Chapter 972

The runic armor stood there, light still fading off its frame, and for a brief second neither of them moved.

Ludger stayed low, one hand braced against the ground, Healing Touch still running in smaller pulses through his body as he forced clarity back into himself.

The armor finished cancelling its camouflage. And the capital behind it continued to glow faintly under the barrier like a city refusing to let him leave in peace. The helmet section of the runic armor shifted with a sharp metallic hiss. Plates folded back. Locks disengaged.

The upper frame opened just enough for the figure inside to emerge, and the moment Ludger saw the face, his expression turned colder.

Verk.

The councillor from the Velis League. The same bastard Ludger had fought a couple of years ago.

Rain slid over the man’s exposed head and the dark metal framing his armor, but his expression remained composed in that smug, deeply irritating way Ludger remembered far too well. The runic shell around him looked far more advanced than anything ordinary soldiers should have been trusted with, thick enough to take punishment and precise enough to move like a second body rather than dead weight.

Verk looked at Ludger like he had been waiting for this exact moment all night.

“Good thing,” he said, voice calm and almost amused, “I stayed behind to deal with you in case you managed to escape.”

Ludger pushed himself fully upright.

The movement was not smooth. His body still ached from the light blast, his wounds still burned from the poison, and the remains of shock still crawled in the edges of his muscles. But he stood anyway, glaring at the asshole hard enough that the rain between them felt colder.

Of course. Of course this retard had connections with the Regent.

That part didn’t even surprise him anymore. Men like Verk always crawled toward places where rot had money behind it. The Velis League built tools for everyone and loyalty for no one, and councillors like him thrived in the cracks between nations, selling polished death to whichever side looked willing to pay enough.

Ludger rolled one shoulder once, ignoring the pain, and let his glare sharpen.

“So you finally got tired of hiding in a shithole,” he said, voice rough and flat, “and decided to show up?”

Verk’s mouth twitched faintly. Not a smile. Something worse. The kind of expression worn by a man who thought he had re-entered the conversation from a position of safety.

Rain tapped softly against the armor around him while the barrier-covered capital glowed behind his back, the city he had helped turn into a trap now serving as a dramatic backdrop for his entrance.

Ludger found that irritating too. Verk spread one hand slightly, casual despite the machine wrapped around him. “You do have a habit of surviving longer than expected.”

Ludger’s eyes flicked over the runic armor again, lines, plating, joints, power flow, the faint residue of the camouflage system still fading across its surface.

He spat a little blood to the side and kept his stance low.

“Yeah,” he said. “You people keep making that mistake.”

Verk laughed. Not loudly at first.

Just a low, ugly sound that came out of him with far too much satisfaction, the kind of laugh only a man wearing expensive armor and standing behind prepared traps could produce without feeling embarrassed. Then it grew, echoing faintly through the rain while the barrier-lit capital loomed behind him like a witness to the joke.

Ludger stayed still.

That only made Verk laugh harder.

“I almost missed this,” Verk said, amusement still in his voice. “That look you get when you realize the world kept moving while you were busy pretending you could fight it alone.”

Before Ludger could answer, Verk moved one arm. That was all. No long chant. No obvious gathering. No warning worth trusting.

A section of the sleeker runic armor along Verk’s forearm split open with a sharp flash of layered runes, and a mana blast erupted from it so fast it barely looked like an attack at all. One instant there was only a pulse of harsh light along the plating.

The next, the blast was already on Ludger. It hit him square in the chest. The impact was vicious.

White-gold force slammed into him hard enough to lift him half off his feet before throwing him backward across the wet ground. His boots carved twin trenches through mud and broken stone as he skidded away, arms instinctively coming up too late to matter. Steam hissed from the point of impact. The smell of scorched skin and burned cloth hit the air immediately.

Ludger hissed through his teeth.

Pain lanced through his chest in a hot, concentrated burst, sharp enough to momentarily drown out the aches already living in the rest of his body. When he looked down, there was a nasty red mark spreading across his skin where the blast had hit—not a full burn, not quite, but ugly and angry enough to promise it would get worse if he let that kind of attack land repeatedly.

He forced himself upright again. The pain stayed. He endured it. Set it aside. Focused. His eyes narrowed on Verk and the armor wrapped around him. It was much sleeker than the last time. That was the first thing that really mattered.

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Smaller too.

Less bulky. Less crude. Less like a desperate walking coffin built to compensate for fear, and more like a proper combat shell, tight to the body, streamlined around the joints, rune-lines integrated cleanly instead of layered on as an afterthought.

And fast. That was the worse part. Much faster.

The attack had fired quicker than Ludger’s perception had properly caught up to it. Not impossible to react to, maybe, but far too close for comfort, especially in his current state. The earlier runic guardians had been dangerous through scale and layered functions.

This was different. This armor had been refined for one thing. To kill him. Verk had probably worked on something like this for years. The idea settled immediately.

A spiteful bastard like that would absolutely spend years improving a design after getting humiliated once, polishing it, refining it, shaving away waste until all that remained was speed, lethality, and the fantasy that next time would go differently.

Ludger wiped blood and rain from his mouth with the back of one hand, then stared at him flatly.

