Chapter 138 - 136 Between Acid and Steel

Chapter 138: Chapter 136 Between Acid and Steel

The regional director recognized Helena.

The contraction of his eyebrows disappeared. For an instant, his expression went blank, suspended between disbelief and the need to correct everything he had been about to say.

Then he tried to rise behind the desk.

His legs obeyed just enough to lift his back from the seat, but Sebastián’s killing intent remained in front of him, naked and exact. The movement died before allowing him to stand.

—Mrs. Caelis...

The name came out broken by a breath that was too short. The director swallowed. His Adam’s apple descended with difficulty, and a drop of sweat traveled from his temple until it disappeared beneath the immaculate collar of his shirt.

The four guards had also understood who had just entered, although none of them could show it in the same way.

The one closest to the desk kept his hand suspended over his weapon. His fingers trembled around a grip he no longer dared to touch. Beside the window, another drew small amounts of air between his lips. The third kept his knees rigid to prevent them from giving way. The last stared at Sebastián without moving his head, his pupils so constricted that his eyes seemed to have left the office behind and were contemplating something situated much closer to death.

Helena handed the cap and scarf to Selena.

She did not look at the weapons or at the men trying to reach them. Her attention remained on the director.

—I need him to be able to answer —she said. ℴ

Sebastián did not ask how much he should allow him.

He reduced the portion of killing intent directed at the man until he left him a narrow margin to breathe and speak. He did not withdraw it from the guards. Any attempt to complete the movement toward their weapons still met with the immediate conviction that they would die before closing their fingers.

The director managed to settle back into the seat. He drew in air with painful depth and placed one hand on the edge of the desk. He left it there, open, trying to show that he was not attempting to hide it.

—I was not informed of the exact time of your arrival —he said—. If I had known it was you, I would have prepared the appropriate reception.

Helena approached without hurrying.

Selena moved forward on her right, took a tablet from inside her coat, and activated three groups of records. The light from the screen outlined her fingers for a moment before she placed it on the desk.

—That is why you were not informed —Helena replied.

The director looked at the tablet, but he did not manage to read anything before turning his eyes back to her.

—I do not understand.

—Yes, you do. You only need to know how much we know before choosing your first lie.

Helena stopped on the other side of the desk.

She did not raise her voice or lean over him. Her authority did not depend on occupying more space. She remained upright, her hands free at her sides, while Selena opened the first set of documents.

—During the last few months, this branch interfered in administrative decisions of divisions that are not under your direct control —Helena continued—. Audit personnel were transferred before completing internal reviews. Access managers lost their positions and were replaced by employees with temporary authorizations. Members of my security teams were reassigned shortly after my movements were recorded in the system.

The director moistened his lips.

—Regional branches can request adjustments when there is an operational need. Those movements do not prove...

Selena slid two fingers across the screen. The administrative orders separated into columns, accompanied by the routes they had followed within the system.

—The requests did not originate in the divisions that supposedly issued them —she said—. They all first passed through an authorization node belonging to this branch. Then they were forwarded so that they would appear to be local decisions.

The director lowered his gaze. He kept it on one of the digital signatures for barely a second before looking away.

—An automated route does not mean that I reviewed every movement.

—It was not automated —Selena clarified—. The node was opened with a credential linked to your office. Each operation required an independent confirmation.

The man moved his tongue inside his mouth. His breathing caught again when his eyes brushed over Sebastián.

The full-face mask did not allow him to find any gesture to which he could attribute the threat. He only saw the dark lenses and, behind them, the certainty that the distance between them was of no use.

Helena waited for him to look back at her.

—Did you give someone your credential?

—No.

—Did you allow someone else to use it?

—Not knowingly.

—Then you signed the orders.

The fingers resting on the desk closed slightly. The director wanted to answer, but the air stopped in his throat.

One of the guards involuntarily shifted his weight onto one leg. The sole made a minimal scrape against the floor.

Sebastián’s killing intent focused on him for a fraction of a second.

The man felt as though something had already crossed the space between them. His knees gave way a few centimeters, and he had to hold back a groan between his teeth.

He did not move again.

Selena opened the second group of files. Service schedules, internal routes, and team compositions appeared alongside the versions preserved before each modification.

—The orders were not limited to transfers —Helena said—. Four changes to my personal security coincided with schedule changes that had not yet been communicated outside the conglomerate. In each case, the replacement left part of the route under the responsibility of personnel brought in from this region.

—I do not directly manage your protection —the director managed to say.

—But your branch proposed the replacements.

—The recommendations come from the security department.

—The person in charge of that area opposed two of them —Selena intervened—. He was transferred forty-eight hours later. His replacement approved all four during his first week in the position.

The director looked at the tablet again. This time, he remained focused on the documents longer. His chest rose and fell beneath the gray jacket, with increasingly less regularity.

