Regression of the Tower's Final Survivor-Chapter 44: The Iron Warden (Part 3)

Phase 3 was annihilation given mechanical form, and the Iron Warden moved with terrifying freedom now that it was no longer anchored to the floor by its power tendrils.

Its legs carried it across the chamber in strides that covered ten meters at a time while its arms swung in coordinated patterns that turned the entire arena into a killing field. Its eyes, burning red with whatever passed for rage in a machine, tracked every survivor with predatory focus.

"SCATTER!" Dante’s command came too late.

The Warden’s hammer caught Leon mid-dodge, the impact hurling the wounded tank across the chamber like a discarded toy. He hit a pillar with a sound that suggested breaking bones and didn’t get up.

"Leon!" Sera’s scream cut through the combat noise as she ran toward her fallen teammate.

"No! Stay in cover!" But she wasn’t listening since her healer’s instincts overrode any survival sense.

The Warden’s cannon arm tracked her movement.

Seira’s warning saved her life as the seer tackled the healer just before a beam carved through the space where she stood, both women tumbling behind a pillar as superheated energy scorched the air above them.

"We’re losing!" Astrid’s berserker form was flagging with her rage burning through reserves that wouldn’t replenish fast enough while blood ran from wounds that weren’t healing. "We need a plan!"

Dante dropped from the Warden’s back, his attempted climb having accomplished nothing except gaining him a better view of how badly they were losing. The core was protected now with spinning blades and energy fields creating a barrier that nothing could penetrate from outside.

’Think. There has to be a way.’

In his original timeline, they brought the Warden down through sustained damage with eight fighters wearing it down over hours of combat until its systems failed from accumulated stress. But they didn’t have eight fighters anymore since they had maybe four still capable of attacking, and the Warden was stronger in Phase 3 than it was when they started.

"Ravenna!" He found her behind a collapsed section of wall, her Hellfire still blazing but her movements slower than before. "Can you reach the core?"

"The blades would cut me apart before I got close." She shook her head, frustration clear on her face.

"Not if they were melted." He grabbed her arm, ignoring the heat that seeped through his gloves. "Your Hellfire at full power, not the controlled bursts you’ve been using, but everything you have focused into one attack."

Understanding dawned in her ember-eyes with something that looked like fear behind it.

"I’ve never pushed that hard, so I don’t know what happens if I do."

"I know, and it might hurt you or change you again." He held her gaze. "But if you don’t, we all die here since Leon might already be dead, Ren can barely stand, so we’re out of options."

She looked at the Warden, at the spinning cage of blades that protected its core, at the friends who were dying around her because they weren’t strong enough.

"Cover me since I need thirty seconds to build the charge."

"You’ll have them."

---

Drawing the Iron Warden’s attention was the easy part, staying alive while doing it was another matter entirely.

Dante threw himself into the construct’s path with his blade flashing in patterns designed to provoke rather than damage. He dodged hammer swings by millimeters, rolled under giant hand grabs that tore up floor plates, and let beams scorch lines across his armor that would have been fatal if he hadn’t twisted at the last moment.

The Warden focused on him completely, recognizing him as the threat who nearly reached its core. Its attacks became more concentrated and more lethal, driving him back across the chamber step by desperate step.

"TWENTY SECONDS!" Ravenna’s voice carried through the chaos.

Astrid joined him with her berserker strength fading but her reflexes still sharp. Together they danced around the Warden’s assault, two targets instead of one, splitting its attention and buying precious moments.

Ren appeared at the front with his ruined shield raised despite the arm that could barely hold it. "FOR THE TEAM!" he roared, and charged directly at the construct’s legs.

The Warden’s hammer swept toward him, and Dante felt his chest seize with the certainty that his friend was about to die.

But Ren wasn’t trying to attack since he was trying to interfere, to throw off the construct’s balance for just a few more seconds. His shield caught the edge of the hammer swing, deflecting it barely enough to avoid a killing blow, and he went down in a tangle of broken equipment and bleeding wounds. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"TEN SECONDS!"

