Chapter 975

Ludger kicked Verk’s face again. And again. And again. Each hit landed with the kind of force that made the air crack.

His heels slammed into the faceplate and helmet assembly in brutal rhythm, the impacts echoing through the rain-soaked ground outside the capital like thunder trapped inside metal. Verk’s head snapped back once, twice, then a third time as Ludger kept both hands locked around the armored wrists and refused to let go.

His fingers dug deep into the armor seams. Not politely. Not like a grappler testing leverage. Like he was trying to tear the suit apart with his bare hands.

Metal groaned faintly beneath his grip. Runes flashed in sharp pulses along Verk’s forearms as the armor tried to compensate, tried to stabilize, tried to rip its arms free from the boy clinging to them like a starving beast with human intelligence.

It didn’t work. Ludger held on. His arms shook. His wounds reopened. His body screamed at him with every movement. None of it mattered.

He kicked again. The impact rang out across the area. Verk staggered backward. Another kick. Another step.

The force behind each blow was absurd. Ludger’s raw strength, reinforced muscles, and stubborn refusal to acknowledge his own collapse turned every strike into a hammerfall. Mud sprayed beneath Verk’s boots as he was forced back step by step, the sleek armor scraping against wet stone and broken ground while its internal systems whined under the effort of maintaining balance.

And yet… not a single scratch appeared. Ludger’s kicks did nothing visible to the armor. No cracks. No dents. No warped plating.

Even the faceplate, despite taking repeated direct hits hard enough to rattle the air, remained flawless under the rain. His grip, strong enough to crush ordinary metal and splinter bone through steel, left no dents around the wrists. The armor did not cave in. Did not buckle. Did not even show the courtesy of looking slightly damaged.

That made several things clear. First, Verk had upgraded more than just speed and output. Second, the outer plating was either made from something disgusting, reinforced by something disgusting, or both.

Third… Ludger was still going to keep kicking him. Because damage was not the only purpose of an attack. Another double kick smashed into Verk’s face, driving him back a full step.

Verk’s body jerked with each impact, but the armor refused to break. Its surface stayed smooth, rain sliding off it as if Ludger’s strikes were nothing more than bad weather.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. If he couldn’t crack it yet, he would move it. If he couldn’t dent it yet, he would force it to react.

If he couldn’t break the shell from the outside, then he would make the bastard inside feel every failure of balance, every jarring impact, every moment of being dragged off the rhythm he clearly depended on.

Verk tried to twist one arm free. Ludger tightened his grip. The motion tore more skin along his own palms and fingers, but he didn’t let go. He kicked again. This one struck slightly lower, under the chin line of the helmet.

Verk’s head snapped back, and the armor took another involuntary step.

Ludger landed on one foot, used Verk’s trapped arms to pull himself forward, and immediately drove both feet up again into the same spot.

Another thunderclap. Another backward step. Verk snarled now, amusement gone. The sound came muffled from inside the armor, ugly and furious.

Ludger smiled through blood. The armor was flawless. The man inside was not.

Verk finally lost the last trace of amusement.

“Insect.”

The word came out sharp and full of disgust, dragged through clenched teeth as Ludger kept forcing him backward one step at a time. The sleek runic armor whined under the strain, stabilizers firing in tiny bursts, runes pulsing beneath the surface as it tried to keep its footing while a half-broken boy clung to its arms and kicked its face like he was trying to hammer sense into a wall.

Ludger only grinned through blood. That made it worse. Verk’s helmet tilted slightly, and for one dangerous instant Ludger noticed something changing in the eye slits.

Light. Not the same broad glow from the palms. This was narrower. More focused. His instincts screamed.

The next second, a concentrated line of fire shot out from the eyes of Verk’s helmet.

Not fire in the normal sense. Not some wavering tongue of flame.

This thing was a burning line of compressed destruction, a thin, vicious beam that crossed the tiny space between them almost instantly. It came out so fast Ludger didn’t have time to release the grip, reposition, and evade properly.

So he did the only thing he could. He twisted his head backward. Hard.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

The burning line cut past his face so close he felt the heat scrape his skin. The hair at the front of his head singed instantly, and a sharp wave of pain flashed across his cheek where the edge of the attack clipped air close enough to burn without fully connecting.

Then the beam hit the barrier behind him.

And exploded. The blast was immediate and violent.

The magical wall flared into visibility, the point of impact erupting in white-gold fire and warped light as if the barrier had been stabbed by a miniature sun. A shockwave burst outward at point-blank range, smashing into both of them at once.

Ludger felt the force hit his back, side, and legs all together. Verk got caught in it too. The explosion ripped them apart. Ludger’s grip tore loose from Verk’s wrists as the shockwave hurled them away from each other. He flew sideways through smoke, dust, shattered magic, and loose stone, hit the ground hard, and rolled once before catching himself in a rough crouch.

Verk was driven backward as well, boots digging furrows into the mud while the armor absorbed the recoil in bright flashing pulses along the joints.

