Varkas grit his teeth, recovered his footing, and surged forward again, anger distilling into ruthless precision. His fists came like boulders flung by a catapult: each strike carrying enough force to crater stone and enough weight to pulp bone.

He opened with a brutal hook toward Ludger’s head, gauntlet streaking through the air. Ludger’s forearm rose in a clean guard, redirecting the blow just enough to let it slide past his ear. The guildmaster’s second strike shot upward, a rising uppercut aimed to crack the jaw and skull. Ludger dipped his chin and rolled his shoulder forward, catching the hit on hardened muscle instead of bone, absorbing the worst of it.

Then Varkas pivoted hard, using his momentum to bring his knee forward for a body slam, aiming for Ludger’s floating ribs. Ludger saw the angle, too committed to dodge, and twisted his hips sharply, bringing his elbow down to meet the knee from the side. Bone hit bone, jarring shockwaves up both their limbs. Pain flickered across Varkas’s face, the joint screaming under the impact.

And Ludger countered. He drove a quick, compact punch directly into the junction between the guildmaster’s shoulder and collarbone, a strip of muscle notoriously easy to seize up. Varkas’s arm spasmed as pain jolted through the nerve cluster. The next swing slowed.

That was all Ludger needed.

The guildmaster tried to drop his elbow to shield his torso, but Ludger slipped in another strike, hammering just above the left hip, where muscle met bone in a tender arc. Varkas hissed through clenched teeth, the blow burrowing deep into tissue and sending shock rippling across his abdomen.

He retaliated with another heavy punch, this one straighter, tighter, more controlled. But Ludger parried again, shifting the hit off-line with a snap of his wrist. He answered by landing two rapid knuckles into the soft meat under the floating ribs, precise strikes meant to bruise organs, not armor.

Varkas snarled, breath hitching.

His next swing came slower, though he forced power into it. Ludger ducked under it and snapped an upward hook into the bottom edge of Varkas’s breastplate, right where the armor lifted slightly when the guildmaster inhaled. The strike slammed into the diaphragm, forcing a grunt from Varkas’s throat as air rushed from his lungs.

Each exchange became the same rhythm: Varkas attacked, Ludger parried, Ludger countered.

And every counter hit a weak spot: nerve cluster, joint hinge, rib gap, liver line, tendon stretch. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t cruel. It was surgical.

With each strike, the guildmaster’s breathing sharpened. Fatigue crept through muscle. Every limb grew heavier. Every step slower. The cracks weren’t visible to the eye, but they were there, inside bone, inside tissue, inside breath.

Where raw power clashed against refined precision, precision began to win.

Varkas staggered back, boots grinding deep lines in the sand as he tried to put breathing room between them. His chest heaved in ragged pulls, each inhale sharp and loud, each exhale heavy and uneven. Thick beads of sweat rolled down his temples and dripped from his jaw. His armor steamed where Ludger’s strikes had found their marks.

More telling than any bruise or tremor was the flicker of mana around him, once raging hot and dense, now faint, thinning, losing heat and weight. It rippled weakly across his limbs before breaking apart like mist in sunlight. His aura was fading.

Trying to overpower Ludger in a battle of mana had been the wrong play, and now it showed. Every time Varkas pushed mana into his limbs to reinforce bone or muscle or armor, Ludger responded with Overdrive and Rage Flow in tandem. Every force the guildmaster met was countered, not by raw strength alone, but by layered skill and perfectly placed strikes.

It had drained him.

Across the arena, Ludger watched him with a calm, measured gaze, steam rising off his skin, chest rising and falling in steady rhythm, mana still pulsing hot and ready. He could feel the shift. The momentum of the duel had swung entirely his way.

More than that, he could sense the broader picture.

The guildmaster was no random fighter. Ashbound Compact had sent their best first. Their second-best next. And now the strongest of the guild had entered the arena himself. There was no hidden champion waiting behind the curtain. No last ace tucked away.

Winning this match meant winning the entire contest. Cleanly. Publicly. Irrefutably.

And Ludger needed to make sure no one forgot the lesson this duel represented: If you pick a fight with him or with the Lionsguard, the price will be pain.

The crowd watched him in silence, breaths held tight. The sand lay cracked beneath his feet, and the air wavered in heatwaves from both their mana.

He thought, briefly, about ending this with something flashy, maybe Turtle Shockwave, a crushing burst of mana that would send the guildmaster airborne and into the wall. It would look spectacular, dramatic, unforgettable.

But this was a melee fight. A brawl. A test of fists and determination. Something flashy from a distance would feel wrong. Something closer, hand to hand, would look cooler and land deeper.

There was only one problem: Ludger didn’t have any dramatic melee finishers. No glowing technique name, no legendary strike, no signature move that would send the audience into a frenzy.

What he had instead was creativity, and plenty of it. His gaze sharpened. His fists clenched. Steam poured from between his teeth. If he needed a melee finisher, he would make one. Right now.

Varkas stood hunched over, breathing in harsh, uneven gulps as pain buzzed through every nerve and bone. His lungs burned from effort, muscles trembled under the weight of fatigue, mana scraped the bottom of his reserves. He saw Ludger across the arena, steady, breathing controlled, power radiating from his body like heat off a furnace, and desperation coiled in Varkas’s gut.

He was losing. To a child. A boy who barely came up to his chest.

