding the weapon.
Behind the Sword Dancer, fresh thrusters ignited once again, while several exhausted fuel tanks dropped away from its back.
All Lloyd could see was a steel beast charging toward him.
His thoughts raced.
Searching.
Calculating.
Looking for an answer.
Yet there truly wasn't much to consider.
The Black Angel possessed only one genuine advantage—
Its overwhelming superiority as a first-generation Godframe.
Thanks to the sheer proportion of living demonic flesh within its structure, it was vastly more stable than the Sword Dancer, and incomparably more agile.
To imitate the first generation's strength, the Sword Dancer had burdened itself with layer upon layer of armor, weapons, and propulsion systems.
Combined with its already degraded design, it could never match the Black Angel's flexibility or freedom of movement.
There lay Lloyd's chance.
The Sword Dancer resembled a frail child trapped beneath an impossibly heavy suit of armor.
Every addition had been an attempt to erase the gap between them.
Even the rocket engines were merely another desperate patch.
The Sword Dancer arrived in an instant, dragging an inferno behind it.
The Black Angel looked almost fragile before such overwhelming momentum.
One more clean strike—
That was all it would take to cripple the Black Angel from the front.
Then the Black Angel moved.
The restraint harness around its body still hindered it, but that no longer mattered.
Fresh iron feathers sprouted from the gaps between living flesh.
These were not external weapons.
They were born from the demon itself.
The Black Angel charged forward.
At first its steps were awkward.
Lloyd still had not fully mastered the machine.
But within moments, clumsiness gave way to instinct.
Its pace quickened.
Its movements sharpened.
Just as the Sword Dancer raised its sword—
The Black Angel accelerated once more, closing directly into its reach.
Everything unfolded within a heartbeat.
This was the Black Angel's true strength.
Its responsiveness surpassed the Sword Dancer beyond comparison.
The Sword Dancer had only begun lifting its blade.
The Black Angel was already upon it.
There wasn't enough room to swing.
The two massive machines were about to collide head-on—
Then the Black Angel slipped aside like a phantom.
Benefiting from its slightly smaller frame, it twisted sideways at the final instant before impact.
Even so—
Steel crashed against steel with an earsplitting shriek.
It was still Lloyd's first time piloting an Old Century Godframe.
He had reacted just a fraction too slowly.
Before he could execute the next movement, the Sword Dancer—unable to halt its momentum—slammed directly into him.
Had Lancelot been the pilot...
The outcome might have been entirely different.
Lloyd remembered that azure phantom.
Without a single propulsion engine, that Godframe had moved as lightly as a swallow gliding through the rain.
The violent collision shattered his thoughts.
The Sword Dancer continued driving the Black Angel backward.
Then—
The Black Angel seized it.
Its flexible frame accomplished what the Sword Dancer never could.
Its arm bent at an impossible angle, plunging deep into the gaps between the enemy's armor plates.
Using that grip as leverage, the Black Angel vaulted cleanly over the Sword Dancer's body.
The fatal slash missed.
Now came the counterattack.
Its razor-sharp wings burst apart into hundreds of blades, stabbing deep into the Sword Dancer's back.
The crude propulsion system and exposed fuel tanks were torn to pieces.
There had never been room for armor around engines of that size.
A blinding explosion erupted.
The blast staggered the Sword Dancer forward.
Fortunately, the tremendous weight of its external armor stabilized its balance.
Almost instantly, flames burst from the opposite side.
Small thrusters mounted upon its arm ignited, allowing it to swing its sword backward at a speed far beyond what the frame itself should have been capable of.
Yet these auxiliary engines were little more than experimental products created alongside the Perpetual Pump.
The miniature fuel tanks scattered across its body held enough fuel for only one or two bursts.
If the Black Angel survived these deadly strikes—
Once every tank was exhausted—
The Sword Dancer would lose nearly all of its mobility.
And with it, much of its threat.
Lloyd had never been a cautious hunter.
Aggression flowed naturally through him.
Iron feathers folded together into an angled shield.
Enhanced by the strength of demonic flesh, the Black Angel failed to stop the sword completely, yet still deflected its trajectory.
Then it struck again.
Not at the Sword Dancer—
But at every remaining external fuel tank.
Explosion after explosion echoed throughout the workshop.
Night Owl's combat instincts were equally sharp.
