His stance shifted lower, a blend of Sword Dancer steps and Pugilist grounding, weight distributed evenly, ready to redirect force instead of clash head-on. Explosions weren’t an option.

He needed to cut clean. Precise. Surgical. Disable without death. And while the first two golems hunted him like wolves, the others in the alcoves began waking one by one, eye-slits glowing, chest-cores pulsing.

If this room activated fully, he’d face a small army of puppets built for close-quarters slaughter. He couldn’t let that happen.

Ludger’s gaze flicked to the ceiling vents, the table straps, the runic coolant tubes feeding into the wall.

He had one thought.

Cut the mana. Break the circuit. Free the people inside.

Ludger’s boots slid across the cold steel tiles as the clawed golem slashed at him again, its movements overly fluid, grotesquely human beneath the metal. He parried the strike with the flat of his armguards, letting the blow redirect instead of stopping it outright. Sparks showered from the impact while his mind raced faster than his body moved.

Damn it… I really should’ve worked more on mana-disruption scripts using my own runic alphabet.

Wordweaver was powerful, frighteningly so,  but it required linguistic structure. Most of the runes he developed were power focused, attack focused, or support-oriented. He’d created shock runes, barrier runes, elemental runes… but disruption runes, runes that could scramble mana circuits, deactivate enchantments, sever control lines?

He had thought about making them, but he’d never prioritized it. Because who could possibly expect human-battery golems?

He ducked another swipe, rolled under a lunging construct, and backstepped as a third awakened golem lumbered from a shadowed recess. It was bigger, rhinoceros-like plating welded onto some poor soul’s body. Each stomp rattled floor panels.

A fourth turned its head toward him, no roar, no scream, just the cold hum of mana in its veins.

Then a fifth lit up.

Ludger cursed silently.

This is escalating fast. Too fast.

He dipped under claw arcs, Mist Shroud flaring to blur his outline. The golems adapted quickly, spreading to flank him, boxing him in with calculated movement. No wasted motion. No frenzy. Whoever engineered them had taught them to hunt, not to chase.

He couldn’t brute force this. He needed a solution, and fast. He sidestepped into a surgical alcove, narrowly dodging a metal fist that cratered a table where he’d been standing a second earlier, scalpels scattered, glass vials smashed, sparks of green liquid fizzling on the floor.

He observed everything while moving, cataloging. Weak points?

Joints concealed with plating. Manacores shielded. Internal circuits protected by flesh, which he couldn’t destroy.

Environment? Pipes. Tubes. Coolant flows. Surgical beds strapped with metal. If he shorted the coolant lines, maybe steam could blind sensors? If he overloaded power conduits, maybe he could force a shutdown command?

Another golem charged. Ludger leapt onto a bed frame, flipped over its back, boots touching metal with feather-light steps. The golem spun unnaturally fast, too fast for an empty husk.

A heartbeat inside it throbbed weakly, like a drum underwater. He felt his jaw tighten.

If he severed mana channels and freed prisoners, the golems would collapse, but he had to disrupt the enchantment patterns without rupturing anything lethal.

His fingers twitched, already shaping runes in the air, thin, English-based, experimental. Something new.

Cancel. Disrupt. Silence circuits. Suppress mana.

The golems cornered him tighter. One swung. He slid under. Two converged. He rolled aside, cloak snapping through air. Three more activated fully, clambering off wall mounts. Room filling. Space shrinking.

Ludger’s pulse slowed, not panic, but clarity. He adjusted his stance, eyes cold behind his mask.

Can I anticipate this in the future?

No. But I can prepare — now.

He raised his hand, breath steady, mind shaping the first full prototype of an English disruption rune. Letters shimmered in front of him like neon ink:

[POWER OVERRIDE – MANAFLOW DISRUPT]

It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t tested. But neither were the golems. And tonight, one of them would break first.

The English rune shimmered, unstable but humming with unfamiliar structure, mana written in a language this place wasn’t built to understand. Ludger flicked his wrist and sent it flying. It spun like a small disk of blue-white light and struck the chest plate of the nearest golem.

For a fraction of a second, everything stopped. The monster’s runes went dark. Its eyes dimmed. Its raised fist froze mid-air like a glitching puppet. Then the entire construct shut down.

Metal limbs drooped. The body sagged forward under its own weight. Ludger could see the faint outline of a human torso inside, barely visible through rune slits, a ribcage rising shallowly with breath. The creature was falling like a collapsed sack.

A flicker of relief pulsed through Ludger’s chest. It worked.

Crude, inefficient, but the concept worked.

He stepped forward, ready to rip the manacore out before reboot…

BZZZT—KRRRSHH.

The runes across the golem’s body flared back to life with violent intensity. Sparks crawled over its plating. Limbs snapped back into position with mechanical brutality. The human heartbeat inside thudded in panic, then drowned again under chemical suppression.

The construct rebooted. Faster than expected. Too fast. Ludger’s eyes widened just slightly before a massive metal fist hammered toward his ribs. He crossed both forearm guards to block…

BOOM.

The impact drove him backward across the floor, boots cutting grooves in metal like plow blades. The shock rattled up his arms and into bone; his joints screamed, but he kept his feet.

“It fixes itself?” Ludger hissed under his breath, irritation threading through the words like acid. “Of course it does.”

These weren’t simple puppets. They had failsafe recovery loops, like Verk’s armor. Kill-switches to restore mobility. Auto-rune rebinding. Whoever engineered them didn’t just copy Verk, they improved him.

