Standing halfway up Blackrock Mountain, I stared at the heavy silver alloy hatch we had just resealed.

  The memory of that desperate audio log—the one talking about the “descendants of interstellar colonists” and “ancient technology” in the South—still sent a cold spike down my spine.

  Just what kind of people were living in the Kingdom of Golden Sands?

  Right now, my primary objective was a massive strategic trade-off: Do I halt construction to avoid waking the Dragon King, or do I risk the noise to retrieve that chip, reboot the mass damping array, and stop this continent from physically tearing itself apart?

  And then there was the other massive variable: What the hell happened to Jasta?

  Grabbing Brad, I tracked down Mykra.

  “Any word from Jasta?” I asked.

  Mykra looked up from a stack of blueprints, his dead-fish eyes unusually grim. “...Boss, Mr. Jasta’s caravan... has gone dark. The three elite Eagle-kin scouts escorting him crossed the southern border—the ‘Wall of Sighs.’ The second they crossed, their communication crystals completely blacked out. Zero response.”

  “Dammit!”

  Brad slammed his fist into a nearby steel pillar. “You don't think those bastards calling themselves descendants of gods slaughtered the old fox, do you? I told him he shouldn't haul that much soap and glass into a hellhole like that!”

  “Cool your jets, Brad.”

  I rubbed my throbbing temples. “Jasta went down there to negotiate trade, not to assassinate a king. No matter how xenophobic the Kingdom of Golden Sands is, they aren't going to execute a merchant right at the border when his wagons are loaded with exotic tech. Jasta can talk a rock into buying sand; he wouldn't back himself into a fatal corner that easily. We hold our position and wait.”

  Even though I said the words, the anxiety in my chest was spreading like a grease fire.

  Over the next few days, the massive “Mountain Suture” reconstruction of Skyreach proceeded under an incredibly oppressive atmosphere.

  It wasn't just the MIA caravan grinding my gears. It was the earth beneath our boots.

  Walking through the lower city construction zones, I felt it.

  Every few hours, a faint, highly penetrating tremor rippled through the ground.

  It didn't feel like the chaotic friction of tectonic plates grinding together. It was too rhythmic. It felt exactly like a colossal, unimaginably heavy beast buried tens of thousands of meters below, taking slow, agonizingly deep breaths.

  To a standard human, the vibration was barely noticeable. But to the hyper-sensitive beast-kin of the wasteland, it was psychological torture.

  Passing by the main forge, I saw Bjorn, the massive bear-kin blacksmith, suddenly freeze mid-swing.

  His usually mild eyes instantly flooded with blood. The hackles on his massive frame stood rigid, wire-stiff with an ancient, primal dread. A low, profoundly disturbed growl rattled in his throat as he stared at the dirt, acting as if the floor was about to split open and swallow him whole.

  It wasn't just him.

  A few Cat-kin toddlers who normally spent all day sprinting and chattering through the alleys suddenly clamped their hands over their long ears, retreating into corners and shivering in absolute terror.

  Even Lyn, our usually unflappable Treasurer, was affected. While taking inventory on the loading dock, the second that faint tremor hit, her bushy tail involuntarily puffed up and went rigid as a board.

  This was an instinctual, genetic terror of an apex predator, hardwired straight into their bloodlines.

  I altered my route and walked into the framing of the new cliffside general hospital. Priestess Ela was carefully wrapping bandages over a wolf-kin laborer who had taken a nasty burn from a ruptured high-pressure steam line.

  Hearing my boots on the planks, Ela looked up. Her clear eyes carried an exhaustion and dread she couldn't hide.

  “Lord Builder...” she murmured, glancing out the window at the smog-stained sky. “That thing beneath us... its dreams are disrupting the Natural cycle of this entire region. A moment ago, I could actually feel the Peacebloom in the herbal greenhouse—the plants most sensitive to ambient mana—beginning to wither.”

  Looking at Ela’s exhausted face, and watching Bjorn and Lyn grinding their teeth to keep the city running outside, the internal pressure inside me hit the redline.

  I could not let this city—this sanctuary we had bled to build, these people who fought so hard just to survive in this brutal world—get wiped out by an irreversible geological collapse.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  To get a better read on the exact threat level of the South, I headed to Elder Carl’s tent.

  I asked him to dump every piece of ancient mythology he knew regarding the “Kingdom of Golden Sands.”

  Elder Carl let out a heavy sigh.

  “Builder, I have constantly advised against your massive industrial expansions on this mountain. But at this point, the fury of the earth has already been ignited. We can only leave it to fate.”

  He picked up a stick and traced a crude map in the dirt.

  “In our oldest hymns, the southern region of Valsaria is an endless desert of death. At the absolute edge of that wasteland sits the Golden Empire. The humans who rule the South are known in our myths as the 'Sun-Stealers'.”

  “Sun-Stealers?” I frowned.

  “Yes. The legends say that two thousand years ago, during the ‘Twilight of the Gods,’ they betrayed the High Creator who remained in the North. They stole the 'Heart that Stabilizes the Earth' and fled to the eternally flowing oases of the South.”

  Elder Carl’s voice dropped into a tone of deep reverence and dread.

  “Using that Heart, they erected a barrier in the desert that no mortal can ever cross—the 'Wall of Sighs'. It is said to be an invisible shield forged from pure gold and glass. Anyone who touches it is instantly reduced to ash.”

  “They proclaimed themselves descendants of the gods, enslaving any beast-kin foolish enough to wander close. That is exactly why, for centuries, neither the most savage Wolf Kings nor the Eagle-kin who dominated the sky ever dared push past the southern desert border. The North fights the North. No one touches the South.”

  Staring at the crude map in the dirt, my brain shifted into high gear.

