Transmigrated as a Playboy: I Solve Crime With Forensic

The Iron Giant

The workshop smelled of dead rust and sleeping potential.

I limped around the massive brass feet of the machine, trailing my hand along the cold metal. It was a masterpiece of pre-magical engineering. A Titan-Class Excavator. Ten feet of hardened steel, brass piping, and hydraulic pistons.

It wasn't built for elegance. It was built to punch holes in mountains.

"Can you make it work?" Nyx asked, her voice echoing in the vast, shadowy chamber. She was standing by the titanium door, watching the metal buckle inward with every THUD of the spiders outside. "Because the door has maybe ten minutes before those things chew through it."

"It's not dead," I muttered, popping the hatch on the rear of the suit. "It's just thirsty."

I looked inside the engine compartment. It didn't use a Mana-Core like modern golems. It used a Flash-Boiler.

"It’s a closed-loop steam system," I explained, mostly to myself. "Water goes in, gets superheated, expands 1,600 times its volume, pushes the pistons, condenses, and repeats. Simple. Brutal. Effective."

"English, Vane," Nyx snapped. "Or whatever language you're speaking."

"It needs water," I said, turning to Eleanor. "And it needs heat."

Eleanor was sitting on a crate, looking exhausted. Her blue dress was torn, and her face was smudged with soot. She looked up at the machine with skepticism.

"It's a toy, Silas," she said wearily. "It has no rune-markings. No enchantment slots. How can it fight without magic?"

"Magic is just energy, Eleanor," I said, grabbing a wrench from the workbench. "But Force equals Mass times Acceleration. And this thing has a lot of mass."

I pointed to the empty water tank on the back of the suit. "I need you to fill that. Pack it with ice. As dense as you can make it."

Eleanor frowned. "Ice? You want me to fill a machine with ice?"

"Yes. And when I ignite the burner, that ice will sublime into pressurized steam instantly. It will give us a kick-start of torque that could tear a dragon in half."

I turned to Nyx. "I need oil. Grease. Anything flammable. Scour the workshop."

"On it," Nyx sprinted into the shadows.

I climbed up the chassis, gritting my teeth against the pain in my ankle. I slipped into the cockpit.

It was tight. Smelled of old leather and copper. There were no magical orbs to control it—just levers, pedals, and pressure gauges.

Analog, I thought, gripping the control sticks. My kind of tech.

I checked the pressure lines. The seals were dried out.

"Nyx!" I yelled. "Grease!"

Nyx vaulted onto the chassis, tossing me a canister of thick, black industrial lubricant. "Found it under a drill press."

I frantically greased the piston seals. "Eleanor! The tank!"

Eleanor stood up. She raised her hands. "Glacial Fill."

A stream of crushed ice shot from her palms, packing the rear tank of the suit. The metal groaned as the temperature dropped.

"Tank full," she called out, shivering.

"Good," I said, strapping myself into the leather seat. "Now, get behind me. Both of you."

SCREEEE!

The titanium door let out a final, agonizing shriek. A massive, jagged hole appeared in the center.

A red mechanical eye peered through.

"They're through!" Nyx drew her daggers. "Silas, if you're going to do something, do it now!"

I looked at the ignition primer. It was a flint-wheel system. I grabbed a handful of oil-soaked rags Nyx had gathered and stuffed them into the burner box.

I struck the flint.

Fwoom.

The rags caught fire.

"Come on," I whispered, watching the temperature gauge. "Wake up."

The needle didn't move. The fire wasn't hot enough to flash-boil the magical ice Eleanor had created.

"Eleanor!" I shouted over the sound of tearing metal. "I need you to heat the boiler! Use a fire spell!"

"I'm a Cryomancer, you i***t!" Eleanor yelled back, blasting an ice lance at the first spider squeezing through the hole. "I only do cold!"

"Think!" I slammed my fist on the console. "Heat is just molecular agitation! Vibrating molecules! Use your Telekinesis! Vibrate the water molecules inside the tank!"

"I don't know what molecules are!" she screamed, creating an ice wall that shattered instantly under the spiders' claws.

"Just... shake the water!" I roared. "Shake it with your mind until it hurts!"

Eleanor looked desperate. She closed her eyes, reaching out with her raw mana, gripping the ice inside the tank not to freeze it, but to agitate it.

The tank began to hum.

Inside the boiler, the friction of the magic grinding against the ice created heat. Massive heat.

Hiss...

The needle on the gauge twitched.

Pressure: 10 PSI.

The door burst open. The wave of spiders poured in.

Pressure: 50 PSI.

Nyx was fighting like a demon, spinning and slashing, but her daggers bounced off the brass armor of the spiders. One of them swiped her, sending her crashing into the workbench.

"Nyx!" Eleanor screamed, her concentration slipping.

Pressure: 100 PSI.

"Not enough," I growled. I slammed my foot on the emergency bypass valve. "I'm overriding the safety."

I pulled the main lever back.

CLANK.

The suit shuddered. A cloud of white steam vented from the exhaust pipes with a sound like a gunshot.

