Chapter 976

The fist passed by his cheek.

Ludger’s forearm tapped against Verk’s wrist, redirecting the punch farther off-line and making the armored fist cut through empty air instead of bone.

Verk followed with the left. A hook this time, heavy and compact, designed to catch Ludger before he could retreat. Ludger ducked under it.

The glowing knuckles swept over his head, close enough to stir wet strands of hair, but again he didn’t overreact. His movement was tight. Efficient. Almost lazy compared to the force trying to crush him.

Verk’s knee came up. Ludger stepped back. The armored knee missed his ribs by a finger’s width. Verk twisted, turning the missed knee into a spinning kick.

Ludger raised one arm and angled his guard, not stopping the kick directly but letting it slide along the weakened forearm plate and past him. The force still made his arm ache. Still sent pain through the damaged guard and up into his shoulder.

But it didn’t hit clean. That was what mattered. Verk’s armor pulsed again. A palm strike. Ludger saw the mana gather at the wrist before the hand fully turned. He moved first. The palm blasted forward and struck nothing but rain. Verk’s eyes narrowed behind the helmet. He pressed harder.

Punch.

Parried.

Elbow.

Avoided.

Low kick.

Ludger lifted his foot just enough for the armored shin to cut beneath it, then set it down again before Verk could punish the opening.

Another punch came from the right. Ludger slapped it aside. A second from the left. He leaned back. The fist passed an inch from his nose.

Verk’s armor surged in the legs, trying to close the distance with an acceleration burst, but Ludger was already moving before the charge fully triggered. He slid back at the exact moment Verk lunged, letting the armored body overshoot by half a step.

Verk snapped his hand upward, fingers opening.

This one wasn’t a punch. A grab. For the neck.

The mana concentration shifted through the forearm into the fingers instead of the knuckles, a tight reinforcement pattern meant to clamp down and crush. Ludger jumped away the moment Verk’s arm started forward.

The hand closed on empty air. For one second, the rain was louder than both of them. Verk stopped moving. Not because he was tired. Because he was confused. His helmet tilted slightly, glowing eye slits fixed on Ludger as if the armor itself was trying to recalculate what had changed.

Ludger landed several paces away and straightened just enough to show the smirk on his bloodied face. There it was. That tiny moment where confidence started turning into irritation.

“You know,” Ludger said, breathing rough but voice steady, “the armor has a bunch of mana wavelengths.”

Verk didn’t respond. Ludger lifted one damaged hand slightly, fingers flexing as rain dripped from them.

“But I can still read them at close range.”

His smirk sharpened.

“Not perfectly. But enough.”

Verk’s fists tightened. Ludger’s eyes stayed locked on him.

“I can see what you’re about to do the moment you start moving. The mana shifts first. Shoulder, palm, leg, fingers. You’re fast, but the armor announces the intention before the strike lands.”

He tapped two fingers lightly against his own temple.

“And when you concentrate mana into a single spot, it gets even easier. Palm blast. Eye beam. Reinforced punch. Grab.” His smile became meaner. “You might as well be holding up a sign.”

Verk said nothing, but the air around him changed. Ludger noticed that too.

“Moreover,” Ludger continued, tilting his head slightly, “adding my fighting style into your armor database to copy it was too obvious.”

That finally got a reaction. Verk’s shoulders stiffened. Ludger’s smirk widened a fraction.

“There it is.”

Ludger lowered back into his stance, battered body still wobbling at the edges, but his eyes clear and cruelly amused now.

“You copied the patterns,” he said. “The angles. The counters. The way I shift weight before certain strikes. Probably thought that would let you predict me.”

He exhaled through his nose.

“Problem is, I know my own habits better than you do.”

A pause.

Then, colder…

“And I know how to lie with them.”

Verk’s fingers flexed once. Ludger kept watching him, every pulse of mana in the armor now another piece of information instead of a mystery.

“So go ahead,” he said. “Try again.”

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His smile faded, leaving only focus behind.

“I’m starting to understand your toy.”

Verk didn’t answer. Not immediately. The silence itself was enough.

Ludger watched him through the rain, chest rising and falling with rough, measured breaths. His body looked like it was one bad decision away from collapsing, but his eyes remained clear. Too clear.

Verk could tell.

The little bastard really could read his movements with Mana Sense.

Even through the armor’s layered output, even with its multiple mana wavelengths, even with all the interference bleeding from the capital’s barrier behind them, Ludger was still picking out the important signals at close range.

That was not just talent. That was skill. The kind of refined perception only a capable Sage should have been able to show after years of training, study, and quiet discipline. And of course Ludger had it. Because apparently being a stubborn, violent, earth-shaping monster had not been enough. He also had to be clever.

Still, Verk saw the limitation. Ludger could read him, yes. But he couldn’t properly use that offensively. Not right now.

His mana was too low. His body was too damaged. He was surviving on timing, stubbornness, and small bursts of recovery. Each second he remained standing was another second spent trying to gather scraps of mana back into his reserves while pretending he had more options than he actually did.

He was stalling. Stalling while he recovered. Stalling while he searched for a way past the armor’s defenses. That was the real game now. Not whether he understood the armor. Whether understanding it would matter before his body gave out.

Verk laughed. This time, there was less smugness in it. More excitement.

