He didn’t remember when he’d boarded the transport back to the city.
He didn’t remember when he’d returned to the military academy.
In the OURO Lab, Nova, Nya, and Meadow—waiting for news—were met by a fat man who looked like a walking corpse.
Only a few hours had passed. Yet his face already looked carved with despair, confusion, and a kind of exhausted emptiness that wanted nothing from life anymore. Nova pried the datapad out of his limp hand.
Her ice-blue eyes skimmed the lines—commendation order? Frontline deployment?—and her expression snapped from curiosity into sudden, unrestrained fury.
“What the fuck is this?” she shouted, voice high with rage, loud enough to draw stares from people across the institute. “Your contract with the lab still has eighteen months left! They can’t just take you! I’m going to Dr. Thorne!”
A spark of hope lit in Jack’s chest.
Right—his contract. He’d completely forgotten.
Nova and Jack—two predators driven by entirely different hungers—charged toward Thorne’s office together. One was fighting to protect her most beloved specimen. The other was fighting to protect his own skin.
Nya stood where she was, watching them run, utterly baffled.
Inside the OURO Lab
Dr. Thorne wasn’t merely irritated. He was pacing at the edge of real rage.
Those generals—the same ones who had ignored his requests for months whenever he demanded skilled technical talent—were now simply reaching in and taking the most useful asset he’d ever acquired.
To Thorne, Jack wasn’t just a mechanic.
He was an acolyte.
An uncut gem.
The Fatty’s intuition outpaced ninety-nine percent of the human population. Mechanical parts weren’t “cold objects” to him. They were elegant three-dimensional geometries. Give him a complex mech’s design pack, and he could assemble and disassemble it freely in that meat-wrapped skull of his, as if he were watching the machine come alive in front of him.
Thorne was certain that with a few more years of direct mentorship, Jack could become one of the Federation’s top mech-and-weapon designers.
And Jack’s cautious, trouble-avoiding cowardice made him exceptionally easy to direct.
But with his status, Thorne had no time to waste arguing with shameless military politicians. He opened a secure terminal and initiated a direct video call with President Valerius.
He informed the President—plainly—that he had taken a new apprentice today: Jack Harlan. That apprentice was now cleared to read all SSS-class materials inside OURO.
And under the Federal National Secrets Protection Act — Article 167, any researcher holding SSS clearance was authorized, in any situation deemed unfavorable to personal safety, to make independent tactical decisions—including tactical withdrawal from active combat zones—with self-preservation defined as the first and highest protocol.
When the old man delivered the news personally to Jack—
Jack threw himself into an enthusiastic hug, then kissed Thorne on the forehead.
Christmas had come, Jack thought.
This was Christmas, and I’m the goddamn Santa Claus.
Building His Own Throne
Nova had watched every second.
Jack’s kiss sent a chill up her spine—followed immediately by a different sensation she couldn’t quite name. She shook her head hard, then grabbed Jack by the arm, wild and chaotic light flashing in her eyes, and dragged him into her private lab.
She pointed at Phantom—her beautiful, lethal prototype.
“Take it, Fatty,” she said. “Go out there and show them what real technology looks like.”
For the first time, Jack shook his head.
“No.”
Nova looked as if he’d insulted her.
“What? Are you insane? That’s the most advanced machine in the entire Federation!”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“I know,” Jack said—and startled himself with how calm he sounded. “And it’s too beautiful. It’s art. Out there, on the front line, art is the first thing that gets destroyed. It’s a living target.”
Nova tilted her head, thinking. Then she nodded slowly.
“You’re right. So what’s your plan?”
A confident smile spread across Jack’s face.
“You’ve got enough raw material for a second prototype, right? Precursor slurry. Graphene composites…” He exhaled. “I have one month before I have to report. I’m building my own ride.”
Beast III
For the next month, the OURO Lab became Jack’s private workshop. He drove everyone—including himself—with ruthless focus. He drew the designs; the other techs—now effectively his subordinates—fabricated the parts. But the final assembly?
He did that personally, locking himself inside Nova’s lab.
All that ever came out was the hum of machines—
and frequent, explosive arguments between Jack and Nova, usually ending with her storming out, muttering about “blasphemous design choices” and “a sacred insult to proper engineering.”
Meanwhile, STARK-2—during these fights—quietly ran betting pools among the technicians.
Wagers: Would Jack get technically dismantled, or would Nova pull a gun and scare him into retreat?
Stakes: rare capacitors, specialty components, even Jack’s next month’s wage credits.
STARK-2 usually walked away richer, upgrading its own logic boards every time.
All of this “rebellion” came from STARK-2’s dissatisfaction with Jack’s plan to transplant its main program into the new ride. It had once asked, very seriously:
“Fatty. My sensors detect corrosion at forty percent. Is this a sophisticated tactical camouflage… or has your aesthetic suffered a catastrophic downgrade?”
Finally, the unveiling day arrived.
