My breathing was jagged. The pain in my chest, a torturing inferno agonizing my every nerve with just a simple breath.

Fear.

No emotion ran through my brain harder than fear. Infinitely times more than the pain.

When was the last time I felt this scared? Honestly, I couldn’t remember. But at this very moment, I regretted not having been this scared before. Maybe a little practice would’ve made me fear this moment just a little bit less.

But with the sound of a single footstep ahead of me, every last thought evaporated like the trees around me. The floating trunks and their magnificent roots that reached down onto the ground like tentacles, collapsed, leaving nothing behind but a cloud of dust and smoke.

The rumbling from the falling trees shook me to my core, but almost like playing on a separate track, and a much louder one at that, was the footsteps that kept getting closer.

And closer.

And closer.

A voice, deep and raspy, distorted yet so clear that my soul escaped with just the tone, filled the air. “You have to do what’s right. Clearly, you don’t comprehend what’s at stake here.”

My vision was blurry, but it was like the person was the only thing in focus. Their arms were made of metal. Their legs were metal. Their face—metal.

He was nothing more than just that. Cold. Metal.

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The numbers displayed on my arm, on the small screen that’d basically been implanted into me, were a distorted mess. They fluctuated from zero to their upper limit of [999,999,999]. I always found it confusing why the strength level reached that high, but ever since he appeared, I began to realize why that had to be the case.

I was way over my league.

In the man’s—no, machine’s hand was a person. At least it had the vague outline of one. Apart from my blurry vision, the person in question was a mess. Disfigured and drenched in blood. While the machine stood there, with barely even a scratch, holding them by the head like they were a throwing rag.

From his point of view, we were all probably not far from it.

The crunching of his steps seemingly burned the little green left on the ground. Behind him, the marvelous machine beasts fell from the skies, their massive wings torn apart, and their lives snuffed without hesitation.

I’m sure that even around me now…the people I’d come to know were…they were…

Tears of desperation welled up in my throat. I wanted to scream, but the pain and fear prevented me from doing so.

…

…

Hmm, something I hadn’t noticed was that the machine there was also fireproof. Flames were covering most of their body, yet there wasn’t a hint of reaction from him. Guess being a bio-mechanical entity had its perks.

…

Heh, now I’m trying to escape reality. Not that I expected any different. I’ve never done anything other than that.

The machine stopped a couple of meters away from me.

He sighed.

“There’s still time to join me…” the machine—Zincreed—extended his hand towards me. “Will you do the right thing?” his mechanical voice clicked.

My body wasn’t moving anymore. It couldn’t move. There was no strength left in me…not that there ever was.

Joining him was the best way out of this. Everything would end if I just joined him…right? Taking his hand was all I had to do. That’s it. Such an easy task compared to everything that went down. Just one action and all of this would end.

It was only then that I hoped, from the bottom of my heart, that I would've died back then.

[Prologue - End]

{Arc 1 Start: Interference}