The Warden surged forward.
Chains snapped tight as it drove itself into the edge of the light, pressure spiking as it tried to force its way through the field Roberto had laid down. The air bent around the impact, stone grinding under the strain.
Roberto didn’t move.
He didn’t brace. He didn’t shift his stance. He just stood there, shoulders loose, weight balanced, like this was no different from waiting for soone to finish talking.
Light thickened around him, subtle but imdiate. The boundary pushed back, not violently, just enough to make the Warden’s advance stall, its montum bleeding away as if it had stepped into deep water.
"...Right," Roberto muttered, almost bored.
The Warden swung anyway.
A heavy strike, chains and reinforced mass coming down with enough force to shatter what was left of the plaza. Roberto lifted one hand.
The blow stopped.
Light wrapped his fingers, dense and clean, and the impact died there. No shockwave. No recoil. Just a halted strike, the Warden’s arm trembling as if it couldn’t understand why it wasn’t moving.
Roberto looked at it for a mont, head tilted slightly.
Then he pushed.
The arm snapped back, chains tearing free as the construct stumbled, scraping across the stone. Roberto stepped forward at the sa ti, unhurried.
"Radiant Slash."
The light moved like a casual flick of the wrist.
It cut clean through tal and chain, not explosively, not dramatically. Pieces simply ca apart and fell, hitting the ground with dull, final sounds. The Warden staggered again, parts of its fra failing to respond as sections of armor slid loose and collapsed.
Roberto sighed softly.
"Did she really have to put so many of these here?" he murmured, more tired than annoyed.
The Warden tried to adjust.
Its posture shifted, chains retracting as it attempted to pull back, to create distance, to rethink whatever passed for tactics. Mana surged unevenly now, its control no longer smooth.
Roberto didn’t give it the chance.
He took another step forward and the light followed, tightening the space, denying retreat without any visible effort. The Warden slowed, movents growing heavier by the second, pieces of its structure shedding with every forced motion.
There was no urgency in Roberto’s expression.
The Warden stopped trying to pull back.
Mana surged through its fra all at once.
Chains snapped outward as it anchored itself to the plaza, carving deep grooves into the stone. Whatever restraint it had left vanished in a single, violent push.
The pressure spiked.
Marcus felt it even where he lay, half-buried and unmoving, the air around him tightening for a brief mont before—
It broke.
The Warden lunged, everything it had behind the strike. Power folded inward, then released, a compressed mass of force ant to overwhelm, to erase whatever stood in front of it.
Roberto was already moving.
He didn’t disappear. He didn’t blur. He simply crossed the distance inside the field of light as if space itself had shortened for him.
"Sanctified Step."
He was there before the attack finished forming.
The Warden’s strike passed through empty air.
Roberto raised his hand, light condensing instantly, dense and focused.
"Corona Breaker."
The discharge punched straight through the Warden’s chest.
The light went in one side and out the other, clean and final, leaving a circular void where reinforced layers and mana constructs had been monts earlier.
The Warden froze.
Chains slackened. The surge collapsed inward on itself.
It tried to move again.
Roberto didn’t let it.
"Judgnt Line."
A straight line of light traced itself through the plaza, splitting stone and structure with quiet certainty. The cut ran through the Warden’s body, dividing what remained of its fra into two uneven halves that slid apart and hit the ground.
Silence followed.
No shockwave. No aftershock.
The air settled.
Around Roberto, the plaza stabilized, cracks sealing where the light passed, debris falling without resistance. The oppressive pressure that had weighed on the area vanished entirely, as if it had never been there.
The Warden lay still.
Small.
Broken.
Roberto stepped forward and stopped just in front of it, eyes lowering to where its core pulsed weakly within the fractured remains.
The Warden didn’t explode.
There was no final surge, no violent release of mana. The fractured remains simply lost cohesion, the light passing through them one last ti before the construct collapsed inward and fell apart. tal, chains, and broken components hit the stone with dull, empty sounds.
And that was it.
The plaza remained as it was, held steady within the bounds of Solar Dominion. No new cracks spread. No structures collapsed. The air stayed clear, calm in a way it hadn’t been since they’d arrived.
Roberto didn’t look at what was left of the Warden for long.
He turned imdiately and crossed the plaza toward Marcus, the light around him softening as he moved. He knelt beside the fallen body, brushing debris aside carefully, his movents precise and controlled.
"Hey," he muttered quietly, more out of habit than expectation.
Roberto placed two fingers lightly against Marcus’s neck, then his chest, confirming the steady rise and fall of his breathing. His mana flickered weakly, unstable but intact.
Good.
Light gathered again around Roberto’s hand, different from before. Dimr. Gentle. He pressed it briefly against Marcus’s shoulder, just enough to steady what was fraying, to ease the strain rather than force recovery.
Marcus’s breathing evened out.
He didn’t wake, but the tension left his body, muscles finally loosening as the worst of the damage settled.
Roberto withdrew his hand and sat back on his heels.
For a mont, he just stayed there, head lowered, the glow around him fading until only a faint trace remained.
"This is getting ssy," he murmured.
He stood and looked past the plaza, toward the distant center of the island cluster, where the light bent faintly in the sky.
Whatever was waiting there hadn’t acted yet.
But it would.
And when it did, this fight would feel small in comparison.
Roberto remained there a mont longer, listening to the quiet, committing it to mory.
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