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Looking back, the KMFs that had intended to use their grappling hooks to stop the leading red and blue trucks were either instantly maimed by the bull-like creature or had their grappling hook cables thrown far away by the force of its drift and turn. After a sudden stop, its large nose, adorned with a human face logo, was already charging towards the chaotic mass of KMFs and the "car monsters" battling it out.
The pilots desperately tried to stop it with spears and guns, but once it calmed down, it began to transform. Everyone could only watch helplessly as a humanoid beast, twice the size of the KMF, rose from the ground. Its red and blue metallic limbs flashed with the sparks of bullets and reflected sunlight, sweeping everything in the road into scrap metal on both sides of the road like a whirlwind or a tsunami.
"Get away! Get away! No!" Aden, holding the machine gun of his machine gun, sprayed wildly at it while retreating rapidly. The big man put his arms in front of his chest and, using the momentum of the high speed, took two big strides to rush to the sergeant, grabbed him, and threw him into the air.
Immediately afterwards, a long sword radiating a blazing red light sprang from the big man's right arm. With a wave of his hand, he cleaved the falling Aden and his aircraft in two.
……
Only the youngest of the brothers, Yag, was left in the KMF, where he had broken his lower body in a fall on the roadside, and witnessed his two older brothers die before his eyes.
Just by looking at them, it's impossible to imagine how he and his comrades should deal with them—these four cars transformed into "KMFs" are as agile and nimble as Lancelot, controlled by Suzaku Kururugi, as if their eyes and noses could sense the next move of every KMF present.
After a long hand-to-hand fight with iron fists and steel arms, the tallest one, the giant who had transformed from the red and blue truck, inadvertently retreated to his side. He glanced at the still-moving head on Yag's aircraft, and without a word, brought down his knife again, severing KMF's neck.
"Oh no no no no no!" If it had been cut straight in the chest, it would have been all over. The giant's slash actually helped Yag, allowing him to open the cockpit and jump to the ground.
His movements were noticed by the big guy, but strangely, the big guy didn't stomp him to death. Instead, he looked back and forth between Yag and the KMFs that were still fighting with the car monsters, and then looked at Yag's KMF with its head cut off.
"Who sent you, human?" The large man crouched down, his two blue eyes gleaming as he questioned him in English, "Did the Decepticons give you these things?"
Despite his friendly tone, Yag was so terrified that he was incoherent and only wanted to escape.
"Back to base! Back to base!" Captain Rocco finally arrived. Seeing that he hadn't been hit hard enough by the big red and blue guy, he threw the cannon at it, ducked to avoid its raised arm, grabbed Yag, and ran away.
"Was it that silver-gray guy who caused your fall?" The captain's aircraft was a Gloster with an MVS sword. Seeing the silver-gray iron giant approaching, he instantly drew his sword and made a sharp vertical slash, dropping the sword from his hand. He caught the half of the metal hand that was stomped down and, along with all the KMFs and their pilots who could still move, slunk into the portal.
……
“Unlike our cold machines like the KMF, the soldiers encountered ‘living beings’ in this world.” Recalling this day, Dr. Ron smiled through his tears. “When the shells hit them, I mean them, they felt the pain of being hit by a rock.”
"Tsk, from skin and muscles to internal organs and bones, it's all made of this metal from who-knows-where?" Elizabeth rubbed her eyes, then glanced again at the hand made of some unknown metal element in the book. "And it can talk and feel pain, just like us?"
"Shouldn't you be concerned about their ever-changing characteristics?" The doctor's smile vanished. "To be honest, the fighter jet the soldiers encountered at the beginning might actually be a Titan like this. If that's the case, the soldiers would absolutely be devastated. They can't imagine what it would be like if they found a bag of potato chips in this world, swallowed it, and then, after turning into chyme, it could transform into a humanoid form in stomach acid and dismember them from the inside out. That would be too terrifying..."
……
So what did these four giants, who were transformed from cars, do after the KMFs left?
"Jazz's hand probably won't be fixed anytime soon, Optimus Prime. That purple dwarf has taken his hand away in his pocket."
"Don't blame yourself, ambulance, you've done everything you could."