“Good,” he said.

The rain slid down his helmet and over the smooth plates of his suit. The runes along his arms dimmed slightly, then steadied into a different pattern.

“I’m thankful.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. Verk’s smile could be heard in his voice.

“It wouldn’t be fun if it were too easy.”

Then he closed his hands. Ludger expected another shift in stance. Punching form. Kicking form. A rush designed to overwhelm his reading before he could adjust. Instead, Verk did not move forward. He simply waited.

A low hum rose from the armor. Not from the palms this time. From the back of the hands.

Thin lines opened along the gauntlets, and light leaked from them in sharp seams. The glow intensified quickly, twisting outward in concentrated streams until two blades of energy began to emerge from the back of each hand.

They extended slowly at first, then snapped into shape. Twin blades of violent light. Not solid metal. Not ordinary mana weapons either. They looked almost like mana sabers, but Ludger refused to call them mana swords. Swords had structure. These things looked like controlled accidents.

The energy around them moved too violently and too fast, constantly rippling, twisting, and tearing at the air around the edges. Rain that touched the blades didn’t simply evaporate. It vanished in sharp bursts of steam and sparks, as if the water had been shredded apart before heat even finished the job.

The blades were narrow but unstable, glowing with that same white-gold nature as Verk’s earlier attacks, only now shaped into cutting weapons along the backs of his hands.

Ludger’s gaze sharpened.

That changed things. Punches and kicks could be parried. Redirected. Endured, if necessary. These? No. Letting those touch him cleanly would be stupid. Verk raised both arms slightly, the energy sabers humming with savage pressure.

“No more bruises,” he said.

His voice was calm again.

Almost pleased.

“Let’s see how well you read being cut apart.”

Ludger exhaled slowly, lowering his stance despite the screaming protest of every injury he had. His mana was still recovering too slowly. His arms were damaged. His guards were weakened. And now the bastard had blades that probably didn’t care much about normal durability. He clicked his tongue.

“Figures,” Ludger muttered.

Verk tilted his head. Ludger’s eyes stayed fixed on the violent energy blades.

“You finally realized punching me wasn’t working fast enough.”

The sabers flared brighter. Ludger’s fingers flexed once, gathering the scraps of strength he had left. The fight had just become worse. Which, considering the night so far, was almost impressive. Verk moved first. Not with the heavy, committed rush of a brawler. Not with the straightforward violence of punches and kicks. This time, he came like a blade.

The twin mana sabers screamed through the rain as he lunged, white-gold edges carving bright lines through the dark. The energy around them was unstable in the worst possible way, constantly rippling and tearing at the air so that each swing left behind a brief, violent afterimage.

Ludger jumped back instantly.

The first slash passed in front of his chest and cut through the rain itself, turning falling water into steam in a narrow arc. The second came from below, aimed to open his stomach if he misread the angle by even a little.

He twisted his body sideways in mid-step and let the blade pass less than an inch from his skin.

Too close. Way too close. Verk didn’t pause after missing.

He chained the motions together cleanly, both sabers moving in a continuous flow that made it obvious this mode of the armor had been designed from the start, not improvised at the last minute. A left-handed thrust came next, then a short horizontal cut with the right. Ludger ducked the thrust, then hopped backward from the cut, boots skidding across soaked ground as the blade passed where his throat had been a heartbeat earlier.

The pressure coming off those weapons alone was wrong. They were not simple mana constructs.

Ludger could feel it now more clearly than before. The edges did not merely radiate heat. They radiated instability. The sort of energy that did not want to stop at cutting flesh, but wanted to keep chewing through whatever it touched.

Verk pressed harder. He stepped in and slashed downward. Ludger sidestepped. The blade struck the ground beside him and split wet stone open in a burst of light and steam. A second saber stabbed toward his ribs before he could fully reset. Ludger jumped back again, the point missing him by the width of two fingers.

Verk’s armor hummed.

Then he accelerated. Ludger’s eyes narrowed immediately. The bastard was moving even faster somehow. Not just from desperation. Not just because he was swinging lighter weapons now.

The whole armor seemed to have shifted priorities. Less raw power in each step, maybe, but more speed channeled through the legs, hips, and shoulders. The saber mode had changed the way the suit distributed mana, stripping away some of the bulkier striking patterns and sharpening everything into rapid, killing movement.

That made the fight much worse. Verk darted in again, sabers flashing.

Left.

Right.

High thrust.

Low slash.

A crossing cut meant to box Ludger into a bad angle.

Ludger retreated in short bursts, forcing his battered body to keep up while reading the mana concentrations in the armor as fast as he could. Each movement came half a breath in advance now, shoulder mana shifting, wrist reinforcement tightening, leg runes feeding speed into the next step.

It helped.

Barely.

He bent backward under one slash, then pushed off one foot to evade the next. He used tiny motions whenever he could, larger jumps only when absolutely necessary, because each big movement cost more stamina and left his body screaming harder than before.

Verk did not let him breathe.

The sabers came in relentless arcs, too fast to comfortably parry and too dangerous to test directly with his already damaged guards. Ludger had to treat each swing as real death. No room for bravado. No room for trading. Just timing, footwork, and the increasingly uncomfortable truth that if this kept up, one clean touch would change everything.