A boy who didn’t even have stubble on his face, no whiskers, no signs of adulthood. Ludger looked closer to ten than twelve, still with the soft angles of youth.

And Varkas Stonefury, Guildmaster of Ashbound Compact, breaker of bandits, slayer of beasts, survivor of wars, the man who had trained some of the empire’s strongest adventurers, was being dismantled.

Piece by piece.Step by step. Strike by strike. Unacceptable.

If he had lost to an older warrior, fine. If he had lost to a renowned mage, fine.

If he had lost to someone twice his size, stronger, faster, more experienced, he could swallow the shame.

But a twelve-year-old child?

Humiliation burned inside him like acid. His hands curled into fists so tight his knuckles cracked. His jaw clenched hard enough to ache. Rage flooded him, hot and wild, demanding he lash out, scream, swing blindly, do something, anything, to turn the tide. But the truth was iron-clad: there was nothing he could do. Not without making things worse.

If he lost control now, if he made one stupid, panicked move, tried something reckless, something outside the rules, the shame wouldn’t just multiply. It would define him. It would follow him. His guild would pay for his pride. His legacy would rot from the inside out.

He was trapped. Pride on one side. Consequence on the other. And before he could decide how to face that reality… Ludger’s aura pulsed.

It was subtle, barely noticeable. A flash of mana so fast, so compressed, that most of the audience didn’t even see it. A flicker of green-white light, crackling over his skin like contained lightning.

Then Ludger vanished.

One heartbeat he was standing across the arena… the next, he was right in front of Varkas.

His foot shot upward, leg straightening in a spear-like kick. It struck Varkas’s chin dead-center with a brutal crack, forcing his jaw upward and snapping his head back. The force lifted him clean off the ground.

He soared. Several meters into the air, arms limp, eyes wide, breath gone. Dazed, spinning, unable to brace or think or react.

Before gravity reclaimed him, Ludger moved again, already repositioned beneath the falling guildmaster.

His aura burned brown, rich and dense, earth-attuned mana thickening along his arm. The air shimmered around his hand as he shaped it into a palm strike. The ground beneath him cracked from the pressure building in his legs.

Varkas dropped.

Still stunned, eyes glassy, body limp… and Ludger met him with the full force of the earth.

WHAM.

His palm slammed into the guildmaster’s sternum like a sledgehammer. The impact detonated through Varkas’s ribcage, blasting the air from his lungs and folding his spine back in a brutal arc. Mana rippled through the strike, pushing the older man backward with catastrophic force.

Varkas flew across the arena… arms flailing, legs trailing, body spinning… until he collided with the stone wall.

BOOOOOM.

The sound rattled every rib in the audience. The wall cracked in a spiderweb pattern, lines racing out from the point of impact like lightning etched into stone. Dust rained down, coating armor, hair, and seats. The entire arena shook from the collision, sand jumping, cracks spreading beneath the fighters’ feet.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence. Varkas remained plastered to the wall… then slumped forward into the sand, limp, unconscious, armor dented inward across his chest. And the air, thick with dust and awe, hung lifeless around Ludger like the moment before thunder.

For several seconds, the arena remained stunned into silence, no voices, no movement, only dust drifting through the air and the echo of the impact lingering off the stone walls. The referee, still pale from the intensity of the match, hurried across the cracked sand toward the far end of the arena.

He found Varkas half-embedded in a section of collapsed wall, armor dented, limbs slack, head tilted forward and chin to chest. The guildmaster’s chest rose and fell, shallow, but steady. Alive, but barely able to hold consciousness even if someone shook him awake.

The referee checked for a pulse out of habit, though it was clear the man wouldn’t be fighting again today, or any time soon. When he stepped back, raising his arm toward the center of the arena, his voice cracked before finding its strength.

“The match is over! Winner, Ludger!”

The reply came like thunder.

The arena exploded with sound, cheering, stomping, laughter, chanting. Sand shook beneath the weight of thousands of feet. Northerners roared so loud half the stands rattled. Some nobles clapped with stiff hands; others froze entirely, unable to believe what they’d witnessed.

Up at the announcer’s box, the narrator leaned into the speaking horn, voice trembling with disbelief.

“Ladies and gentlemen… I am at a loss for words. What we have just witnessed, what this boy has shown, defies every expectation! Strength, innovation, endurance…” A pause, a breath, a shake of words failing to catch up. “…I have been announcing for two decades, and I have never seen anything quite like that duel.”

The callers exchanged glances, stunned into silence. The narrator finally continued.

“That concludes the sanctioned matches for today! And I believe we can safely assume the Ashbound Compact will not have stronger challengers waiting tomorrow.”

The crowd roared again, cheers rising into a wall of sound that swallowed the air itself. Children waved banners. Northerners shook their mugs. Lionsguard members hammered the railings in triumph.

But not everyone shared the celebration.

Up in the higher stands, cloaked figures belonging to other guilds sat silent. Swordsworn Company. Emberfall Adventuring Corps. The Crimson Reapers. A dozen smaller guilds. None were smiling. Their knuckles whitened on armrests. Their expressions darkened. The shift in their posture said everything:

They hadn’t liked what they’d seen. Not one bit.

A twelve-year-old had just dismantled every champion Ashbound Compact could field, including the guildmaster himself. That wasn’t just a victory. It was a warning.

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