{Chapter: 310 The Nuclear Bomb}
William stared up at the massive cannon barrel now hanging in the sky like the judgment of a vengeful god. Blue energy coalesced at the mouth of the barrel, crackling with an intensity that seemed to tear through the very fabric of the air around it.
"What a massive gun," William muttered, eyes narrowing. His voice was calm, but even he couldn't suppress a shiver. "This kind of firepower... it's enough to erase a small nation. No survivors. No ruins. Just a scar on the Earth."
Alice stood beside him, her arms crossed, a smirk on her lips despite the dire circumstances. "Seems like a waste to use something that overkill just to swat three people out of the sky. A shame if they miss." Her tone was playfully defiant—like she wasn't intimidated in the slightest. It was classic Alice: elegant, confident, and ever one step ahead.
William tilted his head slightly, eyes glinting. "Miss? You think the Chitauri don't learn from failure? You really think they'd fire a cannon like that without preparing a little insurance?"
Alice's smirk faded. Her eyes flickered with sudden realization—and then, in an instant, she vanished into thin air with a flicker of spatial light.
A cry of pain rang out a second later. Alice reappeared a hundred meters away, grimacing as she staggered backward in midair, clutching her arm.
"Alice!" Ada shouted, her expression hardening. She flitted toward her, but stopped as if she hit an invisible wall.
William's voice came with grim clarity. "The space within a hundred meters is sealed. An invisible electromagnetic field—dense, layered, and charged. Teleportation won't work inside this cage."
Ada's eyes widened. "Are you saying… we're trapped here? That cannon's going to fire and we can't move?"
Alice's breathing was heavy, but her face was composed. "The field's like a dome. It bends space, absorbs exit vectors. Unless we break the seal manually, there's no way out." She looked at William. "So what now, genius?"
William chuckled under his breath, shaking his head. "Now? I do what I do best. Running isn't my style—and standing still while getting blasted? Not my thing either."
"You mean you're going to pretend to be cool again," Alice muttered, rolling her eyes—but the corner of her mouth curved upward, betraying affection.
Ada snorted. "Honestly, sometimes I wonder if you'd sacrifice the world just to make a dramatic entrance."
William grinned. "You see through me so well. That's why I love you both." Then he raised his hands to the sky, and golden particles—like stardust laced with energy—burst from his body. They spun around him, forming radiant spirals of mechanical light that shimmered with heat and purpose.
"Transformers: Shining Single State!" William roared. The words rang like a divine proclamation, and the golden particles surged in unison.
Alice shielded her eyes as the brilliant transformation unfolded. "Ah. So the 'Shining' prefix shows up when he levels up from a basic form. Makes sense."
Ada blinked at the light show. "A shining singlet? There's going to be a doublet, triplet, quadruplet… That sounds like a cheat code disguised as a naming scheme."
Alice laughed softly. "Still... you can't deny it's flashy. Look at him. He's glowing like he rolled in molten gold."
"He's going to blind the enemy before he even attacks," Ada said, rubbing her eyes. "And us too."
William hovered at the center of the storm of light, his form encased in sleek, angular armor that gleamed like the surface of the sun. Yet, even with the transformation, he still only stood a couple of meters tall.
Alice cupped her hands around her mouth and called out, "Hey, Golden Boy! You still look like a pocket-sized upgrade compared to that ten-meter-tall cannon!"
William looked at himself, then back at the looming barrel of doom above. "Hmm. Fair point." His grin returned, feral and fearless. "Let's scale up, shall we?"
He threw his arms wide, and the sky responded.
"Haaaa—!!"
A shockwave blasted outward from his chest. Blue light flashed through the atmosphere and layers of deformation element particles appeared, this time rising higher, spinning faster, gathering into a whirlwind so vast it punched through the cloud ceiling. The air itself trembled as a kilometer-high column of brilliance took form, until a particle storm a kilometer high was formed.
Within that storm of power, William's voice echoed like thunder.
"Transformers: Shining Triplet Mode!!"
Alice's eyes widened as the electromagnetic barrier suddenly cracked, then shattered in all directions. The field had been broken.
"Barrier's gone," she said, stunned. "He broke it just with raw output. That's not transformation—that's ascension."
Ada crossed her arms, biting her lip to hide her smile. "Okay… that was kind of hot."
The color of the frenzied, whirling particle storm began to shift dramatically—what had once been a brilliant silver-white hue morphed into a blinding, molten gold. Sparks of lightning laced through the torrent of energy like veins of fury, dancing in unpredictable patterns. Thick bolts of electricity cracked and surged within the cyclone, casting flashes of light across the shattered skyline.
