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Page 4146

Hector couldn't feel Sermung's presence yet, but he knew it was probably just a matter of time. He decided to consult the Living Core.

Thankfully, it didn't seem upset at him. Maybe it hadn't realized yet that he'd tricked it.

Any other hidden functions around here?

No, it told him.

Fuck.

But this space could be imprinted for storage.

What?

Hector didn't get an answer to that, because the quaking spiked in intensity, and then Sermung's aura was all around him. And it was already speaking to him, too.

Neat trick, Sermung was saying. But not enough to escape from me.

Hector didn't even get the chance to respond before he felt himself being pulled somewhere.

Then it was like being ripped through an invisible cloth, and he was suddenly back in the normal world again. In the exact same position as before.

His senses needed a moment to acclimate, but yep. Sermung was right there on the other side of the crystal cage. Staring at him. Tilting his head at him. Judging him.

Hector's mind was racing, though. Storage. Storage? Storage...

Surely, it wouldn't be that easy, right? Because if he could just put stuff in the shield's pocket dimension, then...

He tucked the Core away in his armor and touched the wall of the cage with his newly freed hand.

This unbreakable crystal. It should've been hot after all the temperature manipulation he'd been doing, but between his shot nerve endings and the gauntlet over his hand, there was no way to tell. Hector just concentrated on his aim.

Intention in mind. Combined with soul power pressing into the shield.

A circular chunk of the crystal wall disappeared.

Hector's eyes bulged inside his helmet.

Holy shit, Abbas. You absolute genius.

"Hey," came Sermung's voice from Hector's peripheral view. "That's not allowed. How'd you do that?"

Rather than answering, Hector just launched himself through the hole and out into freedom.

His armored ankle caught on something.

Sermung's gauntleted hand.

Hector reacted instantly, dematerializing the iron there and freeing his foot.

Sermung was still right behind him, though, even as he flew away. "I asked you a question, young man."

"And I respectfully decline to answer," said Hector, bounding away with a sudden iron platform.

He didn't get very far.

The Crystal Titan caught him by the neck this time.

But Hector just resorted to the same trick again. He blinked his own armor out of existence, remaking it the instant he was free again.

"You're a slippery one--I'll give you that."

Next page tomorrow

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Page 4145

'Hector...' Garovel's tone was as soft as he'd ever heard it, ushering back many memories from their time together. 'You've grown so strong so quickly. But along with that, you've been taking on more and more responsibility. I know you get frustrated when you encounter a bad situation that you can't do anything about, but that's just the nature of life, sometimes. Whatever Sermung's real problem is, I don't think it's the kind of thing that we can help him with.'

Agh.

The reaper was probably right, Hector knew.

He wasn't ready to give up, though. 'It's not just me, you know.'

'Hmm?' said Garovel.

'I get frustrated, yeah. But you do, too. I know you do.'

Garovel was quiet.

'Garovel, if you could sense what I sense from this guy, I'm absolutely certain that you would feel the same way I do, right now.'

'Yeah, I probably would. But I've also got a few thousand years on you, Hector. And despite how frustrated I occasionally still get, I've also begrudgingly learned that, sometimes, there's only so much I can do. And I don't want you... to go down a path of... quiet desperation, let's say. Because that kind of thing can drive a man mad.'

That subject again.

Madness.

He kept hearing about it. And he felt like he was going to keep hearing about it, too.

Still, it didn't exactly seem relevant to the current circumstances. Hector considered telling him as much, but he didn't want to worry his best friend any more than he already had. Apparently, this was a growing concern in Garovel's mind, and Hector felt like dismissing it out of hand would not be a smart move.

It made Hector wonder again about Garovel's experiences with past servants. The reaper had told him that he was the twenty-second servant he'd ever taken. How many of them had gone insane, Hector pondered? Truthfully, he wasn't sure he even wanted to know the answer to that.

Hector stewed on those thoughts for a short while, and perhaps so did Garovel, because a lingering silence arrived as they floated there together in the pitch blackness of the pocket dimension.

The question of how and when they should return was starting to bubble up in his mind. It probably wouldn't be that difficult, he felt; but before he could even start fully processing the issue, a trembling distraction arrived.