Behind them were two giants, one orange-yellow and the other red-gray, who was sweeping a red laser across the other's hand. Only the tallest and strongest, the red-and-blue one, was squatting on the ground, looking at the KMF fragments scattered everywhere.
“This isn’t from Cybertron.” His eyes scanned the composition of the fragments. “It’s metallic elements from Earth, and unlike us, it’s not a mechanical life form, nor does it have any transforming gears. What they left on the mountain were all the things that ordinary humans need for weapons.”
“But this…” He pushed aside a KMF engine that wasn’t completely destroyed and found a relatively intact Sakura Stone energy block. “I’ve never seen it on other planets. Where did it come from?”
"When did humans start making these things?" As for the black guy that came from the pickup truck, he was trampling on the KMF wreckage that he had previously blasted to smithereens. "We didn't find these on their internet."
"Be patient, Ironhide. Humans will give us the answer in time." Just then, a gold sports car with black stripes, followed by a black armored SUV full of human soldiers, came speeding towards the Hoover Dam.
"Continue to cover Bumblebee and the energy creature, head to Las Vegas!" With that, the giant named Optimus Prime crouched down, and together with his subordinates, transformed back into their original car forms. "Autobots, Transform and Roll Out!"
Section 506 Beyond the Sky of Pendraken IV: The Super-Large KMF of the "Area 11 People"
The development of the portal was a major undertaking, but even so, the "Eternal Protocol" research department still managed to achieve today's results without the knowledge of many high-ranking officials and dignitaries.
Elizabeth initially didn't believe it, but after searching through Dr. Ron's photo album for a long time, she found that almost all the humanoid weapons involved in the exploration of the other world through the portal were from Sunderland or even Glasgow. This gave her an idea of how miserable their department must have been, enduring hardship and biding their time in such a corner.
"Actually, it's all because we were a bit too eager for quick success..." Dr. Ron finally confessed, "When we were barely able to stabilize the portal, we invited some famous generals to come and take a look."
"And then you tricked those generals into sending your precious aces to the other side of the door to get beaten up, right?" Elizabeth had already guessed it.
"More often than not, we return empty-handed, Your Highness. After all, some worlds are so terrible that you can't even find a pretty stone to pick up..."
"So that means you still got a beating, right?"
Seeing His Highness's persistent questioning, the Doctor nodded with a grim face—ever since that major incident, the entire department has never dared to cooperate with high-ranking military figures like the Knights.
……
That time, one of Dr. Ron's scientists used his good relationship with a general to bring in the latter's newly formed knightly order, inviting these shrewd people who could ride Gloucester to join a group of ordinary soldiers in a treasure hunt in the other world.
This time, the landing point on the other side of the portal was set in a place similar to the Siberian Plateau. There were puddles, forests, and grasslands; it should have been a pristine place for breathing clean air, but there was a smell similar to a burning car, seemingly drifting from the nearby woods.
When the knights' Gloucester and the ordinary soldiers' Sunderland approached, they saw a clearing in the woods that had been trampled and burned, and as far as the eye could see, there were armored vehicles in contorted positions.
Even in this year, any Britannian soldier who had spent half a year on the front lines would have seen destroyed armored vehicles, but he had never seen a metal vehicle melted like this before—imagine a fire truck's high-pressure water cannon pointing its nozzle at a paper lantern, forcibly squeezing and deforming its frame.
Not only the soldiers, but even the knights could hardly believe their eyes—no matter how powerful the KMF was, it could only make the warhead that caused the secondary explosion to be fired from the hand of the mechanical arm. At least the corpses of armored vehicles could still be identified. The "slaughter" technology of the armored vehicle in front of them, which was comparable to a dismemberment case, was too outrageous.
Peter, the captain and vice-captain of the Knights squad, and Alice were a couple who had recently gotten married. They were also in charge of the advance team's on-site command. The group finally found a "tank" that looked relatively intact, so they assigned someone to get off and examine it closely. Meanwhile, Alice used her Gloucester to transmit everything she was doing to the support team sitting in front of the portal outside the forest via radio, so that they could relay it to the original world's command center.
Why is "tank" in quotation marks? Because it defies common sense. The turret sitting on the tank chassis is neither square nor round in appearance, and even looks like a backless single sofa. The only tank main gun is also attached to the right armrest of the "sofa." The shells are tied to leather straps similar to machine gun ammunition belts, connecting from the center of the turret to the breechblock of the cannon.
