Chapter 253: Guardians of Katogida

Iron sat on a wooden bench in the middle of a bustling street in Weisburg, resting both arms on his knees and watching the people pass by. The number was still spinning through his head: 0.01%.

​"Lumon, give me the coordinates," he said quietly.

​Coordinates instantly appeared on his retina. Iron looked over the symbols and thought to himself:

​Crafting the crystal myself is much more rational. But there's still a chance...

​"There are no observers in the line of sight," Lumon's even voice responded.

​Iron collapsed space.

​The noise of Weisburg vanished that very second. It was replaced by the whistle of the wind and the sharp smell of ozone.

​Iron stood in the very center of the Katogida Valley.

​All around stretched dry red earth, scarred by deep cracks and faults. The sky overhead was choked with black clouds, and the silhouettes of low hills were visible on the horizon.

​Iron took a step forward, looking over the area, when a massive bolt of lightning slammed into the ground just a few meters away from him with a deafening crack.

​A blinding flash struck his eyes, and the sharp crack and blast of air made Iron flinch and stumble backward.

​He stopped, catching his breath, and looked at the smoking crater in the soil. After that, Iron slowly looked up, examining the storm clouds.

​Lumon initiated a full scan of the area without delay. A graphical schematic unfurled on his retina: the entire valley was literally saturated with streams of free energy. To Iron, it looked like endless lines of small charged particles, electrons, running between the clouds and the earth.

​Iron smoothly lifted off the ground, rising into the air, and commanded shortly:

​"Heavens."

​In that same instant, his vision split: while he himself flew rapidly forward over the hills, Lumon projected a top-down view onto his retina. This allowed him to control the entire space around him without losing speed.

​After five minutes of rapid flight, soaring between another set of hills, Iron noticed a bright glow on the scanner. Deep underground pulsed a massive concentration of electrical energy.

​Iron sharply froze in the air and waved his hand. Gravity and pressure shifted, and layers of red earth silently rose upward, parting to the sides and opening a direct passage to the source itself.

​"Lumon, how do I extract it safely?" Iron asked, looking at the cluster of energy.

​"For safe transportation, a crystal must naturally form at the site of the source."

​"And if I don't wait?" Iron frowned. "I could use my magic for containment or make a special accumulator..."

​"That is possible," Lumon interrupted him. "However, the energy accumulation rate will be negligibly low. If you attempt to artificially increase its influx, critical instability will occur. At the slightest mistake, an explosion comparable to a nuclear one will happen."

​Iron looked thoughtfully at the pulsing source:

​"I see..."

​But he didn't get to develop the thought. Through the "Heavens" view, Iron was still tracking the situation from high above and instantly registered several lightning bolts hurtling toward him from the storm clouds at breakneck speed.

​In a fraction of a second, Iron dashed backward. The lightning slammed into the ground with a crash, and right out of the electrical flashes, three massive figures materialized.

​They were three-meter giants, clad in purple armor. Each of them had a shield with a white opening on their chest, and a solid white line glowed across their face. In their left hands they held purple-and-white shields, and in their right—spears. The shafts of these spears seemed incorporeal, as if woven from translucent purple mist, while the tips themselves glowed with a hazy yellow.

​The central guardian immediately threw his spear.

​It covered the distance in an instant—the blade passed literally a centimeter from Iron's face as he managed to jerk his head back at the last moment. The spear smashed into the red earth, triggering a massive explosion of yellow electricity in all directions. After that, the weapon instantly vaporized and immediately reappeared in the guardian's hand.

​At that same moment, the second guardian appeared right above Iron, bringing his spear down from above. Iron dodged to the right, twisted his body in a spin, and delivered a powerful kick to the purple shaft.

​But his leg passed straight through. The purple "mist" scattered to the sides, then seamlessly reformed.

​The third guardian was already aiming his spear tip right at Iron's face. Wasting no time, Iron collapsed space and shifted a few meters upward, hovering in the air. Below, another electrical explosion rang out from the spear plunging into the ground, but this discharge caused absolutely no harm to the guardians themselves.

​Iron assessed the situation. The top-down view registered a new massive discharge rushing at him straight from the clouds. Glancing at the falling lightning, Iron instantly altered its motion vector, redirecting the discharge squarely into the nearest guardian.

​But the expected damage didn't follow. The guardian simply absorbed the lightning—the yellow tip of his spear flooded with blinding light. Thrusting the weapon forward, he immediately fired a concentrated electrical beam at Iron.

