It surged out of Ludger’s glove in a tidal flow, rolling across the armor like liquid stone. First a patch. Then a plate. Then the entire chest, gauntlets, booster vents, helm seams, the armor disappeared beneath a growing cocoon of granular earth.

He panicked.

Boosters screamed, trying to burn through it, but sand drank the heat, expanding further. Magical alarms crackled. Runes flickered and died. The armor lost sleek edges, turning rough, heavy, suffocating.

“What have you— STOP—!”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t stop. He commanded. Sand obeyed the boy who owned the earth. With a single flex of his mana, the cocoon hardened, then jerked downward. And Ludger dragged Command Albrecht from the sky like a god yanking down a star.

The world blurred in a spiral, sand spinning violently, ripping sound apart. Two bodies fell like twin meteors, one struggling, one unbreakable.

They plummeted. Past burning rooftops. Past screaming citizens. Past the Council balcony where politicians stared in horror. Wind roared. Air ignited. Gravity cheered. Then they hit.

KAAAAAAAA-TTTHHOOOOOM!!!

The crash tore a crater into Coria’s main avenue, stone folding, buildings shuddering as if struck by an earthquake. Entire storefronts cracked. Windows burst. Debris shot like artillery into nearby walls.

Dust swallowed the world. Silhouettes blurred. People staggered, ears ringing, hearts trembling. When the smoke began to clear, they saw one figure rising first. Not the armored commander. Ludger.

Bruised. One arm limp, shoulder dislocated. Breathing heavy, but smiling like the world owed him this moment. Beneath him, Albrecht writhed, encased in a spinning sand shell dug deep into the ground like a half-buried coffin. A prisoner. A trophy. Proof.

Ludger planted one foot on the immobilized commander’s chest, and the street fell silent.

He didn’t kill a hero. He dragged a traitor into the dirt.

Ludger inhaled smoke and dust through clenched teeth.

His right arm dangled numb, shoulder a ruined socket.

His ribs ached like cracked stone.

But as he planted his foot on Albrecht’s chest-casing and felt no resistance, no tightening of muscle or surge of mana, the fight finally felt over.

He reached out with Seismic Sense, letting mana pulse subtly through the earth around the crater. He felt heartbeats, footsteps, the tremor of distant artillery shutters closing.

And beneath him, Albrecht’s pulse. Weak. Fading. Unconscious. No blood. No broken limbs. But the impact had shaken every cell in his body like grain in a mill. Ludger exhaled slowly, chest rising and falling like a storm calming.

“…Finally.”

The crowd edged closer.

Shock, awe, terror, all mixed like spilled ink.

Some civilians stared at Ludger like he was a monster.The commander wasn’t dead. Just beaten. Exposed. Now Ludger just needed to get out before politics sank teeth into him. Before the Council twisted the narrative. Before he became the scapegoat for a burning district.

He glanced toward the shadows where he knew Linne and Dalan would be watching.

If I can slip away… put Albrecht’s armor in their hands… evidence stays alive.

But then… He froze.A pulse of mana. Not Albrecht’s. Not the city’s defenses.

The same signature he felt before against Verk. Verk tech. Core override. His heart plunged into ice. Albrecht’s armor plates began to glow crimson, runes flickering like a heartbeat struggling to resume rhythm. Heat surged. Mana whined. A rising shrill note like a kettle from hell. Self-destruct.

Not from the unconscious man beneath him, someone was forcing it remotely. Ludger’s eyes widened.

“Shit.”

He didn’t hesitate.

He grabbed the entire coffin of sand-covered armor with his good arm, pain tearing through muscle like fire, and hurled the unconscious commander upward with a guttural snarl. The body flew, but not high enough. Not nearly.

The glow intensified, molten color bleeding through seams. Mana swelled like a tidal wave.

The sand shell began cracking, red light bursting through like magma. Ludger swore again, louder, voice raw.

“MOVE, DAMN YOU—”

He dropped into a crouch.

Earth Overdrive, Full Body Release.

Mana flooded every tendon, every bone, every muscle. His cracked shoulder screamed. Veins burned like molten iron. Earth mana roared under his skin. He jumped. The street crater shattered behind him. Stone rippled outward like a shock tide.

Ludger shot upward like a cannon round, chasing the body he’d thrown only seconds ago. The city blurred below, firelines, broken towers, panicked streets. Wind tore at his hair and blood-smeared face.

He reached Albrecht mid-air and kicked him. Not casually. Not controlled. Every ounce of remaining strength — all Overdrive — focused into one brutal strike.

His heel smashed into the sand-coated armor with a crack like thunder. The commander’s body rocketed higher, breaking through smoke and darkness as if thrown by a vengeful god.

Then…

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

The armor detonated in a blazing sphere of red-gold light.

Night turned to dawn for one blinding instant.

Windows across five districts exploded outward.

Shockwave rippled through Coria’s spine, rattling steel and soul alike.

A mushroom of flame rolled above the rooftops. Ash fell like cursed snow. Citizens cried out as the sky burned. And Ludger, body spent, mana dry, bones screaming, began to fall.

Back toward the ruined plaza. Back toward the shocked Council. Back toward a city too stunned to cheer.

A lone silhouette against a dying sunburst of destruction. A boy who should never have been able to do any of this. A boy who just stopped a catastrophe, and became one.

The explosion swallowed the sky. For a heartbeat, Coria turned white-hot, every shadow erased, every windowpane reflecting the detonation like a second sun. And then, piece by piece, the night returned.

From the center of the blast,

metal began to fall.

Not chunks, shrapnel dust. The armor had been vaporized at its core, leaving only glittering fragments raining down like cursed snowflakes. They tinkled against rooftops, bounced harmlessly off cobblestones. Beautiful, if one didn’t know what they came from.

