Chapter 977

A saber sliced past his right cheek, close enough to burn it.

Another thrust skimmed his side and left his coat remnants smoking.

Ludger clicked his tongue and jumped again as Verk spun into a wide horizontal sweep meant to take his legs. He cleared it, landed awkwardly, and nearly paid for it when the second blade came stabbing up toward his chest the moment his feet touched the ground.

He twisted just in time. The point missed his heart. And carved through empty air where his lung had almost been. Too close again. His breathing roughened. His left leg felt slower. His arms were heavy. His mind was keeping up, but his body was starting to argue.

Verk noticed. And he smiled behind the helmet as he rushed in harder, sabers moving with even less restraint now.

Ludger avoided a thrust to the neck.

Slipped past a descending slash.

Turned his shoulder away from a cut aimed at the chest… And then the tip of one saber caught him.

It hit his left shoulder. Not a full slash. Just the tip. That alone was enough. Pain exploded through him. Not normal pain. Not the blunt agony of bruises or broken bone. Not the hot sting of a burn.

This was sharp, scorching, invasive pain that seemed to lance through the shoulder and keep going, as if the saber had cut flesh, burned it, and sent something violently wrong deeper into the wound all at once.

Ludger’s body almost locked up. For one ugly instant, the pain nearly paralyzed him.

His left arm twitched uselessly, his nerves screaming as the strike sent a burst of shock through his whole upper body. If Verk had followed properly in that exact moment, it might have ended there. But Ludger moved on instinct. He jumped away. Not cleanly. Desperately.

He forced distance between them in three rough backward leaps, boots hitting wet ground hard each time until he finally landed several paces away and lowered himself into a crooked stance.

His breathing was harsher now. His left shoulder felt half-dead and half-on-fire. He spared one glance downward. And saw the wound.

A clear black line marked the path where the saber tip had touched him, the skin along it burned dark and angry as if a branding iron had been dragged across his flesh. But that was not the worst part.

In the middle of that blackened line… there was another line. A thinner one. A crueler one. Flesh was simply gone there. Not hanging open like a normal cut. Gone.

Burned and carved away in the same motion, leaving a narrow trench in the shoulder where meat had been erased instead of merely sliced.

Ludger’s eyes hardened. Those swords were the real deal. Not flashy garbage. Real killing tools.

Weapons that could bypass the usual argument between toughness and damage by making both problems happen at once.

Verk straightened slowly in the rain, sabers still humming from the successful hit.

“Well?” he asked, voice carrying a little more satisfaction now. “Do you understand them yet?”

Ludger didn’t answer right away. He kept his gaze on the wound for half a heartbeat longer, feeling the ugly pain spreading outward, testing how much the shoulder still obeyed him.

Then he lifted his head. His face was pale from exhaustion, blood loss, and the accumulated damage of the night. But his eyes were steady.

“Yeah,” he said.

His voice came out rough.

“I understand.”

He shifted his stance again, keeping the wounded shoulder slightly back. Then he looked at the sabers and gave the smallest, meanest smile.

“That means I know how fun it’ll be when I take them away from you.”

Verk lowered both arms slightly, the mana sabers humming along the backs of his hands like caged storms.

“It’s time to end this.”

The words carried through the rain with cold certainty. Ludger did not answer.

His attention stayed on the blades. Their length. Their movement. The way the armor’s runes shifted around the wrists and elbows. The way Verk’s stance changed when he prepared to extend the output.

Verk’s voice remained smooth.

“Finishing you is only the first step of our goals. We have many more things to accomplish, things that you can’t even began to understand that are absolutely necessary.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed.

“Our?”

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Verk ignored the interruption.

“There is a future for this country,” he said, “one far better than the rotting thing it is now. And it will finally become possible once you and your guild are removed.”

The mana sabers expanded. Not a little.

The violent white-gold blades stretched outward with a shrieking pulse, doubling, then extending farther until they were no longer close-combat weapons so much as cleaving lines of destruction. Rain evaporated around them in long hissing curtains. The edges rippled fast enough that the air beside them distorted.

Ludger’s expression hardened. That length changed everything.

Dodging short blades was difficult but possible. Painful, exhausting, stupidly dangerous, but possible.

These? No. Not like this.

If Verk attacked with both in crossing patterns, Ludger couldn’t simply step aside. The reach was too wide. The angles too broad. A pair of those extended sabers could cover enough space to cut off every normal escape path at once.

He needed to slow them down. Now. Ludger pointed one hand at Verk. The ground between them erupted.

Sand and pulverized earth shot upward in a twisting rush, wrapping around Verk’s armored body before he could fully launch the attack. The particles flooded over the sleek plating, slipping into seams, joints, gaps around the shoulders, elbows, knees, and neck. Ludger forced his mana through it all, gripping the sand as tightly as he could.

Verk took one step. The movement slowed. Not stopped. But slowed.

Ludger clenched his jaw and poured more focus into the sand. His mana was still too low, and this kind of control against a moving, powered armor was ugly work. The suit had strength, internal force, and rune-driven reinforcement on its side. Ludger had grit, precision, and the fact that sand was very good at getting into places expensive armor designers hated.

Verk’s next step came heavier.

Slower.

The sand ground against the joints, creating resistance wherever Ludger could force it. Some of it burned away from the heat radiating off the sabers. Some of it was blasted loose by defensive pulses from the armor. But enough remained.

Verk lunged.

Even slowed, he was still fast. The first saber swept horizontally toward Ludger’s waist.

Ludger dropped low, the blade screaming over him and turning the rain above his back into steam. He felt heat and pressure rake across his skin without touching. Then the second blade came down diagonally, trying to catch him before he could rise.

Ludger pulled on the sand packed around Verk’s shoulder and elbow. The arm dragged half a fraction slower than it should have. That half-fraction saved him. He twisted away, the saber cutting through the space beside his ribs and carving a smoking trench through the ground instead.

Verk snarled and attacked again. Left slash. Right thrust. Crossing sweep. Ludger kept moving, every dodge smaller than comfort allowed, every survival measured in inches. The sand gave him warning and resistance both—dragging against the joints, slowing the arms just enough that the extended blades became survivable instead of certain death.

Barely.

A saber passed in front of his face, close enough to burn the air from his lungs. Another cut low, and Ludger had to jump back, his wounded shoulder flaring so violently his vision almost flashed white.

Verk pressed forward.

The sand shifted with him, clinging to the armor like a curse. Ludger pulled harder on one knee joint, making Verk’s step drag. The next slash came slightly off-line. Ludger slipped past it. He forced sand deeper into the wrist mechanism. The following thrust trembled at the start. Ludger leaned away and survived by less than a handspan.

But he knew. This was temporary.

The armor was already compensating. Rune pulses flared through the joints, burning away portions of sand, shaking other parts loose, adapting to the resistance. Verk was still advancing. Still attacking. Still forcing Ludger backward with every exchange.

And Ludger could feel the cost. Every pull on the sand burned more focus. Every adjustment drained a little more mana he barely had. This would not win the fight. It would only keep him alive long enough to find the real answer. Ludger dodged another crossing slash, boots sliding over wet ground as both extended sabers carved luminous scars through the night around him.

Verk stepped through the steam, armor grinding against sand, voice full of cold satisfaction.

“You’re out of room.”

Ludger’s eyes flicked over the armor. The sabers. The joints. The sand burning away. The barrier behind them. Then he exhaled through his nose.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “That does seem to be the idea.”

His fingers twitched. The sand tightened again. One more delay. One more opening. That was all he needed. Probably. And if not, well… it wouldn’t be the first bad idea he’d tried tonight.

Ludger had an idea. Annoyingly, it was an obvious one.

Weight plus speed. That was all.

Enough weight, enough speed, and defenses became something closer to decoration. Armor could be hard. Barriers could be thick. Reinforcement could be layered until some proud idiot started mistaking it for invincibility.

But impact didn’t care about pride. If something heavy enough hit something fast enough, the question stopped being whether the armor could be scratched and became whether the body inside could survive being turned into paste by its own protection.

Verk’s armor was absurdly durable. Fine.

Ludger would stop trying to cut it. He would stop trying to dent it. He would hit it so hard the man inside regretted having a shell to rattle around in. The problem was mana. Of course it was mana.

Everything tonight came back to that little amount he could feel scraping near the bottom of his reserves. He needed speed. Reinforcement. A burst strong enough to make the attack matter. Control tight enough not to shatter himself before Verk did.

And for that, he needed more than he currently had. Ludger’s eyes stayed on Verk while the extended sabers hissed in the rain. He had another idea for that.

A bad one. Maybe a terrible one. Definitely risky, given that his body had been at its limit for a while.

But then again, it would have been weird if he weren’t half-dead after facing the entire capital, a poisoned battlefield, runic guardians, a magical barrier, and now this smug bastard wearing armor specially crafted to crush him.

He didn’t have a choice. Not a good one, anyway. Ludger lifted one hand. Verk slowed at once. The sand still clung to his armor, grinding in the joints, but the councillor raised his guard higher when he saw Ludger’s fingers begin to move through the air.

A symbol formed. One rune. It hung in the rain like a small cut made in the world, glowing faintly with restrained power. The characters were not imperial. Not northern. Not anything Verk recognized.

That alone made him cautious. His sabers lowered into a defensive angle, extended blades still burning through the rain around him.

“What is that?”

Ludger didn’t answer. The rune hovered there between them, silent and thin and strangely steady despite the storm. Verk’s magic sensors swept it instantly. No explosive charge. No barrier formation. No summoning trigger. No obvious elemental compression. Nothing that screamed danger. Which only made it worse.

Then Ludger absorbed it.