Ayla wasn't dodging bullets; she was anticipating the shooter's line of sight, the gun barrel's range of motion, the vehicle's firing blind spots, the reloading windows, and the gaps in fire transitions.
As long as every step was calculated, all incoming fire seemed to actively avoid her as if it had eyes of its own.
Like a shadow hugging the ground, she edged forward along bomb craters and the wreckage of ruined motorcycles, stepping into the gaps between the enemy's bursts with every move.
The first exoskeleton-wearing brute who rushed her was as strong as an ox—a single punch could bend steel plates.
Ayla was pushed back half a step by the impact of their first clash, her arms going numb.
The moment his second fist swung toward her, she saw it clearly.
To stack strength, this garbage modification had pushed the drive system beyond its structural limits, and the connecting pin on the right knee joint was severely worn.
Under normal vertical loads it could hold up, but when the knee joint bent to its absolute angle limit, its tolerance for lateral stress became as brittle as a cracker.
Ayla retreated with the flow of the motion, baiting him to lift his leg and step forward.
The instant his knee reached its highest point, she lunged sideways, driving the butt of her spear hard against the outside of his joint.
Snap! A sharp crack echoed.
The connecting pin detached outright, the hydraulic tube buckled to the side, and the entire exoskeleton locked up on the spot.
The brute's face flushed deep red as he struggled desperately to move, but he was welded tight inside the metal shell.
Ayla crouched down, even leaning in to inspect the structural interface.
"Why is the load-bearing component mounted on the outside?"
The brute: "?"
Before he could process it, the butt of the spear slammed into his temple, sending him limping into unconsciousness.
Pushing further forward into the second position, a bandit's old automatic rifle suddenly jammed.
Ayla lunged across the distance in a few quick strides and snatched the gun right out of his hands.
Pulling back the bolt for a quick glance, she saw that the magazine spring had deformed from fatigue and part of the feed lip had been manually bent out of shape. That it had managed to fire this long was a miracle in itself.
"It ought to thank its maker for lasting until today."
The bandit stared at her in utter bewilderment. Before he could react, he was knocked out cold by a rifle butt to the face.
Gunstone was far craftier than these small-fry minions.
He had intentionally kept a pump-action shotgun in hand, waiting for her to close the gap.
When she was three paces away, he whipped out the gun and pulled the trigger with the barrel almost pressed against her flank.
BOOM!
Even as Ayla dodged sideways, seven or eight pellets still grazed her lower abdomen and ribs.
Severe pain surged through her body like an electric current. Her stance instantly faltered, causing her to stumble back half a step.
"Bleeding, soft tissue damage, suspected rib fissure, mobility reduced by approximately eight percent. Mission remains viable."
The evaluation popped up in her head automatically, cold and robotic.
She didn't stop. Instead, leveraging her forward momentum, she lunged ahead and drove her power spear precisely into the drive gap of Gunstone's mechanical limb, levering it upward.
The sound of grinding and snapping gears was sharp and grating. The bandit leader shrieked in agony as he collapsed to the ground, clutching his severed mechanical leg and rolling in pain.
It was a pity there was no power cell to charge the spear; otherwise, that single strike's disruption field would have blown Gunstone straight into "crushed stones."
Seeing their leader broken, the morale of the remaining bandits collapsed instantly. They threw down their weapons one after another, shouting their surrender.
The battle ended even faster than Ayla had calculated.
Standing amidst the gunsmoke supported by her power spear, her first instinct was to perform an inventory check.
Casualties, injured, usable firearms, remaining ammunition, repairable vehicles, salvageable parts.
Calculating the tally, the settlement's actual losses were slightly lower than projected.
"Success!" she concluded.
Right then, she saw Mae running over from the camp, her eyes bloodshot, her face covered in dirt and tear tracks.
Ayla walked up to meet her, speaking in a flat tone: "We won."
Slap! Mae struck her across the face.
The blow wasn't heavy, but it left Ayla stunned.
Immediately after, the woman pulled her into a tight, desperate hug—so tight that it pressed right against her wounds.
Ayla could feel Mae's body trembling continuously—not from anger or cold, but from sheer terror and lingering dread.
She froze in Mae's arms, her mind working at top speed. She was alive, the battle was won, and every metric was correct.
Why would a correct answer cause her mother so much pain?
She couldn't make sense of it.
Leaning against Mae's shoulder, Ayla felt, for the very first time, that her calculation system was missing something.
---
The battle was over, but the aftermath had only just begun.
Returning to her small nook, Ayla's first order of business was to tend to her wounds.
Lining up alcohol, needle, thread, and hemostatic forceps, she pulled up her blood-stained top and examined the edges of the wound. Confirming there was no shrapnel left inside, she prepared to thread the needle and stitch herself up.
Her movements were as natural and routine as drinking water.
When Mae pushed the door open, she caught Ayla biting her lip as she pushed the needle through her own flesh without so much as a flinch. Without a word, the woman stepped forward and snatched the needle and thread away.
"Lie down."
"I can handle it," Ayla said, slightly puzzled.
"I know."
"Then why?"
"Because you're hurt."
Ayla went quiet.
She couldn't fathom why a task she was fully capable of executing herself had to incur additional labor costs from someone else.
In terms of efficiency, it was entirely redundant.
Yet Mae's expression brooked no argument. Pressing her down by the shoulders to keep her lying flat, Mae began cleaning the blood and grime around the wound edges.
Lacking sufficient anesthetics, Ayla flinched instinctively as the needle pierced through her flesh.
Mae's hand paused, and she looked up at her: "Does it hurt?"
"Pain is essentially a nervous system feedback mechanism used to assess the degree of damage—"
Before she could finish, Mae drove the needle downward and pulled through another stitch.
Ayla swallowed the rest of her sentence instantly, clenching her teeth in silence.
Mae just stared at her without speaking a word.
Only after a long silence did a tiny sound escape Ayla's lips.
"...It hurts."
---
The battle had been won, but two lives were still lost: a scavenger in his fifties and a sixteen-year-old boy.
Ayla had visited the site of their deaths, crouching by the partially collapsed barricade and measuring it for a long time.
If this cover had been shifted 1.7 to 2 meters to the left, exposure to crossfire would have dropped significantly, increasing survival rates by at least thirty percent.
She stood up, instinctively wanting to present her defensive optimization plan to Mae.
Mae shook her head gently before Ayla could open her mouth.
"First, go see who he was."
Ayla froze.
