Kharnek’s club came from the right with enough force to rip the air apart. Ludger stepped in, not out, and slammed his own weapon against it at an angle. The impact burst like thunder, a wave of pressure blasting outward so violently that a line of nearby spectators stumbled back together, swearing as dirt and shards of stone smacked into their legs.
Ludger twisted his hips, bled the force down into the ground, and drove the butt of his club toward Kharnek’s throat.
Kharnek swatted it aside with one hand on the shaft and smashed down with a one-armed follow-up that should have been awkward and wasn’t. Ludger barely got his club up in time. The blow hammered him down to one knee, the earth beneath him splitting open with a sharp ugly crack.
Then Ludger surged back up.
He slammed upward with everything Rage Flow fed him, forcing Kharnek’s club off line, and the two of them entered another furious sequence of pure heavy trading.
No finesse now. No careful testing. Just power.
Kharnek hammered downward. Ludger met it. Ludger whipped a diagonal strike toward the ribs. Kharnek caught it and smashed back across the shoulders. Ludger rolled the blow, repaired another spreading fracture in his club, and blasted a counter at knee height. Kharnek absorbed it on the lower haft and fired back immediately with a rising smash that nearly took Ludger’s chin off.
The clearing had become a forge of noise.
Every impact shoved more loose dirt away. Every miss tore gouges into the ground. The repeated blasts of force made people’s clothing snap and flap at the edge of the crowd. One younger northerner who got too close had to be dragged backward by two laughing veterans before a stray shockwave knocked him on his ass.
And still they kept going.
Kharnek laughed once in the middle of it, wild and savage, and drove forward into a five-blow sequence that looked less like martial technique and more like a mountain trying to kill a man personally.
First strike, overhead. Ludger blocked, feet digging trenches. Second, left horizontal. Ludger turned it, club cracking near the midpoint.
Third, reverse backhand.
Ludger ducked under, repaired the crack with a violent pull of earth, and countered high. Fourth, short brutal slam downward.
Ludger caught it again, but the force traveled wrong this time. Both clubs hit at a bad angle. The shock jumped up Kharnek’s arm as he overcommitted into the follow-through.
Fifth, he forced the next smash anyway. And that was where the damage finally appeared.
The collision was catastrophic.
Their clubs met almost perfectly in the center line between them, and the force of both Rage-enhanced bodies crashing through their weapons at once created a boom so violent that several people in the crowd visibly flinched and clutched at their ears. A ring of dirt and stone erupted outward. Kharnek’s shoulder took the feedback badly, too much torque, too much committed force, too much stress carried through one side of the body after that relentless sequence.
There was a sick, sharp shift in the joint.
Then a pop. Kharnek’s right shoulder dislocated.
Not dramatically enough for fools in stories. Just horribly enough for a fighter to know immediately. His arm lost the proper line for an instant.
That instant was all Ludger needed. His eyes sharpened.
He stepped inside before Kharnek could recover, slammed his copied club hard into the giant northerner’s weapon near the grip with a vicious rising angle, and at the same time drove his shoulder and body weight into Kharnek’s centerline.
The compromised arm failed him. Kharnek’s grip broke.
His giant club tore free and went spinning through the air, sailing across the clearing end over end before slamming into the ground in the distance hard enough to half-bury itself in broken earth.
The crowd exploded.
Shouting. Laughter. Disbelief. Roars of excitement. A few people were already pointing at the distant weapon like they wanted to confirm to themselves that yes, Kharnek had actually just been disarmed.
Kharnek stood there dumbfounded. Not frozen by fear. Just genuinely stunned.
Because apparently he had not expected to suffer that kind of damage in a straight exchange. Not to the shoulder. Not from raw impact chain alone. Not like this.
Then again…
He had never really experienced a trade of blows that intense before. Not with someone who could meet that kind of brutality head-on, survive it, answer it, and keep adapting through it instead of eventually folding under the weight.
Ludger lowered his own club slightly, the earth-made weapon still shedding dust and tiny fragments before quietly repairing itself one last time.
Kharnek rolled his damaged shoulder once out of reflex, hissed, then stopped. He looked at Ludger. Ludger looked back. Kharnek did not say yield. He did not surrender.
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He also didn’t pick up another weapon, rush forward barehanded, or pretend the fight was still balanced.
The fight was over. They both knew it.
The huge northerner exhaled through his nose, reached across with his good arm, and grabbed the damaged shoulder. With a hard ugly shove and a grimace that twisted half his face, he forced it back into place.
The joint set with a nasty pop. A few spectators winced in sympathy. Kharnek rotated the arm once, slower this time, then let out a long sigh.
“…That was annoying,” he muttered.
Ludger’s mouth twitched faintly.
Kharnek shot him one last look, half irritation, half savage amusement, then turned and started walking toward where his club had landed.