On the tank's green base coat, one can still vaguely discern the tank's number painted in gold and a matching gold hammer. The text written below the hammer even resembles Russian, seemingly meaning "hammer."
As for the "left armrest," there was actually a dragonfly with a wingspan of one and a half meters embedded in it? Curious, I patted it and it actually moved—this mechanical dragonfly, which looked like it was pieced together from machine tool parts, was actually alive? It hovered in the air in front of the gun muzzles of the KMFs for a while, flapped its wings covered with patterns similar to those of solar panels, and flew towards the small hill not far away.
"It doesn't seem hostile?" Everyone was a little puzzled. They looked at the left armrest of the tank's turret again. It was empty except for a triangular platform with three orange round light bulbs arranged in a triangular shape inside. As for what they were for, they would probably have to open the hatch next to the main gun's ammunition belt and go inside to find out.
Just then, the KMF pilots, still sitting on the tank, noticed something was amiss. The scattered craters around them, upon closer inspection, looked remarkably like giant footprints.
Looking around, there were other tanks that were almost intact, but upside down, and they all had signs of being hit.
"Peter! That hill to the northwest where the dragonfly flew!" Suddenly Alice noticed crows and sparrows flying around in the woods on the hill, and the ground beneath their feet began to tremble rhythmically.
What's coming? First, a head wearing a Japanese Shogun's helmet popped out of the treetops, staring with bloodshot eyes. Then, as the trees undulated, two shoulder armors painted with the Rising Sun Flag gradually became clear. Finally, the sturdy torso and thick legs flattened and trampled down all the trees, and a mecha giant more than 20 meters tall stood with its back to the sun, pulling the group of four or five-meter-tall KMFs into its shadow.
"Point...point, to the command post!"
Now, from the knights down to the plain-clad pilots, everyone's legs went weak as they looked up at the giant, not daring to raise their guns, unsure whether to fight or flee. Meanwhile, the support team that had been alerted from behind felt the gentle breeze carrying the scent of flowers and grass freeze instantly.
Dr. Ron was still pointing at a picture of a tank with the general who commanded the Knights when Peter's piercing cry for help startled them both. They stared intently at the intricate details of the "KMF" giant tank—why were there so many Japanese cultural symbols?
"You must believe me, Your Excellency..." The Doctor was the first to break down, almost wetting himself in fear. "In every portal experiment our department has conducted, no one from Area 11 has been present... and it's impossible that anyone from the so-called 'Japanese Liberation Front' or the Black Knights used us to escape to another world..."
"I haven't said anything yet, what, are you admitting it without being asked?" The general's face was almost contorted with rage, and he slammed his fist on the table. "Then explain to me where these people from Area 11 came from? When did they build a KMF that's over 20 meters tall?!"
"Calm down, calm down! I know what to do! I'll take care of it!" In his haste, Dr. Ron typed out a Japanese phrase from his head and sent it to Peter and Alice on the other end. "Gentlemen, that was a polite phrase used by people from Area 11 when they reunite after a long separation. Quickly broadcast it to that big guy through the loudspeaker!"
They did as instructed, and thankfully, the mecha giant seemed to understand. It stopped glaring at them menacingly, raised its head, straightened its neck, and tucked in its limbs, adopting a military-style standing posture.
"It worked?" All the KMF pilots and Dr. Ron breathed a sigh of relief, but the general was even more furious now.
"You're still telling me you're not lying? How on earth did this big guy understand your language, the language of the Japanese?!"
"I... I was just taking a gamble! You have to believe me, Your Excellency!" Seeing the general pull out a pistol and point it at him, the doctor was so frightened that he almost knelt down and begged for mercy.
"Hey, wait a minute, everyone!" Alice suddenly called out. "This giant... seems to be talking to us on the radio?"
In a daze, the other end of the radio had repeated "Yoshirou-sama, Banzai" three times in full-band Japanese, but even though the general was about to pull the trigger, Dr. Ron really didn't understand what it meant.
"Long live His Majesty Yoshiro?" Thinking back, before and after Japan's conquest, no one in their government had a name or code name related to Yoshiro, not even the Black Knights, the Japanese Liberation Front, or even the Kyoto Six Families…
This delay led to a major disaster.
