Eleonora threw her remaining knives with surgical precision worthy of a professional assassin. The blades flew through the air, aiming for the exact point where the sword connected to the Colossus's arm.

  Tommaso, despite the cracks in his armor, materialized an immense boulder from his hands and hurled it with inhuman force. The rock flew toward the target like a cannonball.

  Brando concentrated all his energy into creating the most powerful Rust Ice sphere he had ever produced, even more powerful than the previous one. The dark energy condensed around his hands, pulsing with a malevolence that seemed to devour light itself, then flew toward the charged sword.

  But the crucial moment came when Giordano used the power of his Cold Enhancer. The ring lit up with blinding blue light, and a tornado of ice as large as a person materialized instantly, launching toward the Colossus's sword like a rotating spear of concentrated cryogenic energy just as the other attacks struck it.

  BOOM!

  The explosion was massive. The sword's energy, suddenly destabilized by the coordinated attack, exploded backward exactly as Brando had predicted. The overload flowed back through the Colossus's circuits like a destructive wave of pure energy. The Colossus staggered in the chaos of the electrical explosion and its systems fell into complete short circuit. The plates that had previously pulsed with energy now sparked and smoked, overloaded beyond all limits. The repair system that had allowed it to regenerate its arm had been literally fried by the internal explosion. And when silence returned, all that remained was proof that even giants, in the end, fall.

  "SYSTEM... COMPROMISED... TERMINATING..." the Colossus emitted with a distorted voice full of electronic interference.

  "It worked! The short circuit disabled the regeneration!" Brando shouted, but the triumph in his voice lasted exactly three seconds before transforming into pure terror.

  Because the Colossus wasn't simply collapsing. The armor plates began emitting energy. Each one erupted with sparks and electrical discharges in a crescendo of energy that made the air itself tremble. The mechanical giant was transforming into a time bomb of titanic dimensions.

  "It's collapsing!" Tommaso shouted. "But it's about to release all the accumulated energy in a final explosion!"

  "Let's get away! NOW!" Eleonora yelled, but her voice was almost covered by the crescendo of electrical energy.

  But Brando wasn't moving away. He was already running in the opposite direction, directly toward the Colossus that was about to explode. His heart was beating so hard he could hear it in his ears, but only one thing occupied his mind: Rusty was still there, vulnerable and exposed.

  "Not without Rusty!" he shouted, diving toward the point where he had left his companion. "I'm not leaving him behind!"

  Time seemed to slow as he ran. He could see every detail with crystal clarity: the Colossus's plates continuing to emit energy that accumulated in a deadly crescendo, Rusty lying motionless at the spot where he had left him. Twenty meters. Ten. Five.

  "Brando!" Giordano shouted behind him, but he was already too far away to be stopped.

  Brando dove the last two meters, his arms closing around Rusty's warm body. But the moment he grabbed him, the terrible reality of the situation hit him like a punch to the stomach. He didn't have time to escape. The explosion was imminent, and they were less than ten meters from the impact point. It was too close, too late, and all the others were already hundreds of meters away.

  "Fuck!" Brando looked frantically around as panic rose in his throat. One of the metal towers stood a few meters from them, the same one that had protected them from lightning during the crossing. "Rusty, hold tight!"

  He launched toward the tower with Rusty pressed to his chest, sliding behind the metal base just as the Colossus began its final collapse. But Brando knew it wouldn't be enough. A metal tower could deflect electrical energy, but the explosion being prepared was something completely different. He needed more protection.

  His Cold Veins responded immediately to the call of desperation. He concentrated all his energy into creating the most resistant ice his [Violet Two] abilities allowed. He didn't have time for finesse or elegance, he needed mass, thickness, brute resistance.

  The first layer of ice materialized in front of them, ten centimeters thick, a solid barrier between them and the Colossus about to explode. But it wasn't enough. A second layer formed behind the first, then a third, a fourth. His hands trembled from the effort as he pushed his Cold Veins beyond every previous limit.

  Fifth layer. Sixth. The seventh and final layer formed just as his energies were completely exhausted. Brando had reached a total thickness of one meter, layered like tank armor, forming an improvised barricade between them and the imminent apocalypse.

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  Brando curled up behind his creation, clutching Rusty to his chest with all the strength he had. His hands trembled, he didn't know if from the effort of the Cold Veins or from pure fear. It was the first time in his life he had found himself so close to death, so completely without escape.

  "If we have to die," he whispered to Rusty, "at least we die together."

  The small Pseudo-Glacial looked at him with his three eyes, and in that gaze Brando saw an understanding that went beyond words. Rusty knew. He knew his master had risked everything to save him, and there was no fear in his eyes, only infinite gratitude.

  Brando closed his eyes, hugged Rusty as tight as he could, and prayed to all the gods he didn't believe existed.

  The explosion came like the end of the world.

  The mechanical giant impacted the ground with a crash that seemed to split reality itself. The final explosion of electrical energy erupted in an apocalyptic aurora borealis that illuminated the slate-colored sky. The electromagnetic shock wave crashed against the metal tower, which absorbed and deflected part of the deadly energy, but what the tower couldn't contain crashed against Brando's ice barricade.

