Free Web NovelChapter 93: The Iron Legionnaire
Floor 9 was a foundry built for a mechanical god.
Rivers of actual molten metal flowed through open trenches in the floor, casting the massive chamber in oppressive, suffocating shades of crimson and gold. Endless plumes of steam rose toward a ceiling lost in the dark. The walls were lined with massive, dormant assembly belts.
At the center of the foundry, resting upon a throne of shattered gears and black iron, sat the Iron Legionnaire.
It was a twenty-foot-tall monstrosity of pistons, heavy armor plating, and localized industrial fury. It had no hands. Its right arm terminated in a hydraulic hammer the size of a small car. Its left was a massive rotary saw, the teeth gleaming with freshly sharpened malice. In the center of its chest burned an enclosed furnace, pulsing with orange heat, and its optical sensors flickered with an ancient, mechanical hatred.
As it stood, the entire foundry trembled. The Legionnaire didn’t speak with a voice, but with the deafening shriek of metal on metal, the hiss of venting steam, and the grinding of massive gears. Along the walls, the dormant assembly lines began to hum to life.
"Same principle as the Forge Warden," Nathan yelled, drawing Moonlight. "Crack the outer chassis, hit the internal core! It’s just scaled up!"
"Scaled up means the armor is thicker!" Garrett yelled back.
"Then hit it harder!"
The Legionnaire didn’t wait. It surged forward, moving with terrifying speed for its size. Its hammer arm swept the floor in a devastating horizontal arc—a rusted guillotine meant to crush the entire party at once.
Mirko stepped into the path, [Impenetrable Fortress] blazing. CLANG.
The impact rang through the foundry like a struck bell. The green barrier held, but the sheer kinetic force pushed Mirko backward, her steel boots carving deep, smoking grooves into the iron floor.
"Stronger than the Guardian!" she shouted over her shoulder, her voice strained. "But no technique! Just raw, ugly force!"
Nathan’s eyes darted across the boss. The plating on its chest and arms was far too dense for a direct assault. "The armor is layered! Go for the mobility! Target the leg joints!"
Elise commanded her Frost Golem forward. It met the Legionnaire head-on, throwing a heavy crystalline punch. But the Legionnaire simply caught the Golem’s fist and, with a terrifying display of hydraulic strength, hurled the massive ice construct across the room. It crashed into an assembly line, shattering machinery in a cloud of frost.
"Red! The knee!" Garrett roared, rushing the flank.
The Mad-Sheep charged, its wool hardening into armor, and slammed its horns directly into the side of the Legionnaire’s left knee joint. CRUNCH. The iron bent. A fraction of a second later, Garrett brought Volcan down on the exact same spot. The mace’s thermal pulse triggered, superheating the stressed metal and widening the fracture.
Sensing the damage, the Legionnaire abruptly slammed its hammer straight down into the floor.
The impact ruptured the iron plating, sending a surge of molten metal from the trenches spilling across the floor in a river of liquid fire. The party scattered to the edges of the room. The ambient heat instantly spiked to lethal levels, and the furnace in the boss’s chest roared. Exhaust vents along its spine blew open, flooding the room with a blinding, scalding mist.
"It’s trying to cook us alive!" Elise warned, throwing up a partial ice wall just to keep the ambient heat at bay.
Dillon didn’t hesitate. His Cloud Serpent spiraled upward, cutting through the thick steam. He used [Flash Step] to materialize directly above the Legionnaire’s massive shoulders. [Thunder Edge] flared brilliantly, and Dillon drove the lightning-wreathed katana straight down into the creature’s open exhaust vents.
KRAK-BOOOOOM.
The electrical discharge fried the cooling mechanisms from the inside out. The vents sputtered violently, choked on their own steam, and died.
Enraged, the Legionnaire swung its rotary saw blindly over its shoulder to swat Dillon out of the air, but Mirko was already there. She leaped from a raised pipe, her shield absorbing the grinding teeth of the saw.
"You do not get to touch the Samurai!" she roared over the screeching sparks. "He is loud, but he belongs to us!"
"Thanks, I think!" Dillon called out, already flipping to safety.