The moment he realized the Sword Dancer could no longer escape the Black Angel's close-range assault, he abandoned any attempt to protect the fuel tanks.
Instead, he raised the Godframe hand cannon once more.
This time—
He aimed at the ground.
The instant he pulled the trigger, an ocean of fire exploded upward.
Towering flames swallowed every line of sight.
Even from the observation platform above, all anyone could see was an inferno consuming both Godframes.
Then—
A colossal sword swept through the blaze in a great arc.
The flames split apart.
The enormous strike struck the blind Black Angel squarely, hurling it backward.
The Sword Dancer burst from the fire.
Its steps were now heavy.
Without propulsion, its speed had dropped dramatically.
Night Owl understood the gap between them better than anyone.
Once the Black Angel entered close quarters, the Sword Dancer simply could not keep pace with its movements.
With its thrusters intact, one perfectly timed strike might still have ended the fight.
But Lloyd had already found the path to victory.
The disparity between the two Godframes would only widen from here.
He needed distance.
The Black Angel could never be allowed too close.
Using the hand cannon to blind his opponent—and relying on sweeping attacks—would no longer work.
The Black Angel would be prepared next time.
Like duelists circling within an arena, the Sword Dancer moved slowly across the workshop, searching for an opening.
The Black Angel remained motionless on the opposite side.
After enduring countless collisions, its condition had visibly deteriorated.
It was wounded.
Yet the more heavily it bled—
The more terrifying its strength became.
"...Just like one," Merlin murmured softly from the elevated platform.
"Just like a demon."
He watched the duel as though he were some noble spectator overlooking an execution.
His gaze never left that grotesque creation.
Its iron feathers lay broken.
Its heavy armor was riddled with cracks.
The Black Angel lowered its head, as though all fighting spirit had abandoned it.
And in truth—
Destroying the Sword Dancer's propulsion system had come at a terrible cost.
To achieve it, the lightly armored Black Angel had endured repeated direct blows.
Under normal circumstances, such damage should have been fatal.
Yet now...
Its steam engine began rumbling once more.
The cracked armor surrounding its flesh split farther apart, exposing the crimson mass beneath that rose and fell with slow, rhythmic breaths.
The flesh grew.
Slowly.
Relentlessly.
It reinforced shattered joints, wrapped around fractured armor, and forcibly stitched every broken plate back together.
Life revealed itself.
Blood seeped from the narrow gaps between steel and machinery, trickling downward before the rising heat instantly vaporized it.
A crimson mist enveloped the Black Angel.
"The Black Angel's Geiger Index is rising!"
Someone shouted toward Merlin.
Merlin merely shook his head.
"Continue."
He understood perfectly.
The first-generation Godframes and the third generation represented two opposite philosophies.
One pursued flesh.
The other pursued steel.
Only when the Black Angel entered a state of controlled demonic transformation—fully awakening the vitality hidden within that living flesh—could it truly be considered activated.
Because this Godframe...
...was alive.
And now—
It had awakened.
A strange pain spread throughout Lloyd's body.
Then he could no longer see.
Or perhaps—
Everything had simply become clearer than ever before.
Living flesh covered his eyes.
Newly grown nerves fused his body directly into the demonic organism.
The faceplate bulged outward.
A narrow slit tore open across its surface.
Behind it—
A crimson eye stared silently into the world.
The transformation continued.
Along Lloyd's spine, countless strands of living flesh connected him completely to the Godframe.
Every command originating within his brain bypassed his human body entirely.
His thoughts no longer controlled flesh and bone.
They commanded the Old Century Godframe itself.
The next instant—
It crouched like a beast.
The crimson steam dispersed.
Trailing droplets of blood stretched through the air behind it.
All anyone heard was the deafening impact of its feet striking iron.
Then—
Razor-sharp steel feathers descended from above, slashing violently across the Sword Dancer's chest.
Powerful muscles replaced mechanical servos.
Its monstrous heart thundered, pumping blood through every artery.
The creature opened its mouth, exhaling warm mist.
One hand seized the Sword Dancer's faceplate.
With only the slightest pressure—
The steel began to crumple.
Night Owl's breathing nearly stopped.
Through the narrowing gap in the twisted visor, he saw them.
Those crimson eyes.
And beneath them—
That impossible fusion of steel and flesh.
Exactly as the earliest engineers had once described the first-generation Godframes.
It was not a machine wearing armor.
It was a demon clad in steel.