Ludger rolled sideways, cloak dragging through debris as he tried to get distance, but Verk stayed on him. A downward backhand hit his ribs and sent him tumbling across the courtyard again, the mask cracking along his cheek.

  His runic leather armor, reinforced and layered with multiple sigils, was already showing visible damage. Cuts glowed along its surface where the runic plating had heated from repeated blows. Some runes flickered weakly, half-broken. One of the chest sigils sparked violently, failing to activate on time.

  Ludger coughed, tasting iron. His hands trembled as he re-aligned his stance and forced mana into his limbs to stabilize himself.

  He’d taken hard hits before. He’d fought monsters that wanted him dead. He’d faced elites in the frost labyrinth and soldiers twice his size.

  But this was the first time he felt a fight slipping away purely because the enemy understood him. Verk wasn’t just fast. He wasn’t just armored.

  He was reading Ludger’s fighting style, every tell, every habit, every preferred angle, and dismantling it piece by piece.

  Ludger gritted his teeth behind the cracked mask as he wiped blood from his lip and forced himself upright. His chest burned from the impacts, his legs ached from the sweep, and his forearms pulsed with sharp agony from the blocks—but his eyes sharpened.

  The pain grounded him. His heartbeat steadied. And under the aching pressure in his bones, the familiar cold logic returned. If Verk armor had studied his style… Then all Ludger needed to do was change the rules of the fight.

  Ludger forced a shaky breath out and let his mana spread in a controlled ripple across the courtyard.

  Mana Pulse.

  The world didn’t just sharpen, it organized itself. Verk’s armor lit up in his senses like a moving diagram: runic nodes humming with energy, stabilizers shifting weight, thrusters adjusting pressure in micro-bursts. Every cycle produced the same rhythm, the same pulse, the same predictable pattern. And within that pattern, Ludger felt the small inefficiencies, the half-second hitch on the left, the mana spike before each assisted movement, the flicker in the chest plate struggling to keep up.

  The armor wasn’t reading him because Verk was a genius. It was reading him because the runes broadcasted their decisions. Ludger adjusted his stance. Verk’s helmet twitched in response. Good.

  He moved first, stepping into the gap between the armor’s predictions. His body blurred forward, not stronger, not faster, just perfectly timed in the armor’s blind spots. Verk’s gauntlet snapped out in a counter, but Ludger slipped under it, palm already glowing with a charge he’d been feeding since the moment he rolled away.

  The explosion rune burned white-hot. The kind that hurt the user as much as the target. He slammed the strike straight into Verk’s chest.

  BOOM—!!

  The shockwave punched outward in a harsh, concussive burst. Stone cracked under the force. Verk’s armor staggered back several meters, metal plates rattling as emergency reinforcement runes snapped online to keep the entire chest from collapsing inward.

  Ludger felt the backlash instantly. His glove shredded, and smoke curled off his palm as the skin blistered from the overload. The recoil nearly dislocated his shoulder, and he had to bite down to keep from screaming.

  Across from him, Verk steadied himself. He didn’t pant. He didn’t shake. The armor simply readjusted around him with a mechanical hiss.

  “You broke the predictive cycle,” he said, voice muffled behind the helmet.

  Ludger didn’t respond. His breath was ragged, his burned hand numb, but his footing held firm. Mana Pulse still hummed faintly through his skin, each fluctuation feeding him another fraction of insight. He could feel Verk’s next movements forming before they physically happened. Not enough to dominate, just enough to keep from dying outright.

  Verk tilted his head slightly, the gesture almost curious. “Adaptation without output increase is still insufficient.”

  Then he vanished.

  The thrusters screamed as he reappeared in front of Ludger, swinging with brutal force. Ludger reacted faster than before, slipping half a step aside, letting the strike graze past. It should’ve worked. But the armor corrected instantly, adjusting Verk’s angle mid-motion, turning the swing into a vicious elbow that smashed into Ludger’s jaw.

  Pain exploded behind his eyes. His vision flashed white for a heartbeat, and another fragment of his mask snapped off as he stumbled back. But that single exchange showed him something.

  During the impact, when the armor shifted to correct itself, the left chest rune flickered. Only for a heartbeat, but it lagged behind the others. A weak point. A flaw. Not big enough to exploit recklessly, but enough to force an opening if he played it perfectly.

  Verk resumed advancing, each step quiet and precise, like the armor absorbed even sound. Runes along his arms brightened, preparing another burst of speed. Ludger wiped the blood from his mouth with his good hand. The burned one trembled at his side, painful enough to blur his vision but still functional if he forced it.

  The fight wasn’t getting easier. Verk’s armor had already started learning his new timing. But now Ludger had a target, however small.

  He braced himself as Verk closed in again, posture narrowing into a textbook killing form.

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  If you’re relying on your toy to tell you how to fight… then all I need to do is break the toy.

  Ludger’s breathing grew harsher with every step he took, every strike he blocked, every bone-deep impact he absorbed. His mana reserves burned too fast, far too fast, and the warning pressure behind his sternum told him exactly how close he was to collapsing. He’d pushed himself for minutes beyond what any sane person would call survivable. And it was catching up.

  His cloak was hanging in shredded strips, no longer hiding much of anything. His mask, already cracked, now had a fracture running from temple to jaw. One more solid hit and it would split clean off. If that happened, his identity would be exposed, and this entire operation would become a suicide mission.

  A warm drip slid down from under the mask. Blood from his nose. Again. He could taste iron every time he swallowed, metallic and bitter. Even the attacks he managed to block properly rattled his bones so badly his vision blurred at the edges. Verk’s armor-assisted precision made every deflection feel like taking a direct hit from a hammer.

