---
Beyond the third ring, in the Scrap Iron Zone, yellow sand swept the skies, and metallic smog pressed down so heavily that it was hard to breathe.
Lin Yeheng carried a rusted scavenger's bag on his back, inching his way up a mountain of wreckage along a broken maglev track.
This area was known as the "Thirteenth Recovery Belt"—the dirtiest, most forsaken hellhole on the entire human refuge planet.
Above his head, there was no sunlight—only the cracked underbelly of the floating cities, like coffin lids nailed shut over the sky.
Beneath his feet were tens of thousands of mechanical corpses—obsolete infantry mechs, rogue security armor, crumbled battleship debris, and even shattered remnants of enemy-built Tectonic Constructs.
"Lucky day."
Lin Yeheng dug out a mostly intact engine core from a pile of scorched steel bones. Though the casing had melted, the magnetic core inside could still fetch enough for a few days' worth of rations.
His hands were callused and thick, blood dried between his fingers, and even a torn-off nail didn't faze him.
He wasn't a soldier.
Wasn't a mechanic.
Wasn't a warrior.
He was just a scavenger.
Living day by day, surviving at the lowest level of this war-torn world by dismantling machines, picking through junk, and selling scrap.
But just then, a low rumble echoed from deep within the ruins—
As if something that had long been asleep… had moved beneath the earth.
Lin Yeheng looked up.
It came from a zone he had never dared to enter before: The Core Wreckage Field.
Legend said that buried within was an ultimate weapon never deployed:
> Humanity's Final War Machine — Ragnarok 01.
A weapon never completed, abandoned, never officially recorded.
No one knew why it was buried.
No one knew if it truly existed.
But Lin Yeheng knew—because he had seen it with his own eyes. Ten years ago, during an aerial battle, his father—an engineering director in the maintenance division—had handed him a blueprint before dying.
From that day on, he became an orphan, cast into the wastelands.
And from that moment, he made a vow:
> "I will personally repair that divine machine and turn this broken world… upside down."
---
He ventured step by step into the core wreckage zone.
Radiation here was lethal. A normal human's organs would fail in ten minutes. But he wore armor cobbled together from mech insulation plates, a furnace-lid helmet, and breathed through a makeshift valve system.
He descended sixty meters through a fault line, passed crumbled walls, crossed zones of high-energy contamination, until finally stopping before a colossal metal wall.
It was a sealed door, and engraved upon it were three letters: R-01.
—Found it.
Lin Yeheng pulled out the wrinkled blueprint from his pocket, aligning it with the circuit interface. His bloodshot eyes locked on target, voice hoarse:
"The power input is... this way."
He cleared away debris, extracted a power chip, and connected the magnetic core to the conduit.
Five seconds later, the ground shook.
Boom—
The massive gate began to open, chain locks snapping one by one, crashing down in clouds of dust.
A towering figure emerged from the shadows—
A colossal humanoid mech, standing twenty-five meters tall, clad in layers of battle-worn armor. Its right arm was a triple-stage propulsion cannon, and its back held a cluster of seven-tier reactor conduits, like a war god risen from the abyss.
Etched on its chest:
> [R-01]
R-Class Forbidden Weapon –
Status: Dormant –
Lin Yeheng stood at its feet, a mere ant gazing up at a god.
But he showed no fear. He only whispered:
"…I've waited ten years for you."
He began inserting the parts he had gathered over a decade—one by one—into the interfaces, hatches, and power slots.
Every screw, every cable, every circuit board—he had clawed from the ruins with his own hands.
This wasn't a miracle of science.
It wasn't genius design.
It was a war machine built from ten years of blood and sweat.
"Activating you... is like reassembling my own bones."
Finally, he inserted the old neural-response chip into the control core.
Bzzzz—
The entire machine trembled as red light surged from its feet upward, tracing the spinal conduits to the central processor.
The mech's eyes ignited—
A brilliant, blood-red glow.
In that instant, the entire wasteland quaked.
Faraway surveillance satellites exploded on the spot.
> [WARNING! R-Class Forbidden Weapon Activated!]
[Source Signal—Unregistered, Unlicensed, Non-Military Access Detected!]
[Identity: Lin Yeheng. Occupation: Scavenger.]
…
[Logic conflict detected.]
[Forcibly initializing core…]
…
[—Connection established.]
> [Welcome back, Pilot.]
> [Ragnarok-01, Awaiting Orders.]
---
Lin Yeheng grinned, blood and grease staining his face, whispering like a madman:
"We're going for a walk, dear war god."
He wasn't a savior.
Wasn't a soldier.
Wasn't a genius.
But he was the last person in this world still willing to restore hope with his own hands.
Now, the Final War Machine has returned.