Chapter 213: The Steel Guardian

Five knights charged the golem simultaneously with their swords. It made a short swing of its arm—and the strike crumpled their shields with a dry crack, throwing the soldiers back several meters.

​Spotting a group of mages deep down the street preparing another spell, the golem bent down, drove its fingers deep into the dirt, and ripped out a massive slab of soil. In the next motion, it hurled this projectile at the enemy's rear ranks. The heavy boulders crashed down on the mages' position with a roar, breaking their formation.

​Two knights tried to get behind the golem, hoping to find a weak spot in its joints. One of them struck the hip joint with his sword with all his might—the blade shattered into fragments, leaving not even a scratch on the hardened metal. The golem seemed completely oblivious to the distant spell fire: flashes of fire and ice needles simply fizzled out against its metal-plated armor.

​"On its forehead!" one of the infantrymen shouted desperately, covering himself with a shield. "The core is there! Aim for the crystal!"

​One of the fast swordsmen adjusted his grip on his weapon and dashed forward. He neatly dodged the golem's low swing, jumped up, already raising his blade for a precise strike, but with a short flick of its palm, the golem swatted the fighter aside.

​At that moment, the mages in the back combined their efforts. Dark clouds instantly gathered over the passage, and a direct lightning bolt struck the golem's head. The flash blinded everyone for a second, but when the light faded, the golem was still standing in the exact same spot. It bent down, picked up a charred tree lying nearby, and swung it, knocking away the advancing knights.

​The enemy changed tactics. One of the mages shouted an acceleration spell, catching another knight with the wind. The soldier was launched upward, right over the swinging tree. Mid-air, the knight threw his entire weight onto his sword with both hands and drove the blade straight into the glowing crystal on the golem's forehead.

​Something clicked dully inside the construct, and the golem froze, lowering its arms.

​The knights breathed a heavy sigh of relief. The knight whose sword was lodged in the crystal tried to brace his foot against the frame and pull his blade out, while the rest were already turning around to continue storming the defenses.

​Then, the golem brought both hands up with lightning speed, crushed the soldier, and tore his body in half.

​Without a pause, the golem hurled the remains straight into the group of mages standing nearby. The soldiers flinched, retreating in terror.

​"What the hell?!" one of the mages yelled from deep within the formation.

​One of the commanders watching this convulsively clenched his fists. Realizing that conventional weapons and standard spells were useless against it, he spun around and rushed to the armored supply wagon.

​Breaking the latch, the commander pulled C14 from a crate. Wasting no time, he triggered the detonation circuit.

​"Get back! Everyone get back!" he roared, running out of the wagon.

​But as he looked back, the commander saw that half of the mages in his group were already lying in the mud. He ground his teeth in impotent rage. His face contorted, he wound up and hurled the C14 with all his might right at the approaching golem's feet.

​"Shields! Lock down the sector!" the commander barked, dropping behind a berm.

​The surviving mages hastily began erecting multi-layered barriers, and the knights pressed themselves into the dirt behind their tower shields.

​A second later, a colossal explosion shook the earth.

​The explosion superheated the air, and the trees turned to ash. The magical barriers cracked and shattered under the pressure of the detonation, but they absorbed the brunt of the blast. The surviving soldiers were thrown back, deafened, and buried in dust, but none of them sustained lethal injuries.

​The deafened commander raised his head, coughing heavily from the gray soot clogging his lungs. The soldiers froze in anticipation, hoping to see nothing but a pile of fine rubble at the site of the attack.

​However, the heavy, measured crunch of footsteps echoed once again from the thick veil of dust and soot.

​Scorched and riddled with deep cracks, the golem stepped out of the smoke. Entire slabs of armor were missing from its chassis, but it kept moving forward all the same.

​The commander barely had time to roll aside before the golem's palm smashed into the ground with a roar, right where he had just been lying. The surviving mages instinctively combined their impulses and fired a concentrated wave of compressed air, barely managing to push it back a couple of meters.

​"Damn it..." the commander wheezed, getting to his trembling feet.

​He snatched his comm artifact from inside his jacket:

​"Lord Edriac! We are being attacked by some unknown creature! Nothing works on it! The C14 blast didn't stop it!"

​At that moment, the golem picked up its pace again. The commander was forced to jump back, summoning mud spikes in front of him on the move to somehow block the golem.

​Edriac's strained voice broke through the static from the artifact's speaker:

​"I am activating the suppression device now! It should shut down those golems for a few seconds! You have to handle it!"

​"But we don't know how to kill it!" the commander screamed, blinded by anger and fear. "How do we destroy it?!"

​But the connection had already been severed.

​"Damn it... Fine," the commander exhaled, and then roared:

​"Everyone attack! Use everything we have!"

​The surviving mages rushed to execute the order. One mage struck with a powerful torrent of compressed water, trying to jam its joints; another tried to burn it with flames, but it was all in vain. It kept taking steps, closing the distance.

​A few seconds later, the golem simply stopped.

​Seizing the moment, one of the mages took a step forward. Breathing heavily, he raised his right hand and formed a ring with his thumb and index finger, lifting it to his right eye—as if aiming through an improvised monocle.

​His gaze locked dead onto the golem's right side.

​Blood instantly gushed from the mage's right eye, ear, and the corner of his mouth. With a wild strain in his muscles, the mage sharply pinched his fingers together, snapping shut the "ring" he had created in front of his eye.