From the shadows of the Legionnaire’s blind spot, Kuro materialized. She drove [Assassinate] into the exposed cabling of its neck—SHINK-SHINK—forcing the construct to stagger sideways.
"Mirko! The fractured knee! Break it!" Nathan yelled.
Mirko dropped from the air, channeling her tenth and final [Unstoppable Force] strike. The compounded kinetic energy of every blow she had blocked—every hammer strike, every grinding saw, every ounce of pressure—funneled into her blade. She brought it down on the Legionnaire’s compromised knee.
The joint detonated.
With a deafening screech of tearing metal, the massive construct collapsed onto one knee, shaking the entire foundry.
But it wasn’t dead. Raising its rotary arm toward the ceiling, the Legionnaire triggered the walls. The assembly lines roared to full capacity. Iron Crawlers and Steam Sentinels began spilling onto the floor in a desperate, final wave of reinforcements.
"Garrett! Keep those adds off us!" Nathan commanded.
His vision was blurring. His mana pool was dangerously, painfully hollow. F-Rank. The ceiling was pressing down on him, heavy and absolute. But he planted his feet, drew back Moonlight, and began to channel [Focus Shot].
Garrett and Red became a two-man army. The Mad-Sheep tossed Crawlers into the molten trenches, while Volcan became a blur of sweeping, thermal destruction, melting the front lines into slag as fast as they poured off the belts.
Through the chaos, Elise stepped forward. A [Glacial Lance] of absolute zero formed at the tip of her staff. The ambient heat in her immediate vicinity vanished, replaced by a sudden, biting frost. She hurled the lance directly into the Legionnaire’s exposed chest cavity.
Ice met furnace fire with a violent, cracking hiss. The flames in the boss’s chest sputtered, fighting the deep freeze, and its optical sensors dimmed as its core temperature plummeted.
It was exposed.
Nathan held the draw for sixty agonizing seconds.
His arms violently trembled. The Leyline Ring was screaming, bleeding every last drop of stored mana into his veins. The Tyrant’s Eye swirled furiously, the arrow a blinding beacon of silver light in the dark, smoky room.
Now, Master, Mirko’s voice echoed in his mind, carrying absolute trust.
Nathan released.
THWOOOOOOOOOM.
The arrow tore through the foundry, a solid beam of silver light. It punched cleanly through the frozen shell of the furnace, annihilated the Legionnaire’s power core, and exited out its back, embedding itself deep into the iron throne.
The boss froze. Its optical sensors flickered once, twice, and then went totally black. The massive rotary saw dropped, grinding lifelessly against the floor. As the furnace died, the surrounding assembly lines immediately lost power, and the reinforcements collapsed into heaps of scrap metal.
The Iron Legionnaire pitched forward, hitting the floor with a final, echoing crash.
The foundry fell completely silent.
[Ding! Iron Legionnaire Defeated!]
[Ding! Floor 9 Cleared!]
[Ding! Tower of the Iron Horde: Full Clear!]
[Overall Clear Rank: B]
[Clear Time: 2 hours 3 minutes.]
[Level Up! Nathan: Level 43]
[Level Up! Dillon: Level 35]
[Level Up! Mirko: Level 40]
[Reward: Legionnaire’s Furnace Core (Legendary Material).]
Nathan lowered Moonlight, his hands shaking so violently he almost dropped the bow. The ache in his core was profound, a stark reminder of his limits.
"A B-Rank," he said quietly, catching his breath. "The Court’s traps slowed us down. It cost us the A."
Elise walked over, her Frost Golem dissolving into mist beside her. "They are getting incredibly bold. They went from merely observing us in the Sunken Depths to actively rigging a High Class Tower to kill us."
"And they left us a love letter," Dillon added, sheathing his katana. "’Turn back.’ They’re hiding something big."
"Then we make sure the guild knows about it," Nathan said, pulling an extraction crystal from his belt. "We report the sabotage, the message, all of it. Valerie needs to know the Court is escalating."
He crushed the crystal. The familiar light of the Tower enveloped them, pulling them away from the heat and the metal, depositing them back into the cool, evening air of the western badlands.
The sky was painted in bruised shades of violet and deep crimson as the sun dipped below the red rock horizon. The ruined factory complex surrounding the Tower was deathly quiet.
