Meanwhile, near the Kingdom of Cron.
Lucius Feramir stood straight, resting his left hand on the hilt of his sword. A faint smile played on his lips. He shifted his gaze to the man standing opposite him and spoke quietly:
"Well, well, Raul Werner... You certainly live up to your title."
Raul tightened his grip on the hilt. He took a short step forward:
"Who the hell are you, asshole?"
"I am Order," Lucius replied calmly.
And in that same second, he closed the distance. Raul reacted instantly—metal struck metal with a dry ring. One swing, two, three.
On the fourth lunge, Raul caught the rhythm. Twisting his entire body, he put all his strength into a diagonal cleaving strike. The blade sliced straight into Lucius's side and cut cleanly through his ribcage all the way to the shoulder.
But instead of a spray of blood and the crunch of bone, there was only a quiet hissing sound.
Lucius's silhouette shattered into pieces and instantly turned into a thick gray mist.
"So, what's it like... fighting an illusion?" a mocking voice called out from somewhere above.
Raul jerked his head up. Lucius was sitting on a thick branch of a tall pine tree at the very edge of the clearing, his legs dangling.
But before Lucius could finish speaking, Raul's body standing in the clearing instantly lost its shape. Skin, armor, and sword collapsed downward, turning into a pile of ordinary gray mud.
In that exact fraction of a second, right behind Lucius's back—Raul was already raising his blade over the back of his head.
"And how do you like being in my illusion?" Raul hissed.
Strike. Raul's blade cleanly took Lucius's head off.
However, the severed head and the body tumbling backward flared up right in the air and melted away into mist.
Raul jumped down from the branch and landed softly on the grass. A displeased, twisted grimace appeared on his face.
"Not bad," he heard the familiar voice.
Lucius was standing in the exact same spot in the center of the clearing where he had been at the very beginning. Raising his palm, Lucius waved at Raul, and then, with a soft click, drew his blade once again.
Raul let out an irritated exhale, gripped his sword with both hands, and the two dashed toward each other once more.
At that very second in Dornheim, only Iron—whose body was controlled by Lumon—and a barely alive Darwin were still on their feet. Slightly downslope in the dry mud, Noah lay paralyzed.
From deep within his subconscious, Iron watched the swaying Darwin and whispered frantically:
"Please... Please, Darwin, not you too. Hold on..."
The next second, the earth beneath their feet literally tore open.
Three C14 charges, planted by Olgerd and Valdes, detonated simultaneously. A deafening rumble tore through the bedrock. The earth heaved up in three-meter slabs, concrete foundations of buildings were ripped outward, and the entire sector was instantly engulfed in an impenetrable cloud of gray dust, soot, and pulverized rubble.
Iron went blind for a second, but the grid of Lumon's projection interface instantly ignited before his eyes.
Hundreds of red heat signatures flickered amid the billowing smoke. At the same time, right out of the clouds above the clearing, a colossal stone boulder began to plummet.
The automated turrets were silent: their ammunition and energy cells were completely depleted.
"Damn it... Damn it, why is it like this?!" Iron gritted his teeth.
Darwin, standing nearby on trembling legs, wiped his bloodied chin with the back of his hand. He still held his pistol. Pouring the very last, desperate pulse of unstable energy into the weapon, Darwin raised the barrel and pulled the trigger.
The barrel barked. A brilliant blast of energy struck the center of the falling boulder. A dry crack echoed out—and the massive boulder shattered right in mid-air.
Darwin exhaled heavily and shouted, catching his breath:
"Don't give up ahead of time! Let's fight to the very end!"
Iron shook off his momentary stupor.
"Yeah... That's right!"
He instantly addressed Lumon:
"Tell everyone to take up a defensive position! And I don't give a damn, use all the magic!"
[Acknowledged.]
A transparent vector contour flared up around Iron's body.
A squall of bullets slammed into the invisible barrier. With a metallic screech and showers of sparks, the projectiles altered their trajectory and ricocheted back. Dozens of knights fell with pierced armor. A few bullets still punched through the weakened shield and grazed Iron's body, but the defensive perimeter held.
Two kilometers from the battlefield, behind the armored walls of the carriage, Valdes and Olgerd smiled with satisfaction, peering into the smoke-obscured screen of the crystallograph.
"They are at their limit," Valdes said with a cold smirk.
Both kings synchronously pressed their transmitters to their lips and gave the assault squad commanders their final order:
"Finish this. Crush them completely."
The ranks of infantry surged into motion once again. For the next five minutes, Lumon, controlling Iron's overloaded body, traced circular defensive trajectories with his blade and steel prosthetic. He blocked the approaches to the motionless Noah, who, bound by paralysis, continued to press Elyria to his chest.
When a brief, ten-second pause formed in the enemy's attacks, Iron focused his attention on Darwin from within his consciousness.
