They moved as one quickly through the fog after they decided the battle plan, keeping low and silent as the swirling mist swallowed their shapes. Maurien led them to the exact spot where the crack disrupted the barrier’s flow, and once they reached it, all three stopped. The shimmering outline of the mana dome was barely visible, but Ludger could feel the pressure radiating off it, dense, heavy, and perfectly balanced except for this one flaw.

  “This is the point,” Maurien whispered.

  Ludger nodded and raised his hand toward the flickering spot in the barrier. Mana began to gather in his palm, compressed into a thin, razor-sharp line. It took complete focus to keep it stable. Beside him, Maurien pressed his palms together, drawing wind from every direction until a tight, spiraling mass formed between his hands. Kaela mirrored him but rotated her wind in the opposite direction, creating a counter-spinning pressure sphere that shook with unstable force.

  As all three spells built up, the air around the manor reacted. A low hum vibrated from the barrier, and several golems stopped abruptly, their glowing eyes brightening as they detected the sudden surge of mana. They didn’t move yet, the fog hadn’t breached their perimeter, but they were clearly preparing to respond.

  “Now,” Maurien said.

  Ludger fired first. A narrow beam of pure mana shot from his palm, slicing through the mist and striking the weak point of the barrier. The dome rippled violently under the impact. Maurien and Kaela unleashed their spell half a second later, their twin cyclones merging mid-air into a compressed spiraling blast. It slammed into the barrier beside Ludger’s beam, twisting the mana flow and amplifying the strain.

  The barrier fought back, glowing brighter as the runes around the manor walls flared to compensate. The air vibrated with the strain as the cores poured power into stabilizing the structure. A deep rumble spread through the ground, like the whole district was gritting its teeth.

  “Keep pushing,” Maurien shouted as the pressure surged against them.

  Ludger forced more mana into the beam. His hand tingled with heat, and a sharp ache ran up his arm, but he didn’t let up. The combined force of their attacks sent jagged ripples across the barrier, each one spreading further than the last.

  Then came the first crack, a razor-thin fracture running across the surface like a broken mirror. The hum sharpened into a shrill vibration, and the crack spread, branching outward until the entire corner of the barrier flickered.

  With a final, sharp noise that echoed like shattering glass, the weakened portion burst open. A hole the size of a person tore itself into the shimmering dome, edges flickering as the spell tried to mend itself.

  Maurien stepped back with a sharp breath. Kaela relaxed her hands, letting the cyclone dissipate. Ludger lowered his arm, his palm smoking faintly from the output. The opening wouldn’t last long. But it was enough.

  Mist poured through the shattered section of the barrier like water through a cracked dam. It rolled across the courtyard in thick waves, crawling over stone and metal as if alive. The runic golems reacted instantly. Their eyes brightened, and several turned toward the breach, weapons raised. Halberds snapped into guard positions, runic cannons hummed with charging sigils, and heavy metal feet stomped into formation as they awaited a clear target.

  They didn’t have to wait long. Ludger shot forward the moment enough fog covered the ground. His body blurred, Overdrive flaring around him in a bright, cutting green, then shifting to a deep brown just before impact. A burst of earth-aspected force surged through his limbs as he struck the first golem square in the chest with a palm strike.

  The construct didn’t just stumble, it was launched backward. The three-meter titan crashed into the ground, skidding across the courtyard until it tumbled over itself like a toppled statue.

  Ludger didn’t slow. He cancelled Overdrive the moment the strike connected, conserving mana, and redirected his momentum toward the next golem. The dense fog swirled around him as he closed the distance in only three steps.

  This one reacted faster. The runic cannon mounted on its arm glowed and fired a barrage of compressed wind blades. The slashes cut through the mist, sharp enough to carve stone, but Ludger raised his arms to guard and let his earth-attuned mana harden his skin.

  The blades struck, thk, thk, thk, thk, and dissipated, leaving only faint stinging lines where they hit.

  Before the golem could recalibrate, Ludger was already under its guard.He drove another palm strike into its torso.

  CLANG.

  The metal dented inward with a violent crunch, runes flickering as the internal structure buckled. The golem staggered backward, its stability compromised as the mana inside it sputtered and struggled to re-route around the warped plating. Ludger pivoted, readying himself for the next one.

  The fog continued to pour in. The golems continued to converge. Their weapons charged with a chorus of rising hums. And Ludger, mask on, blades hidden, footsteps silent—looked like a phantom made of mist and earth, dismantling a fortress one strike at a time.

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  A sharp, strained whine rippled through the mist, metallic and uneven, like glass under pressure. Ludger immediately knew what it meant. Another section of the mana barrier had just failed. Maurien had found a core and was disabling it inside the fog.

  The barrier flickered across the courtyard, sending wavering blue sparks along the manor walls. As its pulse weakened, the mist thickened and rolled deeper into the grounds. Kaela guided it with her wind magic, pushing the fog into every gap and crevice until the entire garden looked drowned under a shifting white veil.

  Then the golems arrived. Dozens marched out from their stations, their synchronized footsteps shaking the ground. Each construct glowed from within, runes pulsing across their limbs while scanning sigils swept the fog for intruders. Their eyes burned through the mist like cold, blue lanterns.

