Chapter 237: Liquid Metal Armor

Master Korr was enormous.

His shoulders were wide, his body dense with muscle, and his arms were almost as thick as some men’s waists. A thin metallic tunic covered his upper body, leaving the muscles under it clearly visible. His hands were huge, with thick fingers and scarred knuckles that told the story of decades spent working with metal.

Korr’s head was bald, but silver lines of enchanted metal had been embedded under his skin. The patterns stretched from his scalp down toward his neck, glowing with the same amber energy that ran through the foundry’s pipes.

His eyes were amber as well.

They looked like molten iron.

The moment Korr appeared, his Rank 4 aura spread through the courtyard. The remaining guards stumbled under the pressure. Iron weapons rattled against the ground. Pipes shook. Even the furnace flames seemed to flicker in response to his presence.

Korr looked down at Holden.

His eyes moved over the burning sword, the ash-covered yard, and the remains of his garrison.

"I know you," Korr said.

His deep voice carried across the courtyard.

"The young fighter from the Capital. The one who killed the Emperor."

His eyes narrowed.

"Vespera’s disciple."

"That’s right." Holden rested the Eclipse-Sun Sword against his shoulder. "And you’re Master Korr. The man who builds weapons for monsters and chains captured soldiers to his forges."

Korr glanced around the courtyard again.

"You’ve killed around a thousand of my guards."

He didn’t sound angry.

He sounded like a man checking an account book.

"Each one cost me roughly three thousand credits to recruit and equip. You’ve destroyed three million credits worth of personnel in about eight minutes."

Holden’s expression hardened.

"They’re using captured Vanguard soldiers as slaves."

"Everything has a cost, boy. The only question is who pays it."

Korr raised both hands.

"You walked into my foundry. My fortress. Every piece of metal around you belongs to me."

The metal lines on his scalp began to glow brighter.

"You’re standing in my world."

He brought his hands together.

CLANG!

The sound exploded across the courtyard.

A powerful shockwave burst outward, knocking several guards off their feet and cracking the iron floor around Korr’s pillar.

Then the walls moved.

The thirty-foot walls surrounding the courtyard began to ripple. Iron shifted across their surfaces, responding to Korr’s control. The metal groaned as sections of the walls started pulling toward the center.

The north wall moved south.

The south wall moved north.

The eastern and western walls did the same.

Guards scattered in panic as the ground shifted beneath their feet. The open space that had once stretched across fifty yards quickly became smaller.

Forty yards.

Thirty-five.

Thirty.

Crunch. Groan. Shhhhk.

The iron screamed as it bent under Korr’s control. Stone cracked behind the metal as the walls were forced inward.

Holden’s eyes narrowed.

This wasn’t just an attack.

Korr was turning the entire courtyard into a crushing trap.

The walls would keep moving until everything inside was smashed between them.

His enhanced perception immediately began searching for a way out.

Cutting the walls wouldn’t be enough. The magnetic force behind them would simply pull the broken pieces inward, turning every chunk of metal into another weapon.

There had to be a control point.

Holden searched beneath the courtyard.

Then he found it.

A small iron sphere was buried beneath the floor, directly under Korr’s pillar. The sphere was filled with Rank 4 energy and was maintaining the magnetic field.

Destroy it, and the trap would collapse.

The problem was getting to it.

The walls were already twenty-five yards away.

Twenty-three.

Twenty-one.

Korr stood directly above the control point.

Holden couldn’t reach it in time.

"HOLDEN!"

The shout came from above.

Holden looked up.

Emric stood on one of the upper walkways, shield strapped to his arm. Behind him were dozens of exhausted Vanguard soldiers. They looked weak and malnourished, but they were alive.

Emric had found them.

He had reached the prisoners.

"The control point!" Emric shouted. "It’s under Korr’s pillar!"

Holden looked back toward the floor.

Emric continued, his eyes moving rapidly across the courtyard.

"It’s connected to the walls! If we disrupt the energy flowing through it, the magnetic pull will reverse!"

The walls were now less than twenty yards apart.

Emric suddenly turned toward the railing.

His eyes locked onto the iron beneath him.

"I can reach it from here."

He drove his shield into the railing.

CLANG!

The impact sent a powerful vibration through the metal.

Emric had used the strength of his enhanced body and his shield to send the shock through the railing and into the surrounding structure. The vibration traveled down through the supports and into the courtyard floor.

He adjusted his stance.

Then struck again.

CLANG!

The vibration traveled deeper.

Through the balcony.

Into the wall.

Into the iron floor.

And finally toward the control sphere beneath Korr’s pillar.

Holden watched as the energy inside the sphere suddenly flickered.

BZZZZT!

The magnetic field changed.

For one brief moment, the walls stopped moving.

Then they pushed outward.

Korr’s eyes widened.

The walls that had been closing in suddenly launched away from the courtyard with tremendous force.

BOOM!

CRASH!

BOOM!

