The Vers Empire of Mars.
In the room of Princess Asseylum Vers Allusia—granddaughter of the First Martian Emperor.
"Y-Your Highness?!"
Eddelrittuo let out a panicked, frightened cry. Her youthful face was at a complete loss.
The princess she served had suddenly started vomiting—without warning.
Her complexion had turned deathly pale, with a sickly greenish cast. She looked terrible. Her whole body was trembling, as if terrified of something.
It scared Eddelrittuo senseless.
A sudden illness didn't look like this.
Could there have been something wrong with the food?
Poison?
No. She had made it herself. How could it be poisoned?
"I'll go get—"
"No need, Eddelrittuo."
Asseylum cut her off and caught her hand.
"But—"
"It's just… I had a nightmare," Asseylum said, forcing the words out. "I dreamed we went to war with Earth. People were dead everywhere."
That explanation finally convinced Eddelrittuo—someone Asseylum treated like a little sister.
After Eddelrittuo cleaned up the mess, Asseylum pressed a hand to her chest.
Then, gritting her teeth and gathering her courage, she reopened that miserable livestream.
It was a hell she had never seen before.
Even the most horrific wartime records she had studied—images of the Vers Empire's conflict with Earth—could not compare to the sheer ugliness of the world where Mr. Golden Toilet was.
…
In Yuuko's world, the BETA invasion—people being torn apart and eaten by those monsters—was already hell at the highest order.
She had witnessed that hell with her own eyes.
So Kouzuki Yuuko had more resistance to the kind of imagery currently flooding the stream. It did not hit her with the same overwhelming psychological nausea.
From what she could tell now, the world he was in faced two categories of enemies.
One was the more "mysterious" kind—daemonic monsters that looked capable of possessing human bodies and twisting them into new demonic forms.
The other was this nest-like place she was seeing right now: eggs everywhere. Some were translucent, and the creatures inside looked… insectile.
Hm?
They had noticed him.
The monsters on the mining cart surged toward him—similar to the one that had attacked him in the elevator shaft: three arms and razor claws.
Wait—there were also people who looked like normal humans attacking him.
They had betrayed humanity and sided with the monsters.
But they were cut down almost immediately.
And instead of fleeing at once, he didn't leave this enormous elevator platform. He moved upward—toward the top of the elevator car—using a grappling claw to hook on.
What was he doing?
Yuuko could more or less guess his intent. And sure enough—he sabotaged the elevator's cables.
The result was immediate.
That gigantic elevator—large enough to rival a football field—plunged downward with a screech like a dying thing.
Boom—!
A brutal impact rang out—this was the elevator car's top crashing down to a point less than ten meters below the shaft mouth. The metal roof caved in with severe deformation.
And a claw punched through.
Just from that claw, it was obvious how terrifying the creature inside must be.
Judging by the claw's size, Yuuko estimated the monster's scale—and locked onto a conclusion: it was likely the hatchling from the largest "egg" inside that elevator.
Now he was sprinting outward, racing toward the bright opening at the far end of the passage.
The moment he burst out of the tunnel, the god's-eye camera gave Yuuko a far clearer view of the outside world.
What she saw stunned her again.
A city that could only be described as a forest of steel—or perhaps, "nest" was the more accurate word.
There was no orderly urban design. It was chaotic to the point of insanity, like an anthill dug by mad insects.
And this steel nest was so vast it defied comprehension. Looking out across it, she could not see either the sky or the ground.
It wasn't because buildings blocked her horizontal view.
The level he was on was like the interior floor of a mega-building that had never been walled in—only load-bearing pillars—so the sightlines stretched far into the distance.
And yet the distance between "ceiling" and "floor," on average, felt like three hundred meters.
Below was a steel-forest city.
Above was also a steel-forest city—built in the same disorderly, sprawling manner. Some structures extended downward, creating the illusion that the steel city in the "sky" was upside down.
Yuuko couldn't imagine how much metal it would take to build something like this. Even if her entire country pooled its steel, would it be enough?
But beyond the shock of the scenery, there was something else.
This steel metropolis was burning with war everywhere.
Within this layered space, there were aircraft dogfighting in the air—while flying monsters clashed with those aircraft.
On the ground, humans fought humans, and monsters fought humans. The entire layer felt saturated with crossfire, so dense it left no blind spot.
Even he had to keep moving to avoid stray shots.
Boom—!
Another thunderous blast—followed by the shriek of twisting metal. Parts of the upper structures were hit by fire and collapsed, and thousands upon thousands of people fell with the debris.
They were either killed by the fall, or crushed by what came down with them.
And when Yuuko looked closely, she saw something even worse: the insect-like side was collecting the bodies.
No—more than bodies.
It looked like anything organic was being piled together and hauled away to somewhere else.
Which meant the elevator car "hatching pit" he had seen earlier was not the only one.
Hell was everywhere here.
Despair was everywhere.
Even Yuuko felt a chill creep through her.
Suddenly, he leapt onto a platform and looked back.
Yuuko froze.
At first, she had assumed this steel metropolis was underground. But from the angle behind him, she finally saw the surface.
His position seemed to be near the edge of this unimaginable steel city—because far away, in the outskirts, she could see what looked like a mining facility.
A facility so enormous it forced silence.
A mining complex rising thousands of meters into the air.
It was built against the mountainside—ugly, brutal, without any trace of aesthetic intent. Thick black smoke poured upward in rolling clouds, the pollution severe.
The land around it looked dead from contamination—no sign of life, only barren, stone-like terrain.
The mountain being mined had been hollowed out through most of its mass, and even the portion that remained easily dwarfed the tallest mountain in Yuuko's country.
Wait—this wasn't just mining.
It looked like a fully integrated warship production facility, because she could see a vicious, brutal-looking warship lifting off—unfinished, but already moving.
And the moment it rose, the guns that were functional rotated without hesitation—turning toward this direction.
A flash of blinding light.
The beam that lanced out was even more horrifying than the Laser-class BETA beams in Yuuko's world.
A beam so appalling it left her speechless—
It swept past directly over his head.
And the steel sky was torn apart.
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]