The Mercenary Group mechs closing in from all directions stared blankly at the scene before them: the massive hundred-meter behemoth had stopped moving, the Black and White Great Sword was embedded in the thing's "head," and a blood-soaked figure stood atop the sword.
Against layer upon layer of comparison, that body, less than two meters tall, appeared so tiny that the distant mechs had to use electronic magnification to make out its bloodstained form.
Yet he stood high in the sky. Billowing fire clouds illuminated the blood and the heavens, while an iron rain of shattered mech wreckage thundered down past him.
The human body stood in stark contrast to that majestic machine.
Like a lowly ant waving a branch and restraining a ferocious tiger.
The officer kneeling nearby raised his head and blankly watched it all. His figure was becoming illusory at a visible rate, while his eyes and pupils rapidly faded.
He watched everything, and faint ripples seemed to rise within pupils that were gradually turning as thin as paper.
Flaming mech wreckage fell rapidly around him, and the thick armored ground, heavy as the earth itself, shook violently.
After the glow from the central cannon vanished, the lights in the two cannons on either side began flashing rapidly.
The Mercenary Group mechs in the distance seemed to have reacted—or perhaps received some kind of order.
Some of the mechs pushed their thrusters to the limit, while blazing light and artillery fire gathered in the muzzles of their weapons.
They rapidly closed in, trying to stop that tiny figure who had driven the great sword into the enormous machine.
Everything happened in the blink of an eye. Those mechs barely hesitated before making what seemed to be the best response to the situation.
He Ao, gripping the great