Seeing that no one reacted, the giant painted with the Rising Sun Flag immediately rekindled his killing intent. He took a horse stance, swung his arms in a wide arc, and charged towards the KMF members who were still standing there dumbfounded.
"This, so fast!" Peter and Alice were both terrified by this so-called "Area 11 artifact." Its two massive legs, as thick as the piers of a bridge spanning the sea, propelled this 20-meter-tall body to crush and overturn the wreckage of numerous "Hammer" tanks once again. With a final slide, it broke the entire KMF squad in two.
Splitting into two groups to escape from under the giant's feet was only possible for the survivors of the impact; the unfortunate ones were buried instantly by the torrent of sand created by its footprints. It was at this moment that everyone finally saw two Chinese characters written in an inconspicuous place on the giant's back: Ghost King.
"Fire at will!" As soon as Peter and Alice gave the order, the KMF soldiers, holding recoilless rifles, aimed at the Ghost King's waist, hips, and knees and fired—this was the best way for Princess Cornelia's troops to deal with the big guy Barmides when they conquered the Middle Eastern Federation.
The Ghost King remained completely unmoved. Even as the recoilless rifle bullets repeatedly struck its supposedly "fragile" joints, it showed not the slightest tremor or audible whistling. Turning around, its eyes began to flash even more brightly, followed by two parallel flashes accompanied by a thunderous roar, sweeping across the Sunderland tanks still frozen in place firing. The KMF's steel body instantly shattered like a bursting hydrogen balloon, turning into a pile of charred, twisted debris amidst flames and sparks.
Peter and Alice, along with the few surviving KMFs, ran desperately into the forest, almost forgetting to turn back and fight back. Finally, just as the Demon King was firing its second volley from its eyes, its attention was drawn to something else—the support team at the nearby portal spotted the Demon King's massive head as it charged. Realizing the danger, they immediately opened fire with their assault cannons.
"Tell Peter and Alice to retreat immediately!" Clearly, the support team was also too frightened to prioritize the general and the doctor's orders. The assault gun shells struck the Ghost King's back, but failed to breach its armor. However, when the Ghost King instinctively turned around, the outline of the assault gun easily matched the enemy vehicles it knew so well from its own database.
Leaving behind the KMFs, which were minuscule in comparison to himself, Ghost King turned around to catch his breath and began his mad dash once more, this time aiming at the support team futilely fighting back around the only assault gun. The instant he burst out of the woods, he suddenly leaped nearly ten meters into the air, simultaneously raising his right arm high, clenching his three remaining fingers into a fist, and upon landing, smashed everything beneath his palm like a meteorite.
"Doctor! The giant's force was so great that it cracked the ground and created a crater. The portal is about to collapse because it's suspended in mid-air!"
"Quickly shut down and restart! I'll fix the data right away! ...My God, if the knights don't come back, I'm really doomed..."
……
The Ghost King chased after them again, all within a minute. The once invincible KMF on the battlefield was reduced to scurrying around like an ant in front of a child, utterly pathetic.
Sunderland and Gloucester shared the same fate as the fragile tree trunks around them; wherever the Ghost King's feet trod, they left footprints that were nothing more than a mixture of wood, steel, and sand; wherever his death ray swept across, twisted skeletons struggled in the raging forest fires.
The Ghost King's pure white alloy armor had only a few smooth black spots on it. When shells hit it, the flames and smoke that were extinguished in the blink of an eye turned into dust and fragments that drifted away with the wind and fell lightly like snowflakes back into the tracks of the KMFs.
"We'll all die if this continues!" Finally, one of the knights refused to obey Peter and Alice's orders. He drew the MVS sword from his Gloucester and charged straight at the Ghost King. He desperately dodged the barrage of death ray cannons and got close to the Ghost King's ankle. Just as the Ghost King was about to stomp on him, he threw the wire-guided grappling hook from Gloucester's chest onto the Ghost King's thigh.
Watching Gloster effortlessly climb onto its thigh with the help of the steel cable, the Ghost King was clearly taken aback by this reckless young man's unconventional approach—it dared not point the death ray cannon directly at its own leg, as that would be very damaging to its armor.