​In that exact second, a void appeared at the targeted point on the golem's chassis. It lasted for exactly a fraction of a second and vanished, leaving behind a perfectly uniform, gaping hole straight through the chassis. The mage himself collapsed to the ground.

​Missing a section of its supporting hip, the golem toppled to its side, but pushing off with its remaining leg, it closed the distance to their positions in a single leap. With one strike, it crushed several knights who had tried to hold it back.

​Wasting no time, the commander leaped to a heavy mounted gun abandoned near a crater. Aiming directly into the hole left by the mage, he squeezed the trigger all the way down.

​The projectile flew straight into the golem's internal cavity and ruptured its central core.

​The golem instantly froze and crashed to the ground.

​"Get back! Everyone get back!" the commander yelled, jumping away from the dying mechanism.

​A couple of seconds later, the residual reactor overheat triggered in the golem's wreckage, and a massive explosion detonated. Shrapnel flew in all directions, knocking back with the shockwave those soldiers who hadn't managed to reach a safe distance in time.

​At the same time, on the opposite flank, Lumon was moving silently in flight, cleaving through yet more soldiers with his sword. They crumpled to the ground before they could even hear the whistle of the severed air.

​Iron, observing the events, noticed the distant flash and the final detonation pop.

​"Good job, golem..." Iron responded in his mind. Then he shifted his attention to his own status. "Lumon, how many safe teleportations are left?"

​"Five safe spatial shifts remaining. Further teleportation will lead to critical vascular rupture and may cause instantaneous death."

​"Understood," Iron said curtly.

​Meanwhile, a brutal battle raged around Dornheim. Marek, Darwin, Gaston, and the others maintained continuous fire. The automated turrets were glowing red-hot but kept mowing down the advancing enemy groups. At that moment, Elyria also appeared at the fortifications. She crashed into the flank of the attackers, giving the defenders a breather.

​Iron scanned the markers of his allies on the tactical display. One key signal was missing from the list.

​"Lumon, where is Noah?"

​[Deploying global map.]

​A three-dimensional projection of the forest with highlighted points unfolded before Iron's eyes. A single marker blinked a few kilometers away.

​"Teleport to Noah, quickly," Iron ordered.

​"Acknowledged," Lumon replied, and the space around Iron collapsed once again.

​At this time, Olgerd gripped his comm artifact and screamed into it:

​"Roger! Answer me right now! You still haven't let me know when to use the suppression on Iron! Do you hear me?!"

​In response, only a clicking hiss came from the speaker.

​"Damn it... Is he dead or something?" Olgerd hissed through his teeth, his eyes darting wildly.

​He switched the channel to another squad:

​"Where is Iron?! Is anyone tracking his movements at all?!"

​Panic-stricken voices of commanders from different sectors began to blare from the artifact one after another:

​"Lord Olgerd, we have no visual contact!"

​"We can't lock onto his exit point in time!"

​"Useless fools..." Olgerd growled, switching channels one after another. "Why the hell do I even need you?!"

​Finally, another flank commander answered on the line.

​"Have you seen Iron?!" Olgerd snapped at him.

​"Yes! We just saw him right in front of our line!" he reported, out of breath. "But he vanished again! We can't find him anywhere!"

​"Fuck!" Olgerd roared.

​In a fit of rage, he slammed his fist on the table with all his might. The commander on the other end of the line froze, listening silently through the artifact as his ruler breathed erratically.

​Getting his outburst under control, Olgerd composed himself and stated dryly:

​"When you find him—contact me immediately. Do you understand me?"

​"Yes, sir," the commander replied curtly, and the connection was cut.

​Space tore open with a crack right in the thick of the forest. Noah, covered in dried blood, stood in a small clearing among fallen trees. He no longer had his sword—he was breathing heavily, wheezing as he fended off the five knights surrounding him, barely staying on his feet.

​Iron was just about to issue an order, but Lumon instantly assessed the situation. The engineer's body executed a lightning-fast spin, projecting a circular, invisible plane of spatial shear around himself. A barely noticeable distorting pulse rippled through the air—and a second later, all five knights simultaneously fell to pieces.

​Lumon grabbed Noah by the shoulder and immediately initiated a spatial shift.

​Reality compressed around them, and in the very next instant, they were standing on the dirt in the center of Dornheim.

​Lumon set Noah on his feet. The boy, barely keeping his balance, exhaled:

​"Why?.. I would have killed them myself."

​Lumon slowly turned his head to him, and a dry, emotionless voice came from his throat:

​"The probability of your death within the next twelve seconds was ninety-nine point eight percent. Your current physical resource is depleted."

​That tone made Noah uneasy. He swallowed hard and stumbled a step back:

​"Alright... got it..."

​Lumon silently held out a sword to Noah:

​"You will need this."

​Wasting not another second, he instantly shot into the air and tore toward the frontline defenses at high speed.

​Noah took the offered sword and turned toward the village.

​Houses were ablaze all around, a pillar of smoke hung in the air, and screams and the crack of gunfire echoed from everywhere.

​For a moment, reality blurred, and a memory flashed before Noah's eyes: the exact same all-consuming fire, a collapsing burning roof, and his own strained scream:

​"Grandma-a-a!.."

​Noah violently shook his head and slapped his own cheek. The flash of pain instantly brought him back to his senses.

​He caught his breath, adjusted his grip on the sword, and silently dashed back into the fight.