If there's something wrong, blame Sagittarius!
The prototype golem, ten meters tall, rose from its prone position, descended to the seabed when it started moving.
Sagittarius in the cockpit was excited.
"Just like in the movies!" Sagittarius had loaded the driving manual from the blacksmith earlier, enough to know what each button did. He explored with awe.
The foot pedals were operated with both feet as instructed. The golem, standing on the ocean floor, began to walk!
"Amazing!!!" The kid with a new toy shouted, losing his almost thirty-year-old adult composure entirely.
Sagittarius's inner child fully awakened. He impulsively decided to use the golem's two hands to part the water.
Inside the cockpit, Sagittarius felt a subtle force pushing the golem forward faster!
Sagittarius grinned cunningly, then pressed the pedal with his foot. The golem leaped once.
"Frog kick coming up!" The face of a joyous ten-year-old child appeared on Sagittarius's default expression.
"Oh!" But it only managed a few strokes before the extremely heavy golem crashed back onto the ocean floor.
Thud!
But Sagittarius didn't give up, he jumped again...
The thudding sounds and vibrations felt by those on the shore weren't from walking but from the golem belly-flopping because the frog kick didn't float.
Can't help it, everyone has different urges and desires. This man's mad desire was only to drive a giant robot.
But this craziness had a benefit, swimming made the golem's front parallel to the ocean floor, and Sagittarius saw something.
He grinned slyly and continued towards the shore.
As the water got shallower, swimming became harder until eventually, he walked ashore, hands still moving as if swimming... thus the scene everyone saw.
But the people of Lanhai City didn't think the golem was swimming the frog stroke!
Three seconds after their shock at the giant golem coming ashore, their brains started working again.
Screams!!! The first male player supporting LanLan HaiEr shrieked and ran away first.
The players who had just been impressed by LanLan HaiEr all scattered in different directions, some colliding and falling, some screaming, pure chaos, not a single hint of resistance.
From the golem's cockpit, Sagittarius watched the crowd running in panic, fleeing for their lives.
"Even though they wouldn't actually die, why run so crazily??" He was puzzled, not realizing his frog-like movements terrified them senseless.
Seeing people running like this, Sagittarius guessed that LanLan HaiEr would soon surrender. Thus, he decided to test the golem's movement and limits as much as possible.
"1...2... Hup!"
"1...2... Hup!"
"1...2... Hup!"
LanLan HaiEr froze after hearing the scream. She turned around to look at her comrades, only to find that each one had run away for their lives, leaving behind only emptiness.
Both players and NPCs had vanished.
Her city's defensive force of five thousand had fled!
LanLan HaiEr remained rooted to the spot, standing alone at the dock, staring blankly at the golem. She murmured sadly,
"We lost... We lost without even a fight."
As she was about to press the surrender button, she saw the giant golem making strange gestures. It squatted and then swung its arms.
Could it be... trying to generate more momentum?
LanLan HaiEr turned pale. In no time, the golem launched itself into the air, jumping!
It leaped over her head... LanLan HaiEr looked up, following it, and then
Boom!... Boom!... Boom!
Because her city wasn't very large, and the dock was adjacent to the northern and southern city walls, the golem crossed the city in three diagonal jumps, exiting to the south.
LanLan HaiEr saw her city being trampled three times by this golem and cried out,
"Nooo!"
LanLan HaiEr collapsed to the ground, utterly drained, like a little girl being bullied by a burly man.
Ten warships docked at the now undefended port. The soldiers of Sagittarius disembarked without shedding a drop of blood.
Melon-chan walked alongside Mina. Seeing a young girl at the dock looking faint, she hurried to support her. Unfortunately, there was no smelling salt in the game, so she turned to Mina, who was a priestess, and asked her to heal the girl. But Mina shook her head and said that the girl's HP and MP were still full, so she couldn't heal her.
Melon-chan remained worried about the girl but was also curious to see the golem.
She followed Sagittarius to witness this new item being tested up close. She then helped the young girl walk toward the southern city wall."
After jumping down in front of the city wall, which was an open area of several hundred meters, it became an ideal place for a full-scale test.
"Take a note... Agility is okay, but the maximum jump isn't quite there."
"Alright, next, let's try running."
Thump thump thump thump thump, the giant golem started running back and forth in short rounds.
"Good running. Now, try using the weapon on your back."
