He didn’t leap. He walked up the falling debris as if the broken ground itself shaped steps for him. Every footfall was steady. Controlled. Inevitable.
In each hand he dragged sothing heavy, tallic, dented, vaguely humanoid shapes. Gasps rippled through the crowd.
Golems? Captured? No, not just captured.
He was carrying them like prisoners.
Commander Albrecht’s expression finally cracked, a sharp flicker of shock, his hand going to his sword.
The crowd held its breath as the cloaked figure stepped onto solid ground. Only when the street stabilized did the runic armor over the golems begin to spark, faint at first, then violently, before bursting apart like shrapnel blown outward by invisible pressure. Plates fractured and shot away in all directions, clattering across stone.
Pieces fell off like shedding scales.
And beneath the armor, two unconscious beastn collapsed onto the ground.
Young. Unconcious. Bruised. Collars around their necks, runic slave chokers. Linne’s breath hitched. Dalan’s pupils shrank. They had expected proof. They had expected evidence. They hadn’t expected children inside machines.
Nor had they expected him to look like that.
The figure straightened, hood and mask shadowing all but the cold white glint of his eyes. The new armor Linne and Dalan forged wrapped him like a predator’s second skin, lean, dark, bristling with layered runes. Mist curled around him unnaturally as if drawn by his presence. The mana dripping from him was thick, heavy like wet earth ready to swallow anything.
But it wasn’t that which froze the plaza. It was the murderous aura rolling off him.
Vast. Quiet. Controlled, but only barely. The type of killing intent that made veterans instinctively step back.
The first sentinel moved.
A quake of tal and rune-core hum. Then all six.
Their halberds cut through the air like collapsing towers, too large to parry, too fast for most to even see coming. Ludger didn’t flinch.
As the blades descended, he stepped forward instead of back, letting the wind of their swing hit his back. Stone shattered behind him where he should have been. The crowd scread and scattered.
He slid low beneath the crossing halberds, and with both hands, he carried the beastn forward across the cracking street. Not running. Walking through killing intent like it was rain.
Another halberd swept horizontally. Ludger’s foot lifted, then spun the air controllably, just enough to land again and avoid the attacks. He climbed the attack arc like stairs.
One stride. Two. Three.
At the peak he paused, a silhouette frad against lantern-fire and smoke, and gently tossed the unconscious beastn toward the front of the crowd. Not one person touched them. The crowd parted without thinking.
Commander Albrecht reached for his sword again, but froze halfway. The pressure rolling off Ludger was not that of a child. It was sothing unknown wearing a young body like a joke the gods found amusing.
The sentinels shifted their halberds back for a second strike. This ti synchronized, perfectly tid to reduce him into red paste between crossing blades.
He invited it.
Ludger jumped backward landed lightly on cracked stone. He slid a foot back. Centered his weight. Eyes half-lidded. Fight mode engaged. The six runic giants surged.
He exhaled, slow, asured, hand tracing a tiny circle. A rune flared to life like a spark.
《Break》
A small word. A simple script.
But written by him, with a lot of mana.
The closest golem swung. Ludger caught the halberd haft with one palm. tal scread.
The giant jerked, servos grinding, unable to move, not because he overpowered it physically, but because the rune crawled through its core like termites in wood. Weakening joints, misaligning mana channels.
Then Ludger twisted his wrist. The halberd snapped like brittle candy.
Before shock could ripple through the sentinels, Ludger was already moving, a blur followed by the sound of collapsing stone. He stepped into the giant’s guard, fist drawn back. Followed by a palm strike. A dull, dense thunk, like a mountain being nudged.
A breath later, the entire three-ton sentinel shot backwards through a column, body folding inward as if gravity had turned malicious. Dust billowed as it crashed into the guild hall wall, half-embedded, runes flickering like dying stars.
One down. Five more turned to him, runes flaring red with escalation.
Crowd silence shattered into chaos. Mages fired chain spells. Engineers pulled ergency levers. More statues activated across rooftops like an army of waking titans.
A full district lockdown. Ludger rolled his shoulders, flexing fingers wrapped in cracked gauntlet plating. He didn’t look panicked. Or excited.
Just… tired. Hungry for resolution.
“You built these with children,” he said with a rough voice, low enough the crowd had to lean in to hear.
“So I’ll take them apart.”
Stone rippled under his feet like stirred sand. Sentinels charged again, two flanking, three advancing, one aiming a chest-core beam. Ludger smiled without warmth. He disappeared into the volley like a knife through silk.
Golems swung like guillotines. Precise. chanical. Predictable.To most, unstoppable. To Ludger, a puzzle already half-solved.
Halberd arcs repeated the sa micro-delay between swings, two fras of hesitation after impact, then shift weight, then pivot. Target acquisition lagged when he moved diagonally. Their formation tightened whenever he got within five ters of a civilian.
Defensive code. Not free control. They weren’t piloted, they were programd.
Ludger slipped beneath a vertical chop, boots skidding across broken cobble. Another halberd swept the space where his head had been, he dipped under it without rushing, reading the follow-through.
Sentinel #3’s hips rotated counter-clockwise. Every ti. That ant right-side blind spot during recalibration. He stepped into it.
The halberd passed behind his spine with lethal grace. The crowd gasped. A hair slower and he would’ve been split in half.