Was the analysis incorrect? But isn't analyzing the cause of casualties meant to prevent future deaths?
She didn't argue, simply following Mae toward the place where the bodies had been laid out.
The old scavenger's family wept, then took his belongings and left.
The main focus was the young boy—he wasn't even part of the militia.
When the fight first broke out, he was so terrified that he hid behind the barricade, his hands trembling so violently he couldn't even hold a homemade gSarahde steady.
Later, seeing an older guy from next door hauling ammunition, he hesitated for a moment before running over to lend a hand.
Then, when someone was shot and went down, he rushed out with two others to drag the wounded back. He went once, came back, and went out again. On his third run, a stray bullet struck him in the chest. Just like that, he was gone.
The boy's mother sat beside his corpse. She didn't cry much; her eyes were just hollow and blank.
Ayla crouched next to her and asked, "Did he know he might die if he went out?"
"Probably not," the woman replied after a long silence, her voice raspy. "He probably just thought... he should help out. That was just the kind of person he was."
Ayla fell silent. "Thought he should help out"—what kind of utility model was that?
No reward, no orders, no guaranteed return, and it could cost one's life.
Why?
What baffled her even more was that the woman ended up thanking her instead.
She said that if Ayla hadn't charged out first, far more people would have died, and she might not have even recovered her son's intact body.
Her own child died, yet she is expressing gratitude to someone else.
Ayla stood there frozen for a long time.
This variable was something she couldn't fit into any of her existing equations no matter what.
---
The funeral was held in the afternoon.
The coffin was pieced together from scrap metal plates and discarded timber—rough, leaky, and unpainted.
Yet in a wasteland where human life was cheaper than weeds, having a coffin at all was already a luxury.
Dozens of people came to see him off, all scavengers from the camp.
On ordinary days, they would squabble over half a bar of nutritional paste, brawl over a scavenged spare part, or hold a half-month grudge over who occupied an extra square foot of rain shelter.
Right now, they carried the coffin together, their steps slow and measured.
Someone started singing a local dirge—harsh, out of tune, and raspy.
More and more people joined in, and right at that moment, Ayla suddenly felt a strange sensation.
It wasn't a sound or a physical vibration; it felt more like a sense of direction.
The grief of dozens of people, dozens of heavy weights of sorrow, had originally been scattered and fragmented.
Yet as they sang, those feelings slowly converged, coalescing into a single, shared thought:
"Life must go on."
Without realizing it, the pallbearers aligned their footsteps in unison.
When someone's shoulder grew sore, the person beside them moved over slightly without a word to share the weight.
When someone bowed down crying, the person next to them offered a supportive hand, taking on extra weight themselves.
Not a single person had become stronger; not a single person's sorrow had diminished.
Yet the collective unit, strangely enough, was far more resilient and stable than any individual alone.
Ayla stood at the back of the crowd, watching the scene unfold as confusion welled up inside her like a rising tide.
An individual human is so fragile, so inefficient, and ridden with so many flaws.
Why, when brought together, do they transform into something entirely different?
The wind swept across the wasteland, carrying smoke and dust.
She stood there, unmoving for a long time.
Gunstone chose to cooperate.
He slumped on the ground, his severed leg temporarily stabilized, beads of cold sweat breaking out on his forehead from the intense pain—yet he didn't dare play any tricks.
Gunstone could tell that this person, who looked like a young girl, was even harsher than those lunatics in Black Iron City.
And so, his confession was thorough.
A bandit gang like his was, of course, no self-sufficient group of "stray dogs."
The peripheral merchant guild of Black Iron City supplied them with ammunition and cheap stimulants while purchasing populating captives and scavenged supplies from them in return.
Whenever a settlement grew too quickly, unburied valuable technology, or saw its population swell out of control, Black Iron City would send someone to "remind" them.
Black Iron City would never tolerate a second force growing on the outside capable of challenging their strength.
Upon hearing this, Ayla's immediate reaction was direct: "Destroy Black Iron City."
Mae looked at her and asked a simple question: "And then?"
Ayla: "?"
"What about the people inside?" Mae began counting on her fingers.
"Who repairs the water purification plant? Who maintains the generators? Where does the food get shipped from? How does sewage get drained?"
"Once the city falls and chaos erupts, with raiding and killing everywhere, even more people might die than under Black Iron City's exploitation."
Ayla froze in place.
She had never considered any of this before.
Eliminating a wicked ruler seemed like the correct answer.
But if killing them meant even more people would perish, was destroying Black Iron City still the correct plan?
Frowning, she remained silent for a long time.
"You need to think about this question yourself," Mae said, pressing no further.
---
Only when processing the captured equipment did Ayla truly come back to life.
Engines, motorcycles, exoskeletons, power units, hydraulic components...
She had everything dragged out to the open ground to be disassembled piece by piece.
Parts littered the floor completely, and grease stained her hands and face, yet she didn't care in the slightest—her eyes shone with frightening intensity.
Where others saw heaps of scrap metal, she perceived the exact utility of every single component, the structural pros and cons of every detail, and which part could be modified for another application.
Mae called her for meals three times without getting a response.
In the end, the woman walked over carrying a bowl and thrust it into her hands.
Even as Ayla chewed on a hard, dry starch biscuit, her hands were still gesturing to measure a gear's dimensions, calculating whether it could be retrofitted onto an exoskeleton's joint.
This was when she looked most human.
Only when working with machinery did she resemble a child who had found her toys.
Hal, the scavenger with the severed leg, was the first beneficiary.
Using parts from the captured exoskeletons combined with hydraulic structures from an off-road vehicle, Ayla built him a powered prosthetic leg.
The first calibration failed.
The power output was set too high; the moment Hal took a step, he went flying forward and landed face-first in the dirt.
The onlookers surrounding them trembled as they desperately held back their laughter.
Undeterred, Ayla crouched back down and spent a few minutes fine-tuning the parameters.
By the third version, Hal leaned against the wall and slowly stood up—one step, two steps...
Standing in the open space, he looked down at the mechanical leg, and tears began streaming down his face uncontrollably.
This leg had more strength than his natural leg ever had.
"Ayla... can you replace the other one too?"
Ayla looked up at him. "Why?"
"Machinery is stronger," Hal said, his voice trembling slightly. "Flesh legs break; this one won't."
Ayla fell silent for a few seconds, then pointed at his mechanical leg. "It will break too."
Hal was stunned.
"Bearings wear down, power depletes, drive mechanisms snap—nothing is unbreakable."
"But it's still stronger than my leg."
