Chapter 48: The Execution of Iron

Chapter 48: Chapter 48: The Execution of Iron

"Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men." — Seneca

The Forge-Lord stopped chasing him.

That was when Joel knew the fight had reached its final stage.

The Forge-Lord changed, and the whole basin watched.

Its wild hammering stopped mid-swing. The giant planted its feet firmly on the anvil plain.

Then it began pulling everything toward itself.

The vents along the terraces changed direction.

FSSSSHH!

The crater seemed to breathe in. Smoke and sparks rushed toward the center, as if a giant drain were pulling them in.

Even the slag river changed direction. Its orange flow bent toward the Forge-Lord.

Across the terraces, the hounds abandoned their patrols and fled in long silver lines.

The workers of the Fourth Stratum understood the danger before their master had even finished showing it.

The message was simple: run.

[Ding!]

[Charging signature detected: ’Meltdown’ (Boss Ultimate).]

[Classification: total thermal detonation. Estimated radius: the basin.]

[Time to release: 20 seconds.]

Joel stood on the anvil plain, two hundred meters from the growing ball of fire. He studied the numbers with a cold mind. He only thought this clearly when danger pushed him to his limits.

The basin stretched for kilometers. Even at his fastest, Phantom Tread could only carry him a fraction of that distance in twenty seconds. The coming explosion didn’t need to hit him directly. Its size alone could kill him.

Nyx could hide inside her shadow-space and survive the fire, but Joel couldn’t go in with her.

One by one, every possible escape disappeared from his calculations.

Only one option remained.

The impossible one—the same option he had been preparing to face all along.

’You are a pressure vessel,’ Joel thought, watching the giant’s armor glow brighter and brighter until it hurt to look at.

’When a system builds up too much pressure, it can be stopped by breaking through its wall from the inside, before it reaches its limit. I can’t outrun this explosion, so I’ll have to time it. The only place in this basin the blast can’t reach is the place where it’s born.’

Then the ground beneath him shifted, and Joel knew the moment had come.

The magnetic field died.

The Forge-Lord’s field had been pulling Joel’s halberd sideways and bending every straight path in the stratum. Now it collapsed as the giant drew all its energy inward for the explosion.

For the first time since entering the Wastes, Joel felt his halberd go still across his back.

The iron country was no longer a giant magnet. For the next twenty seconds, his weapon would fly straight.

’Nyx,’ he said inwardly, already moving into the opening footsteps of the form. ’The right knee, when I commit. Be the hinge, and be nowhere else.’

"Architect," Nyx whispered from the ridge shadows, her voice soft as silk. The darkness had swallowed her completely.

•••

Joel ran straight toward the exploding mountain.

He took four quick steps to build up the power of Meteor Piercer. Each step drove the force through his hips and spine, adding more power to the next. He raced across the anvil plain, with Phantom Tread leaving faint afterimages behind him.

The Forge-Lord tracked him through the growing light. The giant made its final choice. If its own destruction was certain, it would take Joel down with it.

Its massive hammer rose into the air, then crashed down toward Joel with the full force of the end of the world.

DOOM.

Joel wasn’t beneath the hammer.

Nyx was or rather, she was inside the Forge-Lord’s right knee. Four blades shot out of the shadow between its armor plates.

SHNK-SHNK-SHNK-SHNK!

The giant’s leg buckled just as it brought the hammer down. The blow missed Joel by a body’s width and buried the hammer deep into the anvil plain.

The entire basin rang like a giant bell. The Forge-Lord struggled to stand on three points, held up by little more than its strength and pride.

The fourth footstep landed.

The power of Meteor Piercer surged through Joel’s body, following the path he had trained for years.

At the same time, with his energy reservoir full behind his chest, Joel Carrow activated Kinetic Bastion and aimed it backward.

KRA-BOOOM.

Both powers activated at the same moment. Meteor Piercer drove its stored force forward, while Kinetic Bastion released its energy behind him.

The two forces collided and threw Joel across the anvil plain.

He flew the remaining hundred meters like a bullet fired from a weapon, no longer the one aiming it, but the ammunition itself.

[Ding!]

[Combination technique executed: ’Meteor Piercer’ + ’Kinetic Bastion’ (full reservoir release).]

[Host is now the projectile.]

