Austin reached Level 94 while bolting a new cover over the damaged relay platform.
The floorplates bowed. His core grew to roughly one-third of Earth’s mass, and twin plasma columns burst from the magnetic chokes on his back. They punched through the roof and floor before Tie could add the next lead slug.
“Fourteen hundred pounds!” Austin shouted. “And get everyone out of the jet path!”
Tie locked the slug into place. The dampers rose to fourteen hundred RPM.
Austin stared at the holes. “I liked that roof. A building inspector would red-tag the whole yard for this.”
With ceramic-lined elbows, he turned the jets away from the structure. Dara made him test them inside an empty target field before she would clear the bay. The jets could cut through a warship’s armor. They could also cut through a city. Austin added a mechanical lock so they could not swing toward an inhabited route by accident. “Next time I need to cut steel,” he said, “I don’t need a torch. I just lean forward.”
The rest of the chapter was not battle. It was cleanup.
Crews replaced the relay cover, patched the roof, and logged the damaged insulation. Factories on Crimson Forge stayed on reduced shifts for another day. The public council moved power from smelters to hospitals, water pumps, and the rescue fleet. Every allocation appeared on the public board, with the reason and the time of the next review.
