Episode-934
Chapter : 1867
Kyle shoved the metal into the heart of the fire. He held it there until the iron turned from grey to red, then to a blinding, translucent orange. He pulled it out and placed it on the anvil.
Clang.
"Iron is stubborn, Ben," Kyle said, striking the metal. "It wants to stay cold. It wants to stay hard. But if you add enough pressure... if you force it... it changes. It becomes dense. It becomes unbreakable."
The memory shattered.
Ben’s eyes snapped open. The green torchlight of the Sanctum flooded back in. Rubel’s foot was descending.
I am not scrap metal, Ben realized. The thought was a lightning bolt in his brain. I am the anvil. I am the point of impact.
For years, Ben had treated his prosthetic limbs as separate from himself—machines he had to maintain. He had been using the Steel Blood like a technician, trying to shape it with precision. But he wasn't an engineer like Lloyd. He was a force of nature.
He didn't need to fix the rust. He needed to stop it. He needed to make his metal so dense, so conceptually heavy, that time itself couldn't erode it.
"Spirit: Sloth," Ben whispered, his voice vibrating with a new, dangerous frequency. "Phase Shift: Event Horizon."
He didn't project the field outward this time. He pulled it inward. He collapsed the power of Sloth—the power of Stillness—directly into the molecules of his own steel limbs.
Merge.
He forced the concept of 'Absolute Density' into the iron.
WHOOSH.
A shockwave of heavy, grey gravity erupted from Ben’s body. It was so intense that the grey "Cloud of Decay" hovering around him instantly fell to the floor, crushed flat by the sudden increase in atmospheric weight.
Rubel, caught off guard by the sudden pressure spike, stumbled back, shielding his face. "What?!"
Ben’s body began to darken.
It started at his chest and shot outward into his limbs. The rusted, pitted steel of his prosthetics didn't heal; it compacted. Using a brute-force application of Steel Blood, he crushed the rust back into the metal, fusing the oxidation into a new, hyper-dense alloy. The steel turned a deep, light-swallowing gunmetal grey. The gears didn't spin faster; they stopped spinning entirely, locking into a state of absolute, immovable rigidity. He was no longer a machine; he was a solid piece of Sovereign-grade steel.
Ben stood up.
He didn't scramble. He rose by manipulating his own gravity, levitating his heavy frame upright until his boots hit the floor with a sound like a dropping vault door.
The transformation was complete. The man who stood before Rubel was no longer the crippled knight. He was a singularity of iron.
"Rubel!" Ben roared.
The sound was terrifying. It wasn't just a human shout; it was heavy, hitting Rubel’s chest like a physical punch.
Rubel took another step back, his green eyes widening in genuine fear. He looked at the nephew he was about to crush and saw a monster standing in his place.
"You... how are you moving?" Rubel stammered. "My decay... it eats metal!"
"You can't rot time, Uncle," Ben said. He held up his heavy, grey hand. He clenched his fist, and the air cracked. "And right now, this steel is frozen in a moment where it is harder than any treasure you’ve ever hoarded."
The Corrupter Hydra hissed and lunged. The massive shadow-snake struck at Ben, its jaws opening to swallow him whole.
Ben didn't dodge. He didn't block. He stepped into the attack.
He drove his right fist forward.
"Ironwood Art: Absolute Mass."
His fist collided with the hydra’s face.
There was no resistance. The shadow-flesh of the spirit touched Ben’s hand and shattered. The impact wasn't just physical; it was gravitational. Ben’s fist hit with the weight of a falling mountain. The punch blasted through the hydra’s head, dispersing the entire summon in a cloud of black smoke.
Ben didn't stop. He walked through the smoke, his heavy metal feet cracking the stone floor with every step.
"You called me broken," Ben said, his voice low and dangerous. He walked toward the throne. "You called my father a fool. But you forgot the most basic rule of the Ironwood house."
Rubel summoned a shield of green demonic energy, panic setting in. "Stay back! I am a King! Beelzebub protects me!"