  Armed with the perspective of an engineer from Earth, I rapidly stripped away the mystical bullshit and mapped his mythology directly onto the hard data I had pulled from the E.D.E.N. bunker:

  [The Heart that Stabilizes the Earth] = [The Main Processing Chip for the Mass Damper].

  [Invisible shield forged from pure gold and glass] = [A massive electromagnetic/high-energy radiation defense array], powered by the processing chip, utilizing gold superconducting wire and superheated sand (silicon/glass)!

  The indigenous tribes of the North didn't understand high-tech defense grids. To them, lethal radiation was just “touch-of-death magic.” Of course, they couldn't breach the perimeter.

  If not even a bird could fly through that radiation field, then Jasta’s caravan was absolutely stuck on the outside. Knowing the fox’s survival instincts, the second he hit a literal wall of death, he would have cut his losses and turned the wagons around.

  Running that logic actually bled off some of my anxiety. Jasta would probably come slinking back to Skyreach in a few days, empty-handed but alive.

  I thanked the Elder and stepped out of the tent.

  Alright, priority one: Figure out a countermeasure for the waking Dragon King. If the audio log was accurate, and the world’s foundational physical code was going to crash when the beast woke up... would we even have time to finish casting the artillery?

  Just as my stress levels started spiking again...

  THUMP...

  Another faint, terrifying pulse of dragon aura rippled through the crust, jerking the exhausted workers of Skyreach awake in cold sweats.

  Suddenly!

  The harsh, blaring siren of the “Aegis Anti-Air Array” shattered the night!

  I sprinted out of the municipal building.

  Up in the dark sky, a green flare streaked down, trailing a long tail of smoke.

  A massive, elite Eagle-kin scout flared his broad wings, hitting the landing pad in front of the municipal hall with a heavy thud.

  Under the blinding glare of the searchlights, I recognized him. It was one of the three scouts assigned to escort Jasta’s caravan.

  But his gear was completely absurd. Over his standard tactical rig, he was wearing a ridiculously expensive-looking silk surcoat, heavily embroidered with complex golden thread!

  “Hold your fire! Lord Jasta sent me back!”

  The scout ripped off his flight goggles, gasping for air. His eyes didn't show the hollow exhaustion of a brutal long-distance flight. Instead, they burned with the manic, hyper-caffeinated excitement.

  Dropping to one knee, his hands shook as he pulled a heavy, solid-gold scroll tube encrusted with high-tier magic gems from his tactical vest, holding it high in the air.

  “Lord Mayor! Lord Jasta ordered me to deliver the first installment of the 'deposit'!”

  The scout swallowed hard, his voice trembling with disbelief:

  “He is currently sitting inside the palace of the Viper Prince, drinking vintage wine!”

  Hearing that, Elder Carl—who had hustled over to see what the commotion was about—nearly ripped his own beard off.

  “Drinking wine inside the Viper Prince’s palace?!” Elder Carl’s eyes bulged as if he’d just heard pure heresy. “How in the Creator's name did that silver-tongued con artist bypass the Wall of Sighs?! Why wasn't he incinerated by the descendants of the gods?!”

  I snatched the solid-gold tube from the scout’s hands and twisted off the cap.

  Unrolling the parchment, I rapidly scanned Jasta’s dense, meticulously drafted commercial sit-rep.

  My eyes went wide. Wider. Until finally, standing in the oppressive, freezing night of the wasteland, I threw my head back and started laughing.

  “Hahahahaha!”

  My laughter echoed across the empty plaza, leaving Zayla, Brad, and Elder Carl staring at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “Bro, you good? Did the vibrations from the lizard finally rattle your brain loose?” Brad asked cautiously.

  “I hired an absolute genius.”

  Looking at my completely confused crew, I laid out the exact schematics of the deal.

  “Jasta never tried to brute-force the wall. He hit the border black markets and immediately ran a diagnostic on their political structure. The Golden Empire might wield ‘divine power,’ but the major noble houses are currently locked in a brutal cold war for the throne. They are severely strapped for cash.”

  “So, that fox liquidated all his operational funds to bribe the border guards. He drove wagons fully loaded with Skyreach’s ‘miraculous, crystal-clear’ cheap glass tumblers and high-purity scented soap straight to the most ambitious warlord on the border—the Viper Prince.”

  I waved the heavy, gold-stamped contract in the air.

  “Jasta pitched the Prince a joint venture: Skyreach will supply him with an unlimited stream of these 'industrial luxury goods'—items we manufacture for pennies, but which he can flip to the southern aristocracy for astronomical margins, allowing him to rapidly fund a massive private army!”

  “And in exchange? The Kingdom of Golden Sands isn't just paying our invoices in raw gold. They are officially permitting Skyreach to establish a fully autonomous, Tax-Free Trade Port right inside the Wall of Sighs!”

  “So... the fox basically sold glass trinkets to the heavens?”

  Zayla stared at me, her amber eyes wide, utterly failing to process the absurdity of the world.

  “Exactly.”

  I looked toward the southern horizon, a highly satisfied, predatory smirk spreading across my face.

  “And those high-and-mighty gods... absolutely loved them.”

  ? Overpowers: Magical Girl Crossover [Grimlight Progression Urban Fantasy/Genre based Power System] ?

  by Moawar

  He, Life, had a simple job.

  His responsibility as an Overpower was to make sure that fiction stories and the characters in them follow their dictated path. He always did his job well enough, not more or less than was needed.

  His latest assignment, however, would, in retrospect, prove to be his most challenging one of all.

  He would find himself in a unfamiliar world. There he'll have to quickly adapt to guide Nozomi.

  The strongest magical girl with the potential to accidentally destroy those she seeks to protect in her fight against evil.

  What to Expect:

  -If you like the psychological aspects of Madoka Magica and the mixing of different genres a crossover story brings then this story is for you