Iron continued to fight in close combat, dodging the guards' lunges, even though his hands were still shaking heavily and uncontrollably.
Using the scanner, he processed the data, trying to break down the guards' structure into elementary components and find at least one safe way to destroy them.
At some point, the guards threw their spears at him simultaneously. Iron dodged and tried to intercept one of them right in mid-air—he instantly changed the density and mass of the weapon itself, intending to make it completely material and prevent it from disappearing. However, the misty shaft slipped through his clenched palm, turning back into formless smoke.
Realizing this was useless, Iron instantly pumped out all the air around the three guards, creating a vacuum zone within a five-meter radius. Without atmospheric air, the current couldn't transmit in the usual way, and the pressure instantly dropped to zero—if they were living beings, their lungs would have simply bloated and burst. But the purple mist of the guards didn't even waver.
Then Iron instantly changed tactics and launched a directed wave of high infrasonic frequency. The effect should have torn apart the molecular structure of their armor. Alas, the misty purple field simply had no metallic or crystalline lattice, and the vibration passed right through, without causing them the slightest damage.
Avoiding another crushing shield strike, Iron pushed off the ground powerfully with his legs, flying backward.
To hell with this, he said in his mind.
Not losing a second, the engineer dashed in the opposite direction, reaching top speed. A second later, the low hills were left behind, and he raced over the red wasteland, looking out for any other manifestations of energy on the scanner.
The view from high above was still riddled with heavy interference and obscured by clouds. Without slowing down, Iron, scanning the ground in front of him, tried to analyze the structure of the storm clouds, hoping to find the right frequency and neutralize the electrical properties that had blocked his view.
And why do I have to do this instead of you, Lumon? Iron grumbled to himself.
And at that moment, three bright yellow discharges erupted behind Iron's back and rushed after him at breakneck speed. Noticing this, Iron sharply shot upward. However, the discharges rushed right after him.
Without a second thought, Iron immediately changed the motion vector of all three discharges, redirecting them straight into the ground. Below, a deafening electrical explosion rang out, and right out of the flashes of yellow light, three guards materialized again.
Iron looked down and gritted out:
"You again..."
The shaking in his hands began to gradually subside. Iron simply collapsed space and materialized a few kilometers away from them, in an empty and quiet clearing.
Glancing toward the place he had just teleported from, he said calmly:
"To hell with them."
He walked forward across the red earth, shaking his wrists and cracking his fingers on the go.
"Lumon, how long would it take for that first source to naturally turn into a crystal?"
"According to current calculations and the intensity of energy exchange, the crystallization process would take from a few months to a few years," Lumon replied in an even voice.
Iron abruptly froze in place, and his eyes widened:
"What?! And why was I even fighting for it?!"
He shook his head and walked on. The burn on his palm was healing and disappearing right before his eyes, returning the skin to its former look.
On the move, Iron began to think about the nature of the guards:
Why don't they die from physical attacks? Why doesn't their weapon have a permanent form, and how exactly do they recover every time after a massive electrical discharge?
At that moment, the thick storm clouds over his head parted, and his view from above was completely restored.
Iron smirked slightly, assessing the returned view, and began to scan the surroundings:
"I'll walk around for another hour, observe. If I find nothing, I'll leave immediately."
Iron walked in circles, making his way around one hill after another and peering into the cracked terrain. By this point, the tremor had completely left his hands—his fingers regained their former sensitivity and mobility.
Just as he jumped over another small fault in the ground, a blinding lightning bolt struck right at him out of nowhere. Iron immediately jumped to the side. But following the first lightning bolt, a second one shot down from the sky, and right after it came several dozen electrical discharges. Despite the suddenness, Iron easily dodged every discharge.
Another lightning bolt rushed straight for his chest. Iron noticed that the projectile didn't look like the rest and sharply jerked to the side, but at that moment he planted his foot awkwardly and caught it on a protruding piece of ground. Losing his balance, he fell to the ground, but immediately grouped up, did a quick roll, and powerfully pushed off with his hands, flying further away.
In the very next second, a colossal explosion occurred, and electrical energy lashed out in all directions.
In order to not waste energy, Iron put up an electrostatic barrier right in mid-air. He simply gave the area around his body the exact same electrical charge as the attacking discharges.
A second later, the raging energy was suddenly pulled back by a powerful impulse. It compressed into a point, another short explosion erupted, and five guards materialized from it.
Iron winced at this, looking at them.
The guards instantly launched their spears at him in unison. Iron instantly collapsed space and materialized on the opposite side of the fault he had just jumped over.
"Lumon, why the hell did they show up here?!" Iron exclaimed out loud.
However, in that same moment, his gaze, which was continuously scanning the terrain, caught on a yellow glowing dot at the very bottom of the fault.
