Chapter 971

The spear didn’t fly cleanly like an arrow.

It tore through the air like a collapsing tower given momentum, dragging a spiraling wake of frozen mist and screaming wind behind it. The sheer force of the throw distorted the rain around it into rings, and the poisonous remnants of the capital’s mist were ripped apart in its wake.

Then it hit the barrier.

The impact was apocalyptic.

For one impossible instant, the whole world seemed to turn white and silver and violently wrong. The barrier flashed into visibility in full, a colossal dome of force erupting into existence under the strain. Shockwaves rippled across it in every direction, racing outward over the capital like cracks made of light.

The spear’s point bit in… and stopped.

The barrier resisted. Hard. The invisible wall bowed inward under the pressure without breaking, lines of force and runic light surging through its structure as it tried to distribute the impact across the entire dome. The ice spear screamed against it, the point grinding, compressing, trying to force itself through while the barrier shoved back with equal fury.

Ludger bared his teeth. Not enough. So he pushed.

Standing atop MK 1, he forced more mana into the spear even as it was already embedded against the barrier. Cryomancy reinforced its structure. Water attunement tightened the mass. Earth magic braced the giant beneath him so it would not collapse while he drove everything he still had into that one point of contact.

His whole body trembled with the effort. Blood ran from reopened wounds. His lungs burned. But he kept pushing.

The spear groaned deeper into the barrier, millimeter by millimeter, the point no longer merely striking but forcing itself through by sheer will and power. The dome around the impact zone warped hideously, lines of light bunching inward as if reality itself were straining to hold shape.

“Break,” Ludger hissed.

More force. More mana. More pressure. The point advanced another fraction. Then another.

And then… a crack. Tiny.

Ludger’s eyes widened. There. The first true fracture split outward from the impact point, a jagged line of white distortion cutting across the barrier’s surface.

Then a second crack formed. Then a third.

The fractures spider-webbed outward in all directions, racing through the dome faster and faster as the barrier tried and failed to compensate. Pulses of light misfired through its structure. The whole thing flickered violently, no longer redistributing the force cleanly.

Ludger roared and shoved the last of his remaining mana into the spear. The point punched through. The moment it did, the entire impact zone shattered.

The barrier cracked open with a deafening scream of broken magic, its surface fracturing outward in a huge circle around the breach. A hole tore through the dome, ragged at the edges and wide enough for a giant to force passage through if it moved fast enough.

Wind rushed through it immediately. Real outside air. Cold, wild, and free compared to the poisoned pressure trapped inside the capital. Ludger exhaled sharply, staring at the opening while pieces of shattered magical light rained down around it like dying stars.

The barrier had broken. Not fully. Not everywhere. But enough. Enough for escape.

Ludger did not waste the opening. The instant the hole tore through the barrier, he forced MK 1 to move.

The giant earth construct shifted with a heavy, grinding lurch, damaged joints straining under the last of his control as it turned one massive arm inward. Ludger climbed down just enough to position himself against the giant’s hand, rain and broken light from the barrier washing over him while the torn gap above the wall screamed with unstable magic.

He could already feel the construct starting to fail. The spear had taken too much. The repeated strikes against the barrier had taken too much. The giant had done its job. Now it only needed to do one more thing.

“Throw me,” Ludger muttered.

Then he poured the last functional thread of control into the motion.

MK 1 drew its arm back, not gracefully, not even cleanly, but with enough force to matter. Cracks spread through its shoulder and upper arm as the massive fingers closed around him with careful brutality.

Then the giant hurled him through the hole.

Ludger shot forward like a stone fired from a siege engine, body cutting through the ragged opening in the barrier just before the magic around it could begin to recover. Broken arcs of light hissed around him, scraping past his sides as he crossed the threshold from the poisoned capital into the cold night beyond.

And behind him… MK 1 began to crumble.

The moment Ludger left the capital side of the breach, the last stable flow of mana sustaining the giant snapped apart. Its arm splintered first, dropping in chunks the size of houses. Then the torso caved inward as the internal supports gave out. Reinforced outer layers cracked and peeled away, the whole fifty-meter construct collapsing in on itself like a mountain finally remembering it was only dirt and stone pretending to be a weapon.

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Its fall shook the wall and the ground beneath it, broken sections slamming down in a roar of earth and shattered magic.

Ludger barely looked back. He was already outside. Already falling.

The cold air beyond the capital hit him like a slap, cleaner than anything he had breathed for hours. No poison. No distorted senses. No trapped pressure beneath a hateful dome. Just night, wind, distance, and gravity pulling him down as the capital loomed behind him like a wounded beast trying to close its jaws.

He twisted in the air and landed hard beyond the wall, boots and one hand hitting first before momentum carried him into a rough slide across wet ground and broken stone. Pain flared through his whole body at once, but this time it was almost welcome.

Ludger came to a stop on one knee and exhaled. Then, for the first time in too long, he let out a genuine sigh of relief. Not because he was safe. Because he was free.

