The discarded armor pieces still spinning around him lit up.

Every plate, every gauntlet, every chunk of engineered metal flared with violent runic light as the built-in destruction protocol activated. A chain of detonations ripped through the sky over Coria.

The first explosion was high and sharp, a bloom of blue-white fire that splintered into multiple smaller blasts. Then the second, deeper and closer to the city, followed by a staccato barrage as more fragments reached their trigger conditions and erupted.

It looked like the sky was being shredded.

Fireballs tore through the air, each one blossoming into a shockwave that rippled outward. Shattered bits of armor. now turned into molten shrapnel, rained down in wide arcs. Buildings beneath the blast zone suffered first: rooftops punched through, walls caved in, windows shattered violently as chunks of burning metal embedded themselves into stone metal, and wood.

Some pieces slammed into towers, blowing off entire balconies. Others crashed into the streets, carving craters into cobblestone and sending shards flying in every direction. A stray gauntlet struck a watch post and detonated, erasing the top half of the structure in a blast of fire and smoke.

People screamed and scattered as the raining debris turned entire blocks into chaos. From the ground, it looked like Coria was under siege from above, bursts of unnatural mana-fire tearing across the skyline, followed by showers of blazing fragments that struck indiscriminately.

All of it, every explosion, every falling ruin, was the death throes of Verk’s masterpiece armor. And somewhere amid that storm of detonating metal and falling stone, a battered, bleeding boy who should have been dead was still plummeting toward the city.

The sky spun in broken circles as Ludger fell, battered and half-conscious, clinging to the last threads of awareness. Fire bloomed above him, one explosion after another ripping through the armor fragments in a cascading chain of destruction. Each blast lit the sky in violent flashes… and between two of them, Ludger caught a final, fleeting glimpse of his target.

Verk.

The man’s silhouette streaked across the horizon, propelled by the only pieces of armor he still wore, the reinforced boots and their thrusters. He was already a shrinking speck against the night clouds, fleeing Coria without hesitation, without dignity, without even confirming the kill.

“Tch…” Ludger clicked his tongue, the sound faint and angry. “Coward…”

The absurdity hit him too late. He’d forgotten one small detail. He was about to die. The next detonation swallowed half the sky, the shockwave folding the air around him. Heat raced downward, spiraling, collapsing inward. A storm of molten fragments and mana fire converged on him like a hammer.

Ludger didn’t have mana left. He didn’t have strength.

He barely had consciousness. But instinct moved before thought.

He dragged the last drop of mana from the bottom of his near-empty reservoir, a desperate, skeletal imitation of a proper technique. Water Overdrive. It wasn’t a sphere. It wasn’t a shield. It wasn’t even stable.

It burst around him in a twisting cocoon of dense vapor and compressed droplets, a half-formed barrier that wrapped his body in a sheath of elemental shock absorption. The explosions hit a heartbeat later.

The world collapsed into pressure, heat, and roaring sound. The sky vanished in a flood of blinding blue-white fire. His half-formed water shield shattered instantly, but not before taking the worst of the force.

It hurt. It still hurt more than anything he’d ever felt. A tidal wave of heat slammed into him, tearing what remained of his clothes and armor away. Something cracked in his side. His ears burst. The air was ripped from his lungs. Then—

Darkness gathered at the edges of his vision, swallowing the fire, the falling stone, the screaming air. His thoughts scattered. His heartbeat faded. His body went limp as the world turned black. And Ludger fell into oblivion.

Ludger drifted back to consciousness slowly, like someone swimming upward through cold, murky water. Sound reached him first, the soft drip of moisture against stone, the faint hum of torches burning, and the distant echo of footsteps that came and went without pattern. The smell followed soon after. Damp earth, cold iron, and a sharp undercurrent of old blood. None of it familiar. None of it comforting.

When he finally managed to open his eyes, the ceiling above him made his stomach twist. Sloped stone, rough and uneven, lit by flickering orange light. It wasn’t his room in Lionfang. It wasn’t an inn. After a few seconds of hazy thinking, he recognized it, the underground prison where Kaela had interrogated prisoners. The place Maurien described as “secure,” and Kaela described as “fun.”

At least he wasn’t inside a cell. He was lying on an improvised bed made from a stone table, someone having set cloth beneath his head and thrown a blanket over him. Practical. Ugly. But clearly arranged by allies. If anyone else had found him after that mess in Coria, he would’ve been chained, executed, or dissected. The fact that he was free and breathing meant Maurien or Kaela had gotten to him first.

He tried to push himself upright, but the attempt died instantly. Pain surged through him like a stab of lightning, forcing him back down against the stone. It wasn’t just one spot, his whole body throbbed. His ribs felt bruised, his muscles screamed with each shallow breath, and parts of his skin still burned with residual heat damage. Even his fingers twitched uselessly when he commanded them to move.

Fine. If he couldn’t move, he’d heal. Ludger drew on his mana, thin, ragged, barely there, and activated Healing Touch. The familiar warmth slid through his body in slow, uneven pulses. The technique wasn’t smooth; his channels were too strained, and his reserves too low. But it worked. Pain dulled to something bearable. Muscles loosened just enough to breathe without tasting blood. His right arm, which felt like someone had hammered the bones, stopped throbbing quite so violently.

He took another breath and cast it again. And again. Each use shaved away a layer of agony, letting his body feel a little less like a corpse thrown onto a slab. Sensation returned to his limbs first, dull and sluggish, but present. His chest stopped clenching every time he inhaled. Even the pounding behind his eyes faded to a manageable ache.

