"Victor, can't you be faster? The Spark is getting up again." Eren watched Victor cross the hoverjet cabin, an object cupped carefully in both hands.

"Fuck you. Don't rush me," Victor cursed, his blood-red eyes never leaving the object cupped in both hands.

His upper body was nearly motionless while his feet slid the smallest, careful steps. Sweat beaded at his brow and traced damp lines down the side of his nose. The tiny tremors that ran along his jaw and the way his breath tightened showed how taut and focused he was.

He was carrying it as if it were a bomb that could end them all... and, in fact, it was a nuclear payload.

It sat in his hands as a cylinder, at first glance like a thick glass jar sealed with metal caps at each end.

Up close, the outer skin was matte and industrial, not ornamental. Inside, rows of narrow vials rested in powdered foam. Oily, pale green liquid packed without a single bubble, viscous as a gel, and unnaturally calm.

It was not very big. At most 15 kilograms(33 pounds) by feel. But contained within it was a force beyond ordinary reckoning, more than 10 kt, enough to reduce a city center to a field of ruin in an instant.

Humanity had learned to design this in the last 50 years and even mass-produced it; until now, however, it had never been unleashed or tested. When Adyr jokingly asked why they had created this more advanced explosive than the ones that had turned the Earth into hell centuries ago, the reply he got was equally flippant.

'We don't know, was the 12 City Managers' answer, given with complete sincerity.

"It wouldn't detonate without the right triggers. Why are you so scared of it?" Dalin asked from the side, her face flat with disdain.

"Can you guys just shut up and let me concentrate?" Victor snapped, the sudden spike in his voice jolting his hands into a brief tremor before he forced them still and refocused on the task.

He kept taking small steps toward the upright metallic cylinder, which was lying lengthwise in the cabin. It looked like the shell of a missile, bare metal, its mouth open and ready.

With slow care, he set the glass container into the tube's throat. The vials settled with a soft, muffled click against their foam cradle.

He checked that it was seated perfectly, then set the tube's slightly pointed oval cap in place. He twisted until the threads bit, tightening further until the seam lay flush and secure.

"Huff... Now it's your turn." He wiped his palm across his brow and handed the moment over to Eren.

Eren smiled once, stepped forward, and lifted the long rocket body.

He shouldered it, all 500 kilograms (1,102 pounds), yet in his grip it seemed no heavier than ordinary luggage.

He didn't slow as he carried it to the next station: the launcher that would fire the missile.

The launcher filled the hoverjet's open side door like a crude, functional altar. It was a massive, improvised rig, bolted and braced to the hoverjet's frame.

When Adyr requested weapons from Player Headquarters, the reply was blunt: the firing mechanism they had built was meant to be mounted on heavy vehicles and aircraft.

There was no time to redesign it to fit the hoverjet, so the team shoved the launcher into the cabin and made it work.

It looked rough and rushed, the kind of work that would make engineers wince. But it worked.

The weapon system had been broken into three swift stages so the operatives could load and arm it rapidly.

Stage one had been the insertion of the chemical container that carried the warhead's main components into the metal casing that would accept and secure it.

Stage two was the missile body being seated in the launcher.

Stage three was the final electronic and mechanical checks before release.

Now Eren was performing the second stage. He pushed the long missile body into the hollow cylinder Dalin had opened and felt it slide home with a settling thud.

Then, after making sure it was seated, Dalin closed the cap and sealed the joint.

"Okay. Done," Dalin confirmed to the man in the long white coat who sat with a laptop resting on his knees. Cables could be seen trailing from the device, snaking toward the launcher like veins feeding a living machine.

Victor, already carrying another green liquid-filled glass container, glanced at Dalin and let out a vicious little smirk. "What an important job," he muttered. Ignoring Victor's protest about the unfair workload, the researcher's fingers swept over the keyboard. A red light flickered on the screen several times before stabilizing. "Ten seconds to launch," he said, triggering the countdown. While the team waited for the ten-second countdown to finish, a missile had already been launched from a different hoverjet and was streaking toward the Blood Dragon.

While in one cabin, Eren, Dalin, and Victor were handling this launch, in the other hoverjet, Selina, Evangeline, and Rhys had already completed the same process with the same crude, urgent tools and launched the 4th missile.

As for Adyr, he wasn't inside any of the hoverjets; he hovered outside, beating his wings in place, watching the explosions, and quietly admiring their terrible

beauty.

Slowly, he found himself lost in thought, his unblinking crimson eyes reflecting the massive explosions as if they were detonating inside them.

One thing that occupied his mind was how even the greatest destructive power humanity possessed still couldn't surpass the strength unleashed by a Titled Rank 4 Practitioner.

The other was what the 12 City Managers had told him-that they didn't even

know why they had created such weapons.

"Men have made weapons not out of hatred, but out of fear... Fear of losing, fear of being powerless," he murmured, his voice fading into the night illuminated by distant explosions.

The reason for their creation was simply because they could? The answer to

that was no.

Then, was it because they feared the first-generation mutants roaming beyond the cities, spreading chaos? Again, Adyr's answer was no.

He struggled to find the truth, but one thing was certain: humanity had made these weapons, and that fact alone was undeniable.

And now, weapons born from unknown motives were in Adyr's hands, as if they had been destined for him from the very beginning, creations made for no

purpose other than to be used by him.

That thought made his otherwise calm face tighten into a faint frown.

But his frown eased a little later as another possible answer came to his mind.

Were they created for the next cycle, to reset the world once again when the

time came?

Both theories held a certain appeal and a disturbing amount of truth, and each was equally unsettling.

"Whatever," Adyr murmured with a faint laugh as he brushed the thoughts aside and beat his wings, flying toward one of the hoverjets that carried the nuclear

launchers.

If he let them keep firing like this, it would take too long to bring down the Blood Dragon, a waste of energy crystals and resources, so he decided to take

action himself.

***

A/N: Yo. Only three hours left in the month and we're just 100 tickets short of the Top 10 in the Golden Ticket rankings. Maybe, just maybe... a miracle?