It was a Divine Armor like a beast incarnate—a black angel dragged into filth and corruption.
Its heart thundered with terrifying strength, each pulse growing louder until it echoed through the workshop like the beat of a war drum. Every soul present felt the rhythm striking against their own chest as blood surged violently through their veins, muscles tightening and releasing beneath its relentless cadence.
The loathsome visor had been consumed by grotesquely overgrown flesh. Jagged bone burst through the seams like the fangs of some monstrous maw. Night Owl stood terrifyingly close, the groaning of tortured steel ringing beside his ears. With only a little more force, the Black Angel could have crushed the Sword Dancer's helmet flat—and Night Owl's skull beneath it.
Only after that soul-freezing terror did Night Owl recover his senses.
The Sword Dancer snapped its massive blade upward and hacked viciously toward its opponent, but the Black Angel was already gone.
Without its propulsion system, the Sword Dancer had become painfully sluggish. It simply could not keep pace.
Only a blur of black leaped skyward.
The Black Angel planted a foot upon the Sword Dancer's bulky external armor and vaulted effortlessly into the air—a maneuver utterly impossible for its opponent. The Sword Dancer's body was built almost entirely from machinery, with demonic flesh serving only as connective tissue at key stabilizing joints.
The Black Angel was the exact opposite.
Bathed beneath the pale vault of heaven, it revealed itself completely.
The last time it had lost control, darkness had concealed its true form. Not a single witness had truly seen it. Now, there was nothing hidden.
Blood seeped continuously from the impossible pressure where flesh intertwined with steel. Crimson muscles, stripped of even the protection of skin, coiled and flexed around every joint.
The steam engine's mechanical might fused seamlessly with living muscle, granting the Divine Armor the agility of a predator reborn. Its monstrous resilience allowed movements so violent, so exaggerated, that no ordinary construct should have survived performing them.
Its twin iron wings swept downward.
The razor-sharp metal carved across the Sword Dancer's armor with terrifying speed. Shrill screams of steel filled the air as the edges of the iron feathers glowed faintly red from the sheer violence of the friction.
Landing behind the Sword Dancer in one fluid motion, the Black Angel now possessed mobility that completely overwhelmed its opponent. Yet lacking any true weapon beyond its steel feathers, it found it difficult to inflict meaningful damage against the heavily armored Third-Generation Divine Armor.
Those iron feathers remained unimaginably deadly.
Burrow had nearly died beneath them once.
Against flesh, their lethality required no explanation.
But today...
They faced only steel.
Night Owl forced himself to steady his breathing.
Inside the Sword Dancer, electrodes embedded behind his skull monitored every fluctuation of his mental state. Detecting the surge of stress, the Florend Compound flowed through injectors around his neck.
The relief was immediate.
"Continue, Night Owl."
Merlin's emotionless voice echoed through the communication channel.
"Fight with everything you have. Try to kill him. Mr. Holmes isn't nearly as fragile as you think."
Now that the experiment had officially begun, the alchemist displayed the cold professionalism that had earned his reputation. His empty gaze remained fixed upon the two Divine Armors battling inside the workshop.
To him...
They were nothing more than two unusually shaped laboratory mice.
"I understand."
Night Owl slowly calmed his racing thoughts.
A faint aura of Corrosion radiated from the Black Angel.
Such contamination was inevitable once demonic flesh awakened. Every pilot of a First-Generation Divine Armor eventually had to wage war against that invisible invasion.
He had to remain calm.
Perfectly rational.
Corrosion was like an endless black ocean.
Human reason was the lone ship sailing across its surface.
That ship could possess no cracks.
No weakness.
Not even the smallest fracture where fear might slip inside.
Because once Corrosion discovered such a wound...
It would descend like starving demons, tearing the opening wider with ravenous delight, flooding the mind with ever greater hatred, madness, and ruin.
The Sword Dancer slowly turned its massive body.
Without propulsion, every kilogram of armor had become a burden.
Yet something strange happened.
The Black Angel didn't attack.
It simply stood there.
Blood mixed with gray hydraulic fluid trickled from its body. The rampant expansion of living flesh had crushed several oil conduits beneath it. Wisps of pale crimson vapor drifted upward while copper exhaust pipes had been flattened beyond recognition, making it seem as though the mist itself originated from inside the creature's body.
The Black Angel stood silently within the crimson fog.
Its posture resembled a crouching beast.
Its legs bent backward ever so slightly.
Its waist remained low.
One arm hung limply until its fingers brushed the ground.
The other rose slowly before its face.
Its twisted head stared quietly at the hand where flesh and steel had become one...
