The towering Xyroth commander roared. Corroded gears and grinding scrap metal shrieked, tearing through the dead silence of Planet Orion's white seabed.
Kaori stood paralyzed. Her eyes widened in absolute shock. The blade that had severed the void and eradicated legions now violently rattled in her grip—on the verge of snapping.
*This is impossible... My blade has never been denied.*
Beside her, Isabella frantically scrubbed her palms together. Her flawless face contorted—caught between raw terror and obsessive mania.
"Don't just stand there like a statue, Kaori! The live stream is still running! Do something before we're completely crushed!" Isabella shrieked. Golden sparks flickered around her fingertips as she clawed for her drained Dogma.
Kaori bit her lip. She hoisted her hilt with both hands, tuning out the idol's hysteria entirely.
**Resonance Slash!**
Pure Aether erupted. A massive, curved projection of energy slashed forward—only to evaporate the second it struck the commander's rusted plating. The giant absorbed her absolute strike with humiliating indifference.
The machine's optical sensors flared crimson. It unhinged its jagged, steel jaws.
"Insolent vermin..." Its voice grated like a mechanical bone-crusher. "Filth that dared tread upon our magnificent galaxy... You shall be eradicated."
The commander condensed the corrupted Dogma it had devoured. It discharged a scorching, radioactive beam from its palms, aiming to vaporize the entire vessel.
"Isabella! Fall back!" Kaori abandoned her stance. She yanked Isabella's wrist, hurling the idol behind her back. She raised her cracked blade as a desperate shield.
The crimson Dogma detonated. Kaori clamped her eyes shut. She braced for absolute erasure.
But... instead of incineration, a freezing gale washed over her face. A colossal green shadow erupted from the floorboards, physically tearing the blast in two.
Kaori opened her eyes in pure disbelief.
This was no docile pet. This was Nixia.
Her anatomy had violently expanded and mutated. She stood now as a lethal, cosmic wolf—rivaling the Xyroth commander in sheer, towering mass. She shielded the two wives, her fur radiating savage, Pure Anomaly energy.
"What... what happened?" Kaori whispered. Her usually disciplined voice shook beneath the terrifying pressure of the entity before them.
"It's Nixia!" Isabella shrieked with hysterical enthusiasm. The manic, blinding gleam had instantly returned to her retinas. "She's Pure Anomaly! The absolute predator of all Akasha networks! This scrap giant's Echo tech is no exception... She is its natural enemy!"
Nixia unleashed a mind-shattering howl. She lunged at the raging commander, sinking her cosmic fangs deep into its rusted chassis, violently shredding its metal plating.
Far away... across the frozen northern expanses of Planet Orion.
The Obsidian Canyons of Sijistan. A cursed, volatile wasteland of erupting magma. Razor-sharp black obsidian boulders floated through the smog, suspended by violently fluctuating gravity.
Deep within Sijistan, Veronica stood entirely alone. Her spine was straight as an iron ruler. Her freezing eyes tracked the bleeding sky. Millions of scrap meteors crashed down upon the crust, vomiting thousands of The Junk Race troops into the canyons.
The battlefield was a storm of metallic chaos. Shrieks. Earth-shaking collisions. Rusted mechanical frames charged forward without a single trace of tactical formation.
Veronica adjusted her glasses with a single, gloved finger.
"This is exceedingly random... and entirely disorganized," she stated. Her hyper-professional tone carried zero emotion. "How I loathe it."
She raised her right hand. She imposed her absolute law upon the filth.
**Axiom of Order!**
The atmosphere blackened in a fraction of a second.
Erupting volcanoes froze mid-blast. Chaos itself was crushed beneath the mathematical weight of Veronica's Axiom. Instantly, the charging Xyroth army began folding inward, violently compressing into geometrically perfect metal cubes.
But... interrupting the flawless silence, a mechanical click echoed.
A lone Xyroth warrior—somehow entirely unaffected by the Axiom of Order—raised its heavy blaster. It fired a hyper-velocity round point-blank at Veronica's face.
On the third front, deep within The Whispering Forest.
An ancient Orion woodland. Its colossal roots plunged straight into the planet's core, while massive trees illuminated the pitch-black void with a living, bioluminescent blue glow.
Roxy slammed her fist into her palm. She bared her fangs in a savage grin.
"Screw waiting around! Where are they? I wanna grind their skulls and crush their spines with my bare hands... I don't even need my Axiom!" Roxy growled, blood boiling in her veins. "Got any read on these scumbags, Celine?"
Beside her, Celine stood in absolute stillness. Her serenity completely contrasted Roxy's raw brutality.
Celine pressed her bare foot against the damp soil. She closed her eyes, synchronizing her consciousness with the planet's heartbeat.
**Life Flow!**
Resonance channeled through her frame like a warm current. It read the vibrations of the timber, connecting with every living entity tangled within the colossal sensory network stretching across Orion's depths.
Celine opened her eyes. They glowed with a soft, pure light.
"They are on the left flank of the forest..." she whispered. "A vanguard is advancing toward us with heavy footsteps."
She pointed her fingers into the glowing gloom.
"Finally! Time to smash!" Roxy roared.
She launched herself like a missile toward the coordinates, leaving a cyclone of dirt in her wake. She was driven by the pure instinct to butcher her enemies.
But the forest roots pulsed a different signal back to Celine.
A faint pulse. Rapid. Intensely treacherous.
Celine's eyes widened in raw terror.
"Roxy! Look out!" she screamed with everything she had.
Roxy turned—but she was a fraction of a second too late.
Before she could register the threat, the shadows violently split open. A jagged spear erupted from the dark, impaling her chest with brute force.
Her momentum snapped. She collapsed to the ground. Crimson blood frothed from her mouth, staining the ancient roots.
She coughed, forcing her eyes upward. She fully expected to see a towering scrap giant...
But shock paralyzed her.
The entity standing over her was no behemoth. It was a dwarf Xyroth combatant. A skeletal mechanical frame, wrapped tightly in barbed wire, built explicitly for silent assassination and cloaked completely from the Akasha network.
The small warrior stared down at her with a single, unblinking red optic. It drew a Caustic Blaster, leveling the barrel point-blank directly between her eyes... ready to pull the trigger.