But they were not alone.
Standing a few dozen yards from the portal, leaning casually against a rusted girder, was a man. He wore the same dark grey, tailored robes that Smithy had worn in the Sunken Depths, but his hood was down. He had a sharp, angular face, pale blonde hair cropped close to his scalp, and eyes that danced with a cruel, mocking amusement.
Looming directly behind him, rising from the cracked asphalt like an ancient god of the grove, was a Treant. It was twenty feet of charcoal-black bark and gnarled, serpentine roots that buried themselves deep into the stone. Its hollow eyes burned with a sickly green light.
B-Rank, Kuro’s voice slid into Nathan’s mind, laced with rare unease. But its mana signature... it is incredibly dense. Strong. stronger than a standard B-Rank summon should be.
"Climber Cross," the man called out. His voice was sharp, carrying an aristocratic haughtiness. "And the famous Ash Reclaimers. Slayers of the Frozen Butterfly, and now the Iron Legionnaire." He clapped his hands in a slow, sarcastic rhythm. "Truly impressive. Smithy told me you were uniquely capable, but I confess, I thought he was just being his usual, overly optimistic self."
Nathan leveled Moonlight at the man’s chest. Behind him, the rest of the party instantly drew their weapons.
"Let me guess," Nathan said coldly. "Nemesis Court."
The man pressed a hand to his chest in mock offense. "Ah, where are my manners? I am Clamour. The Court’s voice in the outer regions. Smithy reports to me. And I report to... well, you aren’t quite ready for that name yet."
Clamour straightened, his mocking smile fading into something much sharper. "I have been watching your ascent with great interest. The Frozen Throne. Now the Iron Horde. You are clearing Towers we had specific plans for. You are interfering with the Court’s localized collapses."
The Treant shifted its massive weight. The ground beneath their feet trembled violently, cracking the asphalt.
"The Lord is a patient man," Clamour continued smoothly. "He sees potential in you, just as Smithy does. But I am not Smithy. I do not look at you and see sprouts waiting to be nurtured. I look at you and see weeds. And I prefer to prune."
"We saw your handiwork inside," Nathan said, his grip tightening on the bow riser. "It didn’t work."
"It was a warning," Clamour replied, his eyes flashing. "Stop climbing. Stop interfering with the collapses. Go find a comfortable Mid Class Tower somewhere quiet, settle into your mediocrity, and the Court will forget you exist. Or don’t. Keep pushing, and I will have the distinct pleasure of ending your little party myself."
Nathan met his gaze without blinking. "The other guy—Smithy— gave us this exact same speech in the Sunken Depths. And then we beat him."
Clamour’s smile vanished completely. For a split second, the aristocratic veneer cracked, revealing a cold, furious killer underneath. The Treant’s roots surged, tearing up massive chunks of earth.
Then, Clamour laughed. It was a sharp, humorless sound.
"Smithy is soft. He tried to recruit you. I suffer no such delusions." Clamour took a step backward, letting the massive shadow of the Treant swallow him. "The only reason you are still breathing, Cross, is because the Lord believes you still possess some marginal use. But his patience is not infinite. Keep climbing. Keep interfering. And when the Lord finally gives the order..."
Clamour’s eyes gleamed in the dark.
"...I will be waiting."
The Treant’s roots violently retracted, pulling the massive creature backward into the earth. In the blink of an eye, both the beast and the operative vanished, leaving nothing but torn asphalt and the settling dust of the badlands.
Nathan slowly lowered his bow, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Everyone okay?"
"Fine," Garrett breathed, though his knuckles were bone-white against Volcan’s handle. "That was... that was a B-Rank Treant. And he didn’t even draw a weapon."
"It was intimidation," Elise said quietly, her eyes scanning the empty horizon. "Sabotage inside the Tower, a direct threat outside. They want us terrified."
"Which means we’re making them nervous," Nathan concluded. He turned toward the distant outline of the guild bus. "We go straight to Valerie. The guild needs to know the Court is out of the shadows."
They walked toward the bus in silence. Two High Class Towers cleared. Four remained. But as the final light bled from the sky, the shadow of the Nemesis Court felt heavier than ever.