The iron walls slammed back into the canyon sides, sending cracks through the stone. Furnaces shook violently. Pipes burst, spraying sparks and steam into the air. The entire foundry trembled from the impact.

Korr’s pillar shook beneath him.

The floor buckled.

The control sphere cracked.

Its amber glow disappeared.

The magnetic field was gone.

Korr stumbled and caught himself.

For the first time, his calm expression broke.

He looked toward the balcony.

Emric stood there with his shield raised, glasses still sitting perfectly on his face.

"A child..." Korr muttered.

His eyes widened as he stared at the ruined control system.

"A child broke my field."

Holden glanced up at Emric.

Then he grinned.

"Thanks, nerd."

Emric adjusted his glasses.

"The field wasn’t that complicated."

Holden raised an eyebrow.

"Normal words."

Emric paused.

"I hit it really hard."

A laugh escaped Holden.

"That’s better."

Emric gave a small shrug. "You’re welcome."

Holden looked back toward Korr.

The metal master stood on his damaged pillar, surrounded by broken walls, scattered debris, and the remains of the trap he had been so confident in moments ago.

The courtyard was wrecked.

His garrison was scattered.

The surviving guards were retreating.

And for the first time, Korr looked less like the master of the foundry and more like a man who had just realized his fortress wasn’t nearly as safe as he thought.

Holden raised the Eclipse-Sun Sword.

"Your world just got a lot smaller, Korr."

Korr’s hands came together again.

His massive fingers interlocked, the metal tattoos on his scalp blazing so bright that the amber light turned white. His amber eyes flared, the molten color intensifying until they looked like two pools of liquid iron set in a human face.

The iron floor of the courtyard responded.

The scattered pieces of broken armor, shattered weapons, cracked pipe sections, and demolished machinery that littered the courtyard from Holden’s eight-minute massacre. Hundreds of tons of loose metal, spread across the ground like confetti after the world’s worst party.

The metal moved.

Not all at once. Piece by piece. Each scrap of iron began to vibrate.

bzzzz. bzzzz. bzzzz.

The fragments melted.

Not with heat. Korr wasn’t a fire user. He was a metal manipulator. The iron didn’t liquefy from temperature. It liquefied from will. The Rank 4 energy that pulsed through the metal tattoos on his scalp reached into every piece of metal in the courtyard and commanded it to flow. The molecular bonds loosened. The solid metal became liquid. Silvery, shimmering, alive.

The liquid metal rose.

It rose from the floor in streams. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Thin, silver threads of liquid iron, reaching upward like fingers grasping for the sky. Each stream found another, merged and combined.

The threads became ropes. The ropes became rivers. The rivers converged on a single point.

The liquid metal flowed toward the metal master like water toward a drain. It climbed his pillar. Wrapped around his legs. Climbed his torso. Covered his arms. His shoulders. His neck. His head. The metal tattoos on his scalp blazed through the coating, their amber light visible through the silvery surface like glowing veins beneath liquid mercury.

The coating thickened. Layer after layer. The liquid metal compacted, each layer densifying under Korr’s will, compressing into a solid, living armor that moved with his body like a second skin. Armor that could reform, reshape, and redirect at the speed of thought.

When the process completed, Korr was no longer a man.

He was a giant.

Ten feet tall. His body, already enormous, had been doubled by the liquid metal coating. His shoulders were six feet wide. His arms were as thick as tree trunks, ending in fists the size of boulders. The metal surface rippled with every movement, the liquid armor flowing and settling, shifting and adjusting, maintaining its form through the constant, active will of the Rank 4 mind inside.

His amber eyes blazed through the metal face. Two molten spots in a silver mask. The only part of him that wasn’t covered in iron.

The aura expanded.

The Rank 4, 1-Star energy that had been pressing against the courtyard intensified. The liquid metal amplified his power, the iron acting as a conductor for his cultivation energy, channeling it outward in a suffocating wave that made the air thick and the ground tremble.

The remaining guards fled. The survivors of the courtyard massacre, already broken and scattered, felt the aura spike and ran. They poured out of the courtyard, through the canyon passages, away from the thing their boss had become.

Holden stood in the crater. His Eclipse-Sun Sword blazed in his right hand. The black and crimson fire pushed back against the Rank 4 pressure, the dual-element energy creating a pocket of resistance around his body.

His 10,000x processor cataloged the transformation. The liquid metal armor was a Rank 4 defensive construct. Adaptive. Self-repairing. Capable of reforming at the speed of thought.

The stat gap was real. Korr was Rank 4, 1-Star. Holden was Rank 3, 8-Star. The liquid metal armor amplified Korr’s already-superior Rank 4 body. The defensive rating of the liquid metal was, based on his processor’s analysis, sufficient to resist standard Rank 3 strikes. The Eclipse-Sun Sword, at Rank 4, could cut through it. But Korr would reform the armor the instant it was cut.

This was not a fight that could be won with one sword.

Korr charged.