All Jobs and Classes! I Just Wanted One Skill, Not Them All!

Kharnek looked around the growing audience, then back at Ludger.

“What weapons are allowed?”

Ludger answered without hesitation.

“Any you want.”

That made Kharnek study him more seriously. The last time they had really sparred, it had ended more or less in a draw.

Not a clean one. But close enough.

Still, that had been years ago, and back then they had only used their fists. No weapons. No full expression of reach, leverage, or brutality. Just raw bodies, raw force, and the sort of direct contest both of them understood instinctively.

Now? Now things were different. Ludger was stronger. Stranger too. Sharper in more ways than before. And Kharnek was no fool. He knew time had changed them both. That only made the grin spreading across his face look more dangerous. Slowly, the huge northerner reached back and pulled the giant club from his back.

The weapon came free with a heavy, familiar sort of weight, thick enough and brutal enough to look less like something crafted for elegance and more like the natural endpoint of a man deciding that one concentrated piece of devastation was simpler than pretending subtlety had any value.

Kharnek rolled one shoulder and rested the club against it, grin widening as he wondered exactly how well Ludger would hold up once he started fighting seriously. Then the grin faded. Not fully.

Just enough to make room for a frown. Because Ludger, standing a short distance away, had calmly raised one hand and begun shaping earth. The ground shifted. Stone and packed dirt pulled together under his control, rising and compressing with practiced ease until the shape became obvious.

A club. The same size. The same rough proportions. The same kind of absurd, oversized bludgeon Kharnek himself carried. Kharnek stared at it for a second as the weapon finished taking shape in Ludger’s hand.

Then he frowned harder.

“What are you doing?”

Ludger tested the weight once, adjusted his grip slightly, and said, “You don’t need to worry about it.”

That answer was, naturally, unacceptable. Several spectators laughed immediately. A few shouted things that were probably meant to be encouragement and probably also counted as insults depending on how one translated them.

Kharnek clicked his tongue, clearly not pleased by the idea of Ludger copying his weapon choice so casually, but there was enough challenge in it that irritation only made the whole thing better.

If the boy wanted to imitate a giant club, then Kharnek would be happy to teach him the difference between shaping one and actually using it properly. Ludger lowered his center of gravity and assumed a fighting stance.

It was not identical to Kharnek’s. That would have been stupid. His body was built differently, his movement logic was different, and even when copying a weapon, Ludger had no intention of becoming a lesser version of the man across from him.

Still, the intent was clear. He was meeting Kharnek on that field. Heavy weapon against heavy weapon. Power against power. Kharnek watched him for another second. Then he grinned again, this time with more teeth.

And assumed his own stance. The giant club shifted in his hands as naturally as if it were part of his body, his enormous frame settling into readiness with a grounded, crushing sort of confidence that made the nearby dirt feel less stable just from the promise of motion.

Around them, the crowd quieted by degrees. Not fully. Northerners were not built for full silence. But enough. Enough for the air between the two fighters to tighten. Enough for everyone watching to understand that whatever happened next was going to be worth seeing.

Kharnek moved first.

There was no testing step. No cautious circling. No polite probing to “get a feel” for the other side like two sensible fighters who intended to keep all their bones in mostly recognizable positions.

He just came forward.

The giant northerner’s first step alone made the ground groan under his weight, snow and frost crunching hard beneath his boots as he drove himself into motion with the kind of raw force that made it feel less like a man attacking and more like a siege ram had suddenly grown a beard and bad habits. His club came with him in one brutal arc from the right, the weapon howling through the air with enough speed and mass that several of the onlookers instinctively leaned back before it even reached Ludger.

Ludger met it head-on. He stepped in instead of away.

His own earth-forged club snapped upward, and the two weapons collided with a sound like a wall being hit by thunder. The impact detonated across the clearing.

A sharp, violent crack burst outward, so loud that several spectators at the edge flinched and covered their ears on instinct. Snow exploded away from the clash point in every direction, blasted outward in a white ring that ripped across the ground and stripped the earth bare around them for several meters. Fine powder burst into the air, swirled violently, then got shredded apart by the force still rolling off the impact.

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Both clubs rebounded. Neither fighter gave ground. Kharnek’s grin widened immediately. Ludger’s eyes narrowed. Then Kharnek swung again.

This time the blow came from above, a savage overhead smash that carried the full weight of his shoulders, back, and monstrous frame behind it. Ludger shifted left, just enough to slide out from under the direct line of impact, then turned his own club and slammed it sideways into the descending shaft near the midpoint.

The redirection worked… but only barely.

Even with proper timing and angle, the force behind Kharnek’s strike was ridiculous. Ludger felt it travel through his arms, down his spine, and into the ground beneath his boots. The earth cracked under him as he redirected the blow, a short ugly split spreading from where he stood.

Kharnek used the rebound instantly. He didn’t reset. Didn’t pause.

He rolled his wrists, dragged the club around in a brutal diagonal backswing, and aimed straight for Ludger’s ribs.

