Chapter 942

Ludger looked at it for a second.

Then another. He didn’t react much. Just a colder, flatter stare.

Then he said, “So you’re a labyrinth guardian.”

The beast laughed again.

The sound was worse in this form, deeper, warped by the shape of its throat and fangs into something that sounded like a predator choking on delight.

“You’re too smart for your own good, brat.”

The words came out clearly despite the monstrous mouth, which only made the whole thing feel more unnatural.

Then it moved. One moment the beast stood there with moonlight sliding over its scales. The next it charged.

The ground ruptured under the first lunge as its massive body launched forward with speed no creature that size should have possessed. Its claws tore through the earth and broken stone as it came, silver-black limbs eating the distance in huge, violent bounds.

Then one forelimb rose. The claws flashed down, aiming to slice Ludger apart in a single brutal sweep.

Ludger crossed his arms and met the slash head-on.

Mineral Skin surged across his forearms at the same time that mana flooded into the defense, hardening flesh, bone, and earth-aspected reinforcement to their utmost limits. For a heartbeat, it looked solid enough to stop almost anything.

Then the claws bit in.

Burning pain tore through both arms so fast and so deep that it felt like heated blades had carved straight through the layers of protection without caring what they were made of. Mineral Skin held just enough to keep the strike from cleaving through completely, but only just. The dark metallic claws still cut his flesh with terrifying ease, splitting skin and drawing blood in long, vicious lines.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed as his boots skidded backward across the broken ground.

The pain was bad. What bothered him more was what came with it. His mana was being stripped away. Not drained all at once, but disrupted, peeled off the defensive layer faster than it should have been, as if the metal itself carried some property that resisted, cut through, or scattered mana reinforcement the moment it made contact.

As expected. That metal was special.

Ludger jumped back the instant he felt the bite deepen further. Blood flicked through the air as he tore himself out of the path of the claws, landing only long enough to kick off again and widen the distance.

Then he used Wind Step.

His body blurred through the night and reappeared on the roof of a random building beyond the ruined stretch of the castle grounds. Loose tiles cracked under his boots as he landed in a low stance, one hand pressing briefly against the roofline while his cut arms throbbed in hot pulses.

He looked up at once. The guardian was already coming.

Its massive body bounded over the broken streets and smashed-up structures with absurd speed, scale-covered limbs carrying it forward in huge, fluid leaps. It barely seemed slowed by its own size. If anything, the bulk only made the motion more unsettling, like watching a fortress learn how to pounce.

Within a moment, it had already crossed most of the distance. Its size wasn’t a real problem for its speed. That much was obvious now.

If anything, the sheer mass behind that velocity only made it worse. Every landing cracked stone, bent beams, and shattered rooftops, yet the creature kept moving with predatory smoothness, eyes fixed on Ludger the entire time.

Ludger straightened slightly, blood running down both arms while the wind shifted around him. So that was how it was.

Ludger didn’t stay on the roof.

The instant his feet touched the tiles, he pushed off again, body cutting through the night air as Wind Step carried him across the next building. The city blurred beneath him, shattered streets, fleeing figures, collapsing structures, flickering lights—none of it mattered. Only distance did.

He landed once. Twice. Then again, each step barely touching the surface before launching forward, keeping momentum, forcing space between himself and the castle.

Behind him… Drarc followed.

The massive beast tore across rooftops and walls like gravity was optional. Each landing crushed stone, each leap erased distance that should have taken seconds in less than one. The sound of it was constant, heavy impacts, tearing masonry, low growls carried by the wind.

And the voice. It didn’t stop.

“Running already?” Drarc called out, laughter woven into the words. “I thought you wanted to destroy the capital.”

Another leap. Another impact.

“You’re fast, I’ll give you that. But how long do you think you can keep this up?”

Ludger didn’t answer.

He jumped again, cutting across a narrow alley, then rebounding off a wall to gain height, landing on a slanted rooftop that nearly collapsed under the force.

Drarc’s shadow swallowed the space behind him.

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“Or are you just trying to drag me somewhere?” the beast continued, tone amused. “Hoping for a clever trick?”

Ludger’s jaw tightened slightly.

“You talk too much,” he muttered under his breath.

But Drarc didn’t stop. Of course he didn’t. The voice kept coming, taunting, probing, trying to pull something out of him, anger, distraction, hesitation.

Ludger ignored it. He forced his thoughts inward. Focused. The claws. The armor. The way his mana had been stripped when he blocked. The way his blast hadn’t even scratched Drarc earlier.

The answer was already there. Those scales felt familiar. Not in shape. Not in origin. But in behavior.

They gave off the same wrongness he had felt from the weapons taken from the ant king. And the stone remnant guardian. Artifacts that didn’t behave like normal materials.

Didn’t interact with mana the way they were supposed to. That explained everything.

His mana blast hadn’t worked because it wasn’t just durability.

It was resistance.

Or worse… A property that let the material ignore mana altogether, or disperse it in ways he couldn’t properly track.

Alien material. Not something he could analyze in the middle of a fight. Ludger exhaled slowly as he ran . Understanding it didn’t matter. Killing it did.

He pushed forward again, clearing another stretch of buildings, then slowed just enough for his eyes to scan ahead.

There.

Torvares’ manor. Even from a distance, he recognized it. His gaze sharpened.