  I’m running out of time…

  Too much mana burned. Too much noise outside. Too many witnesses alive if this dragged on.

  The courtyard beyond the shattered gates echoed with chaos. Maurien’s interference had stirred the entire fortress. Soldiers scrambled, alarms blared, and the mist he’d created earlier was thinning. If Ludger didn’t end this soon, someone important would arrive. Someone who would see too much.

  Verk didn’t give him the luxury of thinking. The councilor surged forward again, thrusters igniting, runes burning bright across the armor. The ground cracked under the force of his acceleration.

  Ludger felt the mana spike in the armor a half-second before the attack. He didn’t dodge. He matched it.

  He stepped in, directly into the attack, and mirrored Verk’s punch with his own. A suicidal choice. One nobody sane would attempt. Their fists collided at full speed.

  KRAK-BOOM—!!

  A rune explosion detonated between them, a flash of violent pressure erupting outward. It tore a crater into the stone where they met. The shockwave sent shards flying like razor shrapnel. Ludger wasn’t the winner of the clash. He was launched like a ragdoll.

  The impact hurled him across the courtyard, his body slamming into the manor wall hard enough to make the entire structure tremble. The cracked mask split further. His lungs seized as he dropped to one knee, trying not to vomit blood.

  Pain lanced from his knuckles up to his shoulder in a hot, burning line. He couldn’t feel his fingers. His ribs screamed every time he inhaled.

  But across the courtyard, Verk wasn’t unscathed.The armor’s right arm, where their fists had collided, flickered with unstable light. Runes sputtered. The self-repair circuitry sparked violently, sending thin tendrils of electricity snapping across the plating. The arm didn’t fully recover.

  A patch of the metal hung loose, trembling as internal mana lines misfired. Verk clicked his tongue behind the mask, irritation slipping through the otherwise perfect composure.

  “So this part fails now? Tsk. How troublesome.”

  For the first time, his stance wasn’t perfectly symmetrical. His right arm lowered, micro-corrections jittering instead of flowing. A tiny moment of imperfection.

  Ludger wiped the blood from his mouth. His vision swam. His mana was dangerously low. But the weakness was real. Visible. Exploitable.

  Now it’s your turn to bleed.

  Verk hovered above the courtyard, the damaged arm twitching with lagging responses, but his posture remained steady, controlled, deliberate, and assessing. His visor tracked Ludger’s movements with clinical precision, noting the way the boy’s shoulders sagged under exhaustion, the tremor in his stance, and the faint hitch in his breath every time his ribs shifted. Any ordinary infiltrator would’ve collapsed by now. Even seasoned officers would’ve been unconscious on the ground after taking half the punishment Ludger had endured. Yet Ludger refused to fall.

  Behind the cracked mask, his eyes still held that same cold, stubborn sharpness. Not defiance for show, not bravado, something far more dangerous. Willpower forged under pressure. Experience earned in places no normal person should have survived. Verk found himself grudgingly acknowledging it. The boy’s condition was collapsing, but his presence wasn’t. He wasn’t merely continuing the fight, he was reading it, waiting for a path to kill. That was what made Verk pause.

  Someone with this level of tenacity rarely operated alone. The initial incursion through the manor’s outer layers had been too synchronized, too perfectly timed, to be the work of a single attacker. Verk hadn’t detected any allies, but he knew better than to trust appearances. The fringe of the fortress still burned with confusion; soldiers scrambled in the mist Maurien and Kaela had stirred. It all pointed to one conclusion he hated admitting.

  My opponent’s not isolated. And I’ve already revealed too much.

  He clicked his tongue, irritation slipping through the usually flat composure.

  “This will not end cleanly after all,” he muttered, more to himself than to the boy below.

  Then the air shifted. The armor’s thrusters ignited with a rising roar. A ring of dust spiraled outward as Verk was lifted clean from the ground, the runic engines along his boots and back glowing brighter with every passing second. Threads of mana peeled off him in shimmering arcs, feeding into the engines until their mechanical hum turned into a deep, throbbing vibration that echoed through the courtyard.

  Ludger steadied himself, though the motion forced another trickle of blood from under the mask. His arms felt heavy, his mana dangerously thin. The cloak had been shredded so badly it could barely hide the outline of his clothes. Even the remaining sections of the mask looked ready to split with the next hit. He knew he was seconds away from being exposed.

  Below Verk, the air distorted. Mana spiraled into tight compressions around his palms, creating swirling, high-density spheres of energy. The spinning currents were so focused they tore shallow grooves into the courtyard stone.

  Verk raised both arms, aiming directly at Ludger. His voice, when it came, held the faintest trace of genuine regret beneath the usual calculated calm.

  “This has been… unexpectedly entertaining,” he admitted. “Your endurance has surpassed my projections. But I have revealed too many systems today, burned far more protocols than planned, and allowed this battle to extend longer than acceptable.”

  The mana spheres intensified, turning the air around them into shimmering, unstable heat.

  “I do not have any more time to waste.”

  The engines whined louder, pushing beyond what they were designed for. Even the armor plates rattled from internal strain, a near-violent vibration coursing through Verk’s entire frame. Above his damaged arm, small arcs of electricity snapped and danced, signs of the malfunction spreading further.

  “If it has come to this,” he continued, “then the solution is simple.”

  He locked onto Ludger, no more analysis, no more curiosity, no more restraint.

  “It’s time to erase all evidence that could link me to trouble.”

  His palms flared brilliantly.

  “All evidence,” he repeated, tone final, “including you.”

  The thrusters screamed as the mana spheres reached critical concentration. The air buckled. The courtyard brightened with lethal light. And Verk unleashed the attack.