A deafening, mechanical roar split the air, an ominous prelude to the Chitauri mothership's wrath. From its massive central cannon, a searing column of pure energy—easily a hundred meters thick—erupted outward like the judgment of a vengeful god, striking directly at the heart of the storm.
BOOM!
The impact was cataclysmic. The energy beam collided with the particle vortex in a blinding fusion of power. Light from the beam overwhelmed the sun itself, turning the midday sky into a battlefield of radiance. The surroundings seemed to dim, not because the sun had vanished, but because the artificial brilliance outshone even nature's might.
Yet—there was no explosion. No annihilating shockwave. No obliteration of the earth below.
Instead, the raging storm of particles spun faster, wilder. It absorbed and fragmented the colossal energy beam, dispersing the impact like a cosmic shield. The rotating vortex broke the energy apart, thread by thread, atom by atom, until the attack was nullified.
From within the tempest, a voice echoed—bold and defiant.
"I, William... have returned!"
The storm collapsed inward with tremendous force, condensing like a dying star into a single figure.
When the blinding glow finally subsided, a towering form stood in its place—a thousand meters tall, glimmering in regal, defiant gold. William had taken his final form: the Transformer Shining Triplet. A colossus wreathed in energy, plated in light, with a massive ion cannon mounted on his left arm.
His right hand reached forward, palm open, bracing against the lingering energy column still sputtering from the Chitauri mothership.
His muscles strained, joints locking—but he held.
"Hrrgh..." William grunted low in his throat, feet gouging trenches in the earth beneath as he was pushed backward slowly but surely. The ground cracked beneath his weight. The effort was titanic.
Ada clenched her fists, her voice ringing out from below. "Is that it? Is that all they've got? William—fight back!"
William's jaw tightened, eyes flaring. With a defiant snarl, he braced himself—and stopped moving backward.
The ground beneath him shattered from the force of his resistance. Dust and debris flew skyward. His left arm surged forward, the massive ion cannon charging with a roar of fury and energy. Blue light spiraled inward, concentrating into a devastating core.
Meanwhile, Ada's sharp eyes caught something—something coming from above.
"Alice, look! Look at the sky!" Ada cried, pointing skyward.
Alice turned, her face instantly paling. "No... that's not another blast—that's a warhead. That's a nuclear bomb!"
The warhead streaked toward them like a dagger of doom, its black casing reflecting the light of the chaos below. It descended at terminal velocity, aimed directly at the trio.
Alice's voice broke with urgency, her usually calm demeanor shattered. "William! That's a nuke! You have to get out of here! You can't tank that! Leave—NOW!"
But William had already made his move.
"TOO LATE." His voice echoed like thunder.
His ion cannon fired in a colossal eruption of raw force, the beam slamming into the hull of the Chitauri mothership with earth-shaking impact. The mothership's metal hide buckled under the blast. Flames burst outward. Its internal reactors ignited. The massive alien craft trembled—then began to fall, smoke trailing behind like the tail of a comet.
The energy cannon sputtered out. Silence followed.
But there was no time to celebrate.
The warhead was nearly on top of them. Just 100 meters now. Alice's scream caught in her throat.
William spun, lightning-fast, sweeping Ada and Alice into his arms. The world blinked.
They vanished.
A second later, the warhead struck.
KA-THOOOOOOM!
A detonation beyond mortal imagination consumed the area. The Chitauri mothership, already falling, took the brunt of the nuclear impact. It disintegrated midair in a final, fiery scream. A towering black mushroom cloud soared into the skies, a dark crown marking the death of a titan.
The shockwave expanded in all directions, but the earth it passed over was already scorched—already broken. New York was no longer a city, but a graveyard of steel and smoke. There was little left to destroy.
But the invisible poison—the radiation—would linger for years, for decades. Its true horror had only just begun.
Far above the devastation, William hovered in his base human form, his armor gone. He looked exhausted. Ada and Alice flanked him, suspended beside him in the silent sky, all three staring down at the mushroom cloud still climbing toward the skies.
No one spoke for several seconds.
Alice finally broke the silence, her voice low and reverent.
"I never thought I'd see it. A nuclear explosion… up close. I never wanted to."
Ada shook her head slowly. "We survived it. Somehow… we survived the apocalypse."
*****
You can support me by joining my Patreon and get upto 60 chapters in advance.
patreon.com/Eden_Translation