For a few seconds, the world turned into noise and debris. Dust rose. Smoke spread. Rain hissed against lingering heat. Bits of broken earth and glowing fragments from the barrier rained down around them. Ludger coughed once, forced his blurry vision to settle, and lifted his head through the settling haze.

Then he saw it. Another hole was visible on the barrier. Not large enough for the earth giant from before. Not nearly as wide as the breach he had forced open with the giant spear. But it was there.

A real tear in the magical wall, jagged and glowing faintly around the edges, with cracks spider-webbing outward from the point where Verk’s eye-beam had detonated.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed.

So a single attack from Verk had been able to do that. That alone said plenty. The bastard’s armor was much stronger than last time. Stronger in a truly irritating way. Enough firepower to damage the same barrier Ludger had needed a giant construct and nearly all his remaining mana to punch through.

That explained more of Verk’s confidence. And made the armor even more worth stealing apart. Across from him, Verk straightened slowly inside the drifting smoke, the glowing eye slits of the helmet burning brighter now, like the armor itself had stopped pretending restraint mattered.

Ludger spat blood to the side and stood up again, one hand briefly pressing against his ribs before dropping.

His body hurt. His head was ringing. His chest was still marked red from the earlier blast. And now there was another hole in the barrier behind him. He exhaled through his nose. He fixed his stance.

Not because his body wanted to cooperate. It didn’t. His ribs ached, his chest burned, his head still rang from being slammed into the barrier and blasted around like a training dummy that owed someone money. His arms were heavy. His legs were worse.

But pain had stopped being useful information a while ago. Now it was just noise. He breathed in. Breathed out. Then focused his senses.

Not broadly. That had been the mistake earlier. Too much poison, too much interference, too much distorted mana around the capital. Trying to read everything only gave him a headache and half-lies.

So he narrowed it.

The glow of the runes before movement. The faint delay between shoulder reinforcement and palm discharge. The way the armor anchored the hips before heavier strikes. The pressure shift before a kick. The tiny pulse near the spine whenever Verk tried to accelerate too quickly.

After being treated like a punching bag for a while, Ludger finally understood the armor.

The thing was fast. Ridiculously fast. Durable enough to make his direct attacks almost useless. Its output was absurd, and whatever material coated the outer shell refused to behave like proper metal. But it still had patterns. Everything did. Even expensive toys made by arrogant men.

Verk charged again.

The ground cracked under his first step, the armor launching him forward in a low burst. His right fist came first, wrapped in that pale-gold pressure that had nearly caved Ludger in several times already.

Before, it would have landed. This time, Ludger moved.

Barely.

His left forearm shifted at the exact angle needed, not to block the punch, but to slide it aside. The strike screamed past his shoulder, close enough for the heat around the gauntlet to brush his skin.

A clean parry. Verk’s momentum carried forward a fraction too far. An opening appeared. Ludger jumped away. He didn’t counter. Didn’t grab. Didn’t try to kick the armor again.

He simply used the redirected force and stepped out of range, landing several paces away with a rough slide across the wet ground.

Verk turned toward him slowly. For the first time, he didn’t immediately attack. He studied Ludger through the glowing slits of his helmet, posture still aggressive but less certain than before.

“What was that?”

Ludger didn’t answer. Verk’s eyes narrowed inside the armor. Plain dumb luck? Maybe. It had to be, didn’t it?

The boy was exhausted. Poisoned. Burned. Beaten half to death. Barely standing a minute ago. A single successful parry after that much punishment could happen. Even dying animals snapped in the right direction sometimes.

But then why hadn’t he used the opening? That was the strange part. Ludger never wasted openings. Verk knew that much. The boy was irritatingly practical. If he saw a chance to maim, blind, trip, or break something, he took it without hesitation. Yet this time, he had parried and retreated.

No immediate follow-up. Just distance. That made it feel less like luck. And more like a test. Verk’s fingers twitched inside the armored gauntlets. Across from him, Ludger settled into his usual fighting stance.

One arm slightly forward. The other protecting the centerline. Feet angled for movement despite the damage in his legs. His breathing was still rough, and his body looked like it should have collapsed ten minutes ago, but his eyes were different now.

Verk’s jaw tightened.

The hole in the barrier behind Ludger still glowed faintly, slowly mending itself. Smoke and dust drifted low over the ground, curling around both fighters as the capital loomed behind them in poisoned silence.

Ludger tilted his head a fraction. Not a taunt. Worse. An invitation. Verk felt the insult in it. The boy was no longer trying to overpower the armor.

He was watching it. Learning it. And that, somehow, was far more annoying. Verk attacked again. A straight punch first.

Fast enough to blur through the rain, reinforced by a pulse of white-gold mana that flared along his shoulder and elbow a fraction before the strike fully extended. Ludger shifted half a step to the left.

Not a dodge in the dramatic sense. No wide leap. No desperate roll. Just a small adjustment, barely more than a correction of posture.