Arslan watched the next challenger step forward, watched Ludger crack his neck like he was preparing for another hour of insanity rather than another human being, and then decided that enough was enough.
Before the northerner could fully enter the ring, Arslan vaulted over the boundary himself and landed between them. The reaction was immediate. The crowd went from roaring excitement to confused outrage in less than a heartbeat.
Ludger blinked once, then frowned slightly. “What are you doing?”
Arslan ignored him and looked around at the packed ring of spectators. Then he raised a hand and spoke with the flat authority of a man who had no intention of arguing.
“The fighting is over.”
The response from the crowd was instant and hostile. Booing erupted from all sides.
Several northerners shouted protests. One cursed loudly. Another demanded that Arslan get out of the way. A few even looked personally offended, as if he had just interrupted a sacred ritual rather than an improvised brawl that had been going on for more than a day.
Arslan let them complain for about three seconds.
Then he shrugged and said, “You can complain to my wife if you want.”
Silence. It dropped over the area so quickly it almost felt unnatural. A few mouths remained half open. One particularly loud northerner immediately looked away as if he had never said anything in the first place.
Even the men at the back shut up. Ludger snorted softly. Arslan wasn’t even surprised. Elaine had never needed to beat people in a ring for her name to spread.
She had never needed to throw punches, swing a sword, or shatter boulders with raw strength.
Her aura alone was enough. And once the stories started, they had only grown worse.
By now, even in the north, people knew of Elaine and the so-called Star Widow’s Wrath. The title had become a strange mix of rumor, myth, and collective survival instinct. Some said her stare could freeze a man’s soul in place. Others claimed she had once made a drunken mercenary apologize to the air itself after speaking too loudly near her children. A few of the more imaginative northerners seemed convinced she could kill a man with disappointment alone.
It was all nonsense. Mostly. Still, nonsense stopped being harmless when enough people believed it. And they clearly did.
Arslan folded his arms. “That’s what I thought.”
No one argued. No one even muttered particularly loudly. The fight ring, which had been one loud insult away from turning into another round of chaos, suddenly became very disciplined.
Ludger wiped blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, then glanced around at the silent crowd.
“Sorry, guys,” he said, sounding not sorry at all. “This is over for now.”
A wave of groans spread through the northerners, but much quieter this time.
Then Ludger smirked, pointed lazily at a few of them, and added, “Train a bit more and get stronger so you guys can stop boring me like this.”
That did it. The northerners exploded into trash talk immediately.
“Boring?”
“You little bastard!”
“Say that again after I break your teeth next time!”
“You’ve been standing there getting punched for a day and think that makes you special?”
“One more round!”
“Fight me next, then!”
Ludger only laughed under his breath.
His face was swollen, his knuckles were split, blood stained his mouth, and steam still curled from his battered body in faint waves. He looked like someone had dragged him through a battlefield and handed him back in a mood good enough to be insulting.
Which, in fairness, was basically accurate.
With that same irritating smirk still on his face, he stepped out of the ring and walked off beside Arslan while the northerners continued shouting after him.
Not one of them sounded truly angry. If anything, most of them sounded more motivated than offended. Ludger clearly knew that too. Of course he did.
Arslan glanced sideways at his son as they left the fighting grounds behind. “You really don’t know how to stop talking, do you?”
Ludger shrugged. “If they get mad enough to train harder, that sounds useful.”
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Arslan sighed.
That answer was so completely Ludger that he didn’t even know why he had bothered asking.
As they walked away from the roaring camp, with curses and challenges still being thrown at Ludger’s back, Arslan glanced sideways at his son.
Ludger looked rough.
Not injured enough to worry Arslan—not truly—but rough enough that no one with common sense would call this a productive use of time.
His face was bruised and swollen, one eye slightly darker than the other, his knuckles torn open, and his clothes looked like they had spent the last day losing arguments against fists, boots, and frozen ground.
And despite all that, the brat somehow looked satisfied.
Arslan exhaled through his nose. “What was the point of all that?”
Ludger kept walking for another few steps before answering.
“I needed it.”
Arslan raised a brow. “That explains absolutely nothing.”
Ludger wiped at the dried blood near his mouth with the back of his hand. “I needed something that would push me to the limit without relying on magic every few seconds.”
That made Arslan’s expression shift slightly. Ludger noticed, but kept going.