Jack stood before his creation, a massive waterproof tarp hiding its shape. Pride burned in his eyes. The entire lab staff gathered in a tight ring, anticipation buzzing in the air.
The tarp slipped away.
A collective, disappointed sigh filled the room.
It looked like something dragged straight out of a scrap yard. A six-meter-tall heap of rusted, battered garbage—Beast III, a century-old Federal antique. A domed head. A single red eye glowing like the exhausted stare of a demon. Patchwork weld scars across its torso. Flaking steel plating. Arms and legs gouged and dented. Wide, clawed feet that could extend into tracks. Dents and bullet holes screaming one message: retired veteran.
An antique—specifically, a perfect one-to-one reconstruction of the Terran Federation’s Beast III, a mech that first entered service in 2400.
And worse—it looked older than the cargo-hauling models that still limped around in storage yards.
“He used all that next-gen tech to build… that?” someone whispered.
All eyes swung to Jack. Nova looked about two seconds away from exploding.
Jack lifted both hands.
“I know, I know. It looks like trash. That’s the point. Beast III was designed in the era of general-purpose mechs—before everything became specialized. Structurally, its humanoid frame is the most universally adaptable and perfectly balanced chassis ever built.”
“He’s not wrong,” Thorne said, appearing from nowhere. He stroked the mech’s leg almost affectionately. “My old mentor, Dr. Hill, designed Beast III. It prioritized the combined balance of defense, speed, and strength. For AMS materials… it really is the perfect choice.”
STARK-2’s core program had already been transplanted into the battered cockpit.
Jack continued, “This mech— I’m naming it Thor.”
Then he called out to the machine:
“STARK-2. Your turn.”
“Yes, Jack.”
The rusted steel junk—like something that had crawled out of a recycling pit—released a deep, terrifying infrasonic hum. It wasn’t metal grinding. It was high-energy magnetic fields forcibly twisting material stress.
HMMM—!
From the rust-choked seams, a visible heat haze exploded outward, the air ionizing under instantaneous overload. The rounded head didn’t fold mechanically— it flowed like liquid metal under electromagnetic control, reforming in seconds.
The single red eye went dark. In its place, deep within, an azure, nebula-like holographic composite sensor array ignited.
The helmet plating slid along mag-lev rails and locked into a predatory aerodynamic muzzle.
The transformation continued. No heavy hydraulic pistons—only the faint crackle of current as artificial electromagnetic tendons contracted. The ugly patchwork plates on the torso lifted and misaligned under field tension, exposing an inner graphene skeleton glowing faintly.
The wide, clumsy feet collapsed into a tighter structure. Four high-frequency oscillation claws extended from each limb end, wrapped in plasma arcs, punching deep into the alloy floor.
Then the weapons.
The rusted shoulder housings slid open without a sound, revealing a honeycomb structure precise as surgical tools. Six compact Gauss pulse cannons glided out on magnetic rails, dark barrels still haloed with residual charge.
The heavy back shell split apart, extending in pale-blue particle flow into two aggressive vector thrust wings.
Someone cried out in horror:
“That’s… a Wraith configuration!”
For Paladin-class units, this was a nightmare made real—silent, fast, explosive. A space assassin built to hunt.
Thorne patted Jack on the shoulder.
“Well done, my child.”
The Care Package
“Come with me, Jack. I’ve prepared your equipment.”
The package was every survivor’s dream:
- acceleration combat boots
- an advanced eavesdropping device
- a mech-scale plasma blade
- a combat knife named Bloody Rose
“Do good work out there,” Thorne said in his rough voice. “Remember—you’re my student. If anyone disrespects you, you are permitted to hold your ground.”
He paused, then handed Jack the final piece:
“A p–B11-class 18 MW aneutronic micro-fusion core for your machine.”
“It will keep Thor combat-ready for seventy-two hours.”
As Jack turned to leave, Thorne watched him, expression complicated.
“In war, even with perfect equipment, you are not a god.”
He paused.
“But you don’t need to be.”
“You only need to run a little faster than Death.”
Departure
A month vanished in the blink of an eye. Only Nova came to see him off at the transport pad. Nya and Meadow had already been reassigned to their original units.
Nova didn’t say much. She simply pressed her private sidearm—a beautiful customized pistol—into his hand.
“Don’t be reckless,” she said softly.
“I’ll try,” Jack answered.
The transport lifted off. Sitting among stacks of supply crates, Jack’s emotions churned. The fear was still there—his hands still trembled.
But there was something else now, too: a strange, exhilarating excitement.
Thirteen times he’d run for his life. Fate loved its jokes. The thing you fear most will always find you.
He didn’t know the frontline had stabilized into a brutal deadlock. He didn’t know military intelligence had given his destination—Cadian City—a nickname:
The Meat Grinder.
Jack had never truly been ready for any of this.
But war no longer asked permission.
It simply pushed him forward—whether he wanted to go or not.
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