Chapter 963

Ludger moved the moment the idea finished forming. Mana shifted. Not into earth this time. Water.

Several water balls appeared around him in rapid succession, condensing from the limited moisture he could pull together and the reserves he forced into shape through sheer control. They formed in a ring around his body, dense, spinning, unstable for only an instant before he forced them into proper motion.

Then he sent them out.

The water balls slammed into the blue flames surrounding him, and for a brief second the whole rooftop vanished behind shrieking steam and violent hiss.

The flames dispersed. Not completely. Not cleanly. But enough.

Enough to tear open gaps in the suffocating wall of heat that had been closing around him. That should not have been so simple. Or so effective.

Ordinary water forced against that kind of enhanced blue fire would have struggled far more, likely boiling away too fast to matter or simply getting overwhelmed by the combined flame-and-wind pressure.

But Ludger had not thrown ordinary water at it. He had made the spheres much colder.

Cryomancy flowed through them the moment they formed, dragging the temperature down hard enough to turn each water ball into a moving knot of freezing force. When they burst against the flames, it wasn’t just water meeting fire.

It was violently chilled water smashing into magically accelerated heat.

That changed things. The balance shifted just enough to matter. Steam exploded outward. The blue flames shuddered. Sections of the attack wavered and collapsed where the thermal shock hit hardest.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. It would have been easier if he had trained his moisture manipulation more. If he had refined that side of his control, he could have pulled far more water from the air and done it faster, with less cost, less strain, and more stability. But he couldn’t complain. Not now. Not while it had worked.

The instant he created an opening, Ludger acted.

Another water ball condensed in front of him, already spinning hard enough to blur its outline. He compressed it further, forcing tighter rotational force into the sphere until the surface hummed with dangerous pressure.

Then he froze it midair.

Not all at once into a crude block.

He froze it while it was still spinning, locking part of that violent motion into a compact sphere of dense, rotating ice and half-frozen water. The thing looked wrong the moment it formed, too smooth, too tense, like a weapon that had been caught halfway between liquid and impact.

Ludger fired it.

The spinning ice ball shot forward through the opening with vicious speed, cutting through steam and blue light as it flew straight toward the nearest runic guardian.

It hit the construct in the head. The impact cracked through the night like a hammer smashing into a bell.

The guardian’s upper frame jolted violently. Its head snapped to the side as the blow shook its whole structure, runic lines flickering erratically for an instant under the force. The machine staggered a fraction, enough that its aim broke and the cannon fire from that unit sputtered out.

Its attack stopped. Ludger exhaled once, cold-eyed and sharp. So they could be interrupted. Once the encirclement of flames was broken, escaping became easier. Ludger saw it immediately.

The wall of blue fire had lost its shape. The pressure around him had loosened. Angles that had been sealed off a few moments earlier were now open again, and with his speed, he could have used that opening to break away before the runic golems fully adjusted.

He didn’t move. Instead, he stood his ground. Because running now would only mean dealing with the same problem again later. Maybe worse. So Ludger planted his feet on the half-melted floor and pushed mana outward.

The remaining fire around him shuddered as he forced water-aspected mana into the area, disrupting what still clung to the broken stone. Flames hissed and dimmed. Heat rolled away in ugly waves while steam rose around him, turning the rooftop into a shifting haze of white and blue.

Then he expanded his mana farther. Not in a burst. In a spread.

A cold, steady pressure rolled outward through the district, then beyond it, reaching through streets, over rooftops, across plazas and shattered avenues. Ludger let it sink into the air itself, feeding water attunement into every patch of atmosphere he could touch, then forcing the mana to change.

Transform. Condense. Gather. Moisture thickened in the surroundings at an unnatural rate.

The dry, poisoned air left by the blue flames began to change. Steam, vapor, and whatever trace humidity existed in the capital were seized, amplified, pulled together under his control. Ludger’s breathing stayed rough, but his eyes remained steady as he forced the process wider and wider, ignoring the cost.

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Before long, rain began to fall across the whole capital. There were no clouds. No storm front. No natural sign that the sky should have opened.

And yet water started pouring from the night above all the same, first in scattered drops, then in sheets. Rooftops darkened. Broken streets turned slick. Firelight hissed and dimmed wherever the unnatural rain touched it. Smoke thinned as the downpour spread, and the capital, already tense, already wounded, suddenly found itself drenched under a storm born entirely from one boy’s mana.

The runic golems reacted immediately. Several of them raised their blue-flame cannons again, runes brightening along the barrels as if trying to restart the previous assault.

Nothing happened. Or rather… something tried to happen and failed.

The inner chambers flickered. Blue light stuttered weakly inside the weapons, then died in sputtering bursts. One barrel gave off a sharp, angry hiss before going dark. Another flashed once and produced only steam and a spray of dying sparks.

Ludger watched without expression. As expected. Now that they were drenched, the flame attacks were failing.

