Anker was in a real pickle. The guards' blades were at his throat, and once he had finished his theatrical monologue, also Clesbius pointed one of his two pistols at his head. Anker felt unable to utter even half a word. The tone of his voice alone could have set off the anarchists.

«Let's get to the point, Anker. What brought you here?» Clesbius asked in a placid but mocking tone.

«Let's not jump to conclusions, regardless of what my name or identity is, I really intend to…»

«Cut the crap. You were sent to the Horn of Morghorou to retrieve Viryl of the White Gale's Exoplion. A difficult target for us, since it's protected by Radios of the Shining Sun, that straight, pompous, incorruptible pain in the ass. But then you were supposed to go back to Leopolis. Why did you come to Corlona instead?»

«The mission didn't go well because someone interfered and stole the Exoplion we were after, so I felt like letting loose a couple days before returning to headquarters.»

«I told you not to bullshit me!» Clesbius exploded.

«But it's the truth!»

«Frankleon, do me a favor. Take this enchanted pin and prick him. Maybe pain will make his tongue looser.» Clesbius said, handing Frank a needle with his free hand. Frank obeyed orders and vehemently stuck the needle into Anker's right shoulder, then returned to his place. An unrelenting burning ache engulfed Anker's arm and chest, and he couldn't help but cry out in pain.

«Why don’t we try again, now? You and the other knight... let me check… Madja of the Raging Torrent, were supposed to go back to Leopolis after completing your mission. Though you certainly didn't do so, because our men are still waiting for you at the Cerisia crystalway station. You know, if you had managed to retrieve Viryl's Exoplion, there would be an ambush waiting for you on the way back. So I ask you again: why did you come to Corlona?"

«Do you think it's enough... to make me talk... you numb nuts? I get it, you know? You need me alive.»

«Are you trying to stall?»

«Yes. This rat hole... it... it can't stay hidden forever. But you are... powerless. Let's say that... me and Madja really have a plan... if I don't tell you, you will have to take the risk of finding out by yourselves. And of one thing I am damn sure... you haven't found her yet!»

«Oh, if you think two fresh-faced kids can sneak into the Wolves' lair and get away with it, you're sorely mistaken. Corlona is our city, Sanchiria our land. Not a leaf moves without our consent.»

«What big words... big boss... yet I managed to sneak in here... under your nose.»

«Well, then, you'll have to suffer a lot. You know, I'm telling you for your own good, we could end this with just one bul…»

Clesbius's words were interrupted by an unexpected boom, which seemed to have come from above. All the men in the room jumped up like springs. Clesbius immediately tried to regain control of the situation: «Probably some idiot has just caused God knows what commotion in the workshop. But to make sure our base is actually not under attack, you! go check the control center,» he said, indicating the guard on his left.

The guard drove away his sword from Anker’s neck and sheathed it, then left Clesbius’ office through the back door, behind the desk.

As if nothing had happened, Clesbius resumed the interrogation. Anker continued to unnerve him with vague answers, wavering as if the needle's nociceptive amplification spell was still having an effect on him.

While playing dumb, Anker had something else to focus on.

Now, the general rule is that a knight without an Exoplion who faces a knight with an Exoplion is a dead knight. As for a layman who has grafted himself a Symbjorm and wears an Exoplion playing at being a knight, the situation is different.

An Exoplion, all things considered, is just a multilaminate chest plate, whose innermost layer is coated with Fuligine Stone, and which has a sternal core consisting of a Memory Crystal in contact with the last layer.

The data stored in the Memory Crystal is read by the Symbjorm, and then transmitted to the user's nervous system, which thus manages to innately understand the effect of the recorded spells and trigger them at will. However there is a big difference between knowing the effect of a spell and knowing how to apply it in a real-world context.

The only two spells that are recorded by default on every single Exoplion, from basic to gold ones, are "Ethereal Armor Summoning" and "Ethereal Weapon Summoning". As for ethereal armors, they are certainly lighter and more tenacious than metal ones, but structurally they have the same critical points. The more mobile the joints are, the more they are left uncovered.