Sagittarius pressed the button to select the only weapon available.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
LanLan Haier almost fainted when Melon-chan took her up the city wall to watch. Upon seeing the golem brandishing a huge sword drawn from its back, slashing at thin air, the sound of the blade cutting through the air made her pass out!
Melon-chan did not notice that her companion had fainted; she supported her with one arm while her eyes were excitedly fixed on the golem swinging its sword.
Mina walked up to the other side of LanLan Haier, glanced at the girl for a moment, then smiled without saying anything.
With the city lord, who needed to surrender, now fainted, no one pressed the surrender button.
The soldiers of Chandra City did not occupy the city hall or fortifications but merely stationed themselves at the docks to defend against warships. Thus, the system did not deem Lanhai City defeated.
Her master likely had some more time to play with this robot.
Melon-chan asked with a mix of curiosity and excitement, "Sagittarius doesn't have swordsmanship skills, does he? So how can he use sword techniques?"
It seemed she was also a fan of Gundam.
Mina replied, "The golem is loaded with data files of various attack moves. If you press the correct command buttons, the golem will perform those moves. It's not necessary to have the skills themselves."
Melon-chan nodded vigorously and exclaimed, "Like the old console games with joysticks, where you had to press up, down, left, right, square, triangle."
The golem stopped moving, then approached them. The chest cover of the golem opened, and Sagittarius jumped down, saying, "Give it a try, Melon-san, before the other side surrenders."
Melon-chan's eyes sparkled as she nodded eagerly. It turned out she was also a Gundam enthusiast.
The advertisement has been released. The ending scene caused quite a stir. The silhouette of people sitting together at a round table appears, then the image splits into two very similar sides.
The left image shows a large golem wielding a giant sword, swinging left and right, striking diagonally and pausing. The right image shows a similarly-sized golem wielding a glowing green-tinged iron club, performing multiple swings and assuming a pause position simultaneously with the golem holding the sword.
Both golems are staged with a zoom into the city wall, revealing a man in a mage outfit and another in a bishop's attire. Both men stand with their arms crossed, expressions full of confidence. Behind them, the flags of their respective cities flutter...
There is no need to name the figures; everyone knows exactly who these two men are!
The war in the city of Sirius was a crushing defeat, greatly discouraging the players.
But this ending scene immediately reignited the fighting spirit of players across the server.
Comment 355: "The clip and eyewitness accounts were released even before this advertisement!"
Comment 356: "That's right. Our friend was in Lanhai city and saw Sagittarius use just one golem to invade the city, forcing the city lord LanLan HaiEr to surrender and become a vassal state."
Comment 357: "This is the first time Sagittarius has accepted a vassal state. Usually, he just conquers without giving the other side a chance to surrender as a vassal."
Comment 358: "Probably because he didn't want Lanhai city within his territory."
Comment 359: "Never mind that! It reassures us that even though we lost eight cities in a row in a crushing defeat, we still haven't lost to the dwarves. The five metropolis lords are still intact; we can be at ease."
Comment 360: "I wholeheartedly agree. I call for the five lords to join in the next dwarf suppression!"
Comment 361: "Hey, Comment 360, be realistic... 'join'? They are the lords of the metropolis, the strongest forces on the server. Now that there's a golem that can invade cities alone, who else on this server is more suitable to lead the suppression than these five?"
LunLun HaiEr read the comments below the ad for a moment and could only sigh. Yesterday, she passed out severely until the capsule machine detected abnormalities in her body, ejecting her from the server and calling an ambulance to her condo.
After the ambulance made her inhale ammonia to wake up and recover from the shock, LunLun HaiEr braced herself and returned to the game to see if Sagittarius had left her any city to manage.
With such a terrifying golem, her small city was surely doomed. When LunLun HaiEr opened her eyes, she found herself still on the city wall, seeing men and women taking turns entering the driver's seat to control that golem. Her city was minimally damaged, with only a few houses collapsing due to the golem's three long jumps.
Back in the present, after reading the rapidly increasing comments, she began to understand why Sagittarius chose her city and used the golem to intimidate her. It was to demonstrate the might of Luna Metropolis's army, both to intimidate and to rally everyone, shaking the entire server.
"It's really my own doing," she thought. If she hadn't provided refuge to Sagittarius' rival for the water attack, the target of both intimidation and rallying would have been someone else.
Though LunLun HaiEr's conclusions aligned with the intentions of the five metropolis lords who discussed with the CEO, they did not match Sagittarius's deeper desire to pilot a Gundam, which had nothing to do with intimidation or rallying.