An earthquake with no earth. A dimension quake?

That couldn't be a good sign.

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Page 4144

'It's just a little pocket dimension,' said Hector. 'No big deal. We've visited these before.'

'Yeah, and I'm getting kinda SICK of it at this point. At least tell me you did it on purpose this time.'

'I did, yeah.'

'Well, good. I guess that can be considered progress.'

And then there was an awkward silence.

'...But now what?' said Garovel.

'...I honestly have no idea. I was in a pretty desperate situation back there, and I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with it.'

'Hector, there IS no dealing with it. You picked a fight with Sermung. Y'know, like an idiot. Even if you somehow have more tricks up your sleeve that even I don't know about, there will come a point where you just have to face the music.'

'Hey, aren't you supposed to be more supportive? Telling me not to give up and shit?'

'I mean, if he was actually trying to kill us, then yeah. But I'm sure he's just gonna give you a well-deserved smacking. I don't see much point in dragging this out, Hector.'

'Agh. You don't get it.'

'No. I really don't. You said something about his soul dying, didn't you? I didn't press you before, but it seems we have some time now. Wanna elaborate on that?'

Hector hesitated. 'Not really.'

'Hector...'

'Do you really need me to explain?'

Now Garovel hesitated. 'You think he's suicidal.'

'I know he is. I can feel it in his aura. He hides it well, but it's there. And it's bad.'

The reaper sighed. 'Okay, but how is beating him up supposed to fix that?'

'It's not. Or at least, not really. I just... I... I don't...' Hector might've sighed, too, if there was any air left in his lungs.

'You don't know what to do,' said Garovel.

Hector made no response. He didn't want to acknowledge that, even if it might've been true. He needed to keep thinking that there was some hidden solution here. Some better way out of this. Not for himself, of course. But for Sermung.

And by extension, for everyone else in the world.

Garovel's next words proved more incisive than expected, however. 'Sermung is not you, Hector. Even if you see similarities, you are two distinct souls. What works for you may not work for him. And vice versa.'

That wasn't what Hector wanted to hear. Not at all.

Maybe it was what he needed to hear, though.

He rubbed his forehead hard, squinting against the endless darkness and trying to think.

Page 4143

Regardless, none of that was presently on Hector's mind, even in background thought processes. Right now, his only concern was waking the damn thing up and getting it to help him out. Apparently, a fight with the Crystal Titan had not been enough to stir it out of its slumber already.

With the Core in the palm of his hand, Hector sensed its attentive presence again. He would have to give it specific instruction, though. He still wanted it to help him discern the secrets of the Amir-22, but he knew that he couldn't directly ask it to do that.

So maybe he could trick it.

He asked it to search the immediate vicinity for a hidden soul- or ardor-based function.

While it was busy thinking, Sermung was floating right outside the crystal cage, staring at him. Most of the iron coating that Hector had applied was already gone, stripped away in huge chunks, and he hadn't bothered trying to reapply it.

Agh. And the expression on the man's face. Watching Hector expectantly. All but asking him, 'Is that it?'

There was something about this guy that just pissed Hector off so much. Like no one else he'd ever met before.

Certainly, there'd been plenty of genuinely evil bastards in the past who angered him much more, but this was such a different feeling, somehow. Such a unique flavor of irritation. Hector could not have explained it even if someone asked him to.

The Core got back to him.

There was a spatial concealment function nearby.

A what now?

It was a kind of short-form teleportation into a pocket dimension. Only usable for temporary concealment, not for travel.

Well, that sounded really cool but also maybe kinda useless in the present situation. Hector wasn't about to be picky, though. With that information in mind, he envisioned a pocket dimension and pressed his soul into the shield. Was that the right way to activate it? He wanted to try on his own before asking for further clarification, just in case the Core caught wise to--

Everything was gone, he abruptly realized. Total darkness in all directions.

Garovel spoke up first. 'Okay, Hector, I've been trying to give you plenty of wiggle room here, but what fuck is this now? Where are we? What have you done?'

