Ethan’s body re-formed from the legs up.
He kept his right hand hidden behind his back, power tightening through his shoulder as it gathered. His left hand swept forward first, batting aside every mechanical tentacle in his attack line.
The little dinosaur sensed movement behind it—
But its head turned a beat too slow.
Ethan’s fist was already coming down.
BAM!
His knuckles slammed into the armor on its back.
The impact blasted the little dinosaur out from the center of its tentacles. Its metal body sparked wildly in midair. From inside, intermittent clanging and grinding rang out, like something critical had just gone out of alignment.
All the tentacles attacking the others froze at the same time.
They hung in the air, suspended, no longer moving.
Deep underground, Vexara lay in a nest where flesh and steel tangled together.
The walls around her kept pulsing. Mechanical eggs occasionally clicked and ticked.
She stared up at the ceiling, bored enough to talk to herself.
"Wonder if my guard squad already finished eating them."
Her eyes rolled, and she immediately corrected herself.
"No. Not ’squad.’"
"It’s the King."
"The guard squad name was just something I made up."
On the surface, the little dinosaur Ethan had sent flying got back to its feet.
Its body still trembled faintly. Tiny sparks sprayed nonstop from gaps in its armor.
Then, once again, the caves all around them erupted with the sound of wings.
A flood of mechanical insects poured up from underground.
They didn’t scatter to attack the group.
They spiraled around the little dinosaur at high speed, forming a dense mechanical storm.
Through the swarm, those red mechanical eyes locked onto Ethan.
That stare had turned into pure hatred.
A pale-white shield rose around Ethan.
The mechanical storm immediately closed in.
The insects didn’t bombard him with energy.
They latched onto the shield itself, extending fork-and-knife-like mechanical arms to slice away at it—bit by bit—then swallow the energy they cut loose.
Gaps kept opening across the shield’s surface.
Each "bite" of white power vanished into their bodies in an instant.
Ethan stood at the center of the storm, watching coldly.
"So weird."
His gaze pierced the swarm and settled on the little dinosaur standing behind it.
"What the hell are you?"
Even surrounded, Ethan could feel it—an enormous force building ahead.
Staying here was pointless.
He broke out of the encirclement and rejoined his companions. The pale-white shield expanded outward with him, wrapping everyone inside.
Space trembled softly.
And the group vanished from where they stood.
The mechanical insects kept gnawing at the leftover edge of the shield until they realized the targets were gone. Only then did they stop.
The little dinosaur straightened fully.
The mechanical storm pulled back from the front, circling it in a tight orbit, then carrying it slowly up into the air.
"Who am I?"
Its voice rode on the vibrations of the insects, spreading across the entire space.
"I’m the King here!"
Those red mechanical eyes swept across the plain.
"Azmekar!"
"And I’m your enemy!"
As the last words fell, the mechanical storm finally dispersed.
Azmekar no longer kept its head lowered.
Red light raked the area as it tried to find the missing group.
At the same time, its body began to grow.
The remaining mechanical insects dropped out of the sky and started breaking apart midair—metal parts and energy cores splitting free, all of it streaming into Azmekar’s hands.
The final batch condensed into a single, pulsing core.
Azmekar lowered its head and looked at it.
Then it opened its mouth and shoved the core straight into its body.
Its armor sealed up fast, locking the core deep inside its chest cavity like a protected heart.
Fed by that energy, the tentacles on its back kept growing.
Joints thickened. Length extended. The weapons at their tips burned with a brighter, sharper red.
A towering tyrannosaurus now stood in the center of the plain.
Its mechanical tentacles lashed down, one after another.
BOOM!
Pits collapsed. Gray-black soil blasted outward in sprays.
Azmekar still couldn’t find the group.
It threw back its head and roared—a bellow that shook the entire space.
A king’s pressure rolled through ground and sky alike, rattling the slime around nearby cave mouths until it dripped in steady streams.
Far away, on a mountain ridge, Ethan and the others were hidden behind a thin, pale shield.
Everyone watched Azmekar’s changes with taut focus.
Energy spheres popped into existence in Ethan’s palm one after another.
One.
Three.
A dozen.
He stared for a few seconds—then crushed them all, extinguishing them.
"Can’t use energy bodies."
Ethan watched the insects still circling in the distance.
"Other kinds of power might get swallowed too."
He rolled his wrist once, annoyed.
"What a pain."
A terrifying presence suddenly surged from far away.
Everyone looked up.
Azmekar—still in that tyrannosaurus form—began to shrink again. It returned to its previous size, but the sheer number of mechanical insects around it remained obscene.
Ethan made his call instantly.
"You guys hold it."
His gaze flicked to the cave holes scattered across the ground.
"Their base is underground."
"I’ll be back."
His companions barely had time to answer before the mechanical insects were already crossing the plain, closing on the mountain.
Staying hidden was pointless now.
Kaelira struck first.
Purple-red energy condensed into a sphere in her hand, then flew forward down the slope.
As it tore through the insect swarm, violent power kept erupting outward.
Mechanical insects detonated one after another in the purple-red glow, bursting like rapid-fire metal fireworks. Shards and sparks rained from the sky, and a clean gap was carved straight through their approach.
But the moment the sphere neared Azmekar, the remaining insects swarmed in.
They clung to the surface and devoured the purple-red energy like starving piranhas.
The sphere shrank fast.
Before it ever truly touched Azmekar, it was eaten down to nothing.
Azmekar extended its small mechanical claw.
A new core had already formed in its palm.
Its five fingers tightened around it.
BOOM!
The core detonated in its grip.
The shockwave blasted outward from Azmekar as the center. Every mechanical insect nearby vanished in the explosion, erased in an instant. Smoke swallowed a huge swath of the field, briefly hiding Azmekar’s body inside it.
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