He looked back over one shoulder and watched as the barrier slowly began to close. The torn edges of the hole drew inward in jagged lines of fading light, the dome repairing itself piece by piece until the opening narrowed.

Just fast enough to remind him how close that had been. Ludger stared at it for one more second, chest rising and falling harder now that the immediate pressure had broken.

Then his thoughts moved where they needed to go. Viola. Luna. He needed to catch up with them. That part came first.

He had thrown them out of the capital for a reason. They would be moving, hiding, or pushing for safety on their own, but the countryside around the capital was not safe, not with the Empire in motion, with the roads unstable, and with too many enemies likely spreading outward now that the siege of Lionfang had already begun.

He needed to find them. Confirm they were alive. Get them moving in the right direction.

And then… home.

His eyes turned colder as he pushed himself fully upright. He had to return home to defend it.

Lionfang would already be under pressure. His father knew how to hold a line, and the northerners would not fold easily, but that didn’t change the reality of it. The Empire had not surrounded Lionfang for show. Armies had moved. Tunnels had been collapsed. Lines had been cut.

This was war now. Real war. And Ludger had spent enough time inside the capital.

Once he got rid of the enemies there… once he helped crush whatever the Empire had thrown at Lionfang… then he would come back to finish this properly.

Not as a fugitive crawling through poison and traps. Not half-drained and improvising inside someone else’s cage.

No. A real cleanup. His gaze lingered on the barrier-covered capital, on the poisoned city and the castle hidden somewhere deeper inside it, and something dark and calm settled inside him.

Not just the Regent. Not just the obvious traitors and useful monsters. All of it. Every hidden rot pocketing coin behind polished titles. Every senator whispering in the dark. Every smiling bastard who thought walls, barriers, and prepared narratives could protect them from what they had started.

Ludger flexed his fingers once, ignoring the ache in his body.

First Viola. Then Luna. Then home. After that… the Empire would get what it deserved.

Ludger was about to dash away from the capital.

His body had already shifted forward. His stance had lowered.

His mind had moved past the barrier, past the city, past the poisoned night and onto the next necessary problem, Viola, Luna, the road, Lionfang, war.

Then something hit him from the side. Not a bullet. Not a spear. Not even a physical strike he could feel coming through air pressure or intent. A blast of light slammed into him so suddenly that he didn’t even register it until the exact moment of impact. One instant the night beyond the capital was dark, wet, and cold.

The next, his entire left side vanished inside a violent white-gold flash.

The explosion came a heartbeat later.

It tore him sideways through the air with brutal force, sending him spinning away from the capital wall as if some unseen giant had swatted him out of existence. Pain hit all at once, burning, pressure, shock, too much and too sudden to sort cleanly. The world lost shape around him. Ground, sky, wall, darkness, light, everything smeared together into a streaking blur.

Then he hit the ground. Then again.

He rolled across wet earth and broken stone, his body bouncing and skidding without control while torn skin, bruised muscle, and half-healed wounds all screamed at him together. Mud splashed. Gravel tore at exposed flesh. Something sharp clipped his ribs. His shoulder slammed against the ground badly enough to send another burst of white through his vision.

He kept rolling until momentum finally died and he stopped with his face pressed against the floor.

For a moment, he didn’t move. His mind was a mess. Not from fear. From the shock.

The blast had scrambled things. Thoughts didn’t line up properly. Sound came in strangely distant. His body felt both heavy and too light at the same time, as though parts of him were still trying to catch up to what had happened.

Steam was leaving his body. That was the first clear thing he noticed.

Thin trails of white rose from him into the cold night, hissing softly where rain touched his skin and the residual heat of the blast clung to him. It smelled wrong, burned flesh, scorched mana, and something cleaner and more artificial layered beneath it.

Light-based attack. Or something close enough to it that the difference did not matter right now. Ludger’s fingers dug into the ground. He forced himself to move. No time. No lying there and waiting for the follow-up.

He dragged one hand to his chest and activated Healing Touch, shoving mana into himself with all the subtlety of a man forcing a door open before the house collapsed. Warmth spread through damaged flesh. Not enough to fix everything, nowhere near enough, but enough to close the worst immediate instability, enough to push back the shock fogging his head, enough to force his nerves and thoughts back into something resembling order.

His breathing hitched once. Then steadied. The world sharpened.

Ludger lifted his head. Water slid off his hair and down his face as he looked forward through the darkness.

And saw it. A runic armor appearing in front of him. Slowly. Not walking into view in the normal sense. Revealing itself.

The camouflage over its body peeled away in layers of distortion and dying light, as if the air itself had been pretending something was not there and had finally given up. First came the outline, tall, heavy, more human-shaped than the earlier runic guardians but built with the same ruthless purpose. Then the details sharpened through the fading concealment.

Silver metallic plating. Rune-lines glowing beneath the seams. A broad frame built more like a knight than a machine of war, though it was clearly both. Its surface still shimmered faintly with the remnants of whatever concealment system had hidden it until after the strike.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed.

So that was how they had done it. Not just stealth movement in the mist. Full camouflage. And he had missed it completely. That alone told him enough. This one was different from the others.