Knights are well aware of this Achilles' heel, and they train a lot to scale back the feeling of invincibility that comes with the release of the Exoplion's devastating sympathionic field. Those who are not used to it, instead, can only be overwhelmed by that sense of well-being and omnipotence.

Anker had prepared for the eventuality of facing an enemy in ethereal armor, and had hidden a throwing knife in the sleeve of his tunic. He had only one shot, which had to be precise and fatal.

The opportunity arose after a few interminable minutes, when the guard sent to check on the situation returned in a panic. «Clesbius! Clesbius! There's hell breaking loose! We need you!»

«What the hell are you babbling about?! What do you mean there's hell breaking loose?!» Clesbius bellowed, turning around and giving Anker his back for a few moments.

The knight was lightning fast. He hurled the enchanted dagger with a guiding spell and a corrosion spell in a parabolic trajectory into the joint between Clesbius's helmet and gorget, between the epistropheus and the third cervical vertebra. Despite the Exoplion's regenerative abilities, the blade was firmly embedded in the spinal canal, and, unable to restore the continuity of the spinal cord, Clesbius lost consciousness and the Exoplion deactivated.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

While this scene unfolded under the astonished gaze of the anarchists, Anker deflected the blade that was still at his throat with his left hand and threw himself belly-first onto the desk.

Clesbius's ethereal armor crumbled, revealing his vacant eyes and his agonizing expression, and Anker rushed to rip the chest plate from his chest.

The guard behind him, after being unbalanced, had tightened his grip on his weapon, and while Anker struggled with the chest plate straps, he rushed to stab him three or four times on the ribs, loins, and thighs. But Anker ignored the pain and the feeling of suffocation, and finally managed to detach the Exoplion.

Frank, realizing what Anker was trying to do, rushed towards him, but it was too late. Anker was already leaning the chest plate against his chest.

He had won.

An incredible force surged through every fiber of Anker's body, and thousands of new concepts began to rush through his brain. The four lacerated wounds on his back healed in a matter of seconds. Clesbius's armor, black and trimmed in purple, light as silk and harder than steel, wrapped around him like a drape. The two large-caliber pistols that had just been pointed at his head materialized in his own hands. Anker had never felt better.

How many possibilities had just opened up before his eyes!

Anker launched himself into the air with a special anti-gravity spell and crouched on the ceiling. He realized that he had ten different types of projectiles at his disposal to experiment with his new weapons. He chose to use paralyzing projectiles.

He fired both weapons simultaneously, aiming at the guards' abdomens. The Exoplion's mental enhancement spell guaranteed two clean shots, fired with precision and a steady hand. The wounds were not lethal, but the two enemies were knocked backward and collapsed instantly, with all the muscles in their bodies reduced to mush.

Anker twirled to the ground and turned to Frank, who was already preparing for the fight, but lowered his weapons and made them vanish.

«You have to get out of here, now.» Anker warned him.

«Do you think I'll let you get away with it without even fighting?!» Frank yelled, and without warning cast the "firecracker" spell on Anker. It was a basic spell, with little or no offensive potential, nothing more than a warm-up exercise for newly grafted academy students. Anker deflected it with a flick of his hand.

Frank put his hand to his cheek and his eyes turned red. A few tears of anger appeared. He shouted, spitting in Anker's face: «And then what?! What will we do, where will we go if this place is destroyed?!»

«Listen, the only thing that matters is that you and Nika get out alive. Ferlonia has already taken too much from you. You are now grafted, and your abilities can be useful to many in the Free Communes and other kingdoms. Wherever you decide to go, you will find a way. I don't want you to die here.»

«Damn!» Frank yelled, and pulled up his nose. Then he moved from his corner and headed towards the front door of the study, the one they had come in through.

«Finally you've made up your mind, Frank. I'll try to intercept the others and distract them. For God's sake, don't waste any time.»

