Local Residents Seethe After Seeing Crack In Space, Assumed To Be 'Space Invaders'
"That's a dangerous game you're playing."
Looking directly at her, Jin scratched his head, seemingly 'oblivious' to the fact that their lips were mere inches apart.
"Nero."
As he finally uttered her name, a sudden vibrant red light shone within her irises which intensified her gaze even further than before.
Yet, despite her passionate gaze, her hand continued to delicately cradle his chin, noticeably pulling their lips closer together.
...
{DING! Host, Nero Claudius' Bloodline is boiling! Σ(°ロ°)}
...
"Heh."
And... with a grin that eerily reminded Jin of her Draco counterpart, she narrowed her eyes, tilting her head as she breathed hot air onto his face.
"You consider... this 'dangerous'?"
Hah~ Then, I might as w-"
*TREMBLE*
For just a moment, it seemed as if the world shook.
"Eh?"
The momentary lapse of distraction was enough to wake Nero up from her daze, prompting her to awkwardly back away from Jin.
"Hahaha! Praetor! Just a joke! UMU!"
Copying his signature move known as the 'scratch your head if you're lost as fuck', the woman clumsily forced out a laugh, still feeling shocked that she almost devoured him!
'AHHHHHHHH!'
Mentally screaming in her mind, she subtly glanced at Jin... who seemed to be looking at the sky in seriousness?
Wait, he can do that?
Her Praetor can be serious?!
She soon followed his gaze and was baffled.
"A... crack in the sky?"
"Yeah, a crack in the fucking sky it seems."
Having put their earlier 'tension' at the back of his mind, Jin stood up, eyes squinting at the widening fissure until he noticed something.
"Vermins... VERMINS!"
Hearing this sudden shout of rage which surprised Jin, he couldn't help but glance in his direction.
...
...
...
After the schematic had finished loading a few hours prior, the Legion continued working, now having a realistic 3D blueprint to scramble around with.
Said blueprint contained an engineer's as well as an architect's wet dream. It was in essence, their definition of the perfect 'fap material'.
With incredibly detailed views of the Advanced Technological Workshop's exterior and interior design, coupled with precise dimensions, scales, units as well as ratios...
To the Legion, this task was as simple as killing one of the low-ranking invading troops that had ravaged their homeland.
"..."
Trodding along the way, a certain blue armored war machine observed his brigade, before calling out one of his soldiers.
"You!"
"Y-yes?"
"You're doing great!"
"Thank you, commander Lothric!"
Seeing the soldier happily going about his way, while carrying several tons of reinforced and chemically mixed steel, Lothric did the same... albeit with a load weighing more than several hundred tons.
The second-in-command glanced toward the horizon, where a massive heat wave emanated from a few kilometers away. There, he witnessed a legion of black dots, each emitting lasers from their crimson eyes.
Once they finished, the soldiers would extract the hot molten steel from the ground, setting it in a nearby temporary workplace they had quickly built.
*DING*DING*DING*
And with precise movements, they hammered away at the steel with... their fists.
"As long as it works."
Nodding at their praise-worthy methods, Lothric was about to fly away before he saw Valkyra silently gazing into the distance.
"Hah..."
Releasing a sigh, he knew what this troublesome new-gen warframe was thinking about.
FWOOSH!
He vanished from his position, closing the distance between them in a single leap.
THUD!
'Precisely... 3.314 seconds.'
Lothric mentally noted down the time it took for him to arrive as reference data before he walked up to Valkyra.
"Little Val-"
BONK!
Glancing at the powerful blow from the advanced 8-foot war machine landing at his sides, Lothric was shaken to the core.
"Is this about the moniker I gave you? Surely, you're not so easily wounded, are you?"
"..."
Retracting her fist, Valkyra kept her silence while gazing at the distance, or rather at the steadily developing territory.
"..."
After a while, she finally spoke.
"Lothric... I fear for this place."
Her voice was laced with an uncertain undertone... something he was all too familiar with.
"..."
He knew what this was about, yet he couldn't deny her hidden sentiments.
Memories surged from a distant past, remnants of a once thriving civilization where machinery and advanced tech were the norm, whilst humans were almost extinct, yet those who endured were the most compassionate and empathetic...
All gone in a war that spanned over several decades.
Unironically, that conflict became the trigger of a Golden Age of Advancements, where technology, especially in the military sector boomed at an unprecedented rate.
Yet... even then.
They failed to stop 'them.'
The once mighty Legion Corps called them 'Invaders', 'Plunderers', or 'Greed Personified'.
In a way, they were almost like them, but at the same time they were fundamentally different as well... it was as if they had some kind of advantage that made them so much more dangerous than they already were.
Just, what kind of force allows a World to just appear out of nowhere? Through a sudden gap in reality nonetheless?
"For Gaia's sake..."
Lamenting out loud with a sigh, Lothric glanced at Valkyra.
"Are you perhaps dwelling on it again?"
If possible, a bitter smile would have crept up on his face at the moment.
"Little Val, a human once said to me that nothing lasts forever... how nothing endures indefinitely, be it through conflicts, divine intervention, or other uncontrollable factors."
Placing his hand on her shoulder, he looked up into the sky.
"All of us, whether it's you, Reinhard, the Legion, or me for that matter... every single one of us wants nothing more than to eradicate those pests."
"Then-"
*TREMBLE*
Feeling a sudden tremble that rang through the entire planet, they saw something amidst the skies.
Or more specifically, a gradually widening fissure that continued to spread throughout within the vacuum of space.
"Vermins... VERMINS!"
The plains shook as a roar-filled rage bellowed out.
Reinhard could be seen in the distance, glaring at the skies with unprecedented fury.
Around him, a golden plasma-like energy crackled, manifesting the intensity of his anger like never before.
...
WARNING! EXTRATERRESTRIAL SOURCE DETECTED!
WARNING! EXTRATERRESTRIAL SOURCE DETECTED!
WARNING! EXTRATERRESTRIAL SOURCE DETECTED!
WARNING! EXTRATERRESTRIAL SOURCE DETECTED!
...
Ignoring the constant alarm blaring through their auditory system, Valkra clenched her fist, the metal creaking as the pressure increased.
"So, it appears that the devil listened to our lamentations!"
"..."
Glancing beside she saw Lothric being unusually calm.
"Lothric?"
"Val."
And there she saw it.
The distinctive blue glow of Lothric suddenly started to shift into a hue of ominous, deep purple.
However, before the change could truly happen, he somehow suppressed it, yet the intensity in his gaze hadn't changed.
"Remember, the fissure and the bridge... both took several months to form.
I shall ask for a meeting with the Empress and Respected Advisor. You come with me."
With a tone that left no room for question, Lothric soon blasted off into the distance, his form turning into a streak of blue light.
FWOOSH!
Meanwhile, a golden-colored light soon followed in the same direction.
Valkyra stood in place, remembering that... 'form'.
"Right."
Shaking off those useless thoughts, she flew off as well.
...
...
...
At an unknown place.
A singular eye could be seen illuminating the depths of the vast ocean.
A place so deep and dangerous, that it was deemed uninhabitable by many millions of years ago.
Said eye was wide open, spanning hundreds of meters effortlessly.
Countless marine creatures, spanning a radius vast enough to encompass the entirety of the Pacific Ocean, froze in place as if petrified by the emergence of a colossal entity awakening from its slumber.
"..."
It continued to gaze at something or rather a certain someone, whilst seemingly unbothered by the distance between them.
"Exceptionally... weird."
With that it closed its eyes again, entering another long slumber.
...