Chapter : 1859
He was surrounded. He was wounded. His equipnt was damaged. And Lloyd was nowhere to be found.
Ben looked at the circle of green eyes glowing in the darkness. He tightened his grip on his lance until the tal groaned.
"System Check," Ben whispered. "Spirit: Sloth. Protocol: Stasis."
He focused on the wound in his shoulder. He couldn't heal it, but he could stop it. He pushed the grey energy of Sloth into his own veins, freezing the blood flow around the cut. The steaming poison halted, trapped in a pocket of suspended ti within his flesh.
"You think this scares ?" Ben shouted at the silent knights. "I've lost limbs! I've lost wars! A little poison isn't going to stop from tearing this arena down around your ears!"
The duel in the ruined coliseum dragged on, transforming from a quick skirmish into a grueling war of attrition. Minutes felt like hours. The silence of the arena was broken only by the harsh, rhythmic clanging of steel against steel and Ben’s ragged, labored breathing.
Ben was losing ground, but he refused to lose his composure.
He was bleeding from a dozen different wounds, each one held in check by a desperate, localized application of his Stasis spirit. The "Vile Edge" poison was fighting against his control, trying to break through the ti-freeze he had placed on his own veins. It required constant, draining focus to keep himself from dying.
His armor, once the pride of the Ironwood house, was a ruin. The chest plate was dented inward, pressing against his ribs and making it hard to draw a full breath. His left pauldron had been sheared off completely. But the worst damage was to his prosthetics.
His chanical left arm was sparking violently. A lucky strike from a warhamr had crushed the elbow joint, stripping the internal gears. Now, the arm locked up randomly, forcing Ben to yank it free with brute force just to move it. It was no longer a limb; it was a dead weight dragging him down.
"Too fast..." Ben wheezed, parrying a spear thrust that aid for his throat. He stumbled back, his boots slipping on the blood-soaked dust. "They are fast. But they are repetitive."
The Shadow Knights were relentless. They didn't tire. They didn't feel pain. They fought with the cold, mathematical precision of machines. Whenever Ben managed to land a hit, striking a knight in the helt or chest, they simply absorbed the blow and kept coming. They were grinding him down, piece by piece.
Ben blocked another heavy swing, the impact sending a jolt of agony up his spine. He fell to one knee, his lance supporting his weight.
A dark thought began to whisper in the back of his mind.
They are better than you, the voice said. You are just a man in a can. Lloyd is the genius. Lloyd is the one with the Transcended Spirits. You are just the brute. The spare.
He looked at his sparking, broken arm. He rembered the day he lost his original limbs. He rembered the feeling of helplessness. Was this his fate? To be broken again? To die in a forgotten hole in the Abyss, a footnote in Lloyd’s legend?
"Is this it?" Ben whispered to the grey dirt. "Am I just... scrap?"
The leader of the Shadow Knights stepped forward. He raised his massive sword high above his head for a finishing blow. The green light of his eyes seed to mock Ben. The knight paused for a second, savoring the kill.
That pause was a mistake.
In that split second of silence, a mory flashed through Ben’s mind. It wasn't a mory of defeat. It wasn't a mory of Lloyd saving him.
It was a mory of his father, Lord Kyle Park, standing in the forge of the Ironwood estate.
He rembered the heat of the fire. He rembered his father holding a piece of raw, ugly iron with tongs.
"Iron is stubborn, Ben," his father’s voice echoed in his mory. It was a warm, rough voice, like gravel tumbling in a dryer. "It doesn't want to change. You have to beat it. You have to burn it. You have to break it down until it has no choice but to beco sothing stronger."
His father had looked at him then, his eyes serious.
Chapter : 1860
"A lion's son is still a lion, Ben. Even if he loses his claws, he still has his roar. The tal doesn't make you weak. The tal is just the tool. The will that forges it... that is the weapon. You are the Ironwood Sovereign. Act like it."
The mory hit Ben harder than any sword.
He wasn't scrap. He wasn't just a broken man trying to play soldier. He was the Ironwood Knight. He was the reincarnation of Major General B. He had commanded armies on Earth. He had stood toe-to-toe with Lloyd Ferrum when they were enemies.
He wasn't inferior. He was just holding back.
The fear in Ben’s chest evaporated, replaced by a cold, white-hot anger. He was done defending. He was done trying to survive. He was done conserving energy for a return trip he might not make.
"No," Ben growled. The sound started low in his chest, a vibration that shook his broken armor. "I am not done."
He looked up at the executioner’s sword hovering above him.
"You think I'm broken?" Ben shouted, his voice rising to a roar. "I am not broken! I am compressed!"
Ben stopped trying to conserve his energy. He stopped trying to filter the poison. He reached deep into his core, grabbing every last drop of his mana. He didn't channel it into fire; he channeled it into Mass.
He pushed the energy directly into his broken prosthetics.
WHIRRRRRRR!
The sound was deafening. The servos in his arms didn't just activate; they scread. The batteries overloaded. The tal of his chanical limbs began to glow. But it wasn't the red glow of heat; it was the dense, dark grey of absolute weight.
"Void Art: Steel Blood Density."
As the Shadow Knight brought the sword down, Ben didn't block. He punched.
He drove his fist upward. It wasn't fast. It was unstoppable. His fist now weighed five tons.
CRACK!
Ben’s fist collided with the flat of the falling blade. The force of the blow was so imnse that the massive steel sword didn't just break; it shattered into shrapnel. Ben’s fist didn't stop. It continued upward, slamming into the Shadow Knight’s chest plate.
The armor crumpled like foil. The kinetic force launched the knight backward as if he had been hit by a train. The knight flew across the arena and smashed into a stone pillar, collapsing into a heap of twisted black tal.
The other eleven knights froze. They stared at Ben.
Ben stood up slowly. He looked terrifying. His armor was smoking. His prosthetic arms were vibrating with the sheer density of the mana he was pumping into them. The ground cracked under his feet as he grew heavier with every second.
"Eleven left," Ben said. His voice was calm now, terrifyingly calm.
He grabbed his heavy lance. He didn't hold it like a weapon; he held it like a toothpick.
"Ironwood Art: Gravity Well," Ben whispered.
He slamd the butt of the lance into the ground.
BOOM!
He didn't aim at the knights. He aid at the arena itself. He poured his heavy spirit energy into the earth beneath their feet. The ground didn't explode; it sank. A shockwave of pure gravity blasted outward from Ben in a perfect circle.
The Shadow Knights were thrown off balance. The precise formation they had maintained was shattered. They stumbled, their heavy armor suddenly weighing ten tis more than it should.
Ben didn't wait. He launched himself forward.
He moved with the terrifying montum of a falling boulder. He slamd into the nearest knight, driving his dense lance through the enemy’s shield and chest in one motion. He spun, using the dead knight as a counterweight to swing his weapon into the next attacker.
Clang! Crunch! Smash!
It wasn't a duel anymore. It was a demolition. Ben fought with the arrogance of a man who knew he was the heaviest thing in the room. He abandoned defense entirely. When a sword cut his arm, he didn't pull back; he leaned into the cut, trapping the blade in his own dense tal muscle, and then headbutted the enemy with his helt.
"Is that all you have?" Ben roared, swinging his fist and taking the head off another knight. "I have sparred with Lloyd Ferrum! Compared to him, you are nothing but training dummies!"
He was burning his life force to fuel the mass. He could feel his consciousness slipping. The edges of his vision were going black. His heart was hamring a frantic, uneven rhythm. But he refused to fall.
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