The real devastation came from the shockwave.

Wind roared through the districts, kicking up mountains of dust, scattering smoldering debris, rolling smoke and mist through the avenues like a grey tide. Lanterns flickered violently. The very clouds above dispersed, leaving the sky unnaturally clear, a wide black canvas scarred by the fading fireball.

Coria did not sleep that night.

From engineers in their marble bedrooms to beggars under bridges, every soul was awake, staring at the sky, trembling, whispering prayers or curses. And somewhere in the haze, a body fell.

People saw it, the small silhouette plummeting like a broken feather. Some thought it was the commander. Some thought it was a demon. Many saw the green scarf fluttering and knew.

Ludger hit the rooftops like a dying star.

He crashed through tiles, beams splintering, rolled behind chimney stacks, then slid into the dark arteries of Coria’s alley network. Ash trailed behind him like comet-tail blood.

When the first group reached the alley, mages, soldiers, civilians acting on adrenaline, they expected to find a corpse or a monster. They found nothing.

Only disturbed dust, a cracked wall, and fading footprints that sank into the deeper dark like the earth itself swallowed them.

Someone stammered:

“H-he vanished…”

Another spat blood.

“No one survives that.”

But someone else swore they saw movement on the rooftops. A shadow. A shadow limping across wires. Another insisted he melted into stone. Another claimed he turned into mist. A woman hysterically claimed she saw him smiling as he fell.

Truth died instantly. Rumor took its place. Within an hour, taverns were packed with frantic speculation.

“The Guildmaster fought a flying officer!”

“The commander exploded, he was Verk’s puppet!”

“The shadow is a demon from the south!”

“He saved the children and destroyed half the district!”

“No, he was protecting his own operation, he’s the real villain!”

“Idiots. I heard he killed the commander with one punch!”

Across rooftops, runners carried wild versions of the story:

A shadow fought an army alone. He dodged artillery and surfed explosions. He punched a man into the sky. He fell, but vanished. Maybe he died. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he’s watching.

Coria burned with sleepless voices.

And in every direction, from pubs to manors to factory floors, one name spread like ink spilled in water.

The Shadow Fist. Savior. Terror. Ghost. Weapon. Legend.

No one agreed on the truth. But everyone knew one thing:

The shadow was alive. And he had changed Coria forever.

While Coria roared with rumors, explosions of gossip louder than any artillery,

Ludger lay on a wooden workbench in the underground hideout where Linne and Dalan first fitted the runic infiltration suit. The workshop reeked of oil, arcane fumes, and blood, some his, some not. Tools clinked lightly as Dalan moved around him, hands trembling with a mix of relief and panic.

Linne sat beside Ludger, tightening a brace around his shattered shoulder. Every pull sent a white spike of pain crawling across his vision. He hissed, jaw clenched.

“That hurt?” Linne asked, knowing the answer and still sounding guilty.

Ludger stared at her flatly.

“…A little.”

His right arm was a wreck, bone misaligned, swelling ugly, bruising already the color of deep storm violet. His leg wasn’t better; the final kick had twisted muscle and tendon during Overdrive, leaving a dull, constant throb that refused to fade.

He’d been worse. He’d also been unconscious then, so it didn’t really count for credit.

He let out a slow, bitter breath.

“At least I didn’t explode with him this time…”

Dry humor, thin as paper.

He remembered the flash, red, white, deafening, and how his body barely made it out. Another meter lower and he’d have been charred across a wall like a stain. Progress.

Linne handed him a mana potion vial. Cheap. Tastes like copper and grit.

He downed it anyway.

As mana trickled back into his core, the world stopped spinning. Pain became manageable. Thoughts sharpened like blades.

He needed those thoughts. Because the political battlefield waiting outside made the runic sentinels look friendly. Albrecht was dead, and with him, half the evidence.

Not the labs, those they could still prove. But the direct link to underworld suppliers? The chain of command? The conspiracy tying Verk tech into Velis?

Turned to ash in the sky.

All they had left were:

Several rescued beastman children

Witness accounts of the fight

Fragments of contraband armor dust

Public chaos already beyond control

Ludger flexed the fingers of his good hand, slow, stiff, painful.

“Without Albrecht’s confession, we’re relying on the children’s testimony. And beastfolk aren’t respected in Velis.”

Dalan cursed under his breath, pacing.

“We’ll control what we can. Leak evidence before they bury it. People saw the commander transform. Saw the blast.”

Linne glanced toward the ceiling, eyes sharp.

“But Council can twist it. They’ll try to frame you as a terrorist, paint Albrecht as a martyr. If they are as corrupt as we imagine…”

Ludger knew. He wasn’t naive. He was twelve, not stupid. He tilted his head back, staring at the workshop rafters.

“Rumors are already out of control. If they shape them first, I become the villain. If we do…”

He let the thought hang. He becomes the symbol of resistance. Which was dangerous, for them, and for him. He winced as Linne tightened another strap. His arm spasmed. He barely grunted.

“We still have the children,” he said quietly.

“They were inside those machines. Their scars will speak louder than any Council speech.”

Dalan nodded grimly.

“If they survive the night.”

Silence. Heavy. Real. Ludger closed his eyes, steadying his breath as mana slowly restored torn tissue. His body felt like cracked stone with weeds growing through it.

Progress. He wasn’t unconscious. He wasn’t half-burnt. He was alive, breathing, thinking. Which meant he could still move pieces on the board.

“We’ll need to move fast,” he murmured.

“Before they tighten security. Before the anyone spins a story.”

His gaze sharpened, exhausted but burning.

“Tomorrow, Coria will wake up wanting a hero or a villain.

We’ll decide which one I am.”

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