Prelude: A Fallen Clan

Clan Hoshino Maintenance Facility

Sengoku Empire

The Great Plateau

Month of the Qilin 15, 172 ,328 DE

In the maintenance facility of Clan Hoshino, the Glory of Hoshino, the clan's only remaining Metal Giant stood in the center maintenance bay. Scaffolding surrounded Metal Giant, and the clan's Engineers and Apprentice Engineers swarmed over the scaffolding. Under the direction of three Master Engineers, the Journeyman and Apprentice Engineers were installing the last of the armor plates.

Having the rough shape of a human clad in a set of Bushi armor, the Glory of Hoshino stood nearly fifty meter tall. Beneath what looked like the helm from a set of Bushi armor, the "face" of the Metal Giant looked more like a demon than a human, but that was a common characteristic of all the Metal Giants.

At the back of the Glory of Hoshino, Grandmaster Engineer Hoshino Akito climbed into the Metal Giant's control crypt and looked around. Once the maintenance was completed, the control coffin of the Sacred Elder would be returned to mounting in the center of the crypt, and the Metal Giant would live once more. No matter the clan that owned it, every Metal Giant was piloted by a Sacred Elder of the clan.

The Sacred Elders were chosen form among the strongest elders of a clan. They were men or women, who had reached the end of their lifespan and would be unable to make a breakthrough to a higher realm of Cultivation before dying. Those elder, who were chosen and accepted the position, were sealed into the control coffins for Metal Giants, becoming Sacred Elders. The control coffins could extend the lifespan of a strong Cultivator by hundreds of years, if not more than a thousand, and as Sacred Elders, they would control a Metal Giant until the control coffins could no longer sustain their lives.

Taking a monocle from a dimensional storage ring, he held it up to his left eye and examined the plugs on the coffin connection cables. They had all been replace during the current maintenance cycle, and the gold alloy from which they were fabricated gleamed under the actinic glare of the electric lights. The monocle had a magnification of over one hundred times. He did not see any imperfections in the surface the plugs and nodded in satisfaction.

As Grandmaster Hoshino removed it from his storage ring, a machine appeared in midair, and he set down on the floor of the crypt. Before he could connect the testing machinery to the connections cables, a glint of reflected light caught his eye. With the exception of jacks on the connection cables, every surface in they crypt was dull grey of black metal. Grandmaster Hoshino squatted down and stared intently at a few drop of oily fluid, which had reflected the light. He wiped his fingertip through one of the drop, and seeing the polychromatic sheen of the dark fluid, he rubbed it between his index finger and thumb.

"Oil?" Grandmaster Hoshino mumbled to himself and sniffed the fluid on his fingers. With a grimace at the foul smell, he pulled a rag out of pocket and wiped his fingers before wiping the other drops off the floor.

Standing up, Grandmaster Hoshino frowned and carefully examined the ceiling of the crypts and dozens of pipe and cable crisscrossing it. After taking a clear crystal from his storage ring, he inserted Yuan Qi into it and show the resulting beam of light on the ceiling, but he could not find any source for the drops of foul smelling oil. After putting away the crystal, Grandmaster Hoshino scowled at nothing in particular.

"Damned juniors get sloppier and lazier with each generation. The Masters need to train their Apprentices and Journeyman better. Time for docking some merit points from everyone in the Engineering Department." While complaining about his subordinates, Grandmaster Hoshino connected the jacks to the testing machine for a final check before reinstalling the Sacred Elder's coffin.

When finished his tests and left the crypt, seeming unaware of what he was doing, Grandmaster Hoshino was repeatedly rubbing his right hand on the coveralls he wore. His eyes almost seemed to glow like an animal's in the dim light of the maintenance hanger, and as they saw the ferocious expression on his face, the clan's other Engineers looked away,.burying themselves in their work.

* * * * *

Unseen in the shadows at the back corner of the maintenance hanger, the man called Cross watched as a group of Apprentice Engineers pushed a large cart into the hanger. Laying on the center of the cart, the coffin was made from dull black metal. Its irregular shape made it look like a hexagon with its lower half stretched out. The hundreds of sigils adorning its rough surface glowed in a myriad of colors, and even from over sixty meters away, Cross could feel the intensity of the raw Power fused into the coffin.

The occupant should be a Martial Lord, but I cannot detect a trace of his presence through the coffin. I can not tell if My Lady's Chaos infusion will be able to affect the occupant or not. While staring at the coffin as it was hauled up to the Metal Giant's crypt with a crane, Cross frowned, but as soon as it disappear from sight, his face returned to an expressionless mask.

A shadow among shadows, Cross left the hanger.

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