If those warped crimson lights beneath its fractured visor could still be called eyes.
Like a newborn child discovering its own existence, it examined itself with innocent fascination.
Its gaze wandered over the iron feathers...
The restraint harness...
The seams where muscle fused with machinery...
The shattered armor plates...
It reveled in the strange sensation.
This body.
This extension of itself.
Unable to tolerate the bizarre spectacle any longer, the Sword Dancer raised its enormous sword and advanced cautiously.
Its immense armor transformed its front into an impregnable fortress.
The workshop itself was far too confined.
As long as it maintained formation, the Black Angel's superior mobility alone would never be enough to deliver a fatal blow.
Steam engines roared at full capacity.
Brilliant white vapor hissed from every seam.
Unlike the First Generation, whose power relied largely upon living flesh, the Third Generation was driven almost entirely by steam machinery. That necessity had made it gigantic, bloated, and cumbersome. The massive external armor existed primarily to protect its vulnerable engines.
Heavy.
Immovable.
Like a mountain standing guard.
The Black Angel darted around it with astonishing speed, but could scarcely reach those protected weaknesses.
Meanwhile...
A single successful strike from the Sword Dancer could end everything.
The distance between them slowly disappeared.
The Sword Dancer removed its final Divine Armor hand cannon and gripped it tightly.
This time...
It did not attack first.
It waited.
Seconds passed.
Then minutes.
Only when they stood within striking distance did the Black Angel finally lift its head and truly look upon the towering construct before it.
"Who do you think has the better chance of winning?"
A voice sounded from behind.
Nikola approached, quietly observing the duel below with undisguised curiosity.
"The side of technology."
Merlin answered without hesitation.
"A strange thing for an alchemist to say."
Confusion appeared upon Nikola's sickly face.
"You admire technology that much?"
The question had lingered in his mind for years.
Merlin always claimed that alchemy was dead.
Yet those mysterious powers remained undeniably magnificent—seductive beyond words.
Nikola himself had once longed to pursue them.
But Merlin had never taught him.
Just as he always said...
He intended to carry the final secrets of alchemy into his grave.
"No."
Merlin spoke calmly.
"It is precisely because I understand alchemy that I know its greatest flaw."
He watched the Sword Dancer as he continued.
"The advancement of a handful of extraordinary people changes nothing. Only when civilization itself advances together can history truly be carved into the world."
The Sword Dancer was proof of that philosophy.
Though it still relied partially upon demonic flesh, it represented humanity's newest milestone.
"Alchemy has existed for countless ages," Merlin continued, "yet it could never spread across the world. No matter how miraculous, it remained trapped within myths."
"But technology is different."
"Look at the steam engine."
"It has existed for only the briefest instant in history..."
"And yet that single instant changed the entire world."
Nikola lowered his gaze once more.
Below them, the Black Angel launched another relentless assault.
It danced around the Sword Dancer like a master swordsman, iron feathers scattering showers of sparks with every strike.
Its offense was overwhelming.
Its results...
Minimal.
The Sword Dancer's massive armor absorbed wave after wave of attacks.
"...But what if..."
Nikola murmured thoughtfully.
"You know I've been researching electricity."
"No one believed in it."
"They all insisted the future belonged to ever larger steam engines."
"The only person who supported me..."
"...was you."
He smiled faintly.
"It wasn't until much later that I realized..."
"Perhaps you didn't simply agree with me."
"Perhaps..."
"You already knew."
"You knew electricity would replace steam."
"Just as steam replaced alchemy."
Merlin remained silent.
Behind that youthful appearance lay countless secrets.
"But..."
Nikola's eyes remained fixed upon the Black Angel.
"What if demons are no different?"
For the first time, Merlin's expression shifted.
His eyes slowly turned toward Nikola.
Yet Nikola never noticed.
His attention never left the battlefield.
"You've spent your life turning the unknown into something humanity can understand."
"So..."
"What if demons are merely another step in that process?"
"We've already learned to exploit the properties of their flesh."
"We've turned them into materials."
"What if one day..."
"We understand everything?"
"Every law."
"Every secret."
"And when that day comes..."
"What we once feared as unknowable power..."
"...will simply become another technology."
His eyes suddenly lit up with childlike excitement.
"A technology so advanced..."
"...that when humanity first encountered it..."
"...our ancestors could only describe it with myths."
Just as lightning—
Once worshiped by mortals as the wrath of heaven—
Had long since become something held in mankind's own hands.
Nikola continued staring at the duel below.
He had spoken only idle speculation.
A wandering thought.
An absurd conclusion.