  The first layer disintegrated instantly, vaporized by pure energy. The second held for a fraction of a second before exploding in a fountain of boiling crystals. The third and fourth resisted a moment longer, but the energy was too much, too concentrated, too violent.

  When the fifth layer began to crumble, Brando thought it was over. But the sixth layer held. Cracked, smoking, reduced to half its original thickness, but it held. And the seventh layer, protected by all those preceding it, remained almost intact.

  The heat was devastating anyway. Even protected by the tower and barricade, the thermal wave was so intense that Brando felt his jacket begin to burn on his back. The air itself seemed liquid, too hot to breathe. He could feel his hair curling and burning, and exposed skin reddening as if he'd been too long in the sun.

  The inferno lasted what seemed like eternity, but was actually perhaps ten seconds. When it finally subsided, a spectral silence fell over the plain. Brando remained motionless, not daring to move, not daring to believe he was still alive.

  ***

  Hundreds of meters away, the rest of the group watched in horror at the point where they had seen Brando disappear in the explosion. The glow had been so intense that for several seconds they couldn't see anything through the blinding light.

  "Brando!" Giordano shouted, his voice breaking. "BRANDO!"

  "He can't have survived that," Eleonora whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks. "He was too close, too..."

  "No," Tommaso said, his rocky voice trembling with emotion. "He's not dead. He can't be dead."

  Tommaso grabbed Alessio, who was still partially paralyzed from the Colossus's electrical attack, and loaded him on his shoulder without ceremony. Indeed, he had survived thanks to the fact that Tommaso, in fleeing, had carried him on his shoulder. "Let's go get them," he said, and without waiting for an answer launched toward the explosion point with Alessio on his shoulders. The others followed immediately, their hearts beating frantically across the devastated plain.

  What they found when they reached the tower left them speechless. The metal structure had become incandescent, glowing a deep red that pulsed like a metallic heart. All around, the ground had been melted and recrystallized by the explosion's energy. And behind the tower, protected by the smoking remains of what was clearly an ice barricade, they found Brando and Rusty.

  "Brando!" Giordano threw himself beside his friend, who was still curled in fetal position with Rusty clutched to his chest. "Hey, hey, are you okay?"

  Slowly, very slowly, Brando opened his eyes. When he saw his friends' faces looking down at him, an incredulous smile spread across his smoke-stained face.

  "Am I... am I alive?" he asked, his voice hoarse from smoke and heat.

  "You're alive, you stupid bastard," Eleonora said, laughing and crying simultaneously. "You're alive."

  Rusty laboriously raised his head, his three eyes opening slowly. "Grrlll... wuff..." he whimpered weakly, but it was the most beautiful sound Brando had ever heard.

  "I thought I'd lost you," Brando whispered, hugging his companion tightly. "I thought I'd lost you forever."

  Tommaso helped Brando get up, examining the damage. The boy had first-degree burns on his back and arms, his hair was partially burned, and his jacket was reduced to smoking shreds. But he was alive. Against all logic, against all probability, he was alive.

  "That ice barricade," Alessio said, studying the melted remains. "How many layers did you create?"

  "Seven," Brando replied, still trembling slightly. "Everything I could manage."

  "Seven layers," Giordano murmured, shaking his head in admiration. "You completely exhausted your Cold Veins to save both yourself and Rusty. What a hero."

  The group slowly recovered from the battle's consequences under a tower that had remained unharmed. Tommaso had deep cracks in his armor but was still standing, his stone giant endurance having withstood the explosion's impact. Alessio was completely healed from paralysis, his muscles responding normally to commands again. Eleonora had some scratches and bruises, but was substantially unharmed.

  "Your intuition saved us," Giordano said, looking at the smoking remains of the Colossus scattered across the plain. "How did you figure it out?"

  "I observed," Brando replied, still panting. "In Rione Sanità, when you don't have strength, you have to use your brain. I saw how the energy flowed and thought: 'If it goes in, it can also come out'."

  "Observation, coordination, and a bit of luck," Alessio said, smiling despite his fatigue. "That's how you win."

  "It wasn't luck," Tommaso said, serious. "It was strategy. You learned to think like a team. And Brando..." He turned toward the boy with an expression of deep respect. "What you did for Rusty... that was true heroism."

  The plain's atmosphere gradually relaxed. The lightning resumed its regular ten-second pattern, as if the Colossus's destruction had restored the area's energy balance. The electric air calmed, and the luminous cracks in the ground returned to their constant glow.

  It was then that a voice echoed in the air. Not the annoying voice of the Custodian with her sarcastic parentheses, but something more neutral, more mechanical, that seemed to come from the system itself:

  【Objective completed. Performance analysis in progress...】

  【Giordano Volpe: Excellent tactical coordination. Effective use of Cold Enhancer. Reward: 500 Evolution Points】

  【Brando Casadei: Decisive strategic intuition. Act of extreme heroism with maximum personal risk to save companion. Reward: 1000 Evolution Points】