And then… A window shattered. From the upper floor, something burst outward, tearing through glass and frame before shooting toward him at high speed.

Ludger didn’t slow. He adjusted.

The objects aligned with his trajectory, moving with unnatural precision as they closed the gap… His gear. Forearm guards. Shin guards. Bracers.

Slightly covered in sand, traces of his earlier preparations still clinging to them. He couldn’t control them directly with his mind. Not like a true telekinetic. But he had planned around that.

They reached him mid-motion, and he equipped them in stride, snapping each piece into place with practiced efficiency as he kept moving. The weight settled instantly. Familiar. Balanced. Right.

Behind him, Drarc laughed again.

“So you think that’ll help?” the beast called out, closing the distance once more. “You really believe froststeel will stop my claws?”

Ludger didn’t answer. He didn’t even look back.

Instead… He stopped running.

Then turned. And met Drarc mid-jump. The beast was already descending, claws raised, massive body casting a shadow across the rooftop.

Ludger stepped into it. Not away. Forward. His stance grounded in a single instant, fists tightening as his aura flared again, red energy twisting violently around him.

Then he punched.

The moment Ludger’s punch met Drarc’s descending claws, the night exploded.

A violent blast burst outward from the collision point, a compressed shockwave of force, mana, and raw physical power that tore across the rooftops in every direction. Tiles ripped free and spun into the air like blades. Wooden beams cracked. Decorative stone shattered. Windows all across the nearby streets burst at once in a chain of sharp detonations, glass spraying out into the night like glittering rain.

The sound that followed was worse.

It rolled through the capital like thunder breaking inside the city walls, deep enough to shake doors on their hinges and rip frightened people out of sleep. Lamps flickered to life in house after house. Curtains were thrown aside. Window shutters opened just enough for pale faces to peek through.

And what they saw froze them. A young man was fighting a giant beast in the middle of the capital night. Not in the outskirts. Not beyond the walls. Right there, between rooftops and noble streets, under moonlight and drifting dust, with broken buildings as the backdrop.

The image was wrong enough to feel unreal. Ludger’s fist held for a heartbeat against the claws. Then Drarc forced forward.

The beast’s massive limbs drove down with monstrous pressure, its dark metallic claws grinding against Ludger’s raised guard with a scream of metal and mana. Froststeel forearm guards took the brunt of it this time, reinforced not only by their base material but by the frost enchantment Ludger had layered over them. Thin white-blue lines of hardened cold ran across the metal, locking the structure tighter, making the surface denser and more resistant.

That part held. The guards didn’t bend. Didn’t crack. Didn’t give in.

But Ludger still felt the impact behind them.

Every block slammed force through his bones and deeper into his body. Rage Flow had swollen his strength. Overdrive had pushed his movements and power far beyond normal limits. Even so, it still wasn’t enough to fully match the guardian’s raw might head-on.

Drarc’s claws came down again. Ludger crossed his arms and caught them. The rooftop beneath his feet caved in.

Wood snapped. Tiles burst outward. The building groaned as the whole upper structure sagged under the pressure. Ludger endured, legs trembling under the force as the froststeel screamed against the alien scales and claws.

Another strike. This one from the side.

He twisted and blocked with his shin guards, the impact ringing through the street below like someone had slammed a giant war hammer into a bell tower. Nearby windows shattered from that alone. People screamed from inside the houses as debris rained down from rooftops.

Drarc’s movements never slowed.

A forelimb crashed down and Ludger met it with both bracers, barely diverting the angle enough to keep from being torn open on the spot. The blow still launched him half a step back, his boots carving through the rooftop tiles, ripping chunks free as he skidded.

He answered with punches when he could, short, brutal blows into the joints, shoulder, neck, chest—but every hit felt like slamming into something only half connected to the world’s rules. The beast reeled from some of them, yes, but not enough. Not nearly enough.

Drarc grinned through the exchange, eyes lit with that same predatory amusement. Then the bastard lowered his body. Ludger saw the motion too late. Drarc threw himself forward in a full body slam. There was no elegance to it. No technique. Just overwhelming mass and speed packed into one monstrous impact.

The collision was catastrophic.

Ludger barely got his arms in front of himself before the beast hit him, and then he was gone, hurled backward through the rooftop and beyond it like debris caught in an explosion. He smashed through one building, blowing apart its upper floor in a spray of stone, wood, and dust, then tore into the next structure hard enough to collapse half its front wall. Beams snapped. Roofs folded. Whole sections of masonry gave way as his body carved a path through them.

By the time he finally crashed to the ground farther down the street, several buildings were already coming apart behind him, their upper stories collapsing inward with a chain of cracking thunder.

Dust swallowed everything. Broken walls leaned, then gave out. Tiles, stone, and splintered wood rained into the street. For a few moments, the entire area vanished into a rolling cloud of ruin. Above it, Drarc laughed.

The sound carried over the settling destruction, deeper and fuller now that he no longer needed to hide what he was.

“I didn’t expect this trip to some small empire to be worth much,” the guardian said, amusement thick in every word.

He prowled forward over the wrecked rooftops, metallic claws scraping stone.

“But this…”

His grin widened as he looked into the dust where Ludger had disappeared.

“This is much more fun than I expected. You are a worthy target, brat.”