Yet Merlin found himself unexpectedly shaken.
He had just opened his mouth to respond—
When a deafening scream of colliding steel tore through the workshop.
The battle had reached its climax.
After maintaining such blistering speed for so long, even the Black Angel began to tire.
Machines exhausted fuel.
Living flesh exhausted strength.
Its relentless assault gradually slowed.
And that single hesitation...
Was all the Sword Dancer needed.
Its enormous blade finally swung.
Until now, it had been wielded almost exclusively as a shield, intercepting countless attacks.
But this strike exposed the area it had long concealed.
To the Black Angel...
It appeared to be the perfect opening.
Exactly as expected.
The massive sword missed completely.
The Black Angel effortlessly slipped past the blade and lunged straight toward the exposed weakness.
Precisely according to Night Owl's plan.
It had been a feint.
The Third-Generation Divine Armor contained very little living flesh.
Even after such prolonged combat—and even enhanced by the Florend Compound—Night Owl's mind remained perfectly clear.
Lloyd was another matter entirely.
No matter how resistant a Hunter might be, Night Owl believed prolonged exposure to Corrosion would eventually erode even him.
Corrosion magnified humanity's oldest instincts.
The Black Angel's increasingly savage attacks proved exactly that.
Its desire to kill had been amplified beyond reason.
And that...
Was the moment it struck.
The Sword Dancer deliberately revealed its weakness.
The Black Angel rushed in.
Then—
The Sword Dancer released its sword.
Instead, its armored hand seized the Black Angel.
The iron feathers screamed across its plating, leaving only shallow scars.
It held the creature fast.
Then drove a crushing fist directly into its chest.
For an instant...
Even the Black Angel couldn't understand the attack.
The Third Generation possessed tremendous strength.
But defeating it through brute force alone?
Impossible.
Then...
The sun exploded.
Blazing fire erupted point-blank against its chest.
That had never been a punch.
The Sword Dancer had fired its Divine Armor hand cannon from nearly zero distance.
The blast hurled the Black Angel backward.
Flames engulfed its body.
Half-molten fragments of metal blasted deep into the armor itself.
White-hot iron streamed across its chest amid an eruption of sparks.
Night Owl had waited for this moment from the very beginning.
The strike landed perfectly.
The Black Angel staggered violently.
With a howl of agony, it tore burning metal from its own flesh.
Crimson steam erupted wildly.
Its shrill exhaust sounded almost like the screams of a dying beast, echoing throughout the workshop.
The Sword Dancer stooped awkwardly to retrieve its fallen greatsword.
It refused to pursue.
Steady.
Methodical.
Safe.
The Black Angel convulsed violently.
For living flesh, such heat was catastrophic.
Muscles charred.
Nerves burned.
Every ounce of agony passed directly into Lloyd, whose body remained wrapped within that monstrous flesh.
Blood covered the floor.
Yet after only moments...
Burned flesh began regenerating.
Blackened muscle sloughed away, replaced by new tissue.
Its injuries remained severe.
But demonic regeneration prevented them from becoming fatal.
Still...
The chest plate had shattered.
Large sections of living flesh lay completely exposed.
Had the Sword Dancer been just a little faster...
One clean strike there would have pierced straight through to Lloyd himself.
"Do we continue?"
Night Owl asked calmly.
The Black Angel's full awakening had nearly overwhelmed him earlier.
But time had become his ally.
Corrosion was now affecting its pilot.
He believed victory already belonged to him.
"Continue!"
The reply came not from calm resolve...
But furious rage.
A dreadful howl suddenly echoed through the workshop.
Dense crimson mist burst outward.
The Black Angel slowly rose to its feet.
Its horrifying wounds still bled freely.
"…Lloyd."
Merlin tried to speak.
He was cut off.
"I knew something was wrong from the very beginning, Merlin."
His voice was low.
"This doesn't feel right."
"It feels..."
"As though something has been binding me."
"As if I can never use my full strength."
Those unnatural crimson eyes stared once more upon the world.
Then—
The scarlet restraint harness wrapped around its body began vibrating violently.
Embedded rivets started pushing outward one after another.
The emerald indicator lights shifted...
One by one...
Until every last one burned crimson.
The Geiger readings skyrocketed.
"Stop it!"
Merlin shouted.
But only violent static answered him.
The swelling Corrosion had severed every line of communication.
"So..."
A mad smile twisted across the face hidden beneath writhing flesh.
"This..."
"...is what you were always meant to become."
At last, the restraints could endure no more.
One after another, the silver cylindrical rivets burst free, gleaming beneath the workshop lights.