Instead, Ludger’s hand brushed the giant’s ankle, barely a tap, but sand obeyed him. A trickle of earth peeled off the ground like syrup, thinner than thread, and flowed along the sentinel’s limb. No one saw it.
Slipped into its knee joint. Then hip. Then cable channel. He moved on.
Golem #4 lunged. Ludger backstepped, feeling the timing, three heartbeats between aggressive-phase swings. An opening. He ducked beneath its thrust, sliding over polished stone like a shadow and traced a finger along its plated thigh.
More earth followed, flowing like sand seeking crevices. He didn’t need to break them. Just choke the gears from within.
Sentinel #2 slashed in, and Ludger rolled beneath the halberd, springing back up behind it. His hand touched the spine of its plate, leaving behind a sar of dust so fine it looked like nothing at all.
But inside, the grains accumulated. Crawling through mana seals. Grinding against tal. Multiplying with every step he took.
A minute passed. Then another. He’d touched every one of them.Crowd watched soone dance through death as if choreographed. Sentinels swung again, still perfectly in sync, until one knee stuttered.
Just a hiccup. Then a second.
Then a harsh tallic shriek ripped the plaza as joints seized all at once, like teeth grinding against sand. One sentinel froze mid-swing, halberd raised. Another halted with gears sparking. A third tried to step and failed, tal foot glued to stone.
Ludger exhaled. Sand Injection Complete. He clenched his fist.
The fine earth he’d inserted expanded like packed dirt eting air, filling sockets, wedging axles, jamming rune-pistons. Their internal chanics choked. One by one the giants locked in place, frozen mid-kill like statues praying for rcy.
The last sentinel lurched toward him, forcing its mana core to override the blockage. It managed half a step before locking with a thunderous CLANG that echoed across Coria.
Now six titans stood immobile around him, weapons raised, engines whining in futile strain. Like colossal executioners paused by a boy who hadn’t even broken a sweat. Ludger placed his palm on the nearest tal knee, feeling it tremble.
“Machines break easier than people,” he murmured, voice low enough only Albrecht, and the nearest people caught it.
Commander Albrecht’s face drained pale. These things were guild pride. State-level deterrent. Symbols of safety and supremacy.
And Ludger disabled them without destroying them, exposing the cri without giving Velis an excuse to retaliate. Calculated. Surgical. Ruthless in restraint. He turned to the crowd, voice firm.
“Your sentinels contained enslaved children.
Not one governnt in the world allows that.”
The people didn’t move. They listened. Truth was heavier than fear.
Frozen sentinels lood like failed gods. The plaza held its breath.
Until Commander Albrecht shattered the silence.
“ALL UNITS — KILL THE INTRUDER!”
His voice cracked with desperation, not conviction. But the loyal ones obeyed.
Dozens of mages raised staves and gauntleted hands. Runes lit like wildfire. A barrage of fire lances, arc bolts, razor wind discs, and hardened mana rounds roared toward Ludger in a cascading wave of color. Ludger flexed his wrists.
Wind Overdrive on his forearmguards..
New mana flared pale-blue along his armguards. Air condensed, spiraling into crescent-force plates. The barrage landed. Instead of impact, the air around Ludger bent.
Projectiles skidded, curved, and ricocheted backward as if slapped by an invisible wall. Mages barely had ti to register panic before their own spells slamd into them.
BOOM — CRACK — BANG
Staves shattered. Gauntlets ruptured. Three wizards flew through market stands, collapsing timber. Another scread as lightning crawled back into his catalyst, detonating it into shards.
Weapons exploded in their hands like treacherous grenades. Those attacking him paid the price of blind loyalty. Smoke rolled across cobble. Civilians scread and fled to alleys, but many stayed — morbid curiosity anchored them. They were witnesses now.
Albrecht cursed and charged, blade drawn. Dozens of lee fighters surged with him, spears, axes, and mana-forged sabers. Their boots thundered against the stones. Ludger didn’t step back. He spoke instead, voice cold enough to frost steel:
“If you attack after what I’ve exposed tonight…”
Earth mana rippled under his boots like a tectonic heartbeat.
“…I will execute every single one of you.”
Fighters hesitated mid-charge. Not fear of pain, fear of certainty. His tone didn’t carry a threat. It carried promise.
Runic slave collars. Children inside golems. The frozen titans around them, proof engraved in tal and flesh. Ludger raised one hand, palm outward, sand swirling lazily in a vortex.
“If you didn’t know what was happening underground,” he continued, voice cutting through panic like a scalpel, “drop your weapons. Step back. Wait for your innocence to be confird.”
Half the militia faltered. Blades wavered. One man lowered his spear. Another backed away shaking, eyes flicking to the unconscious beastn, then back at Ludger.
The commander felt control slipping. He knew what this ant. If truth took root here, Coria burned politically. Albrecht roared:
“HE LIES! He’s a foreign saboteur, an assassin!
Kill him NOW!”
His desperation made even the blindest follower pause. A girl in light armor whispered to her partner, terrified:
“If he wanted to kill us… he would’ve already.”
Weapons began to clatter against stone. Not all, but enough.
The frontline split like a wound reopening, loyalists on one side, uncertain soldiers on the other. A tension line so sharp even sound seed scared to cross it.
Ludger’s eyes narrowed. He could end Albrecht here. One technique. One decision. He stepped forward.
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