Chapter 965

The heavy footsteps kept getting closer. Ludger lowered his stance. Then he smiled a little.

“Let’s see,” he said quietly, “how many of those things you’re willing to lose.”

Ludger muttered under his breath while staring into the darkness where the next wave of mechanical footsteps kept approaching.

“What now…”

His voice came out rough, half from exhaustion and half from irritation.

He rolled one shoulder once, rain running over his skin while his mind cut through options at speed.

Buy time. Recover mana. Then do the same thing again? Maybe. If he could drag things out properly, half an hour might be enough. Not enough to return to full strength, not even close, but enough to gather what mattered.

Enough to freeze over ten more of those runic golems if they insisted on sending them in manageable groups. The thought was ugly. But not impossible. And with enemies like these, “not impossible” was usually enough.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly as he tracked the sound of the advancing machines through the streets below.

He could try another hit-and-run pattern. Force them into the rain. Lead them through tighter districts. Break line of sight. Preserve mana where possible. Find another answer before the Regent found a better one.

Before he could settle on anything, a new sound cut through the night.

The runic golem cannons. But… different. Ludger stilled instantly.

The noise had the same mechanical core to it, the heavy internal clicks, the low pressure build, the metallic recoil of something expensive and designed to kill. But it lacked the sharp, murderous rhythm of the earlier barrages.

No screaming bullets. No immediate storm of impacts tearing toward him. Instead, he heard projectiles striking the ground around the district. Then slightly exploding. His eyes sharpened. Not big blasts.

One hit a rooftop nearby with a dull pop and a short burst. Another landed in the street below. Then another farther off, then several more in quick sequence, scattering across the area around him rather than focusing directly on his body.

Ludger’s expression darkened. A moment later, he sensed it. Mist. Something was spreading through the area.

A pale, creeping cloud began to crawl through the rain-soaked streets and over the rooftops, thickening as more of those strange projectiles landed and burst. It moved low at first, hugging broken stone and ruined walls, then rose gradually, turning the district into a cold, shifting haze that ate distance and shape.

Ludger did not like that. The rain still fell, but now even that felt wrong, muted somehow as the mist thickened around the battlefield.

His instincts sharpened further. This was not random cover. Not desperate improvisation. This was prepared. And then he noticed something else. The capital had gone eerily silent. Not literally silent, there was still rain, still the distant grind of machinery, still the occasional settling of damaged stone, but the human noise was gone.

It felt as though the entire area had been cleared out in advance. As if they had shaped the terrain for this exact moment. For some unknown tactic they did not want interrupted by ordinary people getting in the way.

Ludger stood very still in the rain and mist, every part of him alert now, his earlier thoughts about buying time shoved aside by something colder.

The Regent had changed the board again. And whatever came next… it had been planned long before tonight.

Before long, the entire capital had been swallowed by the mist.

It spread with ugly patience, rolling through streets, climbing walls, slipping over rooftops and through broken windows until the city no longer looked like a battlefield.

It looked infected.

The rain was still falling, but now it did little more than streak the pale poison into shifting curtains that made every ruin, alley, and rooftop feel half-real. Firelight became muted smears. The barrier overhead vanished behind the haze. Even the frozen runic guardians nearby looked less like machines now and more like buried shapes inside a bad dream.

Ludger’s expression hardened as he moved. This was getting worse by the second.

He gathered earth around his face and formed a rough mask over his nose and mouth, compacting the material into a dense filter with narrow breathing channels. It wasn’t elegant, but it was fast, and that mattered more right now. The first few breaths through it felt a little cleaner.

Not enough. The mask helped him breathe less of the poison, but it wasn’t being nearly as effective as he wanted. Because the mist wasn’t just lingering in the air. It was clinging to his skin.

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That realization came fast and unpleasantly. The exposed parts of his body, his chest, back, arms, neck, started prickling first, then burning, especially around the wounds he had already taken. Cuts. Bullet holes. Torn flesh. Bruised and swollen spots. The mist gathered there as if attracted to weakness, settling into the damaged areas and making them sting hard enough to tighten his jaw.

Ludger clicked his tongue and wiped at one shoulder, only to feel the same sharp burn flare again moments later. His eyes narrowed behind the crude mask. The enemy had decided to use some sort of chemical weapon in the capital.

Even for the Empire, even for the Regent, that was supposed to be insane. This was their own capital. Their own streets. Their own people still hiding underground or locked inside buildings. Filling the whole city with poison just to bring down one target should have been the kind of thing no sane ruler even considered.

But if Alphonse was willing to go that far… then Ludger knew he was running out of options. That thought landed with brutal clarity. The Regent was done pretending restraint mattered. Done preserving appearances for anyone who might still have doubted how ugly this had become.

