Verk moved first. One moment he was standing in the ruined doorway, calm, composed. The next, the ground collapsed beneath his boots as he launched forward with a violent boom of air pressure.

  To anyone else, it would’ve looked like teleportation. But Ludger saw it. Thrusters, thin, rune-etched propulsion sigils, lit up along the back of Verk’s bodysuit and under the calves of his armor. Small vents glowed blue as compressed mana ignited with each step. Each burst threw him forward with a jet-like kick, turning his charge into a blur of motion.

  So that explained it.This wasn’t natural speed. It was engineered.

  Verk appeared in front of him in less than a heartbeat, gauntleted hand raised high. The runes on his palm glowed a deep cobalt, gathering kinetic force like a storm. This wasn’t a simple punch, this was a strike meant to cave in stone.

  He brought it down toward Ludger’s head. The impact never reached.

  Ludger crossed his forearms in front of him just in time, catching the blow with both bracers. Reinforced metal slammed into his guard, sparking a shockwave that tore a crater into the ground beneath them.

  CRACK—!

  Pain shot through Ludger’s arms as the force rattled up to his elbows. The bones strained dangerously. His wrist joints screamed under the pressure. He felt something crack, just a hairline fracture, but enough to make his fingers go numb for a second.

  Under the cloak, his earth-infused forearm guards pulsed, brown light tightening around the stone cores embedded within them. Earth Attunement flared in response to the impact, reinforcing the guards with a dense, compact layer of condensed mana.

  It saved his skull. But barely. Verk tilted his head slightly behind the visor, almost impressed.

  “My, my,” the councilor murmured. “You can block that?”

  Ludger pushed the hand away with a grunt, sliding back across the courtyard. His boots carved deep marks into the dirt before he forced himself to a stop. His arms throbbed with dull, hot pain. He could already tell two fingers were fractured from absorbing the blow.

  He rolled his shoulders once, ignoring the sting as he forced mana through his limbs. Verk hovered slightly above the ground as the thrusters on his armor hummed.

  “That strike could flatten a reinforced wall,” he said calmly. “And you blocked it with your arms.”

  A dry chuckle echoed behind the visor.

  “Now this is getting interesting.”

  Ludger braced himself as Verk lunged again, the air cracking around the councilor’s armor movements. Each step came with a burst of mana, thrusters firing in sharp blue flashes. The gauntlet swung down, and Ludger caught it on his forearms. The impact jolted through his bones, forcing him to slide back several feet across scorched ground. His fingers throbbed from the strain, but he held firm.

  Verk didn’t hesitate. He closed the distance with another burst of speed, chaining his attacks together with frightening fluidity, a straight punch, a sweeping kick, a jab aimed at the throat, followed by a crushing hammerfist meant to shatter bone. Ludger blocked every strike, his bracers ringing under the impacts like struck anvils. At times he bent with the motion to absorb the force; other times he twisted just enough to let the blows skim past. But every deflection cost him. His arms were growing numb from the repeated shocks.

  He wasn’t looking for victory in those moments, he was looking for a mistake. He watched Verk’s footing, the roll of his shoulders, the timing of each strike. He expected to catch a dropped guard or a misaligned stance, something he could exploit with a quick counter. But nothing came.

  Verk’s form was too clean. Too precise. Every punch flowed into the next, every shift in weight was perfectly balanced. When Ludger thought he spotted an opening, a slightly wide stance or a delayed recovery, it vanished instantly. The armor corrected it before Ludger could even move. That was the part that didn’t make sense.

  Verk did not move like a fighter forged through battle; there was no instinctive rhythm, no raw edge or improvisation. His attacks were almost textbook, patterns drilled but rarely tested. Yet the execution was immaculate.

  Another strike came in. Ludger ducked, blocked the follow-up elbow, and attempted to counter with a palm strike toward Verk’s ribs. For a fraction of a second, he saw an opening. Then the armor shifted.

  A side thruster flared, yanking Verk out of range as the plating around his torso tightened and reoriented. The gap sealed itself in an instant. Ludger stepped back, breathing a little harder, eyes narrowing behind the mask.

  This wasn’t natural skill. This wasn’t training. This was something else.

  As Verk followed with another sequence, an aggressive triple strike that Ludger barely deflected, the truth became clearer. The armor pulsed with faint mana signatures, micro-adjustments happening even between movements. Plates sliding into place. Runes brightening and dimming in patterns too quick for a normal fighter to control manually.

  It wasn’t just aiding him. It was correcting him. Ludger blocked another blow, feeling a fresh crack bloom across one of his fingers. He retreated a few steps to relieve the pressure, and as Verk advanced with unwavering precision, Ludger's thoughts settled into clarity.

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  He’s not this good. The armor is compensating for every flaw he has, and learning with each exchange.

  Verk moved with increasing confidence, likely realizing the armor was gaining data from the fight. He pressed harder, faster, his strikes becoming smoother as the suit refined its support. The thrusters synchronized perfectly with his weight shifts, turning him into a guided missile with human intent and mechanical perfection.

  Ludger tightened his grip and steadied his breathing. Verk wasn’t the problem. The armor was. If Ludger wanted a chance at bringing the councilor down, he needed to break what the armor couldn’t instantly repair, or find a way to overwhelm its calculations.

  He flexed his aching fingers, feeling the fractures knit slightly under a quick pulse of healing magic.

  Fine, he thought, planting his feet as Verk prepared another charge. If it’s the armor that’s fighting me… then I’ll just tear the armor apart.