Ben reached the shield. He grabbed the edge of the energy barrier with his bare, grey hands. The magic sizzled, trying to repel him, but Ben’s "Sloth" spirit simply paused the shield's ability to exist in time.
He ripped the shield apart like it was wet paper.
Chapter : 1868
"Ironwood does not yield," Ben snarled, standing face-to-face with the traitor. The gravitational pressure radiating from Ben was crushing Rubel’s abyssal armor, causing the black plating to crack.
Rubel stared into Ben’s single functioning eye, which was now a void of grey stillness. For the first time, the traitor realized he wasn't looking at a victim. He was looking at the executioner.
"And Uncle," Ben raised his fist for a second strike, the air distorting around his knuckles. "I am the heaviest thing in this room."
Ben swung.
This time, he didn't aim for a summon. He aimed for the man who had betrayed his blood. The impact was coming, and there was no rust left to slow it down. The Ironwood Sovereign had finally awakened, and he was ready to bring the hammer down.
________________________________________
The atmosphere inside the Inner Sanctum had shifted from a battlefield to a slaughterhouse.
Just moments ago, Ben, the Ironwood Knight, had stood tall as an avatar of absolute density. He had shattered the traitor Rubel’s armor and broken his ribs with a single, gravity-infused punch. It had felt like victory. It had felt like justice.
But the Abyss was not a place where justice came easily, and Viscount Rubel was no longer a man who played by the rules of physics.
Ben fell to one knee. His knee joint, which was currently carrying the conceptual weight of a mountain, let out a screeching grind. The grey aura of Sloth flickered and died. The "Ironwood Awakening" technique was a double-edged sword; it gave him immense mass, but it burned through his mana reserves at a terrifying rate. He had gambled everything on that one punch, and the cockroach was still moving.
"Is that it?" Rubel’s voice was a wet gurgle, bubbling up from a throat that should have been crushed. "Is that all the 'weight' you have, little nephew?"
Ben looked up, his vision swimming with black spots. What he saw made his blood run cold.
Rubel was broken, but he wasn't finished. The traitor dragged himself up from the debris of his bone throne. His chest plate was caved in, but his eyes were burning with a new, hateful intensity. It was the look of a cornered rat that had decided to unleash a plague.
"You broke my bones," Rubel hissed, spitting a tooth onto the floor. "You shattered the armor Beelzebub gave me. You humiliated me in my own sanctum."
Rubel raised his hands. His fingers, which were now long, clawed talons, began to tremble. The air in the room suddenly changed. The smell of ozone vanished, replaced by a thick, metallic taste.
"You love metal so much, Ben?" Rubel screamed, his voice cracking into madness. "Then let me show you how metal truly dies!"
Rubel clapped his hands together. A shockwave of sickly orange light erupted from his body.
"Abyssal Art: Rust Blood Apocalypse."
It didn't look like a spell. It looked like a disease.
A massive cloud of orange gas rolled outward from Rubel. It was thick, heavy, and moved with a terrifying, liquid speed. Where the cloud touched the iron bars of the cells, the metal didn't just break; it aged a thousand years in a second. The bars turned flaky, orange, and then disintegrated into piles of brown dust.
Ben tried to stand, but his limbs were dead weight. The "Rust Blood" was a conceptual attack on the very idea of metal. His prosthetic limbs, even with the Steel Blood density he had forced into them, began to pit and peel.
Ben watches the orange wall of death rushing toward him.
He tried to summon Sloth again. Freeze it, he commanded his spirit. Stop the reaction.
But Sloth was silent. He was empty. The "Absolute Mass" strike had cost too much.
Rubel laughed. "Rot, Ben! Rot into nothing!"
Ben didn't close his eyes. He didn't cower. He glared at the incoming cloud, his mind racing for a solution, refusing to accept that he would die here, like this. He tried to force his body to move, to drag himself out of the way, but he was a statue of rust.
But the end didn't come.
Instead, a new sound cut through the hissing of the rust. It was a heavy, thudding sound, like a giant hammer hitting the earth.
BOOM.
The floor in front of Ben exploded.