Chapter 110 - Wave of HUSBANDOs

    The explosion erupted like a chain of firecrackers set off in rapid succession, igniting the entire south side of the complex in a brilliant cascade of light and sound. For a moment, the inside of the bar was bathed in an unnatural glow—as if the sun had briefly risen beneath our feet. When we looked up, we saw the ceiling had caved in, its steel supports twisted and mangled like melted bones. Dust drifted down like snow under the false daylight of the blaze.

    “No… it can’t be,” Neil muttered, his voice trembling.

    Then, as if reality itself had been torn open, the cityscape beyond the walls transformed. Towering above the buildings were giants—not ordinary mechs, but monstrous, corrupted machines. They dwarfed even the largest Frame Units we knew, standing nearly thirty meters tall.

    But these weren’t war machines built for precision or elegance. They were grotesque mockeries of form. One dragged a stump where an arm should have been. Another had legs so short its massive arms scraped the ground as it walked. Some lacked half their skulls, wires and fluid leaking like blood.

    Despite their deformities, a singular and terrifying design unified them—they were all skeletal in structure, like the stripped-down anatomy of steel titans. Crimson lights glowed in their eye sockets, like the gaze of ancient, forgotten gods. They resembled the Machine God, but broken, twisted—as if someone had tried to clone divinity and failed horribly.

    “Those are…” Fei whispered, her breath caught in her throat.

    “HUSBANDOs,” Neil growled, clenching his fists so tightly his knuckles turned white. “They’ve finally done it.”

    I stared in disbelief. “So those are their Frame Units?”

    “No,” Neil replied grimly. “In the past, they were called Defense Operators—the prototype class before Frame Units ever existed.”

    “That explains why they’re all deformed,” I muttered, then glanced at Neil with a teasing smirk. “Can you transform into a handicapped robot too?”

    “That’s not very nice, Zaft,” Myrrh chided sharply, crossing her arms. Her blue LED eyes narrowed in disappointment.

    “Sorry, sorry,” I chuckled, raising my hands in surrender. “I just wanted to shift the mood.”

    Neil didn’t respond right away. He silently slipped his hand into his coat pocket, his face unreadable. When he pulled it out, I saw a strange device—something that resembled a morpher, but unlike the sleek standard models, this one was worn and weathered. Rust clung to its edges, and exposed gears clicked faintly, grinding against each other like old bones. It looked ancient—almost forgotten. But its presence was enough. Neil was a HUSBANDO, and like all of them, he carried one of these relics.

    “Neil,” Fei’s synthetic voice broke through the tension. Her words echoed with a metallic resonance, tinted by concern. From within her colossal Frame Unit form, she gazed down at him. A soft mechanical whirr accompanied the slow shake of her armored head.

    Neil sighed, his fingers tightening slightly around the morpher.

    “There’s no need to join the fray, Neil,” Myrrh said gently, placing a hand on his shoulder. “The KAWAII Agents will take it from here.”

    “R-right…” Neil murmured, reluctantly letting his hand fall to his side.

    We turned our gaze back to the field, and our hearts sank. The operation area had become a hellish arena. Four KAWAII WAIFUs stood at the center, surrounded on all sides by towering mechanical abominations. At least twenty of the deformed skeletal giants loomed over them, forming a jagged circle of rust, metal, and glowing crimson eyes.

    “Steve!” Agent Feena’s voice cracked through the comms, high-pitched and frantic. “Steeeeve! Drop whatever you’re doing and call for backup from the V-TUBERs!”

    “Roger that!” came Steve’s reply, clipped and focused. “Requesting immediate backup from the Vanguard Tactical Unit for Battle, Emergency, and Reconnaissance—VTUBERs on standby!”

    “Shit! Shit! Shit! There’s too many of them! I count twenty!” one of the KAWAII WAIFUs yelled, her voice trembling as the massive shadows closed in.

    “They’re just oversized freaks!” another WAIFU shouted back, trying to rally morale. “All bark, no blades! Look at them—deformed and unarmed! Now let’s do our damn job, girls!”

    “Support Unit, give us something nasty to pierce through those tin can monsters!”

    “On it!” the KAWAII Support Unit barked. His fingers danced over the glowing holo-controls of his WEEB system. “Spiral Lance, Equip!”

    A blinding flash surged from the Frame Units’ steel hands as a sleek, spiral-shaped lance materialized, stretching out into gleaming metallic cones. All four WAIFUs snapped into formation, their thrusters pulsing with energy.

    “Activate Overdrive Mode!” they roared in unison, the battlefield shaking with their collective shout.

    Instantly, the four colossal Frame Units—each standing like crimson goddesses of war—flared to life. Flames burst from the gaps in their armor, their cores pulsing red-hot. The overdrive systems kicked in, steam and light venting from their joints like war-forged demons rising from hell.