'Uh...' With not even any air to breathe, he could already feel his body suffocating. 'Look, don't be mad.'

'Oh, I've BEEN mad.'

Page 4142

Hector didn't really like using the Living Core unless he had to. Not only was it perpetually grumpy and kind of a pain in the ass to deal with, but it tended to go dormant a lot--and Hector was beginning to think that was no quirk of its personality. Perhaps it was so grumpy all the time because it was trying to conserve energy.

Because it needed that sleep.

Or perhaps it was just an asshole.

Tough to say. He was trying to be generous in his interpretations here.

When conducting his practice sessions with the Amir-22 before, he had of course tried to use the Living Core to uncover all of the shield's hidden functionalities--just as he'd done with Rathmore's Gate--but the surly little bastard had refused to help him.

It had called the shield an 'unformed sibling. Unfinished. Unworthy.'

And after discovering some things on his own, Hector got tired of consulting the Core. Because this was no fleeting mood swing on the Core's part. Apparently, it considered itself an "accidental" stroke of genius from Abbas, not a "true" achievement from brilliance.

Which, in brutal fairness, might've held a kernel of truth to it. Obviously, Abbas hadn't intended for things to spiral out of control the way they did on that day. Though, of course, a lot of that had been the Core's own fault, too. It seemed to think that a truly "worthy" creator wouldn't have been tricked by it the way Abbas was.

A real piece of shit, this little fella was.

But Hector had also since come to the conclusion that there was another layer to its refusal, too. To actually refuse a direct order from him, it must have felt very strongly about this particular issue; and given how otherwise logical it was, Hector felt like there was only one explanation for such behavior.

The reason the Core was so disappointed by the Amir-22 was because it actually did want Abbas' newest work to prove that its own creation was not just some fluke, after all--that the Sunsmith truly was worthy of being considered its creator, just like how Hector kept saying he was.

And so, despite how impressive this shield was, it was ultimately still a work-in-progress, as Abbas said. Maybe the "final" version would actually satisfy the Core. But then again, given Abbas' recent behavior, Hector had been getting the feeling that there might not ever be a "final version."

Like maybe the guy would just keep iterating on it forever and ever. Surely not, though, right?

Page 4141

He'd used a similar trick before in the battle with Bloodeye and the Man of Crows. In that case, though, he'd just been ping ponging himself around the sky, but he felt this would be far more disorienting if he started bouncing around inside the cage.

So he took an extra step and braced himself within the cage. Iron spikes shot out all around his armor and crashed against the crystal. They didn't pierce it, of course, but there were enough of them to still stick in place through sheer mass alone. Yeah, he was sealing his own movement, but that didn't matter much when he was already trapped.

The first iron ball hit the mark dead on, and the cage went sailing. Without much help from his senses, he could only assume that the cage hadn't actually broken away from the crystal platform holding it up. Instead, it had probably just knocked the whole platform over and sent the top-heavy cage flying toward the ground like the head of a giant hammer.

Unless it, too, had been suspended on a hovering platform the whole time. He couldn't actually tell, unfortunately. He only knew that he was finally moving. He sent another ball from the opposite direction while dematerializing the first one, but then the cage stopped again.

Motionless.

Caught in more crystal, most likely.

Agh.

After all that. Useless.

Well, of course. It was Sermung.

Hector had to think of something. Sermung's aura was closing in. All slow and casual, but closing in, nonetheless.

He racked his brain. Ideas. Ideas. How could he possibly get out of this? He tried another iron ball, just for the hell of it, but as expected, it didn't even hit the cage this time.

Goddammit.

What else was there?

The cage was still taking turns between molten hot and completely normal. He could see a few cracks around the corners where the drills had been the most active, but even now, that was about it. They were not getting through that, apparently.

Not enough force. Not enough heat. Definitely not enough soul power. Distractions weren't doing much, either. Which made sense, he supposed in a background thought process. The way they were talking before, Sermung almost certainly had multiple thought processes, too. Unless that was just some crazy aura shit.

This wasn't fair at all. Sermung was actually just him but better. Wasn't he? Like in every way, too. Materialization, soul power, aura use, experience. Even his goddamn signature medieval armor. No one else used that shit. Why did this guy have to steal that, too?