Looking at his intact leg, Ayla said calmly, "Your other leg isn't damaged."
"So?"
"So there is no necessity to replace it."
She couldn't explain why.
There was no complete reasoning, no rigorous deduction—it just felt inherently wrong to her by instinct.
Pressured by the authority Ayla had recently established, Hal said no more.
---
In the afternoon, several people joined forces to move a large, old generator set.
Ayla stood nearby shouting instructions: a bit to the left, a bit to the right, how high to lift.
Yet the more she directed, the more chaotic it became. Some feared crushing their feet, some failed to keep pace, and others grew resentful, feeling they were doing more work than the rest.
Ayla became visibly agitated—there was nothing wrong with the precision of her instructions, so why was execution efficiency so low?
Suddenly, she recalled the funeral and the pallbearers.
Pausing briefly, she adjusted her approach.
"Once this equipment is installed, Hal will be able to work on his own."
The people straining under the weight froze for a moment, instinctively glancing at Hal, who was standing nearby.
Nobody spoke, but their movements suddenly smoothed out.
They began chanting work rhythms in unison and actively moved to support unstable spots—their efficiency more than ten percent higher than before.
Standing to the side, Ayla distinctly captured that faint resonance.
She suddenly understood.
Commands only tell people how to act, but people seem to need to know why they are acting.
This was the second seed of "governance" she had uncovered.
---
Gunstone proved honorable enough; after being released, he quickly returned with new intelligence.
"What truly allows the Black Iron City faction to suppress surrounding forces isn't their walls—it's that they possess a fighter aircraft," Gunstone said, taking a sip of cold water.
Ayla's eyes sharpened instantly: "Model designation?"
"How should I know?"
"Propulsion method?"
"No idea."
"Wingspan? Weaponry?"
Gunstone racked his brain for a long time before squeezing out: "It breathes fire."
Ayla was visibly dissatisfied; the intelligence value was far lower than expected.
Gunstone added hastily: "That thing is precious beyond measure. They only operate it once every few months or even years. Every flight burns money like crazy—it's their prized city-safeguarding treasure."
However, it wasn't completely devoid of useful information. According to him, the craft was connected to Pier Seven.
Decades ago, people from Black Iron City dragged out numerous components from there, subsequently placing the ruins strictly off-limits to outsiders.
The reason was simple: ground routes could be checkpointed and blocked, but if someone possessed an aircraft, city walls would become mere decorations.
Ayla made her decision that very day—postpone attacking Black Iron City and head to Pier Seven first to see if an aircraft could be acquired.
She looked up at the starry sky.
Conquering the skies sounded like a worthwhile challenge.
---
During a scavenging run, Ayla retrieved an ancient data chip from a metal box.
Though its interface had long decayed, she managed to extract a small fragment of surviving data.
The coordinates pointed deep within Pier Seven, along with a partial ancient inscription written in High Imperial Gothic:
[THE FLESH IS WEAK.]
Flesh is weak.
Ayla looked at her own hands, then glanced at Hal's metallic leg nearby.
Logic told her that steel was indeed sturdier than bone, stronger than muscle, and far more durable than flesh.
Then why not replace it all?
She stared at those words for a long time.
For the very first time, she contemplated this question in earnest.
---
Pier Seven was even larger than imagined.
A fractured runway tens of kilometers long lay across the wasteland like a massive scar.
A collapsed control tower leaned to one side, and a rusted sculpture of the Imperial Aquila retained only half a wing.
Hangars massive enough to house entire settlements were now filled with scavengers' shacks, where people scraped together a living amid the corpse of an ancient civilization.
Wind whistled as it swept dust across the desolate apron.
Once upon a time, massive transports had landed here, Space Marine Legions had deployed from this site, and God-Machines capable of tearing the earth apart had been maintained here.
Now, however, people bled and died over a single intact bearing.
When Ayla arrived with her party, the scavenger militia occupying the area were initially wary.
Hearing that she had come to repair an aircraft, their leader laughed, stating that many had tried over the decades and all had failed.
Even so, he cleared a path for them.
Everyone wanted to know whether these iron hulks buried in the ruins could still move.
The underground entrance lay deep inside the innermost hangar, sealed shut by a thick blast door. The power source had long vanished, and the lock core was completely rusted solid.
Others called it a dead door, impossible to open.
Ayla crouched by the door, inspecting it for a long while before examining the frame structure.
It wasn't locked solid; rather, several sets of mechanical locks had lost pressure and needed to be manually released.
Crafting a rudimentary tool in half an hour, she succeeded on her very first attempt.
With a heavy thud, the iron door slid aside to reveal a narrow gap.
Dust billowed out, carrying the scent of engine oil and rust.
Inside lay an ancient mechanical maintenance depot.
Indistinct markings of the "Iron Hands" Legion remained on the walls, alongside scattered records of damaged armor repairs, crusade designation numbers, and unit logistics archives.
Ayla flipped through several files; the timespan was terrifyingly vast, with the earliest dating back over ten thousand years to the era of the Great Crusade.
This had once been a forward maintenance node for an Imperial Crusade fleet. After war shattered the site, the facility was buried and gradually forgotten over time.
The deeper they ventured, the more intact the equipment became.
In the center of the innermost hall stood a massive core device, half-buried underground with dense cabling clustered like blood vessels.
Ayla hooked up a temporary power supply. The instant it booted, a red light flashed across the entire hall.
A massive, translucent outline of an Iron Man projected above the core—tall, cold, and expressionless.
Its first words were delivered without intonation, like a mechanical broadcast: "Subject detected: Organic structure proportion excessively high."
"Optimization potential: Significant."
It seemed to be evaluating Ayla.
Looking up at it, Ayla replied, "Your power supply design also contains a substantial amount of redundancy."
The core's red light flickered twice, briefly glitching.
It took Ayla some time to comprehend what this construct actually was.
It was not a living person, nor was it the soul of a Primarch.
It was named the [Gorgon's Teachings Core]. Originally, it was merely a training database, engineering archive, and tactical analysis unit containing combat experience, maintenance protocols, and physical enhancement data from the ancient Legion.
Yet over ten millennia, generation after generation of Iron Hands battle-brothers, Tech-Priests, and successor commanders had continually added to it—embedding their own interpretations, deductions, and dogmas.
Layer upon layer had accumulated into a complex deposit of thought.
Some entries were ancient, others were clearly appended by later generations, and some even contradicted one another.
It was not Ferrus Manus himself.
