Regression of the Tower's Final Survivor-Chapter 43: The Iron Warden (Part 2)

Phase 2 was designed to break them, and the Warden was doing everything in its power to accomplish that goal.

The construct’s new weapons fired in continuous streams, tracking patterns that left no safe zones anywhere in the chamber. Beam weapons swept in geometric arcs with paths calculated to intersect at maximum efficiency while missile pods launched clusters of explosive ordnance that detonated on impact and left burning residue that continued dealing damage. The giant hand, now enhanced with crackling energy fields, grabbed at anyone who got too close.

"The tendrils!" Dante called, diving behind a pillar as a beam nearly took his head while obsidian stone exploded into molten fragments beside him. "Focus on the tendrils since nothing else matters!"

Six of them, thick cables of metal and circuitry connecting the Warden to ports in the chamber floor. Each one pulsed with blue energy, feeding power to the construct faster than they could damage it, and as long as those connections held the Warden was practically immortal.

Ravenna targeted the nearest tendril, her Hellfire burning through the protective casing in concentrated streams of black-edged destruction. The cable beneath resisted, some kind of heat-resistant alloy that even her enhanced flames struggled to penetrate, but she pushed harder and drew deeper on the power she gained from the Infernal Shrine.

The metal began to glow, then soften, then melt as her flames cut through resistance that should have stopped her.

The tendril severed with a shower of sparks and a scream of released pressure that echoed through the chamber.

[Connection 1/6 destroyed]

[The Iron Warden’s power output reduced by 16%]

"One down!" She was already moving toward the next, but the Warden had noticed her effectiveness and its targeting systems locked onto her with multiple weapons tracking her movement with predatory precision.

"REN! COVER HER!" Dante pointed toward Ravenna’s position.

The tank threw himself between Ravenna and the incoming barrage with his partially melted shield leading. Metal weapons fire slammed into enchanted steel while beam weapons scored lines across the shield’s surface, and Ren screamed as heat conducted through his grip to sear his hands even through armored gauntlets.

But he held long enough for Ravenna to reach cover behind a support pillar.

"I’m okay!" His voice was strained, his shield arm hanging at an angle that suggested muscle damage at minimum. "Keep going since I can still fight!"

Leon had regained consciousness with Sera’s frantic healing having stabilized his worst injuries. The tank was missing chunks of his armor and moving with obvious pain, but determination burned in his eyes as he rejoined the fight.

"Where do you need me?" His voice was hoarse but steady.

"Second tendril since Astrid’s going for it but she needs cover!"

---

Astrid went for the second tendril with all the fury her berserker nature could provide.

Her transformation was fully active now with red light blazing from her eyes as rage-fueled strength poured through her muscles. She didn’t bother with precision or technique, just charged the cable and started hitting it with fists pounding into metal with impacts that echoed through the entire chamber.

The Warden’s giant hand reached for her, energy crackling along its massive fingers.

"ASTRID! MOVE!" Dante’s warning came too late.

She didn’t move since she couldn’t, caught in the berserker fury that prioritized destruction over self-preservation. The instinct that made her so devastating in combat also made her vulnerable when the red haze fully descended.

The hand closed around her body, lifting her into the air, squeezing with force that could crush armor.

"NO!" Dante was already moving, Shadow Step carrying him to the arm in a blur of displaced space.

He appeared beside the elbow joint where mechanics connected to hydraulics, his Champion’s Blade singing as it carved through the mechanisms that controlled the giant hand’s grip while severing conduits and slicing actuators.

Sparks flew in showers of electrical discharge while lubricants sprayed across his armor in oily streams, and Astrid fell free, gasping for breath through ribs that might have been cracked.

[Partial damage: Giant hand]

[Grip strength reduced by 40%]

"Thanks," she wheezed, already climbing back to her feet despite the obvious pain. "The tendril?"

She had done enough damage before being grabbed since the second cable was hanging by threads with its outer casing shredded and its core mechanism exposed.

Ravenna’s Hellfire lance finished the job, cutting through the weakened connection with surgical precision.

[Connection 2/6 destroyed]

[The Iron Warden’s power output reduced by 33%]

"Two down, four to go!"

But Seira’s warning came just in time to prevent disaster as she screamed.

