Chapter 769: The Opening He Needed

The hammer passed through the doorway and shattered the edge of the landing.

Leon was already beyond its reach. Stone struck the wall beside his head as he retreated toward the turn, and the guardian drew its weapon back through the opening.

It could reach outside perfectly well. It simply hadn’t bothered until he attacked.

He waited for the head of the hammer to clear the threshold, then went forward. Retreat remained possible, but he wouldn’t get unlimited free attempts from the landing. If he wanted to exploit the delay he’d seen, he needed to be close enough when it occurred.

He entered on the guardian’s hammer side.

The weapon swept toward him at head height. Leon ducked beneath the shaft, felt the wind of its passage drag at his hair, and sent fire around the construct’s raised arm toward its back.

Light rushed to meet the flame.

He struck the opposite hip with ice before the glow finished settling. The protective seams brightened in two places at once, leaving the outer chest briefly dim.

Leon drove his fist into it, compressed earth reinforcing the blow and his older strength behind his arm.

The plate cracked.

Pain jarred through his knuckles. He sprang back before the shield could pin him against the damaged armor, catching a glimpse of a deeper glow through the fracture.

Then light flooded the chest again, sealing the opening with a ward even though the metal remained broken.

I can get through. Just not in one hit.

The guardian lowered its shield and drove the edge into the floor.

Leon stepped onto the air as a shockwave rolled beneath his boots. It struck the pillars behind him, shaking dust from the dome. He landed beyond the expanding ring and immediately moved again.

The guardian pivoted to face him. Its hammer remained ready on one side, its shield on the other. When he circled left, the shield followed. When he tried the opposite direction, the hammer cut across his approach.

It didn’t waste steps chasing him around the chamber. It stayed near the center, blocking easy access to the deposits.

Leon glanced toward the grate behind it. A reckless strike could hit the working reservoir instead of the construct. The guardian didn’t have to worry about that nearly as much as he did.

He led it a few paces away from the central opening by threatening the side of its chest. It followed far enough to attack, then stopped as soon as he withdrew.

That would have to be enough room.

He tested it with a hard strike at the shoulder followed by one at the knee. The defensive glow moved through the body again. This time, he watched the difference between the inner conduits and the seams along the outer plates.

The power passed through the chest, but it didn’t stop there to reinforce the chest armor. The deeper lines brightened as they carried the supply downward. Outside them, the ward over the cracked plate weakened.

Leon nearly took a hammer to the ribs for watching too closely. He turned the blow aside with an angled barrier and slid back across the grit.

"All right," he said under his breath. "I saw it."

There was no need to keep proving the same thing at the expense of his armor.

The construct could reinforce several sections, but not all of them at full strength while rapidly shifting its supply. Small attacks barely distracted it. He’d have to make it commit heavily to one place, then threaten another far enough away to keep that power moving.

After that came the harder part: reaching the damaged chest before the ward recovered.

The glow behind the fracture was still steady. He hadn’t meaningfully harmed its source yet. Breaking the outer plate would only get him close to whatever protected the heart itself.

He tightened his grip on his sword.

His ordinary attacks had opened the first crack. He could use them to widen it, then bring holy energy against the damaged inner defense. The ward would still resist. He needed a real breach before committing that reserve, not a hopeful assumption that a different kind of power would pass straight through.

The guardian struck the floor again.

Leon rose above the wave, but this time the hammer followed him upward. He shifted sideways in the air, close enough that the blade scraped sparks from his armor’s shoulder.

It could combine its attacks. He’d been treating the floor strike as a pause between exchanges, and the construct had just corrected him.

He landed with a better idea of what the final approach would cost.

The shield would come across as he attacked the chest. He couldn’t remove that arm with a cheap distraction, and he wasn’t going to stand in front of the hammer while trying. He needed to draw the hammer high, keep the shield’s swing short, and defend the side he couldn’t clear.

Leon moved in before the guardian finished recovering its stance.

He approached beside the hammer, close enough to invite the swing. As the weapon descended, he set a slanting barrier of wind and stone against its path. The impact tore through the barrier, but the angle sent the hammer past him into the floor.

He stepped beneath the raised arm and drove a concentrated lance of fire into the shoulder joint.

The seams blazed. Most of the outer glow gathered around the threatened joint, leaving the chest and opposite leg comparatively dim.

Leon folded to the other side, low beside its feet, and drove compressed earth into the left ankle.

The construct lurched. Its reinforcement rushed down from the shoulder through the internal chest channels. For the moment he needed, the ward across the fractured plate thinned.

He rose into that opening with his sword.

Lightning ran along the blade as he drove it forward. At the same time, he braced his left side behind a close barrier and turned his body to reduce what the shield could catch.

The shield struck anyway.

His barrier broke. The shortened blow smashed against his armor, cracking it over the ribs and driving a sharp edge through his side. Pain stole the air from his lungs, but the defense had kept him on his feet and his sword on line.

He pushed through the last distance.

The cracked plate split. His blade tore into the ward behind it, and lightning discharged along the opening before the inner defense could fully recover.

Something hard caught the sword short of the heart.

Leon felt power rushing back toward the breach. The guardian’s hammer began to lift beside him. If he withdrew now, he would have paid for the opening with his ribs and gained very little.

He let the lightning discharge end and drew on his holy reserve.

The first light struck the damaged inner ward through the path his sword had opened. It resisted, brightening around the blade as the guardian pulled strength inward from its limbs.

Leon set his feet despite the pain in his side and increased the pressure.

Behind the broken armor, the ward began closing around his sword.