London, 9:30 a.m.
The lingering fog hung over the streets, while the silent concert hall made not a sound.
The square teemed with people. Beneath the perpetual drizzle, umbrellas in hand, they hurried out from the subway exits and merged into the urban clamor.
Yet above the steps, the concert hall shrouded in fog lay utterly silent.
Its cold, sharp outlines towered over the earth. From within came faint, vast echoes, like the roar born from every metal in the world colliding and grinding together.
So solemn.
Yet within the concert hall sealed off by ritual, amid solemn, soaring melodies, roars and explosive crashes rose one after another.
The soldiers encased in heavy armor had transformed from fragile mortals into steel. The control mechanisms wired into their spinal cords and nerves had made them into genuine weapons of war.
Sixteen massive Guardian IV units comparable to tanks, forty-one mobile Hyena II units, six Magicians, seventeen old-model Redeemers fitted with impact systems, and twenty-one new-model Gladiators...
Weapons born purely for destruction had gathered in one place, formed into squads, and pushed inward with astonishing efficiency.
They ignored the towering walls and heavy doors.
The Guardian's enormous body knelt on one knee, and the heavy cannon barrel sprang out from its back, aiming forward.
Amid surging firelight, red-hot shell casings as long as an Ordinary Person's arm flew through the air and rolled across the floor, one after another.
Armor-piercing rounds were followed by explosive anti-personnel shells. After the heavy metal tore through the wall, it erupted with a thunderous blast, creating waves of vacuum before spreading into dazzling beams of Brilliant Light. Countless fragments shot in every direction.
Firepower capable of reducing the entire building to rubble was silently swallowed by darkness, leaving behind only collapsed walls and devastation.
Beyond the