  A moment later, human noise joined them. From the manor’s halls came the clatter of armored boots, shouted orders, and the scrape of weapons being drawn. Soldiers poured into the courtyard, trying to form lines even as the fog swallowed their formations.

  The garden erupted with layered noise, golems stomping, armor rattling, runic weapons charging, and the constant whisper of mist being pushed by Kaela’s winds. Ludger tightened his grip on his earthen blades, feeling the pressure of dozens of mana signatures closing in. The fog gave him cover, Maurien’s sabotage was unraveling the defenses, and Kaela had blinded the entire district. Now every protective measure the manor had was converging on one spot.

  Exactly where he stood. He breathed out slowly behind the mask and steadied his stance. More golems meant more chaos. And chaos was something he could work with.

  Ludger didn’t wait for the soldiers to stabilize their ranks or for the golems to adjust their formations. The moment their scanning runes swept past him, he moved, silent at first, then accelerating like a gust of wind forced through a narrow tunnel.

  He dashed toward the closest runic golem, its towering frame outlined in faint blue through the fog. The construct reacted, its chest sigils brightening as it raised a heavy rune-etched axe. But Ludger was already beneath the swing.

  He lunged forward, Overdrive flashing brown across his limbs, and drove his hand straight into the golem’s chestplate like a spear. The reinforced metal resisted for half a second, then buckled with a sharp crack as his fingers pierced through. Pain shot up his knuckles as the rigid alloy scraped his skin and strained the bones in his hand, but he didn’t so much as flinch. His other hand formed a quick pattern, dragging mana through the air and into the hollow cavity inside the golem.

  An explosion rune at point-blank range. The golem stiffened, runes across its torso flaring in confused response. Its axe came down again, this time in a brutal overhead chop meant to cleave him in half. Ludger ripped his hand free and kicked off the construct’s knee joint, flipping backward just as the blade slammed into the ground with enough force to crack the stone.

  The rune inside the golem pulsed.Then it detonated.

  A thunderous blast erupted from within its chest, ripping the front plating open in a violent burst of flame and compressed mana. Shards of metal scattered in all directions, clattering across the courtyard. The explosion exposed the inner core assembly, a cluster of glowing mana stones wired into the golem’s spine by thick runic conduits.

  Those cores reacted instantly to the ruptured flow. One blinked erratically. Then another. Then all of them synced in a single, unstable pulse. A chain reaction.

  Ludger felt the mana pressure spike a split second before the cores overloaded. He threw an arm in front of his face as a second explosion ripped the golem apart, far louder and hotter than the first. The construct’s entire torso was swallowed by a brilliant burst of blue-white energy that vaporized its internal runes and shredded its limbs into useless scrap.

  Pieces of metal rained down, clinking as they bounced across the courtyard. The shockwave pushed the fog outward for a heartbeat before Kaela’s winds swept it back into place. The golem collapsed in a smoking heap.

  Ludger landed lightly a few meters away, shaking off the stinging burn on his fingers. His hood fluttered in the residual shockwave. The mask hid his expression, but the cold focus in his eyes sharpened. One down. Dozens left.

  The blast tore through the courtyard, and the shockwave rolled outward in a violent ripple. For a brief moment, the mist that Kaela had carefully woven across the garden was blown back, peeled open like a curtain by raw pressure and heat. But the mana wall that still protected most of the manor acted like a dome, holding the fog inside the perimeter. The backlash hit the barrier and folded the mist inward again, compressing it into thicker, heavier clouds.

  Visibility went from bad to nearly nonexistent. Smoke billowed from the ruined golem, mixing with the swirling fog until it became a murky haze that stung the eyes and made every torch flicker violently. Flames licked across the grass where the explosion had scorched the ground, small fires spreading in chaotic patches that cast jagged shadows against the garden walls. Inside that choking soup of mist and smoke, voices broke into frantic shouts.

  “Something hit Unit C—!”

  “Find the attacker!”

  “I can’t see anything—where’s the mist coming from!?”

  The guards tried to regroup, weapons raised, formations broken. But the fog disoriented them, and sparks from ruptured runes on the fallen golem caused small arcs of lightning to crackle across the ground. Before anyone could understand what was happening, the second explosion hit.

  A deeper boom resounded from the opposite side of the courtyard, loud enough to make the manor’s windows shudder violently. Glass trembled in their frames, fine cracks spiderwebbing across several panes. One window outright burst inward, shards tinkling onto polished floors inside.

  A blast of blue light shot upward, illuminating the fog from within like a lantern trapped in storm clouds. Another runic golem had detonated, Maurien’s work, no doubt, its unstable mana cores collapsing in on themselves after its control runes were severed.

  The shockwave sent flames rolling across the grass like waves, and several soldiers were knocked off their feet. The manor’s stone pillars groaned from the impact as loose tiles rattled and fell from their roof edges. Shouts turned into panic.

  “The barrier’s flickering!”

  “More golems are destabilizing!”

  “Where is the enemy!?”

  The fog thickened again, swallowing everything. The air stank of burnt metal, scorched mana, and rising fear. Ludger moved through that chaos like a ghost.