Okay, that thought process was getting a little ridiculous. But it did have a point.

In fact, the more he focused on and processed the idea simultaneously, the more he realized that he really only had two things that Sermung didn't.

But both of those things were made by a brilliant integrator with a Fusion Forge.

Need a few more hours

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Next page on the 13th

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Page 4140

Then he manipulated his soul power within the Amir-22 in order to start releasing the heat outward. He felt the temperature within the cage rise immediately, and he knew that he had to address it again. If not, he would probably melt before the crystals did.

So he had to use the shield's absorption recursively. Release heat in a blanketing, then start absorbing again, then release, absorb, release, absorb--indefinitely.

And quickly, too.

The heat buildup seemed to grow exponentially. Faster and faster. Until even a split second without the absorption being active was enough to make Hector feel like his whole body was on fire.

He couldn't even tell if that was Sermung's doing or not. Was the Titan ramping up the heat? Or was this actually a feedback loop? Was the shield actually generating extra heat, somehow? This felt like a little too much, honestly.

The cage became a very strange place. Flashing between boiling hot and perfectly temperate. Hector's vision began to obscure, bending and warping like a desert mirage that was somehow right in front of him. And without airflow, he couldn't rely on the Scarf to aid his spatial awareness for materialization outside the cage.

All he had was his aura sense now. He'd never relied on it so heavily before, especially for the purpose of harnessing materialization. He could feel his work slipping. Getting sloppier. Less accurate. The iron bugs harassing Sermung must've been missing their shots like crazy now. And the flying drills. They were going all over the place.

Very, very bad.

He had to concentrate. Focal points. Multiple thought processes. Organize. Prioritize.

The iron coating around the cage was complete. The only openings left were for corners so that the drills could still strike.

Even more heat, he decided. Not just an iron coating. A molten iron coating. The crystal was being a real bastard. Needed to soften it up. He could sense fractures in the corners, but that wasn't enough. Even just creating a small opening would at least allow a pathway for the Scarf to aid his spatial awareness again.

Multiple drill strikes connected. Heavy and hard. Enough to shake the whole cage. But after that, they were getting stopped too frequently. Isolated and caged, just like him.

Fine.

Fuck all this precision shit.

He summoned a big iron ball with a velocity state. And the target was not Sermung. It was the cage itself.

If he couldn't move because of the cage, then he'd just have to make the cage move, too.

Page 4139

He went with sixteen points of contact. Two drills for each "corner" of the cage. Eight inside and eight outside, each pair drilling toward each other. Massive sparks flew off the cage immediately, which was no doubt the result of the drills being being rapidly worn down.

Then the walls got abruptly closer, squeezing the inner drills into a much tighter space, to the point where he was forced to shrink them down.

Still, it was better than being completely squashed. Sermung was going easy on him, Hector knew.

The outer drills were wrapped in crystal and halted, so Hector just dematerialized them and tried again. Same story, though. Wrapped and stopped. Only the eight inner drills were being allowed to work, which Hector found curious but didn't have time to worry about.

If he wanted the outer drills to work, he'd have to be more creative.

A multi-pronged approach formed quickly in his mind, and he didn't hesitate to put it all into action.

First, make the outer drills move all around. Zip about the battlefield. Avoid capture via non-linear routes. Then come in for a big drilling strike. If they got captured anyway, remake and try again.

Second, distract Sermung. Annoy him again. However possible. The little pinging tubes he'd used earlier. Bring those back. And bugs. Tiny iron bugs. Buzzing around Sermung's head.

Unfortunately, he couldn't materialize them that close to the Titan. The man's field density was way too strong for that. But he could have them launch even tinier iron pellets at the guy.

Specifically, at his eyes.

They wouldn't hurt, but they might obscure vision and take his attention away from the drills. That was enough.

Third, start coating the cage in his iron, too. Not at the contact points with the drills, of course, but everywhere else. Obscure the cage's view from the outside so that maybe he could pull a fast one later.