—I was unaware of that objection.

Selena opened an internal communication. She did not need to move it closer; the header was visible from his seat.

—You confirmed receipt of it.

The color began to drain from the man’s face. Perspiration gathered beneath his short hair and above his lip.

He raised the hand he kept visible, as though he wanted to touch his forehead, but let it fall when he noticed that Sebastián was following every joint of his arm.

Helena did not use the silence to intimidate him.

She let it exist because no explanation could change what rested on the screen.

—The records were also fragmented —she said when he looked at her again—. An order in this branch, a confirmation in another division, and a replacement carried out from a third.

—Separately, each movement could be mistaken for bureaucracy. Together, they form a structure designed to remove those who could detect the network and place people capable of interfering with my routes, my communications, and my access.

—Mrs. Caelis, I would never authorize an attack against you.

The statement came out faster than the previous ones.

Helena received it without changing her expression.

—I did not say the objective was to attack me.

The director understood the mistake before Selena lifted her eyes from the tablet. His breath caught. He tried to correct himself, but only managed to open and close his mouth once.

—Then explain to me why you modified my security —Helena continued—. Explain why you concealed the objections of the previous person in charge. Explain why you used this branch to distribute the authorizations among divisions that were not supposed to be connected.

—I... received instructions.

The words barely crossed the desk.

Helena showed no satisfaction. Selena did not rush to record an admission that was already being stored by the device. Sebastián remained behind both of them, attentive to the five bodies and everything surrounding them.

The office was almost completely dark. Auxiliary power kept the tablet, the desk systems, and a few faint lines in the floor active, but the lamps remained off since the interruption caused when they entered.

The city filled the window like an extension of ordered lights.

On the ceiling, several rectangular joints blended into the panel design. Sebastián had noticed them when crossing the door. They emitted no sound and gave off no different smell. They appeared to be part of the ventilation.

—From whom? —Helena asked.

The director lowered his chin. His fingers tightened against the edge of the desk.

—I cannot...

—You have already confirmed that you obeyed external orders. The name does not change your responsibility.

—You do not understand what...

Helena interrupted him without raising her volume.

—I understand that you used my structure, exposed my personnel, and opened routes into my security. I understand that you tried to conceal it. The only thing I still do not know is whom you believed to be more dangerous than me.

Sebastián’s killing intent still reached the director in a smaller proportion than the guards, but that difference had ceased to offer relief.

The man breathed as if every breath had to pass through a hand closed around his throat. His pulse beat beneath the skin of his neck. His eyes avoided Helena, searched for the tablet, and ended up returning to the black mask positioned behind her.

He did not see a teenager.

He did not even see a bodyguard.

His mind recognized a death already decided and clung to the only possibility he still had beyond that desk.

—Tell me who gave you the orders —Helena demanded.

Desperation gave the director what courage had been unable to give him.

His visible hand closed tightly around the edge. At the same time, the opposite shoulder dropped an almost imperceptible distance. Beneath the surface of the desk, his other arm began to move away from his torso.

Sebastián did not watch the hidden hand.

He saw how the fabric of the sleeve formed two new folds near the elbow, how the shoulder seam rotated forward, and how part of the director’s weight left the backrest.

It was not another tremor.

He was reaching for something.

Sebastián discreetly pointed the tip of his right foot toward the window and looked at Selena. He kept his attention on her for barely a fraction, long enough for her to understand that the direction of his foot was not accidental.

Selena did not follow the signal with her head or look toward the glass. She kept the tablet open and the same expression while shifting her rear leg, releasing the weight from her heels, and leaving one hand closer to Helena’s side.

She was ready to move.

The director found the button.

Sebastián heard the dry contact beneath the desk.

Everything happened within the same instant.

A vertical seam appeared in the wall behind the director. The panel retracted violently and a sudden depression tore away sheets of paper, lifted the end of his tie, and sucked him out of the seat toward the opening.

At the same time, the rectangles in the ceiling split into grilles and descended a few centimeters. A greenish liquid filled their ducts before the first drop could fall.

Sebastián’s instinct reacted.

It did not explain what substance was descending or how long it would take to eat through clothing.

It did not need to.

The signal was born in the body before thought: a brutal certainty, formed in places where hesitating and dying had been the same thing.

His entire organism chose a single response.

Get out.

His hands were already moving when the green color appeared between the slits.

His right arm wrapped around Helena’s waist. His left found Selena’s. He pulled them against his torso with precise force that gave them no time to lose their balance, but also did not compress their bodies more than necessary.

Helena released her breath as she left the floor. Selena closed her hand around the tablet and allowed Sebastián to impose the direction; the earlier signal had given her the only instant she needed not to resist by reflex.

Behind the desk, the director was sucked into the compartment. His back struck the padded interior of the chamber and a hatch began closing in front of him.