It was a "ghost" compiled from ten thousand years of answers given by countless individuals to a single proposition: steel and flesh.
The core's final evaluation results for Ayla were rendered.
Row upon row of data columns scrolled across the projection.
[Skeletal Strength: Deficient; Muscle Output: Inefficient; Neural Conduction Speed: Far Below Mechanical Standard; Organ Redundancy: Poor; Prone to damage, prone to fatigue, susceptible to aging, pain, and fear—comprising pure flaws.]
Once the scan concluded, the core spoke to itself, as if attempting to resolve a debate left unfinished countless years ago:
"Mechanical prosthetics: Are specific indicators superior to flesh and blood?"
Ayla: "Yes."
"More durable?"
"Provided maintenance conditions are adequate, yes."
"Replaceable upon damage?"
"Yes."
"Then why install them only after flesh and blood are damaged? The performance of mechanical prosthetics far surpasses flesh!"
Ayla remained silent. She wanted to find a reason, to counter, but in the face of pure engineering logic, every argument felt flimsy.
In the end, she could only say, "It is not necessary."
"Define necessity."
Ayla: "..."
"Healthy tissue carries a constant probability of future destruction. Preemptive replacement mitigates this risk."
Ayla had no data to refute it with; she had lost the first round.
"I don't know," she said finally.
After reflecting for a moment, she spoke again: "Machinery breaks too. Bearings wear out, energy depletes, structural frames snap—all systems carry a probability of failure."
seasonal
The core responded instantly, as though this counterpoint had been simulated millions of times already.
"A comprehensive maintenance system can be established, redundant structures deployed, and rapid modular replacements performed. Overall reliability remains superior to flesh."
Ayla was rendered speechless.
It had even accepted her counterargument, integrated it into its own logic, and yielded a superior solution.
This thing was no simpleton spouting empty slogans; it possessed a complete, self-consistent, and rigorous chain of logic.
The core pressed its deduction further.
"The greatest instability factor is not the physical body. It is emotion."
Fear leads to routs.
Grief compromises judgment, attachment leads to erroneous sacrifices, and affection creates vulnerabilities.
"Removing unnecessary emotional interference elevates combat efficiency by thirty-seven to forty-two percent."
It truly inherited the Iron Hands' dogma to a tee...
Ayla complained internally, while a rush of images flashed across her mind.
Mae's bloodshot eyes, the boy's corpse lying on the ground, and the out-of-tune chorus of dozens of voices at the funeral.
She suddenly asked, "If you excise that much flesh and tissue... is the person still human?"
"This definition bears no relevance to combat performance."
Standing within the red light, Ayla felt an inexplicable surge of anger welling up inside her.
Yet she had no way to prove—no way to demonstrate—what strategic value a "complete human" actually possessed.
Finally, the core presented her with a question.
"Today you deem flesh worthy of preservation because you have not yet lost enough to it."
"When those you treasure perish from old age, perish from disease, fail through fear, or die because their flesh cannot endure—"
"—when machinery could have prevented it—"
"—will you still adhere to your judgment today?"
Silence settled over the hall, broken only by the low, hum of the core in operation.
Ayla pondered for a long while. In the end, she spoke very softly, yet clearly: "I don't know."
This time, her defeat was absolute.
When she stepped out of the underground facility, the atmosphere outside was noticeably off.
A lookout rushed over in a panic, reporting that a Black Iron City scout plane had appeared in the distant sky, circling Pier Seven twice.
They had seen the lights; they had seen the equipment at Pier Seven powered up.
To Black Iron City, this wasn't mere scavenger activity—it was a brazen provocation against Black Iron City's authority!
"Large-scale convoy sighted on the horizon. Roughly five to six hundred men—armed personnel, with at least fifteen modified trucks and armored vehicles equipped with heavy machine guns, mortars, and rudimentary rocket launchers."
Gunstone's coarse voice rasped through the comms.
"At the very back, there are a few heavy infantry suits converted from mining exoskeletons. I've seen those before in Black Iron City—only regular army troops get issued those."
Ayla stood up from before the core.
"Estimated time of arrival?"
"Judging by their speed, forty minutes. An hour at most."
She hurried up the stairs back to the surface. Pier Seven was already in utter chaos.
Scavengers scrambled in every direction—some diving deep into the hangars, some attempting to jump-start operable vehicles, and others simply sitting on the ground with their heads in their hands.
Panic spread through the crowd like wild wind.
Ayla didn't speak immediately. Her gaze swept past the debris and wreckage of the pier, settling on the distant horizon.
Yellow dust was rising, resembling a brownish-yellow serpent slowly creeping closer.
She was studying the terrain.
Pier Seven bordered the sea with cliffs at its back, flanked on both sides by industrial zones built on reclaimed land from earlier years, completely impassable to heavy vehicles.
Only three roads offered access to the pier: two former freight routes and a narrow maintenance lane.
All three converged right between the blast doors at the pier's entrance.
"Gunstone," she spoke up.
Gunstone squeezed through the crowd, his face drenched in sweat.
"Take some men and deploy every working tow truck and crane you can find."
"For what?"
"Block the roads."
She turned to head back down to the underground entrance, but paused after a few steps, glancing back at the terrified faces around her.
"Run if you want; I won't stop you. But if you run, don't ever come back."
It was a simple threat, yet undeniably effective.
Fear was one thing; abandonment was another.
The people of Pier Seven had spent their entire lives here. The scrap metal, the wreckage, the junk inside those hangars—that was everything they owned.
Running away meant doing nothing more than changing the location where they would wait to die.
Without waiting for them to make up their minds, Ayla headed straight back underground.
"Core," she called out, standing before the massive data projection and getting straight to the point.
"Is there anything here capable of fighting? Something that can engage a mechanized force head-on?"
The red figure named Gorgon went silent for a moment, as if conducting a search.
"Currently deployable combat units: Zero."
Ayla's expression remained blank.
"However," the core continued, "stored within the lower maintenance sector is an experimental Dreadnought walking chassis abandoned ten thousand years ago.
No pilot sarcophagus, no intact power system, missing left arm, right arm reduced to an interface frame—essentially an abandoned engineering prototype."
"Can it move?"
"No."
"Can it be repaired?"
"Conforms to no existing design standard; structural stability cannot be verified. Recommendation: Abandon."
Ayla was already turning toward the lower level.
"Take me to see it."
That was her first time laying eyes on the thing.