Peter and Alice watched the young man's every move from afar, and were also watching the Ghost King's next move.
Gloucester's MVS sword attempted to break through the inner bend behind the Ghost King's knee, but amidst the flying sparks, the alloy structure showed no deformation. The Ghost King bent down to reach for it with his fingers, but Gloucester nimbly dodged, dashing along the back of its thigh towards its hip, and then forcefully chopped at its groin, but to everyone's dismay, the Ghost King's torso remained unmoved.
Just as the Ghost King's fingers were about to grab him again, a figure he had just met appeared in front of the young man and Gloucester, who was about to slip away—the mechanical dragonfly, about the size of a middle school child, had flown back at some point. The moment its three pairs of mechanical legs touched the KMF, the young man felt a jolt throughout his entire body. Gloucester's engine seemed to deflate like a punctured balloon, and for some reason, it could no longer operate at full power.
"No, no!" At the critical moment, the Ghost King's fingers caught him and Gloucester as they were about to fall to the ground. Three fingers held it between his fingers and presented it to the Ghost King's eyes, staring at the ant that was about to be crushed—without any more last words, it was crushed in the Ghost King's huge palm in the blink of an eye, like a walnut being run over by a high-speed wheel.
In terms of size, strength, defense, and even agility, they were absolutely overwhelming. No one could have imagined that "KMF" would one day humiliate their original creators in such a way. The sharpness of the death ray cannon still flashed between the eyes of the Ghost King. He stepped over the corpses of more than thirty Gloucester and Sunderland vehicles and continued to hunt mercilessly.
It even knows how to learn, just like humans. Peter and Alice watched from afar as the Ghost King peeled the steel cable of the grappling hook from the shattered remains of Gloucester, wrapped one end of the cable, which stretched for tens of meters, around his fingertips, and then swung his arm at the fleeing KMFs, tripping one Sunderland and Gloucester after another, burning them to the ground with his death ray.
The inconspicuous yet eerie mechanical dragonfly was also chasing these KMFs, taking advantage of their unpreparedness to climb onto their bodies and repeating its old tricks to prevent the puppets' engines from operating at full power. Then, before the death sentence of the Ghost King's cannon fire arrived, it quietly flew away with its back to the fragments of the KMFs.
Alice also became one of the many who were caught in the trap, but fortunately she jumped out of the hatch and escaped the danger zone before the death ray cannon fired. Now, apart from her lover, it seems that the only thing she can rely on is the Iron Hammer Tank next to her, which was overturned by the Ghost King earlier and is now crooked in the crack of the rocks.
"This does seem to be Russian... Maybe I can get it to do something?"
After understanding Alice's meaning, Peter, as the last survivor, quickly used his MVS spear to cut the incoming mechanical dragonfly in two, then turned and followed the Demon King.
The turret of the Hammer Tank could still barely move. Alice hurriedly aimed the sights at the Ghost King's head and pulled the trigger, but with a bang from the ammunition belt and breechblock, the bullet hit the Ghost King's lips and teeth, leaving only a faint scratch.
But this made the Ghost King hesitate. Could it be that in its program, the hammer had a higher priority than KMF, even after being learned by artificial intelligence? Peter's Gloucester took the opportunity to attach the grappling hook and flew at an extremely fast speed along the thigh and hip to the Ghost King's back. Just a second before the arm was about to swing, it hid under one of its shoulder armor plates.
"In the next life, I will still rush ahead of you, Alice." Peter said, fighting back tears. Just as the Ghost King was about to fire at the Hammer Tank in the distance, he flipped over its head, rushed to the Ghost King's face, and thrust the MVS spear at the already preheated Death Ray Cannon.
As Peter's Gloucester vanished amidst sparks and flames, Alice abruptly wiped away her tears—his desperate gamble had paid off. The Ghost King's head, equipped with the death ray cannon, burst open like a tank cannon barrel that had exploded due to a foreign object blocking it, revealing a glimpse of the internal components beneath the alloy armor.
It seemed that the Ghost King's target acquisition device was also on its face, and the Death Ray Cannon began to fire randomly in directions other than the Hammer Tank. At this moment, she noticed something on the control panel that she hadn't noticed before—"'Tsar's Extraction Beam"?