The Warden was turning toward Ravenna now, finally recognizing the power building in her position. Energy readings that even its mechanical sensors could detect as a threat.

"NO!" Dante threw himself at the construct’s leg, his Champion’s Blade finding the same damaged joint Astrid targeted earlier. Metal screamed as he carved deeper into the mechanism, ruining the leg’s stability.

The Warden stumbled and began to fall, twisting to catch itself with its arms instead, which was exactly the distraction they needed.

"NOW!" Dante threw himself clear.

---

Ravenna unleashed everything she had, and the Hellfire that erupted from her wasn’t the controlled weapon she used throughout the fight.

It was something older and deeper, drawing on power that the Infernal Shrine unlocked but that she never dared to access fully.

Black flames consumed the entire forward arc of her vision while the temperature in the chamber spiked until even system-enhanced bodies felt the burn. The sound, the roar of fire that was ancient before humanity learned to walk upright, drowned out everything else.

The spinning blades protecting the Warden’s core lasted maybe two seconds before they softened, deformed, and then simply ceased to exist as the Hellfire reached temperatures that nothing material could withstand. The energy barriers behind them flickered and died, and the core itself, that pulsing blue heart that gave the Iron Warden life, was suddenly exposed.

Ravenna didn’t stop there, pouring the Hellfire into the opening and flooding the construct’s internals with destruction. Circuits melted, gears fused, conduits that carried power for longer than humanity existed finally gave up and burned.

The Iron Warden screamed, not mechanical noise or grinding gears but an actual scream, as if something had been alive in there after all and was dying in the flames.

The construct collapsed, and Ravenna collapsed with it.

---

Dante caught her before she hit the ground.

She was unconscious, her skin burning even hotter than before, steam rising from her body where sweat evaporated instantly. Her ember-eyes were dull, the glow that defined her since the transformation barely flickering.

"Ravenna. RAVENNA!" He shook her gently, but there was no response.

[The Iron Warden slain]

[Floor 10 complete]

[System points: +15,000]

[Title earned: Machine Breaker]

[Administrator attention: Level 9]

The notifications scrolled past, irrelevant against the weight of the woman in his arms.

"Sera!" He looked around frantically to find the healer still with Seira behind the pillar, both of them barely conscious. "Anyone! She needs help!"

Astrid limped toward him with her berserker form fully faded, looking more human and more exhausted than he ever saw her. "Is she..."

"She’s breathing but barely." He held Ravenna closer, as if his grip could keep her from slipping away. "She pushed too hard and burned herself out."

"The floor’s clear." Ren’s voice came from somewhere nearby since the tank was alive somehow, dragging himself upright despite wounds that should have left him unconscious. "Exit gate’s opening, so we need to get everyone through."

Dante looked at the shimmering portal forming at the far end of the chamber. Floor 11 waited beyond with more challenges and more dangers and more opportunities to lose people he cared about.

But first they had to survive this moment, so he adjusted his grip on Ravenna and lifted her in his arms. "Help me carry them, all of them, since no one gets left behind."

They moved through the ruins of the boss chamber, a battered party of seven carrying those who couldn’t walk on their own. Leon, unconscious and bleeding. Sera, exhausted beyond words. Ren, limping but refusing to be carried. Seira, supporting the healer despite her own injuries.

Astrid walked beside Dante, watching Ravenna’s still form with an expression that mixed concern and something that might have been guilt.

"She did it for us, all of us."

"I know."

"Is she going to be okay?"

Dante looked at the woman in his arms, at the slow rise and fall of her chest that was the only sign she was still alive.

"She has to be, because after everything she’s survived she doesn’t get to die from being a damn hero."

They stepped through the gate together, leaving the ruins of the Iron Fortress behind, and whatever waited on Floor 11 they would face it when Ravenna woke up.

If she woke up.