Ludger bent backward just enough to let the head of the club tear through the space in front of him. The air itself seemed to scream under the swing. Snow and loose frost behind him burst apart from the displaced force alone.

Before Kharnek could fully recover, Ludger stepped back in and countered. His copied club lashed upward in a compact rising strike aimed straight at Kharnek’s jaw.

Kharnek jerked his head to the side and brought the lower section of his own club in to intercept. The weapons slammed together again with another ear-splitting crack. The second impact kicked up an even harsher wave of pressure, blasting more snow away and sending loose bits of ice skittering across the clearing like thrown knives.

People at the edge of the fight were no longer just watching. They were bracing.

A few had already stepped farther back. Others were shouting, laughing, or cursing in the ecstatic way only northerners could when something violent became entertaining enough to qualify as proper sport.

Ludger and Kharnek barely seemed to hear them. The exchange accelerated.

Kharnek pressed first, driving forward with one heavy strike after another, each swing large enough that it looked like it should have been easy to read. It wasn’t. That was the problem. For all the size and raw brutality of his weapon, Kharnek used it with terrifying efficiency. He chained momentum cleanly, rolling from shoulders to hips to legs in a way that made every blow feed the next. There was no wasted weight in him. No softness. Every strike came with intention and enough force to crush armor, break limbs, or turn a slower fighter into a memory.

Ludger met him in that storm.

Block. Turn. Redirect. Short counter. Step in. Step out.

His own club moved with less raw mass than Kharnek’s real weapon, but his control over it was absurd. Each time the copied weapon hit, the earth magic inside it tightened, reinforced, adjusted density, and corrected shape on the fly. When Kharnek’s club tried to bully through pure strength, Ludger answered with timing and structure. When timing wasn’t enough, he gave ground by a fraction, used that space to bleed force into the earth beneath him, and struck back the instant Kharnek overcommitted.

The clearing sounded like a battlefield forge gone insane. Every collision of the clubs burst like thunder. Every miss gouged the ground or shattered frozen earth.

Snow never had the chance to settle. The area around them had already been blasted nearly clear, and each new clash sent whatever remained skimming away in violent sheets.

Kharnek laughed mid-swing, a deep savage bark of enjoyment as he hammered down with another two-handed smash. Ludger caught it high, bracing his copied club horizontally above him. The impact hit hard enough to drive him down half a step, knees bending as the ground cratered under his boots.

Then Ludger twisted. Not backward. Forward.

He slid his club off Kharnek’s descending weapon, stepped inside the giant man’s reach, and slammed the butt end of his own club toward Kharnek’s stomach.

Kharnek reacted instantly, dragging one knee up just enough that the strike hit thigh instead of gut. The impact still landed with force, enough to make the huge northerner grunt and shift his weight.

Ludger followed immediately with a second strike, short, brutal, horizontal, aimed at the ribs.

Kharnek pivoted and took it on the thick lower part of his own club, but the speed of the counter still caught him a little off guard. The force shoved him sideways a step through the stripped earth of the clearing.

That got a roar from the spectators. Not because Kharnek had taken a step. Because someone had made him. Kharnek planted his foot, dug in, and came back harder.

His next swing was monstrous.

No finesse. No restraint. Just a full-body horizontal sweep that looked like it wanted to erase everything from Ludger’s chest upward. Ludger ducked under it by less than an inch, felt the displaced air hammer over his head, then drove upward from beneath with a rising blow aimed straight for Kharnek’s weapon arm.

Kharnek yanked back just enough to reduce the direct hit, but Ludger’s club still smashed into his forearm and the lower haft of the giant club together with a jarring crack. Kharnek’s grip shifted for the first time.

Small. But real.

Ludger saw it. So did Kharnek. And the grin on the northerner’s face got wider. That was the real answer to the question hanging over all of this. Kharnek had not grown weaker. Not even close.

For all his slacking, for all the drinking, the meat, the loud laziness, and Sigrid’s apparent need to manage him like an overgrown beast with a talent for bad habits, the man had grown stronger.

A lot stronger.

His body carried more power now. His timing was better. His balance was better. Even his weapon handling, still savage and direct by nature, had become denser somehow. More complete. Every blow carried years of actual growth behind it.

The old Kharnek had been dangerous. This one was worse. And Ludger loved that. Because it meant he wasn’t wasting his time.

Kharnek drove at him again, opening with a brutal feint high before turning it mid-motion into a low smashing sweep meant to take Ludger’s legs out from under him. Ludger hopped over the sweep, rotated in the air, and brought his own club down at Kharnek’s shoulder on the descent.

Kharnek met that with a one-handed upward block that should have been too awkward to work.

It worked anyway.

The collision boomed so hard that one of the younger spectators at the edge flinched and nearly stumbled backward into another warrior. More snow burst outward. A few people covered their ears again, cursing through grins as the sound rolled across the camp like war drums being beaten by angry gods.

Ludger landed.

Kharnek surged.

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