Chapter 161: The Iron Breaker
The stream viewer count was at twenty-two thousand when they stepped through the gate.
Sora switched to Mira’s stream.
The viewer count immediately jumped.
While Sera watched from the Hunter Association building. She looked at the stream for a moment and said, "Of course he started with Mira."
Lily was already writing.
Raze grinned at his phone. "Finally."
Elden quietly left his guild office and found a screen.
Mayor Ko watched from his desk without saying anything.
...
A quiet E-rank dungeon.
Wide stone chambers.
Plenty of room to fight. Stone corridors opening into wider chambers. Ambient light from the walls. Nothing threatening in the immediate vicinity.
Both of them walked several meters apart. Neither drew a weapon yet.
The stream was still running. Mira had propped her phone against a stone formation at the entrance where it could capture the space ahead. The chat was flying by too fast to read.
Mira smiled. "Still time to change your mind."
"No," Kai said.
She laughed. "Didn’t think so."
They walked into the first open chamber. High ceiling. Flat floor. Enough space.
Kai looked at her. "Why do you want Authority."
She looked back at him. "Why are you asking me first."
"Because you asked me why you."
She accepted this. "Because future hunters shouldn’t start where we started," she said. "The first weeks of the gate phase were wrong. People died learning things that could have been taught." She looked at the chamber around them. "I want to fix the entry point. Make it survivable before it becomes dangerous."
He nodded.
"Why do you want it," she said.
"Because I don’t want to lose anyone," he said.
She looked at him for a moment.
Then the fight started.
Kai moved first.
The Fractured Blade slashed across towards Mira but she swiftly blocked it.
The impact echoed through the entire chamber. Her arm did not move or even trembled, making his eyes slightly widened.
Stronger!
Then iron had spread across her arms, the coating moving down from her gauntlets to her forearms and up toward her shoulders in the natural organic pattern of a build that had developed past its original form. The armor looked heavier than it had during the Territory operation. The weight of it should have slowed her.
Before he finished thinking, she was already moving.
The Guardian Mantle flared as she shifted position. She crossed three meters in the time his analysis said she should have crossed one.
He moved back.
She planted her feet.
The Blast Maul came off her shoulder in an arc that ended at the ground twelve meters to his left.
The shockwave from the impact moved outward in a ring. Stone cracked along the floor. A section of chamber wall in the blast radius lost several stones from the surface. Kai felt it through his feet from where he was standing.
The chat exploded.
Mira straightened. She was not breathing hard. She had barely started.
Kai was smiling.
Not because it was comfortable. Because the analysis was interesting. Better footwork than the Abyssal Clock. The defense was higher than her previous build had been, which was already significant. The acceleration was faster than heavy armor should allow. And every time she absorbed an impact the next attack came with something additional in it, a quality to the output that suggested the blocked force was not being lost but stored somewhere.
"That’s troublesome," he said.
Mira grinned. "I know."
He came again. Faster this time. The air-step carried him sideways before the approach committed, the angle changing twice before he reached her, and the Fractured Blade found the gap between her guard and the Blast Maul’s carry position.
She took it.
The armor spread over her shoulder. And a clang sounded echoed as the blade struck the armor before she punched.
Kai quickly pushed off the ground backwards to evade but then he saw her smile.
The Iron Pulse released from the armor’s surface in a circular ring. A shockwave from the point of contact moving outward in every direction. He barely cleared it. The edge of it caught his shoulder and he moved with the force rather than against it, landing ten meters back.
The chat exploded. Sora was already explaining what happened on her stream.
Mira walked forward steadily. "What if you’re wrong," she said.
He was moving again. The air-step to her left, the Fractured Blade angled toward the Blast Maul’s carrying arm, forcing her to address the angle before she could swing.
"About what," he said.
"Authority lets you make decisions for everyone," she said. She tracked his position and rotated, the Guardian Mantle compensating for the weight of the Blast Maul in a way that her previous build could not have managed. "What if one day your decision hurts the people you were trying to protect."
The Blast Maul came across in a horizontal sweep. He went over it, air-step to the space above her guard, the blade coming down toward the one angle the iron coating had not reached yet.
She raised her arm.
The iron spread to cover it in the half-second before contact.
The impact rang through the chamber again. She did not move.
He landed back.
She was waiting for his answer.
He said, "Then I’ll admit I was wrong."
She paused.
Not long. One breath. But genuine.
"That’s not what I expected," she said.
"What did you expect."
"Something about being certain." She lowered the Blast Maul slightly. "Most people who want to make decisions for everyone are very certain they’re right."
"I’m certain about what I want to protect," he said. "I’m not certain every decision will be correct."
The chat talked about the fight and the conversation.
Mira came forward and focus on not trying to hit him. But taking away his options until he could do nothing more than take her hits.
The chamber filled with the sound of impacts and displaced air and stone responding to forces it had not been designed to accommodate.
She said, while running the combination, "If everyone disagrees with you."
He redirected a swing using the Ashen Seal, the telekinetic adjustment sending the Blast Maul’s arc slightly wide. "What about it."
"Would you still make the decision."
He moved through the gap her wide swing had opened. The Fractured Blade found her guard and she absorbed it again, the iron spreading further, the stored force building in the armor.
"Yes," he said.
She pushed him back with the Iron Pulse. "Why."
He landed and looked at her.
"Because someone has to," he said.
The chamber was quiet for a moment.
Mira looked at him.
Then she stepped forward and planted her feet and raised the Blast Maul in both hands and the iron coating moved across her shoulders and chest simultaneously and the full power of the Guardian Mantle activated and the chamber temperature changed from the energy she was running.
Kai’s hand tightened on the Fractured Blade.
He felt the Storm Sovereign Cloak respond to the wind pressure building in the space between them.
She was not holding anything back now.
The stream viewer count crossed forty thousand.
He exhaled once.
Then he smiled.
"Alright," he said.
A pause.
"Let’s stop holding back."
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