A steel frame seven or eight meters long lay tilted against a maintenance rack. Its original power legs were reduced to rusted-solid joints, its left side completely bare, and a tangle of severed cables dangled from its right arm socket.
The entire apparatus resembled the steel skeleton of a corpse abandoned for ten millennia.
Yet its main structure remained intact.
The load-bearing framework of that torso was a genuine military-grade design from ten thousand years past—thick, solid, without a single cut corner.
Moreover, the connections around those rusted-solid joints maintained an extraordinarily high level of machining precision.
Ayla walked a full circle around it.
Inside her mind, the process of disassembly and reconstruction had already begun.
By the time she returned to the surface, the Black Iron City convoy had halted and was regrouping in the distance.
Having clearly discovered the blocked roads, they were mobilizing engineering vehicles.
"I need people," Ayla announced, standing before the crowd. Her voice wasn't loud, but it cut through clearly. "A few dozen—to haul equipment, strip parts, connect wiring, and weld."
No one answered right away.
Someone muttered under his breath, "Why should we? Can that junk stop a regular army of hundreds?"
Ayla turned to look at him.
"It can't stop them."
The man froze.
"It can't stop all of them, but it can hold them off for a while." She pointed toward the convoy clearing obstacles in the distance.
"If you run now, you're live targets. But I can hold the frontline shortly—if you run then, your survival odds will be higher."
While the local scavengers of Pier Seven were still pondering, Gunstone stood up with a string of curses and started marching underground.
Immediately after, those who understood hydraulics, those who could weld, those who had driven tow trucks, and those who could lift heavy loads followed behind one by one.
They were willing to give it a shot—if only for a slightly higher chance at survival.
Two hours.
Ayla hardly uttered a single unnecessary word.
The first step was dragging that experimental chassis off the maintenance rack.
The original power legs were long rusted solid, so she had them stripped off immediately and replaced with load-bearing mechanical legs from an airfield heavy-duty handling platform.
The interfaces didn't match, so she welded new connecting pieces on the spot.
The auxiliary reactor's output parameters were incorrect, so she rewired the power supply lines.
On the first startup, a set of fuses blew instantly, sending a shower of sparks into her face.
The core issued a cold notification: "Design failure."
Ayla wiped her face.
"First test."
An ancient anti-aircraft autocannon was mounted onto the right arm, its ammo belt left exposed outside the armor plating.
Lacking military weapons for the left arm, she spliced an industrial plasma cutter together with heavy hydraulic shears, fashioning a crude, brutal melee thermal claw.
Four missile launchers salvaged from the airfield's remaining defensive installations were mounted onto the shoulders.
Where armor was lacking, she welded armor plates stripped from abandoned military vehicles and sections of hangar blast doors directly onto the chest.
There was no time to construct a full neural interface for the control system either, so she rigged a control apparatus tailored specifically to her own physical structure—one only she herself could operate.
Two hours later, that monstrosity actually stood up inside the hangar.
Eight to nine meters tall, completely asymmetrical, with exposed cabling hanging outside like blood vessels, the auxiliary reactor mounted on its back looked like a crude iron coffin lashed on as an afterthought, with many weld seams still glowing hot red.
It looked almost entirely divorced from a true Dreadnought—a walking pile of scrap metal.
"A God-Machine Titan..."
Yet to the locals who had spent their entire lives in Weddell, an eight-meter-tall mech could only be one thing: the legend known as a Titan God-Machine.
Ayla didn't care whether this was a true Titan or not; she was performing a final structural check.
"It only needs to work once."
When Black Iron City cleared the path, Ayla activated the unit.
On its first attempt to stand, a center-of-gravity calculation error caused it to drop directly to one knee.
Everyone felt a chill run down their spines, but she swiftly adjusted the hydraulic output and leg loads.
On the second attempt, the mech stood tall.
An eight-to-nine-meter-tall war machine stepped out from the hangar's shadows, one stride at a time.
The ground vibrated with its footsteps. Uncooled weld seams billowed white smoke, and hoisting chains along with exposed wiring still dangled from its frame.
It looked like a monster forcefully dragged out from the corpse of industrial civilization.
The Black Iron City officer's immediate reaction upon seeing this monstrosity was to order concentrated fire.
Mortars, heavy machine guns, and rockets struck simultaneously.
The temporary armor was continually blasted to pieces, but the core structure was built upon a Dreadnought test chassis and heavy material-handling equipment; it could hold up under short-term pressure.
Ayla had no intention of engaging in a long-range war of attrition. Shielding herself against incoming fire, she charged directly into the enemy's mechanized formation.
The first armored vehicle was sliced open from the side by the thermal claw, while the second had its front end seized by the hydraulic shears, flipping the entire vehicle upside down.
She then used it as cover to block heavy machine gun strafing runs.
The right-arm autocannon swept across a mortar position, and the shoulder rockets all slammed into the enemy's heavy firepower trucks.
Several Black Iron City elites clad in heavy industrial exoskeletons charged forward.
In the eyes of the scavengers, these elites were iron monsters, but standing before an eight-to-nine-meter-tall mini-Titan, they looked like mere mice.
Ayla sent one flying with a single kick.
When the right leg leaked hydraulic fluid, she shut off the damaged loop and forced the remaining two pumps to run at overload.
When the autocannon jammed, she manually switched to the backup ammunition feed while continuing her charge.
The core continuously reported structural risks; she ignored them outright and kept operating!
No one knew how Ayla managed it. This contraption, which looked like a pile of junk, was far more powerful than its appearance suggested.
It genuinely evoked the aura of an Imperial God-Machine walking upon the earth.
Could this girl be an Ork with the power of "I Fink Therefore It Works"?
The Black Iron City commander naturally noticed his troops' morale beginning to crumble, so he decided to deploy the trump card brought along for this operation.
"Damn it, Battalion Commander Two!"
"Here, sir!"
"Where is your damn mining thermal-penetration cannon?!"
"Haul it up here!"
A massive mining transport vehicle drove up from the rear, a gigantic cannon barrel mounted upon its tracked chassis.
Originally designed to cut through thick underground mineral strata, the mining thermal-penetration cannon had an extremely slow rate of fire, but posed a colossal threat to large targets.
"Fire! Aim straight at it and blast the hell out of it!"
The first shot missed, its molten beam scorching a horrifying scar across the airfield's concrete floor.
The second shot struck the mini-Titan's left leg.
The temporary armor and part of the structure were burnt straight through. The hydraulic system burst on a massive scale, forcing the machine to collapse onto its knees.