The crowd parted for him automatically, still buzzing with the wild energy of people who had just watched something worth talking about for months.
And Ludger, standing in the wrecked center of the clearing with a half-broken earth club in hand and Rage Flow still simmering through his body, finally felt that deep familiar satisfaction settle into his bones.
Yes.
That counted as training. Ludger watched Kharnek walk off to retrieve his club, then turned toward the crowd. The northerners were already loud again. Too loud, probably.
A mix of laughter, shouted insults, excited retellings of things that had happened less than ten seconds ago, and the general violent enthusiasm of people who had just watched a real fight instead of the watered-down nonsense most settlements called entertainment.
So Ludger lifted his voice just enough to cut through the noise and said, “Anyone who wants to fight me can step forward.”
That got their attention fast.
He rested the earth-forged club against one shoulder and added, “The reward is one hundred diamond coins.”
The clearing changed immediately. It was almost funny. One moment the northerners were just spectators enjoying someone else getting hit hard enough to dislocate a shoulder. The next, they were very interested in becoming participants.
A queue started forming with alarming speed.
Not even an orderly one at first. Just a rough, surging mess of shoulders, arguing, posturing, and people loudly explaining why they should obviously get to go first, second, or at least before that idiot over there who couldn’t even keep his feet under him during last winter’s drinking contest.
Ludger watched it with mild approval. This would do.
Technically, he could have asked them to put some of their own money into the bet too. It would have been easy enough. A challenger puts down coin, Ludger puts down more, and suddenly the whole thing becomes a much cleaner transaction with less personal cost to him.
But no.
He didn’t need to make money off the northerners like that. Not now. This wasn’t about profit. This was training.
Good, honest, bruising, repetitive training wrapped in the kind of reward system that guaranteed no shortage of volunteers. The northerners would come for the money, the pride, the chance to brag, and the even more important chance to say they had gone at Ludger seriously and not died.
That was more than enough. Before long, the first proper challenger after Kharnek approached.
A big man, broad-shouldered and eager-looking, carrying a large axe that had clearly seen real use instead of just being polished for show. The edge was heavy, the shaft worn in the right places, and the wielder carried it with the comfort of someone who trusted it more than most people trusted friends.
Ludger looked at the weapon once. Then he raised a hand. Earth shifted.
Stone and dirt rose from the wrecked ground of the clearing, twisting together under his control. The material compressed, hardened, and took shape with practiced ease until a copy of the axe formed in his hand, matching the original in size, balance, and broad ugly killing intent.
The challenger blinked.
Then grinned. The crowd roared in approval. That was becoming part of the appeal now. Ludger wasn’t just fighting them. He was meeting them on their field. Club for club. Axe for axe.
Whatever weapon they trusted, he would shape a copy and show them exactly how far that trust could carry them.
He rolled the copied axe once in his grip, adjusted the weight, and looked at the northerner in front of him.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
That was all the invitation the man needed.
He bared his teeth, tightened both hands on his axe, and stepped forward into the clearing while the rest of the queue behind him kept growing, full of bored, blood-hungry northerners suddenly discovering that the best part of the day had just begun.
The next day, around mid-afternoon, Arslan finally returned home.
He looked about as he usually did after a long stretch of guild work, solid, steady, and just tired enough at the edges that anyone who didn’t know him well might miss it. Still, the moment he stepped into the yard and saw Arash and Elle with training sticks already waiting nearby, some of that heaviness seemed to ease.
Naturally.
The twins had that effect on him more often now.
Before long, he was helping them with their practice again.
Arash stood with too much enthusiasm and not enough balance. Elle looked more focused, though in a way that suggested she was one correction away from overthinking the movement completely. Arslan adjusted both of them with the patient efficiency of a man who understood that teaching children was less about perfection and more about making sure they didn’t grow into fools with weapons.
“Again,” he said, stepping back.
The twins nodded and swung. Not badly. Not well either. But they were trying, and that counted for something.
Arslan corrected Arash’s shoulders, then tapped Elle’s wrist lightly and told her not to lock the grip so hard. Both listened with matching seriousness, trying very hard to look competent and disciplined in the way only children could when they cared more about approval than actual technique.
The scene might have stayed peaceful.
Might have. Then Elaine appeared.
She walked into the yard with her arms crossed and an annoyed expression already in place, which was generally enough to make most sensible people review their last several decisions in silence before she even spoke.
Arslan noticed her and blinked once.
Elaine stopped a short distance away and asked, “Why are you home so soon?”
Arslan stared at her for a second.
Then said, “What do you mean, why?”
His brow furrowed faintly.
“I’m done with work already.”
That should have been a reasonable answer.
Elaine did not look impressed.
“How,” she asked, “are you done already when Ludger stayed in the guild through the night and until now?”
That made Arslan pause. Not long. Just enough.
Then he said, “He didn’t spend the night there.”
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