With a strangled, heavy groan, he sagged heavily onto his left knee. His pistol slipped from his trembling palm, and he braced his elbows into the scorching dust, barely keeping himself from falling face down.
Iron looked closer and froze in horror.
The bullet hole on his shin was covered in a black, bubbling crust. The flesh around the wound was darkening before his eyes, decaying and rotting away, oozing purulent ichor.
"Darwin..." Iron's voice sounded through Lumon's vocal module, broken by dry static interference. "Where did that wound come from?... When did you get hit?"
Darwin lowered his gaze guiltily, gritting his teeth.
"Sorry... Forgive me, Iron," he wheezed with effort. "During that volley... I got clipped. I didn't want to distract you... I thought I could hold it off."
Lumon instantly reached out and pressed his palm to the deteriorating tissue on Darwin's leg, trying to channel even a microscopic pulse of regeneration. But only a powerless, dry crackle of static electricity passed from the engineer's fingers.
[Error. Tissue restoration impossible.]
The poison continued to rapidly eat away at Darwin's shin, and he was already physically unable to even lean on his left leg.
[Warning,] Lumon's dry voice cut through the roar of battle in Iron's head. [Enemy infantry firearms ammunition is completely exhausted. Only close-quarters combat and magic remain active.]
"This is our chance!.." Iron shouted inside his mind. "Break through them, Lumon!"
Lumon surged forward. The muscles hummed on the verge of tearing, gray smoke poured off his skin, and dark blood oozed in fine droplets through the pores on his face and hands.
Lumon crashed into the infantry formation. Cleaved shields, shattered polearms, showers of sparks—Lumon hacked down enemies one after another, giving them no time to catch their breath.
Through the crystallograph, Valdes watched this with cold disgust.
"Are you going to finish this or not?" the king snapped into the transmitter. "Enough already."
The mages, who had spent the last few minutes preparing a spell behind the shield-bearers, simultaneously raised their staffs and broke the containment hex.
The space in front of the defenders' position instantly compressed, and then ruptured in a solid, blinding concentric wave of magic. The shockwave annihilated everything in its path.
Sheared pines were blown to splinters. Iron and Darwin, who was nearby, were literally jerked into the air and hurled backward thirty meters. They slammed into the ground with a sickening crunch.
Lumon rolled heavily over his shoulder. His clothes had almost completely burned away, and the skin on his chest and arms was smoking, covered in black burns. Darwin lay nearby, choking on his coughs—his body was also severely burned, and the rotting wound on his left leg blackened even more from the impact.
Lumon, gasping for air, pushed himself up on his elbows.
He turned his head and stared at the tower, silently looming over the ruins of Dornheim.
"Damn it..." Iron roared at the top of his voice, his throat tearing. "Why the fuck are you even here, you bitch?! What the fuck for?!"
[Reducing emotional stress levels,] Lumon stated, injecting residual blocking pulses into the nervous system. [Control restored. Threat of approaching infantry.]
Lumon forcibly smothered Iron's panic and fury, returning his mind to a functional state, while simultaneously continuing to lift the engineer's boiling body off the ground, deflecting the first lunges of the approaching knights with his sword.
The surviving knights tightened their circle. Behind their shields, mages were already chanting a new spell with a hollow drone.
Lumon straightened up. The heart in his chest was pounding at an insane speed, and thin streams of blood began to flow from his eyes once again, mixing with the dried soot.
"Lumon," Iron issued his final command. "Burn absolutely everything. Entirely."
[Acknowledged,] the response came. [Removing limiters. Overload.]
Iron's body, controlled by Lumon, flared with blinding light. Lumon executed a powerful leap, instantly rocketing into the air above the closing ring of enemies. Mid-flight, a colossal, arcing wave of energy erupted from Iron's sword and prosthesis. It crashed to the ground with a deafening crack, turning the enemy infantry's vanguard into ash.
With his own eyes, Iron saw it: through the gray smoke of the forest, hundreds of fresh soldiers were still marching toward the ruins.
At the apex of his jump, time seemed to slow. In absolute silence, he looked down at the enemy blades and the frozen battlefield below.
"Lumon..." Iron asked quietly. "How many teleports do we have left?"
[Exactly three spatial shifts available.]
Iron closed his eyes for a second:
"Teleport Noah, Elyria, and Darwin. To the safest place you can find."
[Full execution impossible,] Lumon stated in a cold, dry tone. [Subject 'Darwin' is dead. Biological indicators are at zero. Death caused by anaphylactic shock and toxic tissue damage.]
Iron cast his gaze downward. On the charred earth, his face buried in the mud, Darwin lay motionless.
A bitter, barely noticeable smirk appeared on Iron's lips.
"Dead, then?.." he said with a quiet exhale. "Well... Then, send Noah and Elyria..."
"And I, I suppose... will put an end to all this."
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