More golems moved in. Two lunged. One vaulted over a crate with disturbingly human grace. Another stalked from the shadows with feline precision. Their footsteps were almost soundless now, like they were adapting to his auditory expectations.

No brute opening. No time to help the prisoners inside. He needed to break the reboot function. Disable the failsafe. Attack the code, not the body.

Ludger slid under a sweeping claw, sparks scattering across his armor. Another golem slammed down where he stood a blink before, floor tiles shattered under the impact. He rolled, came up behind an operating table, and mentally rewrote the earlier rune:

[POWER OVERRIDE – SYSTEM DISABLE – LOCK]

If reboot relied on automatic mana reconnection, then prevent reconnection. Burn the bridge between core and runes. Seal the door. But he needed space to test it, and space was shrinking fast. The first golem charged again, rebooted systems humming furiously, claws raised. Two more flanked him like wolves.

Ludger steadied his stance, sparks dancing on his wrist as Wordweaver flared.

Pain in his arms. Mist in his lungs. Blood roaring. But eyes, cold. Focused. Unshaken. He murmured, almost amused beneath the edge of anger:

“Round two, then.”

And launched the new rune toward the charging construct.

The second rune launched, brighter, more complex, a string of English syntax threaded with mana lines instead of Velis curves. It struck the clawed golem square in the chest, runes rippling across plating like blue lightning.

For one moment, glorious silence.

The construct stuttered mid-step, metal limbs jerking like a puppet with tangled strings. Its core flickered, eyes dimming into shadow.

Ludger leaned forward, ready, But then the runes sputtered, mended themselves, and flared to life again, stronger than before. The golem snapped upright with a metallic snarl of gears, recovery even faster this time, like the system had learned from the first disruption.

Ludger cursed under his breath, blocking a swiping claw with both arms, the impact jolted through skin and bone like a sledgehammer. He gritted teeth as shock bit nerves raw.

Not enough. The rune works, but it isn’t complete, I don’t understand mana disruption deeply enough to visualize the full effect. Intent matters. Structure matters. Image matters.

Rune creation wasn’t just writing, it was mental architecture. Each symbol is a concept. Each word is a command. If the internal picture wasn’t precise, the magic filled gaps itself, often poorly. And now gaps meant death.

Because every golem in the warehouse, every single one of dozens, was awake. Eyes flaring yellow. Limbs whirring. Surgical lights flickering like dying stars.

They began to circle, moving with coordinated precision. Not frenzied. Not mindless. Pack behavior. Predatory. Silent. Human heartbeats inside pumping slow, faint, enslaved to the machine.

Fortunately, or tragically, the beastmen batteries couldn’t channel complex spells in their state. Their ranged capacity was limited. Long-distance attacks were weak. Their strength was melee.

If Ludger kept moving, he could survive. But surviving wasn’t enough. He needed a solution. His brain churned like molten gears. Disrupt runes… failsafe… reboot circuit.

Reboot required core integrity. Core integrity required mana link between prisoner and construct. If that mana link was broken…

No battery, no reboot. No battery, no explosion trigger. Kill the link, eject the host.

His eyes snapped open behind the mask. A new structure formed in his mind. Add one word. Make the command absolute. Force separation.

He lifted his hand, blood dripping from where metal grazed knuckles. Wordweaver shivered in the air, runes forming like burning ink strokes.

The previous runefloated, incomplete:

[POWER OVERRIDE – SYSTEM DISABLE – LOCK]

He added one last directive, a blade instead of a seal:

EJECT

The rune brightened, dangerously bright, unstable, power surging like live current. His hope was slim. His preparation was incomplete. His knowledge is imperfect. But hesitation now meant being buried under metal fists and broken bodies. He inhaled once, slow.

Please work.

He flicked his fingertips, sending the glowing command streaking through the darkness toward the nearest golem. Then the world held its breath.

The rune streaked across the dim underfloor room like a blue comet, a sharp line of foreign magic in a place built on twisted runic logic. It slammed into the third golem’s chestplate and sank into the metal like ink into water.

For a split heartbeat, nothing happened. Then everything happened.

Behind him, the first and second golems lunged simultaneously, claws and plated fists slamming down like guillotines. Ludger crossed both forearms and braced, Earth Overdrive flared, brown mana crackling through his armguards, density increasing until stone-like fibers spread beneath the armor.

The impact was brutal. He felt like he’d just been caught between two collapsing boulders, ribs compressing, air forced from lungs, bones groaning dangerously. His boots dug trenches through the steel floor as he skidded backwards, shoulder joints screaming. But he held on. He endured. Because in front of him, the third golem stopped.

Its core flickered violently. Runes blazed too bright, then went dark.

Metal joints burst outward like a pressure valve giving way.

SHKRRRRK—CRACK—BOOM!

The entire golem exploded, not in fire, but in parts. Armor shards tore free, gears and manaplates scattering across the floor. Glowing fragments spun through the air, showering sparks that quickly died out without a mana source to feed them.

And in the center of the wreckage. A body fell. Small. Thin. Barely clothed. Shackles on wrists, mana conduits piercing to like cruel brands. He hit the ground with a dull slap and lay motionless, chest rising faintly. A child. A young beastman boy,  maybe ten, maybe twelve, fur matted, skin scarred. Drugged, unconscious, but alive.

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