It was a mess. The aerial field in downtown Andeyal came alive with a frenzy of materialized movement. Drills turned into little iron rocket ships with spiraling tips, zigzagging to and fro before slamming into the crystal cage and either digging into its cracking frame or simply exploding into iron chunks on impact. It was tough to calibrate the amount of force to use, but Hector didn't have the luxury of letting the failures discourage him.

He just kept pressing.

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Page 4138

But hold on. Maybe this wasn't as bad as it seemed.

The shield had new functionality that he'd been waiting for an opportunity to use. Not to mention, it was already reshaping itself to flatten out the giant dent in it.

Abbas had wanted him to test it out, hadn't he? Well, here we go.

In his personal practice with the shield, he'd discovered that heat absorption and release were entirely new features. It sure would've been helpful if Abbas had actually bothered to inform him about that ahead of time, especially since Hector only found out accidentally, but whatever.

It was a matter of manipulating certain soul-based "pressure points" within the shield itself. While Hector knew that he still wasn't old enough to be sensing soul power and ardor like reapers could, his ability to sense aura made up for it, at least in this particular instance.

Hector pressed his own soul power into the center of the shield, where the flattening bend currently was.

Then the rising temperature in the crystal cage began to stall. He didn't yet know how much heat could actually be absorbed, but he supposed there was no better time to find out.

That still wouldn't do anything about the crystals themselves, though. Even if he could prevent melting to death, he and Garovel were still trapped in here.

But perhaps the heat could be useful there, too. To his mind, the only hope of breaking through that crystal was to leverage the geometric advantage of acute pressure applied on a wide surface area.

Or in other words, drills. As powerful as he could make them.

And heat--at least theoretically--had a softening effect on hard surfaces, too. So maybe the combination of those two things could save their asses here.

He didn't see much choice but to try. Unless, maybe, the Amir-22 secretly had a teleporting function that Abbas also forgot to tell him about.

Which, honestly, wasn't outside the realm of possibility.

He set to work on his drills as the shield grew hotter and hotter on his armored arm. He wanted as many points of focused contact with the crystal cage as possible, but he also wanted the drills to be as powerful as possible, so there was a certain balance that needed to be struck.

There was actually considerable space in here to work with, so the drills could be pretty big, too.

Page 4137

This wasn't a fortress cube, though. Those were all gone, and he'd given up trying to bring them back. No, this was the cube that was orbiting around him. The one holding that freaky little creature that he'd picked up underground. The Ceese.

Hector let it finish its orbit around him until it slowly bumped into Sermung, and right before it actually hit, Hector dematerialized the cube, letting the creature free.

It still remained totally limp, though. It flopped against the Titan's armor, and its tail brushed against his face, leaving behind a sticky residue as the creature slid down the full length of the man's body.

Hector caught it in another box before it fell too far, but his attention remained focused on Sermung's squinting expression.

He looked Hector in the eye. "Was that a Ceese?" The revulsion in his face and voice could not have been more obvious.

"...I didn't know it would slime you like that," said Hector, suddenly feeling like he might need to apologize.

"It's a fear response." Sermung quickly annihilated then rematerialized his own armor, which made it pristine again. That didn't stop him from still needing to wipe his face down, though. "They excrete bodily fluids when panicking or playing dead."

Oof. "See, this is why my armor has a face guard," said Hector.

There was only a split second to react before the Titan karate chopped Hector straight downward.

The young Lord Darksteel managed to raise the Amir-22 just enough to take most of the blow, but he still went plummeting to the ground. He did not hit it, however. Instead, he crashed into a crystal platform, which did not budge or soften his landing at all.

Disorienting. No wind in his lungs. But he could deal with it. He had spare thought processes.

The Amir-22. It was visibly bent. Hector could almost see a full imprint of the man's arm in it.

And the crystal platform shifted rapidly beneath him, extending around into a cage. Hector tried to leap out but was too slow and bashed against the ceiling.

Plenty of light was still getting through the crystal, but how the fuck was he supposed to break out of this? This guy's crystals might've well been the strongest material in the entire world.

Then he started feeling the temperature rise, too.