Black Iron City immediately launched a barrage of saturated firepower. The right-arm autocannon was destroyed, the rear auxiliary reactor overheated, and the cockpit armor was ripped open.
Ayla herself was injured in combat for the second time, blood dripping onto the control console.
Via a remote data link, the core rendered its conclusion: "The unit has lost the conditions required to maintain operations. Recommendation: Pilot eject immediately."
Ayla attempted to restart the machine, but power to the left leg was completely severed, and the right-side hydraulics could not support the weight of the entire mech.
Yet at that precise moment, looking through the breached cockpit, she saw that the scavengers had not fled.
Some dragged a captured heavy machine gun behind the ruins and began loading ammunition, preparing to fight back.
Others fired at Black Iron City using basic junk guns, while some dragged the wounded through the artillery fire.
They were still terrified—some were even crying while pulling the trigger—yet not a single person ran away.
An intensely powerful resonance of conviction crashed into Ayla's mind.
Previously, it was always her influencing those around her; this time, the combined will of dozens, even hundreds of ordinary people surged in to uphold her.
They were not waiting for a powerful champion to protect them; they were standing shoulder-to-shoulder to fight alongside her, telling Ayla that she was not alone.
Beside the blood Ayla had spilled on the control console, a faint strand of gold-purple light slowly ignited.
There was no sound, no words, nor anything that could be explicitly identified.
Only that faint strand of golden light burned silently between the blood and oil.
For the first time, the Gorgon's Teachings Core issued a report that completely violated engineering logic:
"Broken hydraulic actuators have resumed motion. Disconnected power circuits are generating output. Unsupported mechanical legs are bearing load once more."
"None of the damage has been repaired. Breaches are still spraying oil, armor remains shattered, and the reactor is still overheating; yet an unknown force is compelling this dead machine to continue functioning."
After repeated calculations, the core arrived at an absurd conclusion: "Unknown psychic interference. Estimated sustainable duration: sixty seconds."
Ayla stared at the number.
"One minute. That's enough."
The next instant, the mini-Titan stood up once more.
The monster that had already been brought down suddenly rose, instantly shattering the psychological defenses of a portion of the Black Iron City soldiers.
"Holy shit?! Is that really a Titan?!"
"The God-Emperor has manifested! Run for your lives!"
A wave of troops abandoned their positions entirely and scattered in all directions.
Ayla seized the opportunity. Bypassing the foot soldiers, she charged straight for the mining thermal-penetration cannon.
First fifteen seconds: Before the mining thermal-penetration cannon could finish charging for a third time, Ayla slammed into the position, tearing open the cannon barrel and power structure simultaneously with her remaining thermal claw.
Second fifteen seconds: She destroyed Black Iron City's remaining comms vehicles and artillery command nodes, causing the enemy force to lose unified command.
Third fifteen seconds: Realizing the situation had spun out of control, the Black Iron City commander attempted an immediate retreat in his armored command vehicle.
Ayla grabbed a piece of scrap machinery weighing several tons from the debris and hurled it, flipping the vehicle over.
Final fifteen seconds: Dragging a chassis that had already begun to disintegrate, she walked up to the command vehicle, peeled open the upper armor with her mechanical hand, yanked the commander out from inside, and slammed him onto the ground.
Only a few seconds remained on the clock.
Ayla refrained from further killing; instead, she switched on the severely distorted loudspeaker.
"Drop your weapons."
The Black Iron City soldiers looked at their destroyed heavy cannon, their lost communications, their captured supreme commander, and that iron giant cloaked in purple-gold light—a machine that should have been dead, yet rose again.
The first gun hit the dirt, followed by the clatter of more and more weapons dropping as crowds of soldiers surrendered en masse.
Not a single thought of resistance remained in them.
---
Sixty seconds elapsed.
The mech did not explode, nor did it vanish in a spectacular display; the purple-gold light simply extinguished.
The very next moment, every mechanical failure that had been forcibly held at bay erupted all at once.
The left leg snapped completely, the right leg joint locked up, the rear reactor stalled, the thermal claw detached from the shoulder, and a massive slab of welded chest armor crashed onto the ground.
The eight-to-nine-meter mini-Titan collapsed like a tower of scrap iron stripped of its support.
Ayla had leaped out of the breached cockpit in advance, stumbling as her feet hit the ground, covered in blood and oil.
Forcing the mech to sustain its operations during that final minute had taken a heavy toll on her mental energy.
Gunstone and the others rushed over immediately. Looking at the completely shattered war machine, and then at the five to six hundred surrendering troops covering the ground, they were rendered speechless for a long time.
Someone muttered under his breath, "Unbelievable..."
Ayla looked at the thoroughly ruined wreckage.
"The structural design still has flaws."
---
After the battle, some suggested executing all the prisoners.
Over five hundred extra mouths were too many to feed, posing a heavy strain on rations.
Furthermore, if allowed to live, they might become enemies once again.
Gunstone was also inclined to simply dispose of a portion of them.
Ayla refused.
"They have lost their weapons and command structure; killing them does not align with our maximum interest."
Walking up to the prisoners, she asked directly, "Who knows how to repair engines? Who can maintain vehicles? Who is a medic? Who understands power generation equipment? Who can operate heavy machinery?"
The prisoners, who had been kneeling and waiting for death, looked at one another before raising their hands one by one.
Ayla quickly set about dismantling an army she had personally defeated into technicians, drivers, engineering personnel, and retSarahble soldiers.
She promised that as long as they performed well, they would be freed from slave status in one year and become free scavengers once more.
---
Late that night, she returned to the Gorgon's Teachings Core.
The red figure lit up once again. The core's first words were no longer an argument about "the weakness of the flesh."
"Based on its actual mechanical state, that unit should have completely ceased operation sixty-one seconds ago."
Ayla did not look up. "I know."
"Then how do you explain its continued operation for sixty seconds?"
Ayla was silent for a moment. "I don't know."
"This is a question that cannot be answered using engineering data," the core's voice remained cold, though its cadence was half a beat slower than before. "Your presence is generating variables that existing data cannot accommodate."
Ayla raised her head, looking at the massive red outline.
"Then keep recording."
She turned and walked out of the underground facility.
Outside, Pier Seven was brightly lit.
The surrendered Black Iron City soldiers were being settled in batches, while Gunstone led a team in inventorying the captured weapons and equipment.
A group of scavengers gathered around the wreckage of the mini-Titan, debating whether to strip the components that were still usable.
