Stark had originally planned to test the full power of his Mark I armor.
But the moment he stepped out of the cave, all he saw were corpses. The ground was littered with the bodies of Ten Rings fighters, blood soaking into the sand, the stench of iron thick in the air.
Dr. Yinsen couldn't bear it. He gagged and vomited right there.
"So this is the power of the Allspark…" Senju Haruto thought to himself.
He had gained the Allspark through his most recent sign-in, but he still didn't know whether it had any limits.
If its influence could spread infinitely—turning anything and everything into mechanical lifeforms—then remaking the Earth into a new Cybertron wouldn't be impossible at all.
But Haruto hadn't come to this Ten Rings stronghold to save Tony Stark, the future Iron Man, superhero, and genius. His real goal was simple: complete the sign-in, claim the reward.
Now he had his reward, and he'd even tested the new ability's scope. His business here was done. There was no reason for him to stick around with Stark.
Especially since Stark now had the Mark I armor. That alone was enough for him to contact Colonel Rhodes and make his way back to New York.
With that thought, Haruto took the lead and walked out.
Just as he expected, every weapon in the Ten Rings base had been affected by the Allspark, transformed into mechanical lifeforms.
Seeing Haruto move ahead, Stark boosted his pace as well. He hoisted Yinsen onto the Mark I's shoulder, fired up the suit to full power, and pushed to keep up.
But when they stepped out of the cave, both men froze.
The desert before them was swarming with mechanical beings. Dense, countless, stretching endlessly across the horizon. A living sea of machines.
Even with a conservative guess, there had to be hundreds of thousands.
Though small in size, each one radiated sharp, lethal power.
If these mechanical lifeforms ever went to war, Stark doubted the U.S. military could hold out for even twenty-four hours.
The man who prided himself as a peerless genius found himself shaken to the core.
Haruto had saved them today.
But what if one day…
What if Haruto turned against humanity?
What if his ambition grew without restraint, and he became a merciless dictator with an army of mechanical lifeforms at his back?
The more Stark thought about it, the harder it became to deny the possibility.
Close his eyes, and the image appeared: Haruto towering above the world, a vast mechanical army stretching out behind him. Wherever they marched, nothing survived. Humanity powerless, doomed.
What terrified Stark most was his own uncertainty.
Why hadn't Haruto's magic affected his Mark I armor?
Was it because the spell couldn't touch it?
Or because Haruto had deliberately chosen not to?
The difference was everything.
"…Maybe when I get back to New York, I need to build a suit of armor immune to magic."
The thought whispered in his mind, but once born, it refused to fade.
Of course, he would never tell anyone—not Haruto, not Yinsen, not anyone.
"Haruto."
Stark steadied his expression and approached him, unable to hold back the question.
"These robots… what are you planning to do with them?"
Yinsen was just as concerned.
He was grateful Haruto had saved them, but a proverb echoed in his mind: The slayer of dragons often becomes a dragon himself.
Today, Haruto was the dragon-slayer who crushed the Ten Rings. But who could guarantee he wouldn't one day use this power to rule the world?
If possible, Yinsen hoped Haruto would dismantle the mechanical army right now.
But Haruto didn't care what Stark or Yinsen thought.
He pulled out a blue ring and slipped it onto the ring finger of his left hand.
A ring he had crafted himself, forged with knowledge from the Kamar-Taj library. A magical ring that linked to another space.
A storage ring. Like the "cosmic rings" from fantasy tales—capable of storing anything within.
Stark and Yinsen stared in disbelief as Haruto raised his hand.
In an instant, all the weapons painstakingly gathered by the Ten Rings disappeared, swallowed by the ring's pocket dimension.
"What… what did he just do?" Yinsen muttered, his brain almost shutting down. His worldview had been shattered again and again today.
First Haruto's miraculous arrival.
Then the mechanical lifeforms, decades—centuries—ahead of modern science.
Now, a ring that devoured weapons like a bottomless pit.
Things Yinsen thought could only exist in stories were standing before him in living reality.
Magic was real.
And Senju Haruto was no ordinary man—he was a terrifyingly powerful sorcerer.
The Ten Rings, a force that had troubled even the American military, had been annihilated by him.
The cave was a slaughterhouse. Corpses everywhere. Blood pooled across the ground.
"All done. Time to go."
With that casual remark, Haruto finished storing away every weapon, opened a glowing portal, and stepped back into the Land of Fire.
Weapons like these were better off shown to Orochimaru.
Stark and Yinsen wanted to call out, to stop him, but they couldn't.
And then Haruto was gone.
The two men stood in silence among the carnage outside the Ten Rings' lair.
The wind stirred.
No one spoke for a long while. Finally, Stark exhaled and muttered, "We… should get moving too."
He helped Yinsen climb on and gripped the Mark I's controls, firing up the crude flight system.
It wasn't elegant, but it worked. At least they wouldn't have to stumble across the desert on foot until they dropped dead from thirst.
Once they broke through the Ten Rings' signal-jamming perimeter, Stark contacted Colonel Rhodes, transmitting their coordinates.
But the Mark I was still an unfinished prototype. Mid-flight, the armor buckled under stress, falling apart in midair. Stark and Yinsen were hurled into the desert below.
Fortunately, the sand broke their fall. Otherwise, they wouldn't have survived.
"Who… exactly is that man?" Yinsen asked, sitting in the sand as they waited for rescue.
Stark let out a helpless laugh.
"How the hell should I know?"