After activating this strange device, the sound of the tank's ammunition belt locking up came from the hammer. In its place, the previously strange-looking "boiler port" in the center of the front of the vehicle started making intermittent noises, and the crosshair on the fire control panel also changed accordingly.
Will this help? Alice nervously aimed the crosshair at the Ghost King's disfigured face and pressed the activation button for the beam.
An even more terrifying scene unfolded, than anything they had just witnessed. A beam of green light, like a vine, climbed up the Ghost King's head. Then, the once indestructible alloy armor on the Ghost King's face began to peel off piece by piece. Fragments flying into the boiler opening at the front of the vehicle devoured chunks of armor like a meat grinder. Alice then noticed that the dented wounds and peeling paint on the Iron Hammer Tank were beginning to heal, and the turret could even rotate flexibly.
However, following the direction in which the armor fragments fell, the Ghost King learned her location and began to grope his way over like a blind man, even as more and more of the armor on his face was being peeled off and cut into pieces.
Just then, the control panel of the Tsar Beam seemed to scan something, and Alice then saw something being removed from the Ghost King's shattered skull—it looked like the location where the Death Ray Cannon's eyes were installed.
One electronic component after another, metal units continued to fly onto the Hammer Tank, but instead of filling the armor, they concentrated on the inexplicable "left armrest" of the turret. Gradually, Alice could hardly believe her eyes—the Ghost King's Death Ray Cannon, along with its power supply, was actually being reassembled on the Hammer Tank's turret?!
Following the somewhat familiar instructions on the control panel, she turned off the beam and aimed both the tank cannon and the death ray cannon at the Ghost King's nearly empty head. Sparks flew as the crosshair locked onto the severed head and neck joints, and then the death ray cannon that had previously filled everyone with terror roared out from Alice's hand, completely transforming the Ghost King's skull into a giant torch.
“Alice calling command, please respond…” Thick smoke began to billow from the chest of the swaying headless ghost king, and bursts of fire would occasionally emerge, but there was still no response from the other side of the portal.
With a soft sigh, Alice calmly remained in the turret compartment of the hammer, tears streaming down her face as the Ghost King was about to fall and crash into the tank. "Are you waiting for me, Peter? We can finally be free from all those constraints and go to heaven together..."
……
No one survived; Dr. Ron's portal was ultimately too late.
All KMFs, including the Knights Order, were torn to pieces by the Demon King, leaving no audio or video records. Naturally, no one knew about this desperate duel. "Killing a Knights Order that had just emerged from its cradle, this is the most disgraceful day since the establishment of the 'Eternal Protocol'," the Doctor coldly recorded.
As for the general? He was indeed going to execute Dr. Ron directly, but who knew that the two people named Peter and Alice were his son and daughter-in-law. Upon hearing this, the general suffered a heart attack on the spot and eventually died.
What legacy was left behind? A few pieces of the Ghost King's armor wreckage were salvaged for analysis, the details of the Death Ray Cannon were handed over to the Hadron Cannon department, and as for the Hammer Tank's mysterious beam? The engineers frantically disassembled the remaining intact parts of the tanks, but failed to assemble a complete and effective beam emitter, which was eventually forgotten in some corner.
Besides that? It seems that the words "Soviet Union" and "Japan" are visible on the Hammer Tank and the Ghost King Mech. Years later, when Her Highness Elizabeth, as the defeated commander, recalls the cause and effect of this event, combined with Area 45's memories of Japan and the Soviet Union, she will probably forever wander in the abyss of fear of these two countries.
Chapter 240 Special Volume: The Soviet Union - The Undying Siberian Red Bear
With only a handful of sunrises remaining until the end of 1945, the year was drawing to a close.
Today is December 29th. The sun rises over Moscow as usual, shining brightly over the Kremlin dome at noon as usual.
Four years ago, the anti-aircraft balloons that blanketed the great capital and the shadow of war defeat had long since vanished; and in the years that followed, Nazi swastikas were burned time and again over Eastern European cities, while the thunderous cannon salutes that rang out over Moscow still echoed in the buildings surrounding Red Square. The solemn yet excited steps of Soviet soldiers marching in formation, carrying captured Nazi flags, past Lenin's Mausoleum undoubtedly made this 45-year winter seem less icy.