"THE FLOOR! IT’S MOVING!"

---

The metal plates beneath them began to shift, the entire chamber reconfiguring into a maze of pits and barriers.

This wasn’t just the Warden fighting them anymore since it was using the fortress itself as a weapon, reshaping the battlefield to isolate and trap its enemies. Walls rose from the floor to separate party members while sections of ground withdrew to reveal grinding machinery beneath, and the remaining tendrils repositioned to more defensible locations.

Dante found himself cut off from the others, trapped in a section of floor that was slowly sinking toward certain death.

Below him, gears meshed and blades spun in a meat grinder designed to process anyone unlucky enough to fall in. The walls on every side were smooth metal with no handholds, rising too fast to climb.

"DANTE!" Ravenna’s voice was distant, blocked by the barriers that had risen between them.

He had seconds, maybe less, before the floor dropped him into the grinding machinery below.

He looked at the sinking floor and the death that waited beneath, then looked up at the Warden’s exposed back where a maintenance hatch sat between its massive shoulder blades. The same hatch he used in his original timeline, the access point that led directly to the core.

’Climb the monster, reach the heart, end this.’

"Keep fighting!" he shouted back, hoping his voice would carry. "Destroy the tendrils since I have an idea!"

He jumped toward the Warden itself, using the shifting floor to gain height as he leaped from rising platforms to falling ones in a pattern that should have been impossible to navigate. The timing was insane with the margin for error at zero.

He made it anyway, his fingers catching a ridge on the Warden’s back plating as the floor collapsed behind him.

---

Climbing the Iron Warden was like climbing a mountain that was actively trying to kill you.

Every surface was designed to prevent exactly this approach with smooth armor plates that offered no grip, vents that released superheated steam without warning, and the construct’s awareness of his presence expressed through constant shifting to throw him off.

But Dante had done this before in another life with less skill and worse equipment, so he had climbed this monster and survived once and could do it again.

Handhold to handhold, ridge to ridge, he made his way upward while avoiding the steam jets by memory of patterns eight years old, anticipating the shifts in the Warden’s balance before they happened.

Below, the fight continued as he could hear Ravenna’s Hellfire roaring while she targeted another tendril, could hear Astrid’s berserker roar as she tore into the fourth, could hear Leon and Ren’s shields clanging as they held the front line despite injuries that should have dropped them.

Four tendrils destroyed with two remaining.

[Connection 3/6 destroyed]

[Connection 4/6 destroyed]

[The Iron Warden’s power output reduced by 66%]

[Warning: Phase 3 imminent]

The Warden was getting desperate with its movements becoming more erratic and less coordinated. Without the full power of the fortress feeding it, its combat effectiveness was degrading.

Dante reached the maintenance hatch.

His fingers found the release mechanism exactly where memory said it would be, the latch clicking as the hatch opened.

Inside was a mass of gears and pistons and conduits that carried power from the floor connections to the core. The construct’s innermost workings, exposed and vulnerable.

There, nestled in a cage of protective mechanisms, sat the core itself. Glowing blue, pulsing with diminishing energy, the heart of the Iron Warden.

He could see it, could almost reach it, and then the Warden’s internal defenses activated.

Blades emerged from the walls of the maintenance shaft, spinning in patterns designed to dice anything that entered while electricity crackled between contact points in unpredictable arcs. The passage began to narrow, the construct literally closing up around him like a healing wound.

He pulled back just before the hatch sealed, his hand coming away with a deep gash across the palm where a blade caught him.

’It knows what I’m trying to do, so it’s shutting down the approach that worked last time.’

The Warden was done playing defensive, shifting to something far more dangerous.

[Phase 2 complete]

[The Iron Warden enters Phase 3]

[Final form activated]

The remaining tendrils retracted into the floor, replaced by something far worse: internal power reserves that the construct saved for exactly this moment.

The Warden’s legs unlocked from their positions, allowing free movement for the first time in the entire fight while its chest cage of spinning blades accelerated to lethal speed with the core now completely inaccessible. Its eyes, those glowing blue orbs, burned suddenly red.

The construct roared, a sound of grinding metal and mechanical fury that shook the entire chamber.

Phase 3 had begun, and this time Dante could tell the Iron Warden wasn’t holding anything back.