The impacts came one after another in a blinding sequence, slamming into the armored giant’s broad back and shoulders hard enough to shake the entire garden again. Explosions swallowed the two of them in smoke, flame, sparks, and shattered debris. The armor took the worst of it, the enormous frame jerking under repeated hits as runes across its surface flared in chaotic bursts.
Ludger stayed behind it, low and braced, one arm still locking the warhammer shaft while the other used the giant’s body like a portable fortress.
The irony almost amused him. A second ago this thing had been trying to cave his skull in. Now it was tanking spells for him.
The barrage continued for several seconds more, intense enough to tear apart what remained of the nearby garden structures. Stone statues burst. Trees splintered. Chunks of wall disintegrated under stray impacts. The whole area turned into a storm of magical overkill.
Then it stopped. Smoke rolled thickly through the ruins. Ludger shoved the armored giant forward and stepped back out of the haze, claws still active, eyes already shifting toward the new threats. His expression flattened.
“Great,” he muttered. “More idiots.”
When the smoke thinned enough, Ludger finally saw who had joined the party.
Behind the giant armor stood a full squad of mages in silver and blue armor, their formation spread with practiced spacing across the ruined edge of the garden. Their gear caught the firelight in sharp cold flashes, polished plates layered over reinforced robes, each piece marked with clean arcane lines meant for channeling and protection rather than brute defense.
The Silver Talon Order.
Ludger almost facepalmed.
Of course. Of all the people who could have shown up to complicate things, it had to be them. And there, near the center of the formation, stood Varik.
Even at a distance, Ludger recognized him immediately. The man was studying the wreckage his group had caused with narrowed eyes, gaze moving over the cratered garden, the shattered masonry, the scorched ground, and the still-standing cloaked figure behind the giant suit of armor.
For a brief moment, Varik looked genuinely unsure. Which, honestly, was almost worth the trouble. He clearly hadn’t expected this.
His barrage should have flattened most targets in the area, or at the very least forced them into visible damage, retreat, or panic. Instead, what he saw was a giant unknown armored construct taking the hit and a black-cloaked figure standing behind it with no obvious wounds.
Varik’s gaze shifted from Ludger to the giant armor and back again. He didn’t recognize either. That much was obvious. Ludger squinted slightly behind the darkness covering his face. So Varik didn’t know what this thing was either.
That made the situation more interesting.
For a second, Ludger’s thoughts flicked over the giant armor again. Not a runic golem. Not a normal suit of armor. Not something even Varik’s group seemed familiar with. Some kind of prototype defense? A hidden castle weapon? A personal project from some paranoid lunatic with too many resources and not enough shame?
Possible. He didn’t have time to chase the thought. Varik recovered quickly. That uncertainty vanished from his posture almost at once, replaced by cold decision. He raised one arm and barked an order.
The Silver Talons moved instantly.
This time the formation widened even further. Mana surged from multiple directions at once as the mages began casting a second barrage, and Ludger immediately understood this one would be worse. Much worse. They weren’t just throwing another heavy blast in his general direction.
They were boxing the area in. Spell circles flared to his left. Then behind him. Then high above and farther out to the right. They were layering the attack so he couldn’t simply dodge one direction and escape the rest.
“Cute,” Ludger muttered.
The next instant, spells began to fall from all sides.
Lances of light screamed downward. Rotating discs of compressed wind tore through the air. Fireballs with dense runic cores arced in from above. Spears of ice and bolts of crackling lightning followed half a breath later, timed to crash into the same zone from staggered angles.
A proper saturation attack. Wasteful. Expensive. Very Varik. Ludger moved before the net fully closed.
He bent, grabbed the giant armored figure by its frame, and ripped it fully off the ground. The thing was monstrously heavy, but Vitality Well was still roaring through his body, and the extra weight only made his muscles snarl harder under the strain.
Then he raised it like a shield.
The first wave slammed into the armor’s broad back in a sequence of blinding detonations. Fire and wind hammered it together. Lightning crawled over the runic plates in violent blue-white lines. Ice exploded across the metal, only to be shattered by the next impact a fraction later. The armored giant shook in Ludger’s grip with every strike, runes across its body flaring wildly as it absorbed punishment that would have turned most people into ash and fragments.
Ludger crouched behind it, letting the barrage break itself against the massive frame.
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Stone burst under his boots. Heat rolled over his shoulders. The sound alone was enough to make the whole garden feel like it was being shelled by a small army.
And then, just as the next layer of spells descended, Ludger shifted his grip. He planted one foot. Twisted his hips. And threw the giant armor straight at the Silver Talons.
The three-meter runic monstrosity tore through the smoke like a launched siege engine.
For one beautiful second, the mage formation simply froze.
Because no matter how disciplined a squad was, seeing an entire giant armored construct flying directly at you at absurd speed was not part of most standard training exercises.
Varik’s eyes widened. A few mages tried to redirect their spells.
Too late.