If he was ready to flood the capital with poison, then everything after this would only get worse. Ludger took another careful breath through the mask and immediately felt the irritation in his lungs anyway.

Not as bad as before. Still bad. His body was already tired. His wounds were already open. And now the whole city was turning hostile in a way raw strength alone couldn’t simply punch through.

But even then… he could tell there was more to the mist. Much more. Because it wasn’t only affecting his body. It was messing with his magic senses. That was the part that truly bothered him.

Ludger extended his awareness outward the way he had done all night—feeling for movement, pressure, mana flow, terrain shifts, the subtle signatures of weapons and enemies in the dark.

Everything came back wrong. Blurred. Warped.

Not completely dead, but distorted enough that readings bled into each other in ugly ways. Distances felt less reliable. Mana traces smeared. Shapes that should have been clear became uncertain. Even the frozen runic guardians nearby felt fuzzier at the edges of his perception than they had any right to.

The mist wasn’t just poisonous. It was interference. A second layer. Maybe its whole purpose. Ludger’s posture lowered instinctively. So that was the real trap. Not just to weaken his body. To blind him. To make the capital into a battlefield where his senses could no longer be trusted the way they had before.

That was not the kind of tactic used by someone trying to fight fair. It was the tactic of someone building a slaughterhouse. Ludger stood still for one more second, letting the burn in his wounds and the distortion in his senses settle into something usable instead of merely irritating.

Then he exhaled slowly through the mask. The enemies didn’t attack.

That bothered Ludger more than if they had. No bullets. No flames. No compressed air. No charging footsteps from the runic guardians closing in through the poison-thick streets. Nothing.

They didn’t make any real movements either, at least none he could catch clearly through the mist mangling his senses. The whole capital felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for something.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed behind the mask. Were they waiting for him to get even weaker? That would make sense.

The poison was already doing its work. His wounds burned. His breathing was rough. His mana was low again. If the Regent’s forces had finally learned patience, then maybe this whole setup was meant to let the capital itself soften him before the next wave moved in.

Annoying. But maybe useful. Perhaps that was the chance he needed. If they were really waiting, then he could move without being bothered for a while. He didn’t need a perfect opening anymore. Just one that existed long enough to matter.

So Ludger started moving.

He headed toward one of the city gates, keeping to the rooftops where possible, jumping from one rain-slick structure to the next while the poisonous mist crawled through the streets below like something alive. His landings stayed light despite the state of his body, each movement controlled, efficient, wasting as little strength as possible.

One rooftop. Then another. Then a narrower gap. He kept low, eyes cutting through the haze, trying to trust his instincts more than his distorted senses.

The gate had to be tested eventually.

Even if the barrier still held, the routes around the outer walls would tell him something, guard concentration, structural weaknesses, maybe even where the enemy expected him to make a break for it.

He launched toward another roof… And suddenly saw a spear almost piercing his head. There was no warning worth the name. No buildup he could properly read through the mist. Just the gleam of metal and the murderous certainty of a thrust already inside killing distance.

Ludger reacted on pure instinct.

He snapped both hands up and caught the spearpoint between them, stopping it just in front of his face with a violent jolt that sent pain through his palms and shoulders. The force behind it was monstrous, enough to drive him backward half a step even with the catch, but he held it.

For an instant, boy and machine locked together in the poison-soaked dark. Then the shield hit him.

One of those insanely large shields slammed into his side with enough force to make the world lurch sideways. The impact blew him off his footing and hurled him across the rooftop, rain and mist tearing past him as his body smashed through a half-collapsed chimney and skidded hard across broken stone.

Pain flared through his ribs and shoulder. Ludger forced himself to turn mid-slide, bracing for the follow-up. Another spear thrust. A shield crush. A coordinated rush to pin him while the poison kept working.

He waited for it… But it never came. The attack did not continue. No second strike crashed down. No barrage followed. No encirclement tightened around him. The capital remained eerily still, with only the rain, the mist, and the distant mechanical hums filling the silence.

Ludger stayed low where he had landed, muscles coiled, eyes fixed on the haze ahead while blood and rainwater ran down his arms.

That was worse. Much worse. Because now it was obvious. They weren’t trying to kill him quickly. They were herding him. Ludger steadied his breathing and forced himself to think through the pain. So that was their game.

They were truly trying to wear him down.

Not kill him fast. Not overwhelm him with some glorious final charge. Just keep pressing, keep harassing, keep letting the poison, exhaustion, and constant pressure shave pieces off him until the last fight became simple.

It was an ugly plan.

Which meant it was a good one.