"A Morphine-type source filled with the Electro element has been detected inside the fault," Lumon instantly replied. "The structure is in the process of forming. About one week remains until crystallization is complete."
Iron had already opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment the storm clouds in the sky completely blocked the "Heavens" view again.
Iron cut himself off, threw his head back, and gritted out in annoyance:
"Damn it, again?"
At that very moment, his eyes instantly turned gray-white—Lumon had activated the skill. And the world around him immediately slowed down. Five spears flying straight at him, just a few centimeters away, practically froze in mid-air.
Iron slowly shifted his gaze to the blade hovering in front of his nose and carefully touched it with his fingertip. A thin cut immediately formed on his skin, from which blood slowly seeped out.
Pulling his finger away, Iron scanned the point of contact and immediately detected microparticles, identical in structure to those very electrical clouds that blocked his view. A barely noticeable smirk flashed across his lips.
He made a wide sweeping motion with his hand, trying to grab and secure all five spears in one swing, but they slipped unhindered through his fingers again.
Not surprising... flashed through his head.
Wasting no time, Iron made a lightning-fast dash toward the five guards. Increasing the mass of his fists and fortifying the density of his own bones, he rained dozens of crushing blows down on the guards. The bodies of the guards began to scatter into smoky matter in all directions under his fists. But having smashed their shells, Iron clearly saw that there was no core inside them.
Maximum power, Iron commanded to himself.
Lumon immediately pushed the skill to maximum level. And Iron saw that directly from the storm clouds, massive, invisible channels of electrical energy stretched downward, directly feeding the scattered mist particles.
Iron froze, analyzing what he saw. He assumed that the energy could circulate in both directions and the guards were sending their signal back up. Deciding to make a countermove, Iron sent an antiresonance impulse right into these streams, directing it strictly upward.
He froze in anticipation... but the result was zero. The stream didn't even flinch.
Iron exhaled. Realizing that a bottom-up impulse didn't work, he collapsed space in that exact second and instantly materialized right by the storm clouds. Before his eyes pulsed a massive channel of electrical energy, going down to the misty remains of the guards.
This time, Iron reached out his hand and launched the antiresonance impulse strictly downwards, right along the stream's path of motion.
The wave instantly clashed with the energy. The channel shattered and collapsed with a crack, and the misty bodies of all five guards on the ground evaporated without a trace in that same second.
The skill deactivated. At that same moment, a wild, tearing pain crashed through Iron. The blood vessels in his head felt like they stretched to the limit, and a fire flared up in his chest. Iron broke into a choked cough, punched himself in the chest to knock out the air stuck in his lungs, and dark blood splattered from his mouth.
"Warning. Critical spike in internal blood pressure," Lumon notified.
Everything became a blur in his head, his vision blurred and clouded over with dark spots. His flight control instantly faltered—Iron began to fall downward in jerks, sometimes losing balance, sometimes trying to hold onto the magic flow. With immense effort, he still managed to land safely on the ground and dropped to his knees, bracing his trembling hands against the cracked soil. He breathed heavily, with a wheeze, doubled over and wiping the blood from his lips with the back of his hand.
"Lumon..." Iron exhaled, "can this crystal be taken safely?"
"Accurate localization and safe extraction require about fifteen minutes of full analysis of its internal structure."
Iron, overcoming the buzzing pain in the back of his head, barely got to his feet:
"But you were just analyzing it!"
"Previously, the analysis was conducted on a fully formed crystal," Lumon explained. "The analysis of the current source only began when you first noticed it at the bottom of the fault."
Clenching his teeth, Iron forced himself to take a step forward. Limping and swaying slightly, he headed back to the fault, stretching his stiff muscles.
A couple of seconds later, Lumon's warning voice suddenly rang out in his head:
"Warning, incoming electrical discharge!"
Iron realized that because of his body's delayed reaction, he simply wouldn't have time to dodge on his own.
"Lumon, take control!" he barked.
Lumon instantly intercepted control and collapsed space, materializing to the side a fraction of a second before a lightning bolt crashed into their previous spot with a deafening roar.
As soon as the threat passed, Lumon immediately returned control to Iron. But the sickening sensation instantly made the engineer vomit. He doubled over, gagging and throwing up right onto the dry earth, trying to cover his mouth with a shaking palm.
Breathing deeply, Iron tried to collect himself. Several more lightning bolts rushed down from the sky, but Lumon gently shifted their vectors to the sides on automatic mode, giving Iron a few seconds to catch his breath.
The engineer wiped his mouth with difficulty, slowly straightened up, and lifted his head, peering forward.
From all sides, out of the electrical discharges, dozens of three-meter purple guards materialized.
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