Gazing upon the utter mess of the battlefield, it finally dawned on Acrisius that his glorious future might not last much longer.

Then the communicator inside his pocket bleeped.

With every eye watching, Acrisius took out the magical equivalent of the cell-phone and answered his caller.

Rem noticed that action and issued the order, “Ehto, tapped it.”

“I am on it, Dream,” Ehto voice replied from the octopus.

Acrisius listened to the devilish bargain from that tiny device like it was worth his entire career.

“Well, my friend, it looks like this is the end of the road,” said the voice of Nereo Melosov. “I have some Hail Maries left,” the voice hesitated, “but I want to make sure you will be thrown under my plan. It is going to be messy, but I totally understand quitting now.”

Rem’s face sank. Aw crap, that was the classic reverse psychology. He must order Ehto to cut the connection at once. He doubted the tactic would stop the mysterious Nereo Melosov, but beggar couldn’t be a chooser. He needed to slow down whatever was about to happen.

As usual, Rem was too late when it mattered the most.

“Go ahead!” Acrisius’ voice was that of the desperate man. “Do anything you want!”

…

History often deviated when it record how the battle proceeded, but all the statement from all involved wrote the same fact.

Everyone had underestimated the shadowy researcher hanging behind the mythical villain of Duke Acrisius. It was at that moment Nereo Melosov showed the world what he was capable of. Even the Horizon Dawn who had stood tall and triumph against various threats admitted the Hidden Vault Showdown was an unexpectedly even battle because of this one man.

Yes, the Dawn technically won, but Dream, Chronicler and Architect never counted themselves the victor because one man pulled out ahead.

It was for this development, and his subsequent escape, that Remus Breaker awarded Nereo with a title. It was an honor he didn’t reserve for Palisade, Ehto Shaxter, Orwell Mehest, or El Acerbia. Yes, Rem said they were intelligent, but Nereo was another story.

In the Horizon Dawn's file, Nereo Melosov was classified as a Darkseid-level threat. The highest of the five classifications of Condiment, Light, Atomic, Luthor and Darkseid. His moniker was a simple reason Rem used to encapsulate why he ranked alongside the multiversal threats and cosmic beings.

Rem feared Nereo Melosov as The World Smartest Man.

…

The first to feel the effect of Nereo’s shenanigan was Melody.

Beneath her feet, the originally docile Earthshaker erupted with power. Its black scale turned sparkling blue, and its six-eyes erupted into crimson flames. The burst of power blasted Melody off the dragon’s snout as it thrashed from the power-surge. The humongous beast took into the air and spread it three-pairs of wings wide enough to cover the sky.

And those wings flapped.

The effect was immediate. Mana burst outward from each wing beats like a volcanic eruption. A suspended explosion that couldn’t be contained rippled through the canyon, causing massive landslide which buried every fighter regardless of allegiance under a mountain of rubble.

But the heaviest hit was the Hidden Vault itself. The secret treasure trove was directly below Earthshaker’s sudden ascension and the intense Mana storm cratered the valley housing the treasure. The crushing pressure flattened the canyon itself, along with the Vault, into molten rock.

Still, the berserk dragon wasn’t completed it in attempt annihilation. With a roar, the intense will within its Mana gathered the cloud across the Tengen continent to the wrecked valley. Storms and winds raged as a gloomy cloud blanket the 12-million-kilometer square worth of Centuria.

From the tumultuous cloud, crimson lightning rained in wrathful strike across the nation. Various cities toppled and trembled beneath the Earthshaker's rage. Cries of terrified citizens rose as the battle officially escalated to a terrifying degree within mere second.

…

The ground zero of such incident, the Hidden Vault’s valley, was utterly ruined with Rem’s hope for a clean, quick victory vanished with it.

In the site of the massive avalanches, flooded to the brim with rubbles, several rocks levitated as Rem dug himself out of the epic landslide, carrying a spotless but shaken Penelope with him.

“Okay,” Rem spoke to himself. “How the hell did the dragon recovered?”

Beside him, several rocks shifted and a lightning bolt blasted out as Phillips Odysseus dug himself from the ocean of boulders with Atlanta’s unconscious body on his shoulder.

He wasn’t the only one.

Debris shifted as people rose from the impromptu burial, but the dragon carnage took its toll. Out of over two-hundred thousand troop, only 56890 survived the bombardment.

Of course, the most annoying players were still alive.

ZZZ Millione and Elish Metis emerged as a pair from the hole. Their clothing was tattered. Millione herself looked like she had been holding a concert in Amazon rainforest for a month. Meanwhile, Metis looked as if he had been caught in an explosion.

Elin Rockshooter blasted herself out relatively unharmed, but judging from the blood on her cloth, her fellow S-ranker from the Isle of Knowledge didn’t make the cut.