They probably had some kind of ignition mechanism embedded in the arms, something dependent on stable combustion or a controlled internal trigger that did not appreciate being soaked under unnatural rainfall. Flame and wind together had made them dangerous. But if the flame system couldn’t properly ignite, that whole combination fell apart.

That part of the problem was handled. Unfortunately, the golems didn’t stop there.

Their frames shifted again, rune-lines along their arms changing pattern as they abandoned the failed flame sequence entirely. A moment later, the air around the nearest units compressed with a sharp, ugly whine.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. Then the blasts came.

Violent bursts of air tore toward him from multiple directions, far more concentrated than ordinary wind magic and carrying enough force to feel almost physical even before impact. One of them clipped past his shoulder. Another shattered part of the rooftop behind him into fragments.

The third hit him in the stomach.

Ludger’s body folded around the impact for an instant as all the air in his lungs tried to leave at once. It felt less like being struck by wind and more like being hit with a battering ram swung by something that hated him personally. The force hurled him backward across the wet rooftop, boots carving through loosened tiles before he caught himself near the edge.

Pain rippled through his abdomen. Not deep enough to break him. Plenty enough to remind him that even without fire, these things were still very capable of being annoying. Ludger exhaled sharply, one hand pressing against his stomach for less than a second before dropping again.

Ludger raised his guard and endured. There was no elegant way around it.

The air blasts came too fast, too hard, and from too many angles for him to keep dodging cleanly on the soaked rooftop. So he crossed his arms in front of his body, lowered his stance, and let his reinforced limbs take the worst of it.

The first blast slammed into him and shoved him back three full steps across the rain-slick stone. The second hit from the side and twisted his balance hard enough that only raw instinct kept him from being thrown off the roof entirely.

Then the rest followed. Again. And again. And again.

Each one carried crushing pressure behind it, not sharp like a blade, not hot like the earlier flames, just blunt, dense, and merciless, like invisible battering rams smashing into him from every direction. Ludger blocked what he could with his forearms, bracers, and hardened muscles, but even then the force still drove through his guard and into the rest of his body.

His boots gouged through broken tile. Water sprayed around him. His bones rattled under repeated impact.

The runic guardians moved around him while they attacked, heavy metallic frames circling through the streets below and along adjacent rooftops, never staying still long enough to let him line up an easy answer. They had given up trying to burn him alive.

Now they were content to batter him down. A blast clipped his shoulder and spun him half around before another struck him in the ribs from the opposite side. Ludger blocked high, then low, then high again, but every defense came at a cost. The repeated force tore at his clothes first.

His shirt shredded along the chest.

His coat followed soon after, ripped apart by pressure, shrapnel, and the accumulated abuse of the whole fight until the fabric simply gave up and came apart in soaked, useless strips.

Rain poured over bare skin. His chest and back were exposed now, marked by everything the capital had thrown at him. Swollen points where the pressure blasts had landed badly. Cuts opened by stone fragments and earlier close combat. Piercing wounds from those monstrous bullets. Bruises darkening beneath the skin. Blood mixed with rainwater and ran in thin trails down his torso, over old scars and fresh injuries alike.

He was covered in all of it. And still… Ludger did not drop his guard. He did not kneel. He did not fall.

Every time the blasts tried to fold him, he forced himself upright again. Every time the pressure threatened to break his stance, he tightened it. His arms stayed raised. His eyes stayed sharp. His breathing was harsher now, ragged under the weight of pain and exhaustion, but it never became panic.

The guardians kept attacking. So he kept enduring. There was something ugly about that kind of exchange.

No flourish. No spectacle. Just a boy being hammered over and over by enough force to pulp most grown men, and refusing to collapse out of sheer stubbornness and reinforced flesh.

Then, eventually… the attacks stopped.

Not gradually. Not because he had escaped their range. They just… stopped. The rain kept falling. The rooftops hissed quietly under the downpour. Ludger remained in place for half a second, arms still up, body tense and ready for another impact that didn’t come.

His eyes narrowed. Why? Maybe they had run out of fuel. Or at least burned through enough of it that they couldn’t keep spamming spells capable of hurting him that easily. Between the bullets, the blue flames, and the compressed wind blasts, the runic guardians had been cycling through expensive weapon systems one after another. Even machines like that weren’t infinite.

The thought was useful. Because the guardians were still moving. And a moment later, their arms changed once again. Metal shifted with heavy, grinding clicks. Runes reconfigured. Whole sections of the limb assemblies folded inward and outward in brutal mechanical patterns as new forms locked into place.

On the left side, armor plates thickened and widened until each guardian bore a massive shield, broad, dense, and heavy enough to serve as a moving wall. On the right side, the weapon limbs narrowed and extended into long spears, their tips gleaming cold under the rain, built for thrusting power rather than ranged fire.

Ludger stared at them through wet hair and falling water, chest rising and falling harder now.

This was about to become really troublesome.