The amber lights on the console flickered to life.

Inside the cockpit, I felt the vibration in my bones. It wasn't the hum of magic; it was the roar of industry.

A spider lunged at Eleanor, its mandibles spinning.

"Hey!" I shouted, my voice amplified by the suit's brass speaker-horn. "Ugly!"

The spider turned.

I shoved the right control stick forward.

Hydraulic Punch.

The right arm of the suit—the one with the crushing claw—shot forward with the force of a freight train.

CRUNCH.

The claw caught the spider in mid-air. The impact didn't just stop it; it obliterated it. Brass gears and red glass sprayed across the room like confetti.

Silence fell for a split second. The other spiders paused, their sensors processing this new threat.

I flexed the mechanical fingers. The sound of pistons hissing filled the room.

"Get away from my wife," I growled.

The horde shrieked and charged.

"Hang on," I yelled to the girls. "This is going to get loud."

I pushed both throttles forward.

The Titan-Class Excavator didn't run; it stomped. THOOM. THOOM. The floor shook.

A spider leaped at the cockpit. I didn't dodge. I raised the left arm—the Pneumatic Drill.

I engaged the rotor.

VRRRRRRR!

The drill spun up to 3,000 RPM. I drove it into the spider's faceplate. Sparks showered the windshield as the drill tore through the magical brass like it was butter.

"Behind you!" Nyx yelled.

Three spiders were climbing the legs of the suit, trying to find the hydraulic lines.

"Eleanor!" I shouted. "Flash Freeze the legs! Give me armor!"

Eleanor didn't hesitate. She blasted the lower half of the suit with a cone of cold. The spiders froze to the metal.

"Purge Vents!" I flipped a toggle.

Superheated steam blasted out of the leg vents. The thermal shock (Cold Ice + Hot Steam) shattered the frozen spiders into dust.

"Physics!" I laughed, the adrenaline finally overriding the pain in my body. "It always wins!"

I waded into the swarm. I was a god of iron and steam. I grabbed one spider and used it as a club to smash two others. I engaged the drill and swept it in a wide arc, severing legs and heads.

It was brutal. It was messy. Oil and hydraulic fluid coated the floor.

But there were too many of them.

Warning: Water Level Critical, the gauge read.

The steam pressure was dropping. The punches were getting slower.

"Silas!" Eleanor shouted. "The tunnel! More are coming!"

I looked at the door. She was right. A second wave was pouring in.

I looked at the suit's schematics etched on a brass plate in the cockpit. There was one system I hadn't used.

Seismic Anchor.

It was designed for mining—to shatter bedrock.

"Get behind the workbench!" I ordered. "Cover your ears!"

"What are you doing?" Eleanor cried.

"I'm going to ring the dinner bell."

I maneuvered the suit to the center of the room. I engaged the Pile Driver mode on the right arm. I locked the leg joints.

I pulled the lever all the way down.

The suit groaned. All the remaining pressure built up in the main piston.

HISSSSSSS...

"Fire in the hole!"

I slammed the piston into the stone floor.

BOOOOOM!

The impact was devastating. The shockwave traveled through the stone floor, turning it into a liquid ripple for a fraction of a second.

Every spider in a fifty-foot radius was thrown into the air, their internal gyroscopes shattered by the vibration. The stone ceiling cracked. Stalactites rained down, crushing the spiders that were still standing.

The suit hissed one last time, then died. The pressure gauge hit zero.

The room was silent, save for the settling dust and the twitching of broken mechanical legs.

I popped the hatch.

Steam billowed out, blinding me for a moment. I climbed out, coughing, sliding down the cooling metal leg.

My ankle gave out instantly, and I hit the floor.

"Silas!"

Eleanor was there. She fell to her knees, grabbing my face. Her hands were cold, but her eyes were burning with something that wasn't hate.

"You i***t," she whispered, wiping oil from my cheek. "You suicidal, brilliant idiot."

"Did we win?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

"We survived," Nyx said, limping over. She kicked a piece of a destroyed spider. "That counts as a win in my book."

Nyx looked up at the giant, silent machine looming over us. "I want one."

"Eleanor," I said, grabbing her wrist. "The spiders... they aren't wild. They're security drones. Someone activated them."

Eleanor looked at the pile of wreckage. She pulled a glowing red crystal from the remains of a spider.

"This is a Control Shard," she said, her voice grim. "It's inscribed with a sigil."

She held it up to the dim light.

It wasn't the King's seal. It wasn't the Syndicate's eye.

It was a Tower. A black tower with a single eye at the top.

"The Void Tower," Eleanor whispered, terrified. "This isn't just a conspiracy, Silas. The legends... they're real. The Void Gate is opening."

I looked at the suit. I looked at my wife.

"Then we're going to need a bigger drill," I said.

"Help me up. We need to scavenge this room. If there's a suit... there's a way out."

As Eleanor and Nyx helped me stand, I looked back at the darkness of the tunnel. We had survived the spiders. But we had woken up something much worse.

And I had a feeling that 48 hours was no longer my only deadline.

The world itself was on a timer.