«Alright Anker. There's a hidden corridor behind a shelf in the first-floor pantry that we can use. But know that this isn't over between us, you cowardly bastard.» Frank said through gritted teeth, spitting out his resentment like poison.

Frank reached for the doorknob, but before he could turn it, the back door of the study creaked open. The stone floor at his feet crumbled to dust, and a dense cloud of debris engulfed him. Frank began to struggle, but the debris compacted into solid rock with him in the middle. His blood and viscera splattered everywhere, along with his dismembered limbs dancing. His eyes bulged out of their sockets from the internal pressure.

Anker, completely caught off guard, turned and looked over the desk, at Clesbius's corpse and the neutralized guards. Kalira stood in the doorway, returning his gaze from within a flaming orange ethereal armor, waving a warhammer in her right hand, while holding her pelvis with her left.

«Wow, what a cocky little bastard he was. I've been listening to his moronic soliloquies since this morning.» Kalira said. Then she strode across the room, retrieved the symbjorm bag on the desk, and from her open helmet, spat on Frank's remains.

«Go explain demons in hell what your other tricks up your sleeves are, you sacrilegious piece of shit.» she added.

Anker put his hand to his mouth and suppressed a gag reflex.

«I was skeptical, but I must admit that your automaton idea was a great find, Anker. These idiots had hidden almost all the Exoplions in a small room on the top floor, and the surveillance around the tower was really poor. They didn't think anyone would attack them from there. All we had to do was jump up, open a breach, grab one Exoplion each, and clean up all the rooms coming down. I see you've been busy too though.» Kalira said with pride.

«Actually, I barely escaped with my life.» Anker hedged.

«Oh, we did everything we could to come and give you a hand as soon as possible.» Kalira said, stepping over Frank's pile of organs. Then she opened the front door of the study, now all streaked with blood splatters, and said: «Let's go and rejoin Bersept and Geltram. They're already heading for the first floor.»

Kalira and Anker retraced their steps through the narrow, intricate corridors of the base towards the first-floor hall. The more peripheral and isolated rooms were as silent as the central rooms, which until a few hours earlier had been teeming with noisy and busy anarchists. Now there were only a few still-warm corpses left, horribly mutilated.

One of the most dismembered and tortured bodies was Follyhox's, which lay with those of three other warriors, much less defaced than his. These four bodies were piled up just in front of the service door of the hall, and it was easy for Anker to guess that they were trying to defend with a last line the non-military personnel who must have barricaded themselves in the hall.

And so it was. The hall was also full of corpses. Some catering staff, infirmary staff, Urchibond included, logistics staff, a total of over a dozen people, had been brutally murdered. Geltram and Bersept, also wearing ethereal armor, were cheerfully helping themselves to liquor at the hall bar.

As soon as Bersept saw Anker enter, he raised his glass of cognac towards him and said: «She was quite a hottie, the chick who tried to take you under her blankets this morning. Let me tell you, you were an idiot not to screw her. But anyway, cheers for leading us here!»

Hearing Bersept's welcome, Anker took a closer look at the corpses. Nika was among them. Her neck was broken and her white shirt had been torn open, revealing her soft, well-proportioned breasts. Her red rusty eyes were wide open. There were no other signs of violence on her body.

Anker had a visceral desire to kill Bersept right then and there. He vividly visualized the image of a fist smashing through the glabella of that calf's head and then spattering its pink brains, and he began to pace back and forth, as if he were actually screwing the skull, while his big brown eyes with thick black lashes watched him blankly, wide open like Nika's.

«Now all we have left to clean up is the entrance and the stables, and we're done.» Geltram said, with satisfaction.

Anker's vision was interrupted, brought back to reality by Geltram's words. There was little point in losing his cool. In the first place, if he had attacked Bersept, he would have been outnumbered three to one. Secondly, his three fellow knights, rationally speaking, had done nothing that was outside their duties: of course, they had perhaps taken the liberty of carrying out a slightly too cruel repression, but all in all the code is clear. Those who undermine the kingdom's constituted order are to be executed, even summarily.