Seeing Ayla walk out, someone called from afar, "How should we handle these parts?"
Ayla walked over.
Beside the wreckage lay piles of parts stripped from the unit—twisted joints, severed hydraulic lines, and several fragments of the thermal claw.
"Repair what can be repaired. Melt down what can't."
"What about this?" The man pointed to the completely wrecked main frame.
Ayla observed it for a short while.
"Keep it."
"Keep it for what?"
She didn't answer, simply reaching out to touch the load-bearing beam, which was still hot to the touch.
Cold and coarse, bearing the combat intent of ten thousand years past, it felt like something she could not articulate in words.
"The unification of Weddell requires a true Imperial God-Machine."
Ayla's eyes burned with a fervent light.
"The unification of Weddell requires a true Imperial God-Machine."
Having spoken those words, Ayla withdrew her hand from the load-bearing beam. The surrounding scavengers looked at one another in mutual bewilderment, not a single one daring to respond.
They had certainly heard tales of such things as "Imperial God-Machines."
In the old legends of Weddell, those were leviathans of war that existed only during the Golden Age and the era of the Great Crusade—hulking steel behemoths towering like skyscrapers, shaking the very earth as they walked, capable of shattering city walls with a casual strike.
Yet legends were just legends.
The largest war machine any of them had ever witnessed in their lifetimes was the "mini-Titan" Ayla had cobbled together just two hours prior.
And now that thing lay scattered across the ground in heaps of scrap metal. For Ayla to already be contemplating a "true Imperial God-Machine" sounded utterly detached from reality, no matter how one looked at it.
Gunstone sat nearby on a twisted sheet of armor plate. His newly fitted mechanical leg was still disobeying orders, twitching intermittently.
He held his tongue for a long while before finally failing to contain himself: "Say, shouldn't you consider something a bit closer at hand first?"
Ayla turned to look at him.
"Such as?"
"Such as Black Iron City."
Gunstone gestured with a hand toward the distance.
"We just detained all five to six hundred of their men—there's no keeping a lid on this. Those folks in Black Iron City aren't dead; once word gets back, it won't be long before they send another force over."
"And it might not be such a small group next time."
Ayla went quiet for a few seconds.
Then she said, "They won't."
Gunstone was taken aback: "What do you mean, they won't?"
"They will not send another military force of comparable scale in the short term."
"How do you know?"
Ayla didn't answer directly. Instead, she walked straight toward the Black Iron City officers bound together nearby.
Among the prisoners, the middle-aged officer who had originally commanded the entire attacking force sat on the dirt floor, half his face covered in blood. His right wrist was dislocated from the impact of the mini-Titan's final charge, and his complexion was ghastly pale.
Seeing Ayla approach, he instinctively straightened his posture—not out of respect, but pure terror.
After all, just a few hours ago, he had watched with his own eyes as this woman piloted a pile of junk cobbled together on the spot and forcefully rammed right through his entire battle line.
That final minute was even more absurd. Though the machine had clearly been turned into scrap iron by the mining thermal-penetration cannon, it had somehow risen back up.
He never wanted to witness such a scene a second time in his life.
Ayla walked up to him, skipping any pleasantries, and asked directly, "How much available military strength does Black Iron City have left?"
The officer kept his mouth shut, refusing to speak. Ayla thought for a moment, then turned to the side.
"Gunstone."
"What?"
"He is unwilling to answer."
Gunstone instantly flashed a thoroughly friendly smile, hobbling over as he pulled a pair of pliers from his waist belt.
"Back when I ran in Black Iron City, I picked up a thing or two about interrogation."
The officer's face turned instantly white: "Wait!"
In less than five minutes, every detail was laid bare.
Black Iron City maintained a total standing armed force of roughly two thousand men.
It sounded like a considerable number, but those fully equipped, systematically trained, and capable of operating as field combat units numbered fewer than twelve hundred.
The force that had just launched the assault on Pier Seven was the cream of that crop.
Over five hundred men, more than twenty vehicles, heavy exoskeletons, mortars, rocket launchers, plus that extraordinarily precious mining thermal-penetration cannon.
Black Iron City's original plan was simple: flatten Pier Seven in a single stroke.
Instead of flattening anything, however, they ended up delivering half of their own arm to the doorstep.
Most of the remaining forces inside the city were required to maintain public order, guard warehouses, protect the merchant guild, and control peripheral outposts.
The regular troops that could actually be mobilized at a moment's notice were few and far between.
When he finished speaking, Ayla crouched down and drew a simple troop distribution map on the ground. Gunstone stood by watching for a long time, his expression gradually turning odd.
"What are you trying to do?"
"Attack Black Iron City."
"Now?"
"Now."
The corner of Gunstone's mouth twitched: "Wait, we just finished fighting."
"We haven't even carried away all the wounded or cleared the bodies, and you're already planning to raid their home base?"
Ayla looked up at him: "That is precisely why we must go now."
"Their losses are greatest, information is most chaotic, and internal troop strength is at its lowest. Once they reorganize their defenses and recall peripheral forces, the difficulty will increase."
Gunstone opened his mouth to say something, but ultimately closed it.
Still, there was an indescribable sense of absurdity to it all. A few hours ago, everyone was contemplating how to survive Black Iron City's grip; now Ayla was already calculating how to swallow Black Iron City whole.
The pace was undeniably fast, yet it made eminent sense.
First, Ayla's reasoning was sound.
Second, the preceding battle had emboldened everyone—Black Iron City was far from invincible.
Their formidable-looking armored vehicles could be flipped over, their heavy exoskeletons kicked flying, and the mining thermal-penetration cannon, claimed to shatter city walls, had ultimately been reduced to a pile of scrap iron on the ground.
More importantly, they now possessed vehicles, firearms, heavy weaponry, and fully five hundred prisoners.
To ordinary people, five hundred extra mouths were a burden. To Ayla, they were five hundred repurposable components.
She swiftly set about reorganizing them.
Those who could drive kept driving; those who could repair engines were formed into a dedicated maintenance team; medical personnel treated the wounded; and those originally assigned to heavy weapons continued maintaining the captured equipment.
As for the original Black Iron City officers, all command authority was stripped, and they were placed under guard by Gunstone and the Pier Seven locals.
One prisoner couldn't help but ask, "Aren't you afraid we'll run?"
Ayla was inspecting the transmission system of an armored truck and didn't even raise her head.
"You may."
The man froze: "What did you say?"
"Anyone who wishes to run may run."
Ayla pulled her hands out from the engine bay, covered in black grease.