Holy shit, that wasn't even necessary, was it? He really must've succeeded in pissing the guy off.

Next page tomorrow

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Page 4136

His iron was disappearing faster than it was appearing now. And it wasn't even getting blown apart, either. It was just disintegrating. Atomizing, perhaps. Gone in sudden bursts. Hector couldn't even see any materialization from Sermung, either.

Incredibly, the Titan still didn't seem to know where he was just yet, but Hector knew that wouldn't last much longer at this rate. He had to take a different approach, but it seemed like Sermung wasn't even letting him materialize anything near him, anymore.

That was the work of emperor's field density, almost certainly. Long-ranged materialized objects would vanish into nothingness--or simply not take form in the first place. A ranged attack, therefore, would have to be materialized from afar, then launched closer.

But even that was questionable, seeing those invisible bursts annihilating everything. What even was that? Soul power? Aura?

Memories from the Candle tickled the back of his mind. Aura, they said. It was a feat that only the powerful were capable of. A way of putting the world around them to order. Bending it to their will in one oppressive moment.

Huh.

Well, that was pretty fucking terrifying.

No helping it, Hector knew. Even if he still had some tricks up his sleeve, he was gonna have to go in there and get his butt whooped, sooner or later. Running away, hiding, being annoying--these tactics were just prep work.

Would there actually be a payoff, though?

That was a really good question. Hector wished he had an answer for it.

He gripped the Amir-22 in his hand as he dove in, rocketing him straight toward the Titan. This probably wasn't the kind of fight that Abbas had in mind when he'd given this shield to Hector, but the man had asked him to put it to the test and report back.

Sermung didn't even dodge. He just let Hector crash into him, and the impact didn't cause him to budge in the slightest. That gleaming armor just remained perfectly pristine as Sermung turned and looked at him. He didn't say anything, but the curiosity was obvious.

Okay. Not what he'd planned for. Hector could admit that. But it wasn't like he'd expected the human torpedo technique to do much, either. There was more to this dumb plan, still. But since Sermung was being so generous, Hector decided to just let the awkward silence linger a bit longer while he waited for the right moment.

For the last remaining cube in this entire aerial battlefield.

Page 4135

Hector kept it up in a sustained rhythm, going faster and faster.

It was a countdown, of sorts. Meant to impart a sense of escalating urgency. He'd used a similar tactic on those Abolish invaders just before his fight with Banda Toro. The intention back then had been to get the invaders to flee without a fight altogether. That hadn't exactly worked out the way Hector wanted it to, but he wasn't expecting it to work here, either. Obviously, the Crystal Titan was not about to get scared and run away.

But thankfully, the guy was also not a bloodthirsty psychopath. So the consequences of failure weren't quite as bad here.

Or at least, the consequences upon himself weren't.

The consequences for Sermung, though? And for the rest of the world? If Hector couldn't find some way to get through the guy?

When he thought about it like that, the stakes of this fight felt considerably more terrible. It was enough to make a certain question bubble up in his mind, one that he felt compelled to ask Garovel about, despite the incredibly inconvenient timing as he continued navigating his own floating fortress.

'...Did you sense the aura of death around Sermung?' said Hector.

Garovel needed a moment. 'No. That doesn't work on undead.' And the reaper probably wanted to ask why Hector was bringing that up all of a sudden, but perhaps for the sake of not breaking his servant's concentration, he kept that question to himself.

That, and he probably didn't even need Hector to explain. Garovel would almost certainly be able to connect the dots.

What a strange thing this all was. That Hector could feel such anger and desperation toward someone that he'd also come to admire. Was this what they meant when they said to never meet your heroes? That didn't seem quite right.

Hector kept planning, though, even as those emotions and questions bubbled up through his mind. He let them dissipate like foam on the sea while the majority of his concentration remained on the fight.

And so he wasn't surprised when Sermung finally decided to move, even though the force was so immense that the floating fortress nearly disappeared in its entirety.

Like a popped balloon, almost all of it burst apart in an instant.

Hector was still concealed, though, in a far portion that remained. He immediately went to work regrowing the whole network of cubes again, but apparently, the Titan's patience had run out.