    With a thunderous boom, they launched forward in a blinding red blaze, tearing across the ruined cityscape at breakneck speed—lances raised, engines screaming, and vengeance burning in their eyes.

    Each KAWAII WAIFU plunged her Spiral Lance straight through the twisted husks of the deformed Frame Units- or Defense Operators, cutting a blazing path toward the southern corridor. Sparks and oil sprayed like black blood as their lances tore through synthetic bone and armor plating.

    “Myrrh! Zaft!” Agent Feena’s voice boomed through her loudspeaker, crackling with cybernetic distortion as she skewered another hulking HUSBANDO with a savage thrust. “Get to the safe zone! You’ve done enough! We’ll clear the way—just follow through!”

    “Got it!” Myrrh responded, her voice crisp with resolve. She turned her giant armored head toward me—and before I could react, her massive steel fingers wrapped around my body with surprising gentleness. She hoisted me up and carefully set me atop her shoulder, like a knight bearing a trusted squire into battle.

    Fei mirrored the action with Neil, scooping him up with a practiced ease only a HUSBANDO could trust. Then, with a synchronized blast from their back and leg thrusters, the two Frame Units surged forward, rocketing through the war-torn streets with blinding speed.

    Behind us, the HUSBANDOs lumbered like metallic corpses, crawling with mangled limbs and dragging their heavy forms forward. Their crimson eyes glowed hungrily, reaching—always reaching—for us. But before their grotesque fingers could so much as scrape our armor, the KAWAII Agents charged in once more, their Spiral Lances piercing through the mechanical abominations like divine judgment. Sёar?h the Novёl?ire.n(e)t website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

    We burst out of the shattered remnants of the bar and onto the empty highway. The moment our feet hit the road, the world shifted. No more explosions. No more lights. Just eerie stillness. The entire stretch was deserted—no civilians, no support, just rows of darkened streetlamps and the hum of cooling engines.

    “Are you sure this is the way?” I asked, scanning the shadows ahead.

    Myrrh nodded, her ponytail swaying slightly as she ran. “Agent Feena briefed me about multiple escape plans—A through F. This is supposed to be Site A… the rendezvous point. But there’s no one here.”

    I raised an eyebrow and smirked. “You sure Feena wasn’t drunk when she gave you the briefing?”

    Myrrh sighed, exasperated. “She had a boba tea in her hand, okay? That doesn’t mean she was drunk.”

    "Maybe she spiked her own drink? Seriously, she''s trying to kill herself."

    “You’re one to talk, Zaft!” Myrrh snapped, her voice cracking through the comms with righteous fury. “You pulled off that insane stunt just to set up Ismail Arondight! We''re lucky the KAWAII Agents greenlit your suicide plan at the last possible second!”

    Her Frame Unit’s movements became more erratic as her frustration boiled over.

    “And you didn’t even tell me!” she continued. “I thought we were friends!”

    “Okay, okay! I’m sorry for leaving you out of the loop,” I said with a sheepish grin, scratching the back of my neck like an idiot caught red-handed. “But hey, to fool your enemy, you have to fool your friends first… right?”

    “You didn’t just fool me—you made a fool  you fool!” Myrrh growled, her voice rising with a metallic echo that trembled through her armor. Her Frame Unit’s eyes flared for a second—whether from emotion or power surge, I wasn’t sure.

    “Shush,” Fei muttered. Her tone was cold, but there was tension underneath it.

    When we didn’t stop, still too caught up in our heated exchange, Fei suddenly raised her voice, robotic yet commanding.

    “Zaft. Myrrh. ”

    I blinked. “What is it, Fei?”

    Fei’s voice shifted to a serious, almost monotone register. “My sensors... I can sense someone.”

    Neil''s brows furrowed, his eyes narrowing with a blue glow. “Yeah… I feel it too. My cybernetic eyes are detecting something.”

    Myrrh and I fell silent, instinctively turning our gazes to match theirs.

    Up ahead, silhouetted against the darkened skyline, stood a mid-rise building—five stories tall, just slightly higher than the massive Frame Units we were piloting. And there, standing atop it like a figure out of a nightmare, was .

    Ismail Arondight.

    He slowly removed his sunglasses, revealing two burning crimson eyes that glowed like dying stars. The wind picked up around him, whipping his long, tattered trench coat like the cape of a fallen angel.

    “Did you really think I’d let you escape?” he sneered, his voice low but resonating, amplified somehow across the ruined street.

    Then, with a single dramatic motion, he flared open his coat. The lining shimmered, and from within, he drew a strange device—an archaic-looking morpher, cobbled together with brass gears, copper tubes, and glowing pressure gauges. Steampunk tech, ancient but dangerous.

    He raised the morpher high into the air.

    “” he bellowed.

    The sky responded with thunder.