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He had to be mindful of the city below them, though. It was a pain to annihilate every individual bit of iron that started to fall too low, so he decided to reconceptualize his entire approach to that problem. He imagined all his iron materializing above an "annihilation barrier," a hard boundary where none of it was allowed to exist.

That simplified matters greatly. He didn't even need to dedicate an entire thought process to annihilation duty anymore. Every materialized piece came pre-packaged with that idea embedded into it.

Whoa. This felt like quite the realization, actually. And now he had a spare thought process to work with? Better put it to use, he figured.

The fortress of cubes grew still larger. He remembered that there were a few giant black boxes nearby that had encased some of the skyscrapers of Andayel, so had fortress account for them, expanding around them and weaving between them.

Beyond that, though, it was a bit difficult to remember how far away the other black boxes were. He knew there plenty more around, and he didn't want the fortress to bump into them. He'd have to ease off the expansion, then in order to be safe. There was no way to--

No, wait. On second thought, maybe he could remember where those more distant black boxes were. They felt pretty clear in his mind all of a sudden. Just like Sermung's location, actually.

Was that his iron, too? Informing him again?

He wasn't sure what to think, but now wasn't the time to be worrying about it, either. He decided to just take whatever he could get and be grateful. He was in a fight with the strongest servant in the world, after all.

A part of him was wondering if Sermung even considered it a fight in the first place, though. Hector hadn't stopped focusing on the man's location for an instant, and yet the guy still hadn't moved from within the box that Hector had put him in. What was he doing? Just waiting and seeing?

Agh. He was probably just amused, wasn't he? What a jerk.

There was no doubt in Hector's mind, though, that the dude had plenty of tricks of his sleeve. Maybe he had some secret way to keep track of Hector's movements, even through all this soul-infused iron. Aura wouldn't be able to do, since it would be necessarily injected into all the iron as well, but maybe the guy had some other method.

Next page tomorrow

Thanks for your patience, guys.

Page 4132

Unfortunately, boxing himself in also meant giving up any helpful spatial information from the Scarf, but that was fine. He had a mental map of everything that he was materializing. All the boxes together. Even as they plummeted toward the ground.

And he didn't hesitate to begin moving through them. Dematerializing walls, then rematerializing them again. Up through the fortress, then diagonal, then up again, then to the right, on and on. He kept adding more boxes to the top of the fortress while annihilating the lower boxes before they could reach the ground.

He could've tried to use the hovering technique on all the boxes instead, but this would be more disorienting for his opponent. Plus, it basically was the hovering technique, just scaled up to a huge degree. Instead being held up by the hovering iron, they were inside it. And this way, Hector could add extra boxes as he pleased, too. Horizontally, diagonally, vertically. Every which way.

He wanted it to be a maze. A means of concealment. If he couldn't run away from Sermung, then maybe he could surprise. The only trouble was that all these soul-infused walls also concealed Sermung's position from Hector--or at least, he'd thought that would be a problem.

But it wasn't quite so. It was subtle, but Hector felt like he could actually still sense which box Sermung was in, somehow. It didn't make sense. Was it aura? Didn't feel like it. No, it felt like the iron itself was telling him. His iron.

There wasn't time to dwell on it, though, even with the benefit of a spare thought process. He needed all of those, right now, because he knew that an attack was coming. If his plan was not to win the fight but to just annoy Sermung, then he had to prepare for if the plan actually worked.

The Crystal Titan would not abide an obnoxious maze for long. Without a doubt, the man would be able to tear the whole moving fortress of cubes apart in an instant whenever he wanted.

So Hector used the concealment to help create that distance he'd wanted. Sermung wouldn't be able to destroy all of it if he didn't know how much there was. More cubes. More iron. Turn the fortress in a snaking line. Then add more lines. Tentacles. Sprawling. Diverting attention.

And fill some of them with molten iron, too, while he was at it. Just to be extra irritating.