The Northern Frontier, on the border between Coastal Province and Southern Border Province.
The sky was a sickly yellow-green. A low-hanging "canopy" of alchemical poison gas mixed with highly concentrated magical waste seemed poised to crush the steel behemoth standing on the border.
Hector stood on the terrace of the Mobile Fortress, the crimson wine in his hand reflecting an eerie sheen beneath the poisonous sun.
It was a suffocating steel behemoth.
The Mobile Fortress had the brutish shape of a bull, but its size had swollen beyond all reason-it stood a full six or seven stories tall.
Its entire body was riveted together from thick, pitch-black armor plates. Countless obsidian spikes engraved with runes stood like a mane along its spine, sending visible ripples of magic surging outward with the violent pulses of the alchemical core inside.
Several densely packed rows of Siege Ballistas were mounted across its broad back and flanks. Between the heavy armor plates, intricate magic arrays spread like blood vessels. Magical light flowed and pulsed through them, supplying the metal shell with an endless stream of shielding and power.
When this "iron bull" moved its immense, pillar-like metal limbs, the earth groaned beneath the unbearable burden, as though even the crust would shatter under its wall-crushing weight.
Ahead of him lay a Linked Fortress Complex armed to the teeth.
An enormous hemispherical magic shield enveloped the overlapping fortifications. Runes shimmered across it like an upturned bowl of colored glass, keeping the deadly gas and long-range attacks outside.
"What a lovely turtle shell."
Hector gently swirled his glass as he gazed at the thick, deep-blue barrier. "Then let's crack it. First movement, accented beat."
The earth roared.
Thirty Black Steel Constructs, each three meters tall, advanced with heavy strides through a sky filled with raining magical