“So,” he said, voice rough but steady, “you ready to make another armor self-destruct after getting your ass kicked?”

Verk’s smile twitched. Didn’t vanish. Just sharpened. Rain slid off the smooth plates of his upgraded armor while the runes along one arm slowly dimmed from the recent shot.

“That spirit of yours sure is strong,” Verk said.

His tone was light. Almost conversational. Which made the next words worse.

“Even though your family and guild are being massacred right now.”

Ludger did not move. Verk watched him carefully as he continued.

“All of your life’s work,” he said, “won’t live to see another day.”

The rain kept falling. For one heartbeat, the world felt very still. Not because Ludger believed him immediately. Because the words hit exactly where they were meant to.

Lionfang. Arslan. Elaine. The twins. Viola, Luna, Torvares… the guild, the northerners, the walls, the town they had built out of frost and blood and stubbornness.

Verk had chosen his target well. Not Ludger’s body. His focus. His control. The idea of Lionfang drowning in blood while he stood out here burning mana on this laughing piece of shit was enough to make something dark stir behind his ribs.

His fingers flexed once.

Then stilled. Because rage was exactly what Verk wanted. A wounded, exhausted opponent making fast decisions from the worst possible place. Ludger lifted his head slightly, eyes colder now than before.

“Then I should kill you fast,” he said.

No heat in the words. No shouting. Just simple intent.

“And head home.”

Verk raised his hand again.

This time Ludger saw it. Not because the attack was slow.

Because he had already accepted what this armor was, faster, cleaner, and built by a vindictive bastard who had clearly spent years obsessing over how to kill him. The runes in Verk’s palm flared with harsh white-gold light, layers of etched symbols igniting one after another in a tight spiral. The air around the hand distorted from the heat before the blast even fired.

Then it came.

A concentrated beam of light erupted from Verk’s palm with a sharp, vicious shriek, cutting through the rain and darkness in a straight line toward Ludger’s chest.

Ludger moved his arms up instantly. The blast slammed into his forearm guards. For a moment, the world became white.

The force drove into him hard enough to push him backward across the soaked ground, boots carving two deep lines through mud and broken stone. Sparks and steam exploded from the point of contact as the forearm guards took the hit. The reinforced metal held, but the energy pouring into them was so intense that the surface began to glow faintly red.

Then brighter. The heat climbed fast. Too fast.

Ludger could feel it through the metal, through the leather beneath, through skin and muscle and bone. It was like having his arms pressed against a forge while someone tried to shove him through the wall behind it. The smell of overheated metal mixed with wet earth and burned flesh. Rain struck the guards and hissed into steam instantly.

Verk kept the beam on him.

Of course he did. A bastard like that would enjoy this part.

Ludger gritted his teeth and endured while the attack kept driving him backward. His arms trembled from the force. His shoulders burned. His boots continued sliding until the ground beneath them churned into a messy trench.

Still, he didn’t bend. Didn’t drop his guard. Didn’t scream.

He simply lowered his center of gravity and let his body absorb what it could while his mind measured the rhythm of the attack.

Eventually the blast ended. The white-gold beam snapped off, leaving behind a trail of steam and fading afterlight in the rain-soaked dark. Ludger stopped sliding a moment later.

He remained standing, arms still raised, forearm guards smoking faintly. The metal had overheated badly, hot enough that touching it bare-handed would have been a stupid way to lose skin. But it had held.

So had he. Across from him, Verk lowered his arm and smiled with that same smug, practiced calm.

“Congratulations,” he said, mock sincerity dripping from every syllable. “You’re more durable than most vermin.”

Ludger stared at him for a second, then let out a long sigh. Not tired. Not defeated. Just annoyed.

“Alright,” he said, rolling one shoulder slightly as he lowered his arms. “Let me explain how this will work.”

Verk’s smile lingered.

Ludger’s expression stayed flat.

“You’ll keep trying to overpower me,” he said, voice calm and sharp in the rain, “because your fragile ego won’t let you do anything else. You need to make me feel small in order to get rid of the same from previous time.”

He took one step forward.

“Then, when that doesn’t work, you’ll start pulling out other cards to make things more troublesome.”

Another step. The overheated forearm guards were still faintly steaming, but Ludger didn’t seem to care.

“You’ll tell yourself this is all part of your brilliant plan. That you’re forcing me into a corner. That this is different from last time.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Then, eventually, you’ll get your ass kicked again.”

The words landed without emphasis. Which somehow made them worse.

“And this time,” Ludger said, “you’ll die for good.”

The rain filled the silence between them for half a breath. Ludger tilted his head slightly, as if considering something mildly inconvenient rather than deciding how to end a man.

“The only difference,” he continued, “is that I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll make you suffer slowly while I rip your limbs off one by one…”

His tone remained almost conversational.

“...or if I’ll kill you faster because the first option is a waste of time.”

For the first time since revealing himself, Verk’s smile thinned a little.

Not gone. But thinner. Ludger noticed.

And in the dark beyond the capital, with the barrier slowly sealing behind them and Lionfang burning somewhere in the distance inside his mind, that tiny change was enough to make something cold and satisfied settle in his chest.

The bastard had heard him.