By the time he let his head fall back against the makeshift pillow, he wasn’t healed, but he was functional enough to think clearly. Barely alive, but alive nonetheless. Now he just needed to figure out exactly who found him, how long he’d been unconscious… and whether Kaela was lurking nearby with that unsettling smile she wore whenever she saw someone helpless enough to “test things on.”

It took time, far more than Ludger wanted to admit. Healing Touch wasn’t a miracle; it was a slow grind of forcing damaged flesh to knit and battered organs to calm down. Every cast he pushed into himself worked, but the improvements came in inches, not strides. His mana channels felt like sandpaper. His nerves screamed whenever he tried to shift his weight. The explosion and the mana blast hadn’t just torn into his body, it had soaked him in raw mana, a saturation heavy enough to bruise his circuits from the inside out.

Two full hours crawled by. By the end of it, the worst of the external wounds had closed. The burns faded from angry red to irritated pink. The cuts were sealed. The swelling in his ribs went down enough that he could breathe without tasting blood. But the ache inside, deep in the bones, threaded through his muscles, refused to fade. It pulsed with every heartbeat, a reminder of the mana storm he’d nearly taken head-on.

Gritting his teeth, Ludger finally swung his legs over the side of the stone table. It felt like someone had filled his limbs with molten lead. His feet touched the floor, and for a moment his vision went white at the edges. His knees almost buckled. Every tendon in his body screamed. The improvised blanket slid off him as he steadied himself with a shaking hand against the wall.

Standing hurt. Breathing hurt. Existing hurt. He forced himself upright anyway. His bones still felt wrong, like they had been rattled loose inside his skin and shoved back roughly into place. His muscles spasmed with delayed aftershocks, twitching involuntarily beneath the surface. And his magic circuits… Those were the worst. They felt swollen, sluggish, as if raw mana still clung to them in thick, burning residue.

He’d been overwhelmed, flooded, by an amount of mana no twelve-year-old should ever be within ten meters of. Verk’s blast had been meant to erase everything it touched. Even at the very edge of the explosion, the pressure had nearly torn his circuits apart. If he hadn’t fired off Water Overdrive in that last desperate moment…

He probably wouldn’t be waking up at all. Ludger exhaled slowly, feeling the ache ripple through his core.

“Damn… that bastard.”

His voice was rough, barely more than a whisper. But he stood. And standing was enough proof that he was still alive, and still had unfinished business.

Footsteps echoed from the stone staircase, light, quick taps mixed with slower, heavier ones. Ludger didn’t even need to look up to recognize the pair.

Kaela appeared first, leaning casually on the railing, her usual predatory grin softened just enough to show relief rather than mischief. Maurien followed behind her with a far calmer expression, but the tightness around his eyes gave away his concern. The moment they saw Ludger upright, if barely, both let out long, exhausted sighs.

“Well, look at you,” Kaela said, hands on her hips. “Standing on your own like nothing happened. Good thing, too. I was already rehearsing how to explain this to your mother. Something like…” She cleared her throat dramatically and raised her voice. “‘Elaine, don’t be mad, but your son sort of exploded over a city and we couldn’t find all the pieces.’”

Maurien shot her a flat look. “Kaela.”

“What? It’s true.” She pointed at Ludger. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Ludger let out a weak exhale. “Please don’t tell my mother anything. Ever.”

Kaela smirked. “See? He agrees.”

Maurien stepped closer, giving the boy a once-over that managed to be both professional and silently impressed. “You look terrible,” he said, “but I expected worse.”

“Thanks,” Ludger muttered. “I think.”

Maurien ignored the sarcasm and continued, tone shifting into a colder, more serious cadence. “We need to bring you up to speed. Two and a half days have passed since the battle.”

Ludger blinked. “Two and a—”

“Two and a half,” Maurien repeated. “You were barely breathing when we pulled you from the rubble. We had to move quickly, hide you, and treat the worst of the damage before anyone else got to you. Fortunately, the chaos and the night hid from everyone signs of a boy falling from the sky.”

Kaela tapped a finger against her chin. “You were kind of… unconscious. Bleeding. Burned. Half-naked. Not your best day.”

Maurien shot her another glare, but this time it didn’t hold much force; she wasn’t wrong.

“The situation outside is a mess,” Maurien went on. “Coria is in complete chaos. The explosions… the debris falling from the sky… the crater where the manor used to be… People thought a dungeon core had detonated. Others think an enemy weapon was used.”

Kaela shrugged. “A few think Verk angered a monster. Honestly? That one’s my favorite.”

Maurien continued, voice low. “Verk is missing. Completely gone. His entire manor was wiped out. All records, all staff, all defenses—nothing remains. The city guard can’t piece together what happened. The Council is panicking. And without Verk to answer for anything, everyone’s pointing fingers at each other.”

Ludger absorbed the words in silence, the weight settling over him like an extra burden on already bruised shoulders. Two and a half days. Coria in chaos. Verk vanished. A crater where an entire fortress had stood.

Kaela leaned closer, squinting at him. “So. Feeling up to causing more trouble? Because the whole city’s aflame with rumors, and you’re the reason half of them exist.”

Ludger shut his eyes for a moment, feeling the ache pulse through his bones.

“Give me five minutes,” he murmured.

Kaela snorted. “Look at him. Barely alive and already planning.”

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