​Iron deftly dodged the flying beam and rushed into close combat, closing the distance. Reaching the nearest guardian, he readied a powerful upward strike with his right hand straight to the chin. To make the blow more powerful, Iron increased the mass of his fist, simultaneously reinforcing the density of his own bones.

​But he didn't get to finish the swing. The second guardian brought down a slashing spear strike from above. Iron executed a forward flip at the last second, soaring over the blade and landing behind them.

​But the third guardian was already behind him. Iron tried to sweep his legs out from under him on the fly, but his leg passed through the misty limb without resistance.

​"Again..." Iron hissed through his teeth.

​With quick rolls and a half-backflip, he bounced backward. However, the three guardians instantly caught up to him and closed the circle, raising their glowing spears. The yellow tips and purple shafts flared ever brighter.

​Iron cast a quick glance over all three, registering new metrics and logging the data into the scanner's memory. Right after that, Iron executed a spatial shift, vanishing and materializing a dozen meters to the side.

​The thrown spears pierced empty air. The weapons of the first and second guardians collided with each other and were completely absorbed, while the third's spear flew past and exploded in yellow lightning.

​The guardians turned around. The white glowing lines on their masks and shields flared sharply and changed color to bright yellow. Their movements became much more aggressive.

​Iron frowned, quickly running through his options:

​"They aren't affected by friction, impact force, or pressure changes..."

​As the guardians rushed at him again, Iron dodged another lunge and drastically raised the surrounding air temperature by several thousand degrees. In the next second, Iron registered absolute stability through the scanner—the guardians' metrics didn't even twitch.

​The engineer snapped his fingers, returning the temperature to normal:

​"Thermodynamics goes to hell too..."

​The next option brewed in his head. With a quick pass of his hand, Iron disrupted the forms of the misty spears and used the force of gravity to squeeze all the water from the air to the ground, trying to strip them of density. But the mist particles merely scattered in all directions and a second later gathered back into the guardians' hands.

​Iron clicked his tongue in annoyance:

"Yeah, gravity doesn't work either. Still, I need 'Ssengnihton' now more than ever..." Iron gritted his teeth.

​At that very second, one of the guardians hurled his spear at him with full force. Iron easily dodged, and immediately said to himself:

​But using it right now is extremely dangerous...

​And at that exact moment, his top-down view clouded over completely. Dense storm clouds tightly choked the sky, and the raging electrical properties of the air completely blocked out visibility. Iron froze for a moment, not understanding what was happening above.

​And suddenly, right behind his back, the spears, even though they had exploded a moment earlier, unleashed a massive burst of energy. This entire insane torrent of electricity rushed straight at Iron.

​The strike was so powerful that steam instantly billowed from Iron's body and clothes. He dropped to one knee, breaking into a heavy, muffled cough and desperately trying to draw in even a little air. His insides were burning, but Lumon continuously sustained his vital functions, preventing his body from shutting down and dying from shock.

​After several agonizing seconds, Iron finally managed to take a full breath. But in that same instant, a guardian materialized right in front of him, already drawing his spear back for a fatal strike.

​In the very last fraction of a second, Iron redirected the spear's motion vector straight at the guardian himself, perfectly aware that the spear would simply be absorbed and no explosion would happen. And so it did—the weapon instantly plunged into the guardian's chest and dissolved inside his body.

​Taking advantage of this pause, Iron flew backward, opening up the distance. His breathing had barely steadied, but his body still ached from the current that had shot through him.

​Iron thrust his arm forward sharply. But right in the process, he realized the deadly danger and sharply cut off his mana supply.

​Nevertheless, the electrical current still managed to travel through his arms. The energy supply stopped, but his nerve endings received a massive false signal. Iron's hands began to shake uncontrollably. A mild burn flared on his palm, and a nauseating weakness and slight dizziness arose in his head.

​"Damn it..." Iron spat.

​He clearly saw two guards right in front of him and sensed the third one behind. All three hurled their spears simultaneously, trying to skewer him from all sides.

​Iron spun on the spot at lightning speed, his left hand brushing against the incoming spears and instantly nullifying their forms. In that same rotation, he jumped up and delivered a powerful two-footed dropkick to the two guards in front, knocking them back. Barely touching the ground, he spun around sharply and slammed a fast left-handed strike straight into the third guardian's torso, sending him flying.

​Breathing heavily and looking at the knocked-back guards, Iron looked at his shaking, burned palms and muttered:

"Damn it, why can't I just use electromagnetic interaction?"