“I’ve been leaning too much on my stronger options lately,” he said. “Not because I had a better choice, but because I got used to having them. Earth magic. Reinforcement. Overdrive. Rage Flow. Other techniques. Skills that let me solve problems by overwhelming them.”
He flexed one hand once, as if testing the ache in his fingers.
“That works. But it also makes it too easy to skip the boring parts.”
Arslan stayed quiet. Ludger rarely talked this much about his own training unless he had already thought it through from every angle.
“I wanted to force myself into a situation where I couldn’t just end things cleanly whenever I felt like it,” Ludger continued. “No easy resets. No throwing people away with magic. No controlling distance perfectly. Just pacing. Movement. Timing. Breathing. Endurance. Learning how much I could spend without burning out too early.”
Arslan looked ahead as they walked through the snow-packed path. “So you turned yourself into a punching bag for a day?”
Ludger shrugged. “More efficient than it sounds.”
Arslan snorted. “That’s a lie.”
“It’s only half a lie,” Ludger replied. “Getting hit that much teaches useful things too.”
That, unfortunately, sounded exactly like something his son would believe.
Ludger rolled one shoulder, then added, “At first, I was just trying to keep winning. After a while, it became more about maintaining a rhythm. How much force to use. When to speed up. When to let the other side burn themselves out. When to accept a hit instead of wasting energy avoiding it badly. How to stay sharp once the body starts getting heavy.”
He glanced down at his own hands.
“I learned a lot.”
Arslan studied him for a moment.
And annoying as it was… Ludger probably wasn’t wrong.
That kind of training was stupid on the surface, but beneath the stupidity there was a clean logic to it. Endless repetition. Controlled exhaustion. Continuous adaptation against different bodies, different habits, different levels of aggression. It wasn’t refined training, but for someone like Ludger, who could absorb patterns and sharpen himself in the middle of chaos, it was probably ridiculously effective.
Then again, that did not make it less insane.
“And the diamond coins?” Arslan asked. “What was that about?”
Ludger’s mouth curved faintly.
“The northerners needed a reason.”
Arslan looked at him again.
Ludger went on in the same calm tone, as if he were explaining something obvious. “They’ve gotten stronger since settling here. Better food. Better security. Better gear. Better future. That’s good.” He paused. “It also makes people softer if they’re not careful.”
Arslan didn’t interrupt.
“The northerners thrive on pressure,” Ludger said. “Competition too. If they don’t have something pushing them, some of them will get lazy. Or sloppier. Or satisfied.”
He looked back once toward the camp they had left behind, where shouting could still be heard even from this distance.
“So I gave them something simple. Beat me, take my money, prove you’re tough.”
Arslan let out a low hum. That… also made sense. Annoyingly.
Ludger sighed and rubbed the side of his jaw. “Some came for the coins. Some came because they were irritated. Some came because the others came. Doesn’t matter. They fought. They pushed harder. They’ll keep talking about it. Which means they’ll keep training to avoid getting mocked next time.”
His smirk returned, smaller now but still there.
“And while they did that, I got what I wanted too.”
Arslan shook his head slowly.
“So let me get this straight,” he said. “You beat the hell out of yourself for over two days because you wanted to improve your basics, test your pacing, and trick the northerners into training harder through greed and pride.”
Ludger thought about it for a second.
“…Yes.”
Arslan stared at him.
Then he sighed the long, weary sigh of a father who had long since accepted that his son’s thought process was both terrifyingly sharp and profoundly irritating.
“You do realize,” Arslan said, “that normal people would’ve just held a training session.”
Ludger glanced at him. “That wouldn’t have worked as well.”
“That isn’t the defense you think it is.”
“It worked.”
Arslan clicked his tongue. Again, that was the worst part. It had worked.
The northerners had been roaring like madmen. Half of them were probably already planning how to challenge Ludger next time. The other half were probably planning how not to get humiliated when they did. And Ludger, absurd little monster that he was, had clearly wrung real results out of the madness.
Arslan shoved his hands into his sleeves and kept walking.
“I’m still the one who has to explain this to your mother.”
Ludger’s expression became a little more cautious at that. That alone improved Arslan’s mood.
After a moment, Ludger said, “You can just tell her I was training.”
Arslan gave him a flat look. “Yes. Because that will definitely cover the part where you turned the northerners’ camp into an underground fist-fighting ring with prize money.”
Ludger was silent for a beat.
“…Leave out the prize money.”
Arslan barked a short laugh despite himself.
“No,” he said. “I think I’ll include that part first.”
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