Duke Acrisius rose from the rubble. His shirt was gone, revealing the toned body above his tattered trouser.

Various soldiers and lucky survivors dug themselves from the earth, thanking whatever cosmic entity keeping them alive.

And of course, like lightning, Luxinna rejoined the fray in a positive health. Beside her, the rock quaked and Hikma walked out of his burial on a perfectly shaped stair.

Acrisius laughed like a madman as he enjoyed the sight of the new and enhanced bloody Earthshaker, “Nereo, you are freaking awesome!”

“All your troop is dead, moron,” Rem said. “You are the biggest loser here.”

But Rem was wrong.

The World Smartest Man struck again.

Beneath them, the battlefield exploded.

Flood of flesh from hundred-thousand men rose as one in a form of bloody abomination. Pieces of armor decorated the squirming meat told the entire story. One looked at Acrisius' color dotting the lumbering tower of muscle, blood and gore flowing up the sky as the solid proved that the 113000 people who sided with Acrisius were absorbed into the abomination hanging over them.

“A blood golem,” Hikma recognized something similar from Venistalis. “Acrisius! What are you doing?” the normally mild-manner Hikma was enraged. “Those are your own men!”

But Acrisius responded in an enchanted, maddened trance, “Incredible. This is fantastic!”

Rem gritted his teeth. The Duke lost his mind. The event happening was too much for that idiot's brain to fathom, but the question was how did this monster arrive when they weren’t looking?

The answer came from the smartest woman in the canyon.

“Dream,” the voice of Satholia herself emerged from the octopus. “Look carefully at the flesh monster. See those thin glowing lines? Scan the image and sent it to Architect, I need to confirm something.”

Rem followed her instruction and noticed faint strands of lightcoursing through the flash monster. He quickly realized the light frequency hiked, and a vision struck his [Clairvoyance].

Shit.

“Everyone! Take cover!” Rem took an image with the multi-purpose octopus and dove back into the hole he emerged from with Penelope.

Luxinna disappeared in a flash.

Hikma sped to the gawking Phillip and dragged him and the unconscious Atlanta into smoking pit. He jumped down with both of them and plugged the entrance with [Trinity].

Seeing the most threatening group of individuals took a dive, Elish Metis took a clue and shove ZZZ Millione back into the ground they came out of.

The toward of flesh worth a thousand people coursed with energy, thousands of pores emerged around the tower, and from them, came countless beams of heat. Troops failing to find cover in time were skewered by the lance of heat that easily penetrated shield and armor. The high temperature attack immediately boiled the victim’s blood, bursting limbs and organs. Several heads burst from being punched directly with the heat ray. The tower of flesh wasn’t finished, a gaping mouth warped at its tip and torrential high temperature beam spew forth as the abomination tower hosed the entire canyon in heat rays. The torrect of heat radiation penetrated the canyon entrance and exploded a camping siege engine Eurytheus loaned from the Isle of Knowledge, punching through its magical protection like a piece of paper.

Finally, the tower stopped, leaving a red-hot path in its wake.

Rem poked his head from the steaming ground agian. He looked at the molten rock the flesh tower laser beams reduce two-third of the canyon into. It was clear. This wasn’t your classic flesh golem. Flesh golem didn’t come with a torch capable of destroying an entire city in one careless wave.

It was then Ehto arrived with the gloomy analysis.

“Dream, I deciphered the electromagnetic and thermal reading,” the voice between the octopus huffed like the artificial intelligence barely escaped a meeting with the reaper. “If the analysis wasn’t wrong, that flesh operated with an electric component.” Ehto’s voice paused. “Very tiny machines. Shit. Dream, listen to me. That thing operated with nanobots. This is one of the most advance models I have ever seen.”

Rem asked lady misfortune how did the nano-machine got involved with this battle, then he realized that every soldier in Acrisius camp received a booster jab from one guy.

“Yeah,” Rem growled. “Take the shot they say.” He glanced at the lumbering monster of flesh that used to be humans. “Nothing will go wrong they say. Fucking hell, people should listen more to the Anti-vaxxer.”

“What?” Penelope asked, curious about her savior’s outburst.

“Nothing,” Rem said. “Just complaining about a childhood gripes.”

Then he realized the humongous dragon was about to throw down another round of death by lightning.

“Oh shit,” Rem realized Nereo Melosov had just shit on the entire battlefield.

The Earthshaker roared as another round of lightings slaughtered the country.

When it rained, it poured.

“Awesome!” Acrisius yelled amidst the falling lightning of heaven. “I fucking love you, Nereo!”

Despite the continuous barrages of lightning around her, one woman stood tall. She prided herself from the hole created after she got launched like a cannonball by the six-eyes freak outburst. She cracked her sore neck and flexed her finger. [Scarlet Brand Soul Gazer] appeared in her hand and morphed into a sword.