The world became a tunnel of orange stone.

Joel felt the blast of air from the Forge-Lord’s hammer sweep over him as he raced ahead of the falling strike. He reached the gaps in the giant’s stomach armor and drove himself straight into the furnace inside.

The passage glowed white and gold. The heat should have killed him before he crossed it, but he pushed through. His whole side burned, and the damage reopened across his body as if every wound were being counted at once.

He crossed the molten darkness and drove the Ash-Spine Halberd into the core.

The Forge-Lord’s core was a sun the size of a wagon. For twenty seconds, it had been gathering enough pressure to destroy the entire basin.

Joel reached its surface with his weapon ready and one final plan.

Then he spent everything.

The halberd’s curved blade punched into the core’s outer shell. Joel released the last of his stored energy, sending it through the weapon and straight into the heart of the pressure.

He had opened the system from the inside, just one second before it reached its limit.

The core did what any system under too much pressure would do.

It shut down.

The explosion began, but instead of bursting outward, the force rushed into the hole Joel had made.

The blast shot upward through the Forge-Lord’s broken spine, torn coolant pipes, and shattered visor.

A pillar of white fire rose two hundred meters into the dark clouds.

FSSSSSSSSHHHHH!

The blast threw Joel across the terraces. He spun through the air like a coin.

The world blurred around him. Slag, sky, then slag again.

Finally, he crashed into a ridge and stopped.

He lay against the rock, smoke rising from three parts of his body. Even in pain, he counted his arms and legs out of habit, making sure they were all still there.

•••

Joel slowly took in his surroundings. The whole basin was changing, and control of the Fourth Stratum was passing to someone new.

The vents along the terraces had stopped. The slag river straightened and slowly began to cool along its edges.

The orange glow across the Fourth Stratum grew weaker, little by little. It was like watching a house go dark at the end of the day, one room at a time.

Across the terraces, the hounds stopped running. They stood in silver lines, facing the center and waiting. It was as if an entire workforce had just been told their jobs were over.

The Forge-Lord remained standing where it had died, balanced on three points with its hammer buried in the ground.

The glowing seams in its armor slowly changed from white to gold, then to orange. Finally, the furnace light behind its visor went out, like a door closing on an empty room.

The hammer fell last. It slipped from the giant’s dead grip and struck the ground with a sound that resounded across the entire crater.

DOOM.

The shift bell, for the end of the last shift.

[Ding!]

[Forge-Lord (Lv. 40, Stratum Boss) eliminated.]

[Fourth Stratum Cleared. SOLO.]

[Massive EXP gained.]

[Level Up! You are now Level 31.]

[Level Up! You are now Level 32.]

[Level Up! You are now Level 33.]

[Lethal encounter survived against a statistically superior entity (level gap: 7, boss-class, self-destruct conditions). The Wheel acknowledges your gamble.]

[+2 Fate Points Earned. Current Balance: 15.]

[Achievement Unlocked: ’Fourth Stratum Cleared Solo, Under-Level’.]

[System Note: the anvil has outlived the hammer. The house would like the record to reflect that this was the plan the entire time.]

Joel Carrow rose from behind the ridge, bruised, burned, and still smoking.

He stood over the cooling body of the largest creature he had ever killed. Every step sent pain through his injured side, but he kept moving.

The pain could complain all it wanted. It would never win.

The deal was done, and Joel’s house now owned everything in the country.

Hundreds of hounds watched Joel from the terraces. They stood in silence, with no orders to follow and no master to serve.

’Note for the file,’ he thought, looking at the jobless hounds, the cooling giant, and the fading glow of the furnace country.

He had fifteen points in his account and a Mythic skill ready to use.

’The next owner of the Fourth Stratum is standing right here, and the job has been open for about forty seconds.’

[Ding!]

[Fate-Bound Legion: eligible target detected.]

[Target Core: Forge-Lord (Lv. 40, Stratum Boss). Binding available on your order, Architect.]

The dead Forge-Lord’s shadow stretched across the anvil plain in the fading light. It was huge, deep, and unbroken.

Joel Carrow planted his aching feet and walked toward the fallen giant. The house had one last task to complete in the Iron Wastes.

It was time to hire a new employee.

"Now then," he said to the dead Forge-Lord. "Let’s discuss your contract."