  Ludger didn’t give Verk a chance to dictate the pace. He shot forward, cloak billowing behind him, feet kicking up scorched dust. Every muscle in his arms tensed as he funneled mana into his palms, and he struck with a flurry meant to overwhelm any normal defense. His first blow came in fast, aimed straight for the center of Verk’s chestplate.

  Verk intercepted it immediately. His gauntlet rose with flawless timing, catching the strike with the exact angle needed to disperse its force. There was no hesitation in the councilor’s movement, no flinch, no adjustment after impact. It felt too perfect, too measured. Ludger pivoted to the side and attacked again, driving a palm into Verk’s ribs, only for the blow to be redirected with the same mechanical precision.

  He didn’t let up. A palm thrust to the shoulder, knocked aside. A strike aimed at the visor, met with an upward parry. A quick jab toward the left hip, blocked before the motion even fully extended.

  Each time Ludger sped up, Verk matched him. Every time he shifted angles or tempo, the armor corrected Verk’s form instantly. There was no wasted movement on the councilor’s part, no lag between intention and execution. It was almost like fighting someone who had rehearsed Ludger’s every move in advance.

  But Ludger still had leverage: the explosive rune. He waited until he felt the faintest pulse of mana from Verk’s gauntlet, an indicator that the armor was preparing a counter. Instead of withdrawing, Ludger pressed in and forced their limbs to collide.

  The rune flared. A sharp red flash—

  BOOM.

  The explosion tore through Verk’s forearm plating, sending sparks and fragments of glowing metal scattering across the courtyard. The armor shuddered under the force, and Verk slid back a step, surprised by the sheer impact. Ludger didn’t waste the moment.

  He stepped in immediately and unleashed another palm strike to Verk’s hip joint. The rune detonated again in a muffled burst that dented the armor inward slightly, disrupting the flow of runic light along the side.But before Ludger even finished retracting his arm, the armor responded.

  Blue mana flickered across the damaged sections, traveling in sharp lines like lightning trapped under glass. Plates shifted with small mechanical clacks, repositioning themselves. Cracks fused shut. Bent metal straightened as if the armor were breathing deeply and resetting its posture. By the time Ludger readied another strike, the damage had been undone.

  He gritted his teeth behind the mask. This wasn’t basic self-repair, this was a high-grade autonomous restoration system, likely powered by an internal mana core with that sole function. It was repairing combat-grade damage in seconds.

  Ludger attacked again, refusing to back off. He ducked under a retaliatory punch, spun sharply, and drove a palm into Verk’s shoulder plate at an upward angle—

  BOOM.

  The blast staggered Verk more than the others, forcing him to brace himself with his opposite foot. For a heartbeat, the armor sparked violently, runes dimming as if the internal circuits were faltering. Ludger surged forward to exploit the weakness, but the armor’s core flared at full brightness and everything snapped back together before he could land the next blow.

  The plates sealed. The mana lines stabilized. The cracks vanished entirely. Verk straightened his stance, the visor glowing with a cold blue sheen. The rhythm of his breathing remained calm, and the amusement in his posture was unmistakable.

  “You hit hard,” he said, voice echoing through the helmet. “Harder than I expected, honestly. But this armor wasn’t crafted for mere ornamentation.”

  He lifted his gauntlet, fingers flexing with fluid mechanical support as the last traces of damage disappeared.

  “It was created to ensure that I—”

  Blue thrusters ignited across his armor in a synchronized flash.

  “—do not break.”

  And then he vanished in a surge of mana.

  Verk reappeared in front of Ludger with a sound like air collapsing inward, and the second he materialized, the barrage began.

  A straight punch, fast enough to blur, slammed into Ludger’s guard and blew it open. He barely shifted his forearm in time, the impact rattling all the way up to his shoulder and numbing half his hand. Before he could realign his stance, a knee strike crashed into his ribs, folding his cloak and armor inward. The leather creaked. Something inside him popped.

  Ludger staggered, but Verk didn’t let him breathe. Another punch came from the side, hitting him just under the arm where the armor was thinnest. His body twisted with the force, boot skidding violently across the broken courtyard stones. A heavy hammerfist followed instantly, crashing down on the curve of his shoulder with such precision that Ludger’s vision flashed white. He tried to counter.

  His hand shot up to intercept the next blow, but Verk’s armor shifted its angle in the last millisecond, letting the gauntlet slide past Ludger’s palm and crash into his sternum. The impact forced the air out of him and sent him stumbling back two steps.

  Verk didn’t chase. He was waiting for Ludger’s reactions. Testing them. Matching them. Exploiting every familiar habit in Ludger’s movements.

  Ludger raised his guard again, but his arms felt heavier, slower, already bruised from the earlier hits. He felt another punch coming and tried to angle his elbow to deflect it, but the armor corrected Verk’s trajectory again and the gauntlet smashed into Ludger’s left side. The world spun.

  A boot swept his legs out from under him. Ludger hit the ground hard. Stone cracked beneath his body.

  Pain lanced up his spine and for a moment everything went dim. His mind flickered between awareness and blankness as his body struggled to process the blows. His breaths came shallow and uneven. He forced his senses back online through sheer instinct.

  Seismic Sense read the ground.

  Mana Sense flickered across Verk’s outline.

  The dull ache pulsed from the soles of his feet to the fingers he’d used to block.

  He pushed himself up, just enough to avoid the armored heel that crashed down where his head had been a second before. The shockwave from the missed stomp still rattled his teeth.