The giant armor smashed into the front of their formation like a falling tower. The impact was catastrophic. Silver-and-blue figures were hurled sideways as the ground exploded beneath them. Two mages were sent tumbling through broken garden walls. Another almost vanished under the armored bulk as it hit and bounced, tearing through stone, dirt, and magical formations alike. Half-completed spell circles collapsed in messy flashes as their casters lost control.
The barrage broke instantly. Ludger was already moving behind it. He launched himself through the smoke and debris with both mana claws extended, eyes locked on the surviving Silver Talons.
If Varik wanted to keep throwing long-range spells at him, then Ludger would just have to fix the range problem personally.
Ludger couldn’t go easy on them. Not without looking suspicious.
That was the irritating part. If he held back too much against the Silver Talons, anyone with half a brain would start asking why this mysterious attacker was smashing Armandis guards into paste but treating one specific imperial-aligned guild restraint. That kind of inconsistency got noticed. And once people started noticing patterns, they started surviving long enough to attach names to them.
So yes, he had to hurt them too. Not necessarily kill all of them.
But enough damage had to happen that nobody watching could think there was any hidden favoritism in play.
Annoying. Very annoying.
Fortunately for him, the decision was taken out of his hands almost immediately. He took one step toward the shattered Silver Talon formation. Then the night behind him exploded.
The blast was enormous.
Not the sharp concentrated detonation of a mage barrage or the heavy impact of the giant armor’s warhammer. This was raw destruction, wide and violent, a section of the castle wall simply ceasing to remain a wall. The shockwave punched through the ruined garden hard enough to make debris jump and smoke twist in midair. Broken stone screamed as it sheared loose. Firelight flared brighter.
Ludger stopped instantly. Then turned. Everyone else did too.
Silver Talons. Surviving Armandis guards. Even the men scrambling back to their feet near the impact zone all froze for half a breath and looked toward the new breach.
Another part of the castle wall had fallen. A huge section of it.
Dust and smoke boiled outward through the opening, chunks of stone still dropping from the fractured edges. For a moment, the hole looked like nothing more than a fresh wound in the castle’s side.
Then figures began crossing through it. A group of them.
Black armor.
Not dark steel. Not soot-covered plate. Proper black armor, deliberate and uniform enough to belong to an organized force rather than random opportunists. Their silhouettes cut through the smoke with grim purpose, one after another, as they poured through the broken wall and into the castle grounds.
And then, without hesitation, they attacked the castle itself. Not Ludger. Not the people in the garden. The castle.
The first wave rushed inward with a level of coordination that instantly killed any idea that this was some panicked secondary breach or mob of scavengers taking advantage of chaos. They moved like they had come here with a clear target and a clear plan. Some spread wide to secure the breach. Others pushed directly forward. A few launched attacks at the nearest intact defensive positions with brutal efficiency, cutting down or blowing apart anything that stood between them and the interior.
Time seemed to stop. Not literally. But the whole battlefield staggered under the sheer wrongness of it.
Because a moment ago this had been simple, at least in structure. Ludger made noise. The castle responded. Defenders moved. Viola and Luna infiltrated. Elira provided support. Clean enough, even with all the complications.
Now there was another force on the board. An unknown one. And Ludger had no idea who the hell they were. That was bad. Very bad.
His eyes narrowed behind the cloak.
He didn’t recognize the armor style. Didn’t recognize the formation habits. Didn’t recognize the way they entered or the symbols, if they had any visible ones at all through the smoke and distance. Which meant one thing immediately:
He had not planned for them.
And worse, he didn’t want their crimes pinned on him.
If these idiots started massacring people, stealing something, assassinating the wrong target, or turning this whole operation into a larger political disaster, there was a very real chance the capital would just lump it all together under one convenient story.
Unknown attacker breaches castle. Walls destroyed. Defenders slaughtered. Secondary force enters. Chaos spreads. Blame whoever is easiest.
Which, right now, was probably the cloaked monster already standing in the middle of a ruined garden with giant mana claws and a very obvious trail of devastation behind him.
Ludger’s expression flattened.
Another unknown force would only make his own plans harder to achieve. Maybe impossible, depending on what they wanted. If they were here for the same prisoners, then Viola and Luna were in even more danger than before.
If they were here for something else entirely, then the castle’s response would become even more chaotic and unpredictable.
If they were here to kill everyone involved and erase evidence, then tonight had just gotten much uglier.
Behind him, the Silver Talons were recovering from the thrown armor impact, but even they hesitated now, caught between the unknown intruders and the cloaked attacker already in front of them. Varik, to his credit, looked just as thrown off as everyone else for one precious moment.
At least that meant he hadn’t invited them.
Ludger rolled one shoulder slowly, mana claws flexing as he kept his eyes on the black-armored force entering through the broken wall.
His thoughts moved fast. Too many variables. Too little information. And underground, Viola and Luna were still on a timer that had only gotten worse.
He exhaled once through his nose.
“What,” he muttered under his breath, “is wrong with this country?”
No one answered. The black-armored figures kept pouring into the castle through the new breach, and the ruined garden stood on the edge of becoming something far worse than a diversion.