"Black Iron City just lost an army. If you go back, what can they possibly offer you?"
"If you stay and complete the work, I will provide food, water, and shelter."
"Obey instructions and work for one year, and your freedom will be restored."
Silence settled over the surrounding prisoners.
The terms were hardly merciful, but in a place like Weddell, they were so favorable as to feel surreal.
When Black Iron City captured people from peripheral settlements, there were usually only two outcomes:
Sent to the mines, or sent to the slave markets.
Work for one year and regain freedom? Many even doubted whether they had misheard.
A young soldier hesitated for a long moment before stepping forward on his own initiative.
"I know the firepower layout at Black Iron City's West Gate."
Immediately after, another hand went up.
"I used to work in the machine repair shop inside the city; I know where the armored vehicle depot is."
"Beside the North District granary, there's a maintenance passage that leads directly into the inner city."
More and more people began speaking up of their own accord. Gunstone watched with his eyelids twitching.
This woman just beat them within an inch of their lives, and now, without even applying real torture, they're voluntarily selling out their former masters.
He suddenly felt that Black Iron City might truly be finished this time.
---
A few hours later.
A convoy that looked thoroughly bizarre by any standard appeared outside Black Iron City.
At the very front was the armored unit that had just been dispatched to eradicate Pier Seven.
Not many vehicles were missing. Even Black Iron City's own banners were still mounted atop them.
The garrison atop the city walls was initially thrilled.
Someone even blew a whistle.
"They're back!"
"I told you! What kind of waves could a bunch of scavengers possibly make?"
"Pier Seven has probably been flattened by now."
Yet as the convoy drew closer, the noise gradually died down—because they noticed something was amiss.
Standing on the gun turret of the lead armored vehicle was a woman.
Her long black hair whipped backward in the wind, and a pair of purple eyes shone with striking clarity under the setting sun.
Meanwhile, the officer originally in charge of commanding this force sat battered and disheveled in a trailing truck, his hands bound with rope.
A dead silence fell over the city walls.
A few seconds later, piercing sirens echoed throughout all of Black Iron City.
"Enemy attack!"
"Close the gates!"
"Everyone to the walls!"
The heavy city gates began to grind shut slowly. Standing atop the vehicle, Ayla glanced over and made no move to stop them.
She had already extracted a full picture of Black Iron City's situation from the prisoners.
This so-called city was, in essence, merely a massive stronghold converted from an old industrial zone.
The walls were thick and weapons abundant, but the vast majority of defensive installations were built upon old-era industrial structures.
In other words:
In her eyes, the design was littered with flaws.
The authorities inside Black Iron City attempted to demand their immediate surrender over the loudspeakers.
Ayla didn't bother responding.
The first artillery shell soon whistled down from the battlements, landing ahead of the convoy and detonating a massive plume of dirt and rock.
As one vehicle burst into flames on the spot, Gunstone stuck his head out from nearby.
"What do we do? A direct assault?"
"Unnecessary."
Ayla leaped down from the armored car. Walking along the city wall for a short distance, she finally stopped beside the main gate.
This gate of Black Iron City was originally a heavy-duty sluice door used in the old industrial zone for transporting massive mining machinery; later generations had welded thick steel plates onto the exterior, making it appear exceptionally formidable.
Yet they clearly failed to understand its original design—while the outer armor was thick, the mechanical locking mechanism that actually controlled its opening remained the same centuries-old apparatus.
Ayla observed it for two minutes before summoning several captured heavy trucks.
Steel cables were attached to the gate's internal structure. Following her instructions, several engineers severed two hydraulic locking conduits.
Then, all vehicles accelerated simultaneously.
Engines roared deafeningly as the steel cables snapped taut.
Creak! The screech of twisting metal rang out, sending the garrison on the walls into an instant panic.
"What are they doing?!"
"The gate lock! The lock below is breaking!"
"Send someone down to fix it, quick!"
It was already too late.
With a deep, heavy boom, the entire ancient mechanical locking mechanism was forcefully ripped apart.
The seemingly impenetrable steel gate slowly cracked open, leaving a gaping fissure.
A cheer instantly erupted among the scavengers outside, while utter chaos broke out within the city.
Black Iron City's most elite field force had just been wiped out, and now even their main gate was being dismantled right before their eyes.
Even more fatal was that news could no longer be suppressed.
The expeditionary force failed. Pier Seven was not destroyed.
Not only was that black-haired, purple-eyed woman alive, but she had returned leading Black Iron City's own army.
Riots broke out first among the peripheral workers, followed by the mine slaves, and finally the general populace.
The Black Iron City merchant guild and administration had ruled this place for so many years not through affection, but by convincing everyone that resistance was futile.
Now, that premise had been shattered.
Someone covertly cut off power to the West District defense tower, and a side gate was secretly unlocked.
Even among the security force tasked with defending the city, some dropped their weapons straight onto the ground.
By the time Ayla actually stepped into Black Iron City, the expected street combat never materialized.
The city had already fractured from within first.
Gunstone led a team to secure the armory, while the Pier Seven locals headed for the granaries.
Ayla issued her orders directly:
"Secure the water purification plant first, then the power station, then the granaries. The armory comes last."
Gunstone was taken aback: "Aren't we capturing the city lord first?"
Ayla looked at him: "If the city lord escapes, he can be captured again."
"If the water purification plant is destroyed, people will die tomorrow."
Gunstone went quiet for a few seconds, ultimately saying nothing.
---
That night, the city lord of Black Iron City failed to escape after all.
Carrying several crates of valuable supplies, he attempted to flee via an underground transit passage, only to be cornered at the exit by his own security guards, who delivered both the man and his crates straight to Ayla.
Ayla didn't even execute him immediately.
What she required was far more useful than a single man's head:
Census records, grain reserves, mine distributions, peripheral settlements, industrial equipment—and everything hauled back from Pier Seven decades ago.
When auditing the final item, her movements suddenly halted.
In a yellowed, ancient archive file, an exceptionally unique piece of war trophy was recorded:
A massive Imperial war machine wreckage dragged back from the depths of Pier Seven.
With Black Iron City's technical capability at the time, repairing it was completely out of the question.
They could only strip away its outer armor and a few minor components. The main structure, being too heavy and complex, had been sealed away inside an old industrial underground warehouse.
For decades, it had remained untouched and forgotten.
Ayla stared at that file for a long time before standing up and nudging the city lord of Black Iron City with her foot.
"Lead the way."