He managed to see the open grilles and the four men he had left in the office before the wall concealed him again.

Sebastián positioned Helena and Selena in front of his body, holding them against his chest.

He pivoted on one support.

His back ended up facing the window.

The killing intent ceased to be directed at the five when all his attention focused on getting the two women out alive.

The guards recovered their movement too late.

The first managed to pull his hand away from his weapon and raise both arms over his head.

The greenish liquid struck his forearms directly.

The sleeves darkened and contracted against the skin before opening into soft shreds. They did not fall like fabric: they lost consistency and descended as a black paste that carried the first layer of flesh with it.

The skin on his hands became covered in blisters in the time it took him to try to close his fingers. They burst almost at the same time. The surface became shiny and reddish, and began to peel away from the wrists in wet strips.

The tendons remained exposed for an instant before paling and dissolving as well. Two fingers bent without resistance, held only by fragments of tissue, and ended up falling into the liquid already gathering at his feet.

The guard screamed.

He lowered his arms by reflex and allowed the next discharge to strike his head and shoulders. His hair stuck to his scalp and disappeared beneath greenish foam. The skin of his forehead split open, slid down over his eyebrows, and left the bone visible before the acid began to dull it.

Beside the window, the second man raised his face when he heard the grilles.

The stream struck him across the left side of his face and neck. His cheek swelled, lost its shape, and began to slide toward his jaw. His eyelid retracted until the eye was left exposed; an instant later, the surface of the eye turned white, collapsed inward, and dissolved into the mixture running down his face.

He tried to cover himself, but his fingers passed through the softened flesh of his cheek. When he pulled them away, he dragged part of his lip with them and exposed a row of teeth.

The scream became distorted when the liquid entered his mouth. His tongue, gums, and the inside of his throat began to dissolve; his voice turned into a wet sound, interrupted by blood-tinted bubbles.

The other two tried to abandon their positions.

One crashed into the desk and received the discharge across his back. His jacket stuck to his body, smoked, and disappeared in sections. Beneath it, the skin separated from his shoulder blades and fell in thick folds.

The acid opened grooves between the muscles, reduced them to reddish fibers, and then to a mass that ran down his sides. When he tried to hold himself up against the desk, the shoulder lost the structure necessary to support the arm. The limb hung loose, connected for several seconds by a strip of flesh that eventually tore under its own weight.

The last one managed to take a step toward the door.

One of the streams struck him from the back of the neck down to his right leg. The fabric of his trousers fused with the skin before both began to run together. The calf muscle split open, detached from the bone, and descended in soft fragments around the ankle.

The tibia was left exposed.

Unable to support himself, the man fell onto his hands.

His palms entered the puddle formed across the floor. His fingers sank up to the knuckles as the flesh liquefied around them. He tried to rise and only managed to separate his arms from hands that no longer retained a complete shape.

The four began to melt beneath the continuous discharges.

The blood did not remain red for long. It mixed with the acid, the dissolved fabric, and the detached tissue until it formed dark streams that advanced across the floor. The chemical odor filled with the smell of burned flesh.

The screams overlapped for barely a few seconds. Then they began to lose strength as the faces, throats, and bodies ceased to retain what they needed to produce them.

Sebastián flexed his legs.

He did not use Qi.

The force came solely from the brutal contraction of his muscles. The floor gave way beneath his boots with a compact burst and his body was propelled backward.

His back struck the window.

The glass resisted for a fraction of a second. Then it became covered in white cracks and exploded outward. Sebastián’s jacket took the largest fragments; his shoulders and back opened the space through which Helena and Selena passed without touching the broken edges.

The night air struck them all at once.

They left the third floor surrounded by shards of glass that still reflected the city lights. Above, behind the opening, the screams mixed with the hiss of the acid and the final closing of the hidden chamber.

Below, the pavement of the side area rose far too quickly for either woman.

For Sebastián, the fall still contained time.

He loosened the pressure holding Helena and Selena against his chest only enough to change their positions. He slid Helena over his right shoulder and Selena over his left. Their torsos lay across him, supported by the width of his back and secured by his arms at the hips.

He did not let them swing.

He adjusted each grip so that the deceleration would not travel through their necks or spines.

He rotated his hips until both feet were positioned beneath his body.

The pavement arrived.

Sebastián landed with both soles at the same time. His ankles yielded, his knees bent beneath the descent, and the musculature of his legs, abdomen, and back absorbed the force in a single chain.

His body dropped until he was completely crouched, compact beneath the weight of the two women.

The impact produced a dry sound.

Several fine cracks formed beneath his boots and extended a short distance across the pavement. A layer of dust rose around the soles and settled again.

Sebastián did not place a knee or a hand on the ground.

He remained crouched, with Helena and Selena still lying across his shoulders, held with the same precision with which he had taken them inside the office.