Melody Solarmaria rocketed into the Earthshaker, impaling the lance [Soul Gazer: Ara] into its chest and detonated the power.

The shock-wave rippled the sky and parted the cloud.

Melody refused to stop. Using [Void Surfer Manifestation], she entered her dragon form and punched with renew ferocity. A tiny ant-like glow of crimson blew the kilometer=long juggernaut, enhanced by steroid, away from the canyon.

Earthshaker recovered from its dazed and attempted slaughter the ant tormenting it with a breath to carve the ocean floor, but Melody was faster. She flew into close-quarter and closed the mouth full of charging breath in a kick, causing the energy to explode inside the dragon.

Not waiting for the lizard six-hundred times her size to recover from roasting its own mouth, Melody grabbed the humongous dragon by the nose and surreally threw it into the ground with enough force to cause Richter 5 Earthquake.

…

Rem picked himself from the high-voltage smiting from the stupid dragon. To be honest, he believed he could technically intercept those lightnings, but to his relief, Melody came in to save the day.

Rem got up and sincerely hoped the nanobot meat and the unpredictable dragon of the doom were the only surprise Nereo Melosov had prepared for them. He believed otherwise. Three was the golden numbers, and they were only two down.

“There will be third, isn’t it?” Hikma had accompanied Rem on so many mishaps he knew it wasn’t over.

It was Acrisius who unleased the curse of the Nereo the genius wish-granting genie.

“Melosov,” said the Duke, so drunk on power he didn’t realize the abomination his insane wishes had released. “I want Penelope dead!”

“Aww hell,” Rem’s [Clairvoyance] came with the bad news. “Ace! I think you are about to meet an old friend.”

Once again, the rubble exploded.

…

She, it, or whatever the pronoun anyone preferred was barely human. The monster, cladded in steel, rose from the debris and dust cloud like a mishappened puppet being pulled by the string. Purple light ran across the armored fiber optic that replaced her nerves. Her skin hissed as the machine composing her body whirled.

The chest and abdomen armor split, revealing a complex combination of Mana-circle and fusion battery for the heart. The internal organ and intestine had been hollowing out for sophisticated capacitor hooked to a force-field. Her rib and skeletons were converted into high-strength bio-alloy offered by Nano and Material technology. The legs clicked open, revealing a red-hot high-frequency blade sandwiched by an accelerator. The cyborg back shone as eight appendages, supported by unholy mixture of advance shape-memory-alloy-fiber, unfurled. Each of those appendages support different weapon; a pair of high-frequency chainsaw, a high-intensity laser, a bunker-busting nanite-disassembler rocket, and a pair of external barrier projector. Pair of human arms twisted, revealing the contraption that resembled the unholy love-child of mini-gun, cannon and rocket launcher. Her faceplate opened, revealing the human mouth and utter robotic face of fitted with eight different zoom lenses.

The monster screamed. Her body surged with Mana and spewed forth the mother of all sonic screams.

Rem dissipated the scream with Tutaminis, but the monstrous transformation was witnessed by everyone.

ZZZ Millione took one glance at the abomination and fainted on Elish’s shoulder. The normally crass Elish was utterly unused to this side of Millione. The combination of the cyborg transformation and the girl falling into his arms blew his world-view.

Elin Rockshooter stared and questioned what had the world had come into.

Acrisius laughed so hard you would convince a time-traveler gifted him the mythical PlayStation 6.

“Is that T-1000 meaner big sister?” Hikma asked Rem.

“That is Kakia,” Penelope was quivering like a hamster. “Nereo Melosov…”

Rem groaned, “Fuck me,” he glared at the heaven, “I know he might be problematic but this is just too insane.” Rem yelled. “Just how many doctorates this guy needs to create that?”

Kakia the Cyborg suddenly turned toward Rem. Her camera zoomed at Penelope behind him.

Phillip reacted to the coming threat by tackling the girl out of the coming attack and shielding her, “Look out!”

Kakia disappeared in a flash of purple and red. Rem whipped out the Central Magnum and caught the cyborg with an electric round in the head. Normally, that round would kill average machinery, but Kakia’s electricity grounding was something else entirely. The cyborg shrugged off Rem’s attack of like it was nothing.

Thankfully, the Dawn had a bigger bolt.

Luxinna flashed out of her nowhere in her berserker armor, kicking the rocketing Kakia into the sky.

“Do we need to worry about the law and precedent?” The elf called out to Rem.

“Not this time,” Rem noted the court-case down. “From what I can read, she is affectively euthanized by cyborgification. It is sad to say Kakia won’t be able to attend the hearing as a mechanical zombie.” Rem didn’t even pretend to be sad. “Sent her to the morgue, Ace.”

“With pleasure,” The elf vanished and pursued the mechanical terror in a bolt of lightning.