By the time the scolding finally ended, Ludger’s ears were still ringing.
That was what annoyed him the most.
Not the lecture itself. Not even the fact that his father had sold him out with the speed and shamelessness of a seasoned criminal trying to cut a deal for a lighter sentence. No, the worst part was that Arslan had done it purely to avoid sharing the blame.
The man had walked into the house with Ludger beside him, taken one look at Elaine’s face, and then explained the entire situation with the kind of honesty that only appeared when he was trying to preserve his own life.
He had mentioned the nonstop fighting. He had mentioned the prize money. He had mentioned the trash talk. And, naturally, he had made sure to present it in the worst possible way.
Ludger was fairly certain that if given enough time, Arslan would have found a way to describe it as some sort of illegal underground festival too. As a result, Elaine had looked at Ludger in silence for a few long seconds, which had somehow been far worse than if she had simply started yelling immediately.
Instead, she used that calm tone that somehow made every word hit harder. She went through his recklessness, his complete lack of restraint, the fact that he had pushed himself for over a day without coming home, and the even more absurd fact that he had turned the northerners into a gambling crowd while doing it.
She also made it very clear that being strong did not magically exempt him from being an idiot. Ludger had taken the hits in silence. Mostly because arguing with his mother was like punching a stone wall and expecting it to apologize afterward.
By the time she finally let him go, his head felt heavier than it had after half the punches in the ring. So he retreated to his room. The door closed behind him.
He let out a slow breath, rolled his aching shoulders, and sat down on the edge of the bed for a moment, staring at the wall while the last remnants of his mother’s words continued to echo inside his skull.
“…I guess Dad knows that I am not telling everything about the work I had been doing lately and decided to punish me a little for it,” he muttered.
That part, at least, was objective truth. Still, after another breath, the irritation faded enough for him to focus on the useful part of the day.
He opened his status. Lines of familiar text appeared before his eyes. His gaze moved first toward the classes that had benefited the most from the madness.
Berserker and Monk.
Those two had risen more than the others, exactly as he had expected.
When it came to Berserker in particular, the value of fighting the northerners had been obvious almost immediately. Most of them had spent years sharpening the instincts and habits tied to that path. They might not have understood every skill with clean system terminology, but they had lived the principles behind them for most of their lives.
Berserker Lv 59 (+6 STR, +4 VIT, +2 END / level)
Skills: [Rage Flow Lv. 71]
[Blood Rush Lv. 61]
[Crimson Howl Lv. 31]
[Frenzy Guard Lv. 31]
[War Cry Lv. 31]
[Pain Tolerance Lv 25]
Battle Instinct Lv. 29 - improves combat awareness during close-range engagements; enhances reaction speed when under pressure.
Last Stand Lv. 27 - Temporarily increases physical output when heavily injured or near exhaustion.
Adrenal Surge Lv. 32 - Momentary burst of speed and explosive force after receiving damage.
Bone Breaker Lv. 28 - Enhances blunt-force penetration; improves damage against armor, bones, and defensive stances.
Relentless Drive Lv. 26 - Reduces stamina loss during prolonged combat/training.
Killer Intent Lv. 25 - Passive pressure aura that weakens enemy morale and hesitation in battle.
The ability to keep going after the body had already started complaining. The ability to hit back harder after taking a blow. The ability to push emotion into motion without becoming sloppy.
They had built those things through years of battle, hunting, cold, pride, and the simple northern refusal to collapse before the other side did. And Ludger had thrown himself into the middle of that. Again and again.
He began checking the skills one by one. That number alone said enough about how stupid the entire training session had looked from the outside.
Still, it was progress.
There were more gains beyond those, smaller refinements hidden in the body rather than the text. A better grasp of pacing. Better breathing while hurt. Better judgment on when to accept a hit and when avoiding it was worth the extra effort. A clearer instinct for how much strength to commit early without sabotaging himself later.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Then his focus shifted toward Monk. That class had benefitted too, though in a different way.
Not through rage. Through repetition. Through rhythm. Through body control while tired. He reviewed the new and familiar skills.
Monk Lv. 67 [+5 Strength, + 5 Vitality, + 5 Dexterity, + 5 Endurance.]
Skills: Vitality Well Lv 42
Iron Skin - Lv 53
Flowing Step - Lv 35
Impact Fist - Lv 44
Breath Control - Lv 36
Tempered Bones - Lv 33
Counter Force - Lv 34
Inner Circuit - Lv 32
Pressure Point Strike Lv 28 - improves precision attacks against joints, nerves, and weak points.
Steady Core Lv 31 - Enhances balance, footing, and resistance to knockback/displacement..
Muscle Control Lv 29 - Improves fine control over muscular output and explosive movements.
Reflex Guard Lv 27 - Increases defensive reaction speed during close combat exchanges.
Body Reading Lv 26 - Allows prediction of enemy movement through subtle body cues.
Perfect Form Lv 25 - Slightly improves efficiency and power of martial techniques when performed correctly.
A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
The nonstop fighting had sharpened more than just endurance. It had forced his basics to keep functioning under terrible conditions. Sloppy footwork got punished. Bad breathing got punished. Poor force transfer got punished. Any unnecessary motion became obvious once fatigue piled up high enough.
It was inefficient.
Brutal. Crude. And extremely effective. His mother had been right to scold him. His father had been a traitor. And yet Ludger could not deny the simple truth in front of him. He had learned a lot. A great deal, actually.
Enough that even now, with his face swollen and several parts of his body throbbing in protest, he could already feel the temptation creeping back in.
The northerners were useful. Very useful. Especially for Berserker.
They had instincts that books could not teach cleanly. Habits carved into them by blood and struggle. Ways of fighting that looked simple until one tried to replicate them and realized how much hidden experience supported every choice.
Ludger leaned back slightly and exhaled through his nose.
Despite the scolding, despite the exhaustion, and despite the risk of getting dragged back home by his mother personally next time…
He was absolutely willing to fight them again. Sooner rather than later, preferably. The thought alone made his expression turn a little more satisfied. Then he paused.
A second later, he frowned.
“…I should probably avoid letting Mother hear that.”
That was the truly difficult part.
In the end, Ludger turned it into a weekly event. That was probably the moment it stopped being a bad habit and officially became a problem.
Every seven days, the northerners’ camp would set aside a stretch of time for challenges, sparring, and what had now become known, with increasing enthusiasm and very little dignity, as the chance to take one hundred diamond coins from the little monster of Lionfang.
The prize remained the same. One hundred diamond coins. A sum large enough to make people greedy, stubborn, and stupid in exactly the right proportions.
Ludger had considered lowering it.
Then he had watched how much harder everyone trained once that number was attached to his name and decided against it almost immediately.
Money worked. Pride worked better. And when both were combined, the result was usually entertaining. Of course, there was one obvious problem. He could only fight so many of them at once.
Even for him, there were limits to how many challengers he could take in a single session before the whole thing stopped being useful training and started turning into a badly organized mob beating with extra shouting.
So the northerners solved the issue the way northerners solved most issues. They started beating each other first. A tournament formed almost naturally.
At first it had just been arguments. Too many volunteers, too much noise, too many people insisting they deserved the next shot more than the others. After the third week of nearly turning the sign-up process into a brawl larger than the actual main event, Kharnek finally stepped in, barked a few threats, and established a simple rule.
If they wanted the right to challenge Ludger, they had to earn it. That was all the excuse the camp needed.
Now, before Ludger’s weekly appearance, the northerners held their own rough tournament to decide who would face him. Brackets were drawn in the loosest possible sense of the word. Names were shouted. Matches were decided in rings of packed snow and churned mud. Bets changed hands constantly