Chapter 265: The Return

Five days passed.

​Iron stood in the corner of the room, staring intently at his own sword. Translucent lines of data flickered before his eyes. The scanner thoroughly analyzed the metal's microstructure, checking the crystal lattice for microcracks, structural shifts, and signs of fatigue from the recent sparring. The verdict remained the same — not a single defect.

​Finishing the check of his weapon, Iron shifted his gaze to Noah's azure sword.

​Noah himself was tirelessly fencing right in the middle of the room at this time. He made short, snapping lunges, precisely changed attack angles, and cleaved the air with a whistle. Noticing that Iron had been silently watching his blade for several minutes, Noah paused his swing for a moment and asked reservedly:

​"Is something not to your liking?"

​Iron silently finished building a full-sized model of the sword, then calmly replied:

"No. I was just thinking."

​Iron sat on the edge of the bed and rested his elbows on his thighs, propping his chin on his palms.

​Noah shook his head and continued to fence:

​"So when are we going there?"

​"I don't know. When Lumon gives the command."

​The engineer opened his eyes and, staring at the oak table in the corner of the room, thought:

​Yeah... Five days spent on meditation, and I still haven't really understood anything... I realize, of course, that this is a long and complex process. But still... I'd like it to be faster.

​And exactly at that second, the exact coordinates of the point flashed on his retinas. Lumon himself reacted with a barely perceptible vibration in Iron's mind.

​The engineer raised his head and tossed out briefly:

​"Alright, let's head out."

​Noah only just opened his mouth, about to answer and turn to Iron, when both of them disappeared from the room.

​In the next instant, they appeared in the Katogida Valley.

​Noah landed on the crack-covered ground right at the edge of a deep rift.

​Iron, however, materialized right in the air — inside the rift itself. Suspending his body in mid-air, he hovered exactly opposite the protective rock that hid the crystal source.

​He smoothly extended his arm forward, directing his palm toward the rock's surface.

​Right above the rift, a flash sparked in a storm cloud, and a devastating lightning strike rushed straight at Iron at a frantic speed.

​Standing on the edge of the chasm, Noah, noticing the falling stream of energy, made a rapid dash forward, throwing up his sword to deflect the lightning with a block.

​Iron instantly evaluated Noah's trajectory and movement.

​After which, with a vector shift, he threw Noah backward — onto the safe ground at the edge of the rift, while he himself arced to the side with a levitation dash.

​With a deafening roar, the lightning struck exactly into the source's protective rock. From the point of impact, electrical discharges spread out in all directions, from which a Guardian formed.

​Noah, getting up from the ground and brushing small debris off his shoulders, grumbled in displeasure:

​"And why did you do that?!"

​Iron smoothly rose from the depths of the rift and pointed his finger at the materialized figure:

​"That's why."

​The Guardian turned sharply toward them. A spear formed in its hand in a fraction of a second, and it hurled it at Noah with all its might.

​Noah ducked his head to the left just in time — the spear whistled by literally millimeters from his ear and detonated in the air a moment later with a crackling electrical explosion.

​"We have ten minutes," Iron said calmly, watching the Guardian. "Just distract them all, and..."

​Without finishing listening, Noah instantly pumped a mass of blood into his right arm and got to the Guardian's flank with a rapid dash. The sword cleaved the air with a series of cuts, slicing right through the Guardian.

​The scattered clumps of fog instantly pulled back together, completely restoring the structure in a fraction of a second.

​Iron finished his sentence:

​"...and they are immaterial."

​The Guardian wove a spear again and made a lightning-fast lunge. Noah dashed backward out of the attacks and froze next to Iron:

​"So how do I fight them then?"

​"Just distract them with whatever you can, that's all," Iron answered.

​Noah gave a barely noticeable nod.

​In that same second, dozens of lightning bolts struck around the entire rift with a deafening crack. The ground shuddered, and new figures of Guardians began to rise from every electrical surge.

"Good luck," Iron said evenly, vanishing in that same fraction of a second and materializing right at the base of the storm clouds.

​Barely had he materialized when dozens of discharges tore free from the storm clouds and struck Iron from all sides.

​The engineer maneuvered at high speed, utilizing spatial displacement and evading the flashes. However, with every second, the lightning bolts became thinner, faster, and more imperceptible — they were turning into the thinnest threads of compressed plasma, striking almost without sound or warning flashes.

​Lumon, scan to maximum, Iron commanded mentally.

​The scan deployed at the limit of its available power, but the chaotic structure of the cloud source still blurred, not allowing him to lock onto the key control node for the discharges.

​Iron barely dodged another translucent thread that scorched the air a centimeter from his shoulder, and exhaled heavily:

​"Alright... Skill at full power."

​In that same instant, Lumon brought the skill to full power, and Iron's eyes turned gray-white.

​Through the clouds and chaotic bursts of energy, Iron clearly saw the energy channel leading straight down.

​Dodging the thin discharges rushing to meet him, Iron closed in on this channel. Getting right up close, he reached out his hand and launched a pinpoint anti-resonance pulse straight into the channel's core.

​The focused wave instantly sent a destructive vibration along the flow, destroying its integrity.

​"Turn it off!" Iron gave an emergency order.

​The gray-white glow in his eyes immediately faded, and the skill deactivated.

​Not losing a fraction of a second, Iron collapsed space and instantly transported downward — back into the depths of the rift.

​At that moment, the Guardians around the rift lost their energy supply and simply dissolved in fractions of a second.

​And Iron himself, finding himself opposite the source, reached his hand forward and, through the scan, launched an anti-resonance pulse straight into the mass of the protective rock.

​Nothing happened.

​Iron frowned and poured more energy into the pulse, forcing the wave to literally punch through the rock's structure. But the wave, barely touching the protective layer, faded almost instantly, dissolving without a trace.

​"What the hell...?" Iron muttered through his teeth. "Does it have a different frequency and phase shift?!"

​His tone instantly became irritated.

​"Lumon, what the hell?!"

"My apologies," Lumon replied evenly. "I incorrectly interpreted the components of the crystal matrix."

​"Are you serious?!" Iron gritted his teeth.

"I must ask you not to move more than twenty meters away from the crystal source," Lumon added calmly.

​"Fuck, are you for real...?" Iron sighed, staring at the rock with a heavy gaze.

​He tried to manually run the scan and catch the necessary component, but quickly realized that without the skill active at full power, it was simply impossible to read such minor fluctuations.

​At that moment, echoing thuds and crackling came from above — Noah had already entered the fight again on the surface.

​Iron looked up and saw a blinding lightning bolt hurtling straight into the rift at breakneck speed. On the fly, the electrical discharge sharply split apart — first into two, and then into three independent streams.

​Iron instantly collapsed space and transported himself to the ground at the edge of the rift. The lightning bolts immediately changed their vector and rushed straight after him. Iron dodged with a shift, and three new Guardians instantly wove themselves from the flashing discharges. Not wasting a second, they hurled their spears at him synchronously.

​Iron, however, altered the movement vector of the spears, turning them right back at the Guardians.

​I do have one way, of course... flashed through Iron's mind as the redirected spears flew back. But it has, damn it, way too many risks.

​The Guardians simply absorbed their own spears back into their bodies. The energy they absorbed made the yellow tips of their immaterial spears flare even brighter.

​Forming spears once more, the Guardians rushed at Iron, showering him with continuous attacks. Iron had to maneuver in the air, weaving between discharges and flying spears, keeping to the limit set by Lumon.

​At the same time, Noah was single-handedly holding off two Guardians.

​One of them abruptly threw its arm up and hurled a spear at him. Noah dodged effortlessly with a slight shift of his torso and, pumping blood into his right arm, delivered a devastating triple cut. The blade cleaved the air with a whistle, passing right through the foggy silhouettes of both Guardians.

​Right after the attack, Noah made a rapid dash forward, breaking the distance and moving away to a safe range.

​However, the scattered clumps of fog immediately pulled back to each other, weaving back into their previous solid figures.

​Noah just chuckled briefly and rushed back into the fight.

​He wove between lunges, dodged the shimmering spears, and caught every swing of the Guardians. Ducking under the outstretched arm of the first Guardian, Noah smashed his fist right into its head with all his might.

​His arm instantly punched right through the immaterial form. The Guardian's head scattered in all directions as thick fog. Noah froze for a split second, looking in bewilderment at his hand that had passed through.

​And in that same instant, the second Guardian struck at Noah's head with its spear, while the first thrust its weapon forward, intending to run Noah through.

​Noah, executing a sharp dive downwards, slipped out from under the double strike.

​As a result, the Guardians' spears crashed into each other devastatingly. The energy discharge from the collision was harmlessly absorbed by their structures, and the dispersed fog of the first Guardian gathered back together in that same second, completely restoring its head.

​Iron continued to levitate over the rift, weaving between the fragments of rock hanging in the air.

​Suddenly, right behind his back, a Guardian figure instantly appeared. Its spear was already rushing towards his shoulder blades. But Iron immediately compressed the space around himself and, with a sharp shift, jumped out from under the strike, vanishing a moment before the collision.

​Appearing on the opposite side of the rift, Iron looked at the streams of data spinning at frantic speed — his scan was probing the deepest layers of the rock, searching for the hidden properties and unknown fluctuations that had caused the first anti-resonance attempt to fail.

​Meanwhile, the Guardians' bodies momentarily disintegrated into pure bright discharges. At breakneck speed, they rushed after Iron.

​He had to make sharp turns and circles in the air.

​At one point, two Guardians, speeding as lightning bolts, instantly condensed right in Iron's path, shifting into their base form and simultaneously bringing their spears down on him with a crushing strike from top to bottom.

​Iron instantly turned to face the falling spears. Without slowing down, he executed a perfect backflip right in the air: his body glided centimeters above the descending spear tips, completely avoiding contact.

​Completing the flip, Iron accelerated and continued along the arc.

​Behind him, the Guardians, without delay, turned back into blinding discharges and rushed after him with a resonant crackle.