Neither of them had touched the ground.

Neither had received the impact.

Sebastián loosened his right arm first. He lowered his shoulder enough for Helena to descend without slipping down his back and held her waist until both shoes found the pavement.

He did not remove his hand immediately. He waited until he felt her legs regain their balance after the fall and only then released his grip.

He repeated the movement with Selena.

She kept the tablet closed against her chest; when she touched the ground, she bent her knees slightly and placed one hand on Sebastián’s shoulder for the instant she needed to stabilize herself.

Then she moved away on her own.

Neither of them had cuts caused by the window nor had they received the violence of the impact.

Sebastián began to rise.

—Wait —Selena said.

She did not need to point toward the opening located three floors above.

Between the broken edges of the window, greenish wisps appeared that the night air could not carry outward. They curved inside the frame and returned to the office, drawn by a current working in the opposite direction.

Selena watched that movement before directing her gaze toward the full-face mask.

—The acid is releasing fumes. The system is keeping them inside the building, but the concentration in the office must be high. Activate gas mask mode before going back in.

Sebastián raised his face toward the third floor.

—Activate gas mask mode.

The mask did not change position or readjust its edges. It already completely covered his face.

On both sides of the cheeks, four almost invisible lines separated within the black surface and revealed small filtering inlets. A brief flow moved through the internal ducts. The dark lenses remained motionless over his eyes.

Sebastián looked at Helena.

—When I get the director out, restrain him.

Helena straightened the edge of her coat, still disturbed by the fall, and raised her gaze toward the office.

—We need him conscious.

—He will be.

Selena stored the tablet inside her coat and moved one foot backward. She did not intend to follow him; she was preparing her body to receive the director if Sebastián threw him out of the path through which he intended to return.

He finished standing.

The difference in height forced both women to raise their faces.

Sebastián placed one boot in front of the other and aligned his body with the dark opening on the third floor. For a fraction of a second, he did nothing. He measured the distance, the angle, and the fragments of glass still attached to the frame.

Then he bent his legs.

The contraction drove the soles into the cracked pavement. The impulse came from both limbs at the same time and produced a burst beneath his feet.

Sebastián rose diagonally, directly toward the opening.

The dust accumulated between the cracks rose behind him along with a gray puff born from the friction. The cloud reached Helena and Selena.

Helena closed her eyes for an instant and held her breath; Selena turned her face away and raised a forearm in front of her glasses. The air passed over their coats, stirred Selena’s ponytail, and continued toward the road.

It carried no acid and not enough force to harm them.

Sebastián reached the third floor before the dust began to descend.

He extended one leg through the window and rotated his torso to avoid the teeth of glass that remained attached to the upper section. The boot came down on a strip of floor that was still intact. The second support followed without touching the puddles spread beneath the opening.

The office had ceased to resemble the orderly space in which Helena had interrogated the director.

The discharges from the ceiling had stopped, but the acid was still working. Where the four guards had previously remained, irregular masses were sunk within greenish liquid, darkened blood, and fabric without consistency.

No body retained a complete shape.

A buckle protruded from one of the puddles; farther away, the deformed frame of a weapon rested among fragments of bone that lost their color as the compound covered them.

There were three other accumulations distributed in front of the desk. One occupied the place where Helena had been standing, another spread across the position abandoned by Selena, and the last one bubbled slowly where Sebastián had gathered them against his body.

They contained no human remains.

They seeped through the joints in the floor, widened the cracks, and released small bubbles upon reaching the lower layers. In some places, the covering had already disappeared, leaving visible a metal mesh that was beginning to blacken.

Vapors rose from all the puddles. They formed a low mist around the legs before rising in thin columns. The grilles remained open above the office and drew in the gas through a constant current.

The system was not attempting to clean the room to save anyone who remained inside. It maintained a pressure lower than that outside to prevent the substance from escaping through doors, ducts, or windows and revealing what had happened.

The night air entered through the destroyed window and dragged inward the last grains of dust suspended outside. When it met the greenish mist, both currents turned toward the ceiling.

The side inlets of the mask emitted a barely audible murmur. Sebastián inhaled without perceiving the chemical burning that would have accompanied the air inside the office. The smell of dissolved flesh did not pass through the filters either.

He did not stop before the remains.

The director’s heart was still beating behind the wall at the back.

The layers that made up the chamber muffled the sound, but they could not hide it from Sebastián’s senses. He heard rapid breathing, the scrape of a back against the interior lining, and two clumsy strikes against some control that no longer responded.

The man remained conscious.

The trap had sacrificed the guards and sealed the person who activated it inside a shelter built to survive it.

Sebastián advanced between the puddles. Each step found a safe portion before receiving his weight. He did not look down more than necessary; the location of the acid had been registered from the first instant.

The desk obstructed access to the section of wall that had closed behind the director. Its dark surface was still supported by two wide bases, although one of its ends had begun to deform under the splashes. The integrated screens remained lit by auxiliary power and repeated warnings that could no longer help anyone.

Sebastián did not search for a mechanism to move it.

He planted his left foot and drove his right into the center of the structure.

The desk was destroyed.

The surface folded around the boot before splitting in two. The supports were torn from their anchors; drawers, documents, and electronic components were hurled to the sides.

One half struck the floor and broke into fragments. The other spun until it came to rest near a puddle, where the acid began to devour one of its edges.

The impact exposed the wall.

The vertical seam through which the director had disappeared once again blended into the decorative panels, but the hurried closure had not recovered perfect alignment. A difference narrower than the thickness of a fingernail ran across the surface from the floor to a height above Sebastián’s head.

He approached.

He placed the fingertips of both hands against the separation.

There was not enough space to insert his fingers.

He pressed anyway.

The hardened skin of his hands did not yield.

The covering did.

His fingers penetrated the material with a contained crack. Sebastián drove them in until he reached the internal structure and closed his hands around the edges he had just created.

Beneath the outer covering, he found overlapping plates and a reinforcement framework designed to resist being opened from the office.

He pulled in opposite directions.

The wall bowed around his arms. The hidden anchors endured the first pressure; then one of them tore free with a sharp crack.

The sound traveled through the panel and reached the chamber.

Behind it, the director’s breathing stopped.

Sebastián increased the force.

The plates began to separate. The inner framework stretched until it emitted a metallic groan and two locks deformed inside their housings.

A black opening, still too narrow to pass through, appeared between his hands.

The director retreated as far as the compartment allowed him.

Then the statue’s eyes flashed.

The light appeared and disappeared so quickly that it did not manage to illuminate the mist. However, it reflected along the edge of one of Sebastián’s dark mask lenses.

Inside the figure, several locks released at the same time.

The fists that had rested at both sides of the body closed. The shoulder plates separated by a few millimeters and the broad torso abandoned its decorative rigidity.

It did not need to take a step. The heavy legs absorbed the change while the upper body began to move.

The mechanical waist rotated.

The movement was not that of an industrial machine trying to imitate a man.

It reproduced the economy of a trained strike.

The torso drove the force toward one shoulder, the arm advanced behind the rotation, and the fist took a straight trajectory toward Sebastián’s head.

A piston activated inside the forearm.

The cylinder released its pressure when the strike already seemed to have reached its full extension. The front section shot forward beyond the elbow, added distance to the attack, and transformed the rotation of the body into an impact far more violent than the robot’s size allowed one to anticipate.

Sebastián’s instinct responded to the flash and the first displacement of air.

He released the wall.

The deformed edges tried to close, but the damage stopped them and left between them the irregular opening he had managed to create.

Sebastián withdrew both hands, turned half his body, and raised his right hand.

The robot’s fist met his open palm.

The collision produced a boom like two masses of steel striking each other inside an empty chamber. The echo crossed the office, made the remains of the desk vibrate, and cut through the hiss of the acid for an instant.

The mist around both arms split apart under the compression of the air.

Sebastián’s hand covered barely the central part of the mechanical fist. His fingers could not wrap around a piece of such proportions; they closed over the edges of two plates and gripped it where they found resistance.

The impact did not move him.

The force entered through his palm and tried to fold his wrist. The muscles of his forearm contracted before allowing it. The tension rose beneath the skin in compact bands, divided between the fibers closing the fingers and those supporting the joint, and continued up the arm.

Biceps and triceps hardened at the same time, not to move the fist, but to receive the violence that was still pushing from the piston.

The black sleeve tightened around that sudden contraction. A seam split near the forearm and the tear advanced several centimeters toward the elbow. Beneath it, the white shirt gave way along a shorter line.

A portion of skin was exposed between the edges of both fabrics.

The force did not pass through the rest of his body.

Sebastián distributed it within the same arm. Each muscle group accepted a portion, reduced it, and passed it to the next until the impulse lost continuity before leaving the shoulder.

His torso did not rotate.

The boots did not move backward.

No new crack appeared beneath his feet.

A thread of smoke rose between his bare palm and the metal. It did not come from a burn, but from the compressed friction at the point where two similar forces had tried to occupy the same space.

The piston finished extending.

The mechanical arm became motionless.

Sebastián kept the fist trapped within a single hand, his sleeve torn and all the muscles of his arm still defined beneath the fabric.

The statue had just struck with brute force equivalent to his own.

Sebastián kept his hand closed around the mechanical fist for another instant. Beneath his bare palm, the plates continued pushing with the residual pressure of the piston, even though the arm had already reached the limit of its extension.

There was no trembling in his fingers.

Only a motionless tension between two forces that, for the first time since he had entered the branch, could recognize each other within a similar scale.

The director’s heart continued pounding behind the partially opened wall. Fast, irregular, but in the same place. There was no other footstep inside the chamber nor a second presence moving away through some hidden duct.

Beyond the broken window, Helena and Selena remained on the pavement. Their breathing had returned to a steady rhythm and neither of them was in the office’s direct line.

Sebastián opened his fingers, changed the angle of his wrist, and pushed the fist to one side.

He did not throw the robot.

He only moved aside the arm that had tried to pass through his head. The shoulder joint rotated to the limit allowed by its locks and the machine’s upper mass followed the deflection with a brief tilt.

The piston retracted inside the forearm with an internal thud.

Then, the robot recovered its axis.

Sebastián took a step backward.

The boot avoided one of the acid puddles and found the dry strip leading toward the center of the office. He took another step without assuming a guard stance.

Then one more.

The robot finally separated its feet from the symmetrical position it had maintained as a statue and advanced behind him. Each step left a heavy sound on the floor, too regular to belong to a living being, but not clumsy enough to be mistaken for an industrial machine.

The grilles continued drawing in the greenish mist. The current descended around both bodies, collected the vapors released by the puddles, and dragged them toward the ceiling.

Between them remained a clear portion of the room, bordered on one side by the remains of the desk and on the other by the furniture the acid had not yet reached.

Sebastián stopped there.

The robot did the same less than two meters away.

The difference in height forced Sebastián to raise his face only slightly to observe the compact head sunk between the metallic shoulders. The machine, on the other hand, tilted its visor toward him.

The light in its eyes remained fixed.

There was no breathing, hesitation, or pain behind that gaze; only a system that had stopped pretending to be motionless and waited for the next movement in order to respond.

Sebastián did not call upon the crimson Qi.

No current left his core or traveled through his meridians. Nor did he allow the Dao of Force to hint itself within his arm.

He wanted to know what had changed in the flesh, not how much power he could accumulate over it.

The ascent to Realm 9, Law Cultivator, had not been limited to transforming the density of his Qi or bringing him closer to the laws he was beginning to understand. The body containing that advancement had also been forced to adapt.

The Path of the Indomitable Body remained his foundation: bones rebuilt through pain, muscles born from successive ruptures, organs that had learned to survive where an ordinary body would have ended.

However, now that structure supported something different.

Sebastián could feel it in the response of every fiber, in the ease with which strength came when he closed a hand, and in the new margin that remained after what once would have been his limit.

The robot offered him a measure capable of withstanding him.

Sebastián advanced until he entered striking distance.

He did not shift his foot to generate momentum. He did not turn his hip or load his torso. His right shoulder moved and his arm shot straight forward in an ordinary punch, so clean of preparation that the distance seemed to disappear around it.

His knuckles reached the robot’s left flank, beneath the plates protecting the side of the torso.

The impact sounded like a mace striking a bell without room to resonate.

The metallic surface caved in around the fist and left a short depression, marked with the irregular shape of the knuckles.

Sebastián first felt the outer hardness.

A fraction later, he perceived something different beneath it.

The force did not return from a single point.

It opened behind the plate and traveled toward the sides within a dense medium. It was not a loose piece nor a soft layer. A fluid enclosed within ducts received the pressure, distributed it through the torso, and prolonged the impact time by a fraction.

Internal valves opened in sequence.

On the robot’s back, a narrow hatch separated between two plates and expelled a jet of white steam that crossed the greenish mist before being drawn toward the grilles.

The armor had been dented, but the internal structure remained intact.

Sebastián withdrew his fist.

The robot responded before his arm had fully returned.

Its right foot locked against the floor. The mechanical waist rotated, the torso drove the movement toward the shoulder, and the opposite arm advanced with the compact coordination of a boxer.

When the elbow was close to extending, the piston discharged the remaining distance.

The fist grew toward Sebastián’s face through a sudden acceleration.

He could have avoided it.

Instead, he raised his left forearm.

The blow struck the outer side of the arm and produced a boom that made the fragments of the desk vibrate.

The jacket sleeve split open from the point of contact. The white shirt gave way beneath it and exposed a line of skin from the wrist to the middle of the forearm.

The muscles received the pressure.

The contraction appeared like a wave beneath the skin. The fibers closest to the impact hardened first; the following ones took part of the load before it could concentrate on the bone. The forearm trembled once, with a brief violence that traveled through the arm to the shoulder and died there.

Sebastián did not retreat.

When he lowered his guard, a dark area was beginning to form beneath the skin. Two superficial vessels had ruptured and a short fissure crossed the edge of an old scar.

The damage did not have time to establish itself.

The blood stopped spreading almost immediately and the edges of the small opening began to come together.

The robot retracted the piston.

Sebastián struck again.

This time he chose the center of the chest. His left arm traveled in a straight line and found a thicker plate. The metal caved in less, but the sound was deeper.

The hydraulic pressure fled toward both shoulders and two rear outlets released steam at the same time. Before the machine could close its arms around him, Sebastián had already withdrawn his fist and moved his head out of the trajectory of a second charge.

The mechanical fist passed beside one of the dark lenses of the mask. The compressed air brushed the surface and stirred the torn edge of the sleeve.

Sebastián returned with a short strike to the opposite side.

The machine absorbed another dent.

During the following minutes, the office ceased to contain a succession of attacks and began to sustain a single prolonged exchange.

The robot fought through a logic built around its weight. Each fist was born from the supports, traveled through the rotation of the waist, and received one final extension from the piston. It alternated straight strikes toward the head with lower impacts intended to close the ribs or compress the abdomen.

It wasted no movements.

Nor did it improvise beyond the patterns its structure allowed it to combine.

Sebastián saw every beginning.

The pressure of one foot against the floor announced the side. The closing of a plate indicated which shoulder was going to advance. The first change within the piston revealed the exact instant when the arm’s reach would cease to be what it showed.

By the time the strike occupied the space where his head had been, Sebastián was already a few centimeters outside it.

He did not need to disappear or use all of his speed.

A tilt of the neck, a short step, or the precise lowering of a shoulder was enough.

He attacked from those evasions without turning them into techniques. One fist reached the chest. Another entered beneath the protection of the mechanical ribs. The next struck the shoulder joint, not to tear it off, but to observe how the internal fluid transferred the load toward the center.

Each impact produced a different deformation and ended with a white exhalation from the robot’s back.

Sebastián was not trying to bring it down yet.

He could increase the movement of his torso, add the hip, or use the strength of his legs.

He did not.

He let each arm reveal on its own how much it could deliver. The strikes lacked embellishment and, even so, reached the chosen points with a precision that no absence of technique could turn into clumsiness.

His experience did not disappear because he decided not to execute an art. It remained in the distance, in the instant of withdrawing his hand, and in the choice of the plate that would receive the next impact.

The machine tried to trap him against one of the corroded areas.

Sebastián saw the puddle behind his heel before placing his weight down. He shifted his body inward, allowed a fist to pass over his shoulder, and struck the same metallic side twice.

The first impact forced the fluid to move.

The second arrived before the valves recovered their position.

The plate caved in with a deeper fold.

The steam came out late.

The robot swung its arm back and the heavy forearm reached Sebastián’s side.

This time, he allowed the contact.

The black fabric compressed against his ribs. The pressure entered the lateral muscles, made them tremble, and opened three small tears beneath the clothing.

Sebastián shifted his outer foot half a step, not because the blow had overcome his resistance, but to prevent the edge of his boot from touching the acid.

The pain arrived cleanly, enough to define the exact point of damage.

No rib had given way.

Before the robot withdrew its arm, Sebastián drove his right fist into its chest.

The impact separated the central plates for an instant. White steam escaped from the back with such pressure that it struck the side glass and returned as droplets.

The machine lost its axis for half a step, recovered it, and threw another punch.

Sebastián dodged it.

He did not need to receive the same answer twice.

Time began to reveal itself in the remains of the room.

The acid mist, dense at first around their legs, gradually thinned under the constant suction from the ceiling. The puddles continued bubbling and sending greenish wisps upward, but they could no longer fill the office before the grilles captured them.

In their place, the steam expelled by the robot appeared again and again between both bodies. The white discharges enveloped the dented plates for moments and then rose like ghosts dragged out of a room that had killed too much.

Sebastián’s clothing also began to measure the duration of the confrontation.

The right sleeve, opened by the first impact he had stopped with his hand, finished tearing when a mechanical fist grazed his elbow. The fabric hung for a few seconds before detaching from the shoulder.

On the left arm, the successive cuts in the jacket and shirt widened with each block until they exposed most of the forearm and a portion of the biceps.

There was no useless bulk beneath them.

The muscles stood out compactly, crossed by old scars and by damage that did not remain the same for long.

An impact received on the left left a dark discoloration that began to shrink while Sebastián kept moving. Another opened the skin near the elbow; a line of blood managed to travel a few centimeters before the wound closed behind it.

The fibers trembled after absorbing each piston blow and recovered their stillness before the next.

The robot did not possess that possibility.

The depressions on its sides did not return to their shape. The chest had lost its symmetry and one of the plates overlapped the next at an angle that had not existed at the beginning. The right shoulder emitted an additional click before each advance.

Even so, the machine continued facing him head-on, incapable of understanding that every response cost it a part it could not rebuild.

Its strength remained within the same scale. When one of its fists managed to find Sebastián’s arms or torso, the flesh had to work to withstand it.

But the equality ended there.

The robot needed to construct each strike through mass, rotation, and mechanical pressure. Sebastián could produce similar violence with the simple movement of an arm and possessed enough speed to choose which impacts would touch him.

The difference became clearer as the hydraulic system began to fail.

Sebastián struck the central plate again.

The hatch on the back opened, but only expelled a short burst. Something vibrated inside the torso without finding an immediate outlet. In the next attack, the fluid shifted to the left and remained there a fraction too long.

The robot tried to compensate for the imbalance with the opposite foot; the mechanical knee bent late and the entire body wavered.

Sebastián did not hurry.

He deflected a fist with his palm, stepped inside the piston’s reach, and struck the already deformed side.

The plate gave way until it touched an internal structure.

The steam that should have followed the impact appeared as an irregular cough: two brief expulsions and a third that died inside the valve.

The robot responded with a straight punch.

Sebastián moved his face aside.

The second arm came from the side.

He received it on his right forearm.

The skin compressed, the muscles absorbed the load, and a remaining seam of the jacket split near the shoulder.

When the mechanical arm withdrew, Sebastián had already closed both injuries. Only the dried blood and the recent sheen of regenerated skin remained.

The machine took another step.

One of its feet landed with a minimal difference from the other. The torso corrected too late and the eyes lost intensity for a fraction.

The pistons could still strike.

The armor could still support it.

But the whole had ceased to behave as a single structure.

Sebastián understood it before it tried to advance again.

He had already obtained the answer he was looking for.

The body strengthened by the Path of the Indomitable Body not only produced greater strength. It sustained it without the loss that would previously have appeared after so many exchanges and recovered minor damage while continuing to use it.

The previous limit had not disappeared.

It had moved farther away.

In front of him remained a deformed machine that had needed to spend pressure, fluid, and stability to keep up with him for a few minutes.

There was no point in prolonging it.

Sebastián let his arms fall to both sides of his body.

The robot interpreted the opening and advanced. The left shoulder dropped, the waist began to turn, and the piston prepared itself inside the forearm.

Sebastián walked toward it before the strike finished being constructed.

He did not speak the name of the technique.

His right arm changed.

Every fiber tensed from the shoulder. The contraction passed through the biceps and triceps, descended along the forearm, and concentrated all the force in the hand. The tendons stood out like cables beneath the skin.

Sebastián clenched his fist until the knuckles lost color and small red lines appeared in the folds, where the pressure came close to tearing it.

The rest of his body did not construct the strike.

He did not turn his hip.

He did not gather momentum from his legs.

The shoulder held the origin and the fist received the end. Between the two, the entire arm was taken to that limit where flesh ceased to resemble a part of the body and became will compressed within muscle and bone.

The robot launched its attack.

Sebastián drove his fist forward.

The atmospheric pressure closed around the arm. The white steam still floating between them was torn from its ascent and forced to follow an impossible shape.

First, a compact line appeared in front of the knuckles.

Then an elongated head emerged, jaws open, and a body of transparent undulations whose scales could only be seen because the compressed air distorted the light.

The Fist of the Absolute Dragon was born centimeters from the robot’s chest.

It was not Qi.

It contained no aura or fire.

It was the pure pressure produced by a physical force that the arm could no longer contain within itself.

The dragon’s head struck first.

The central plates, weakened by the dents, caved in until they met the internal components. The metal resisted for a fraction and then split open from the center.

The edges were torn inward; the hydraulic lines burst and a mass of blue liquid scattered among fragments of armor.

Sebastián’s fist came behind it.

It passed through the opening created by the pressure, shattered the core of mechanisms supporting the torso, and continued until it broke through the rear plates.

The mechanical body arched around his arm. The discharge that tried to travel toward the internal reservoirs found ruptured conduits and escaped in a mixture of steam, blue liquid, and blackened parts.

The piston advancing toward Sebastián stopped before completing its extension.

The robot’s eyes flickered once.

The light dimmed as the blue liquid ran down the arm inserted into its chest, traveled over the regenerated skin, and fell from the elbow onto the office floor.

Then, the eyes went out.

________________________________________

END OF Chapter 136 The path continues...

New Chapters are revealed every

Sunday, and also between Wednesday or Thursday,

when the will of the tale so decides.

Each one leaves another scar on Sebastián’s journey.

If this abyss resonated with you,

keep it in your collection

and leave a mark: a comment, a question, an echo.

Your presence keeps alive the flame that shapes this world.

Thank you for walking by my side.

If this story resonated with you, perhaps we have already crossed paths in another corner of the digital world. Over there, they know me as Goru SLG.

I want to thank from the heart all the people who are reading and supporting this work. Your time, your comments, and your support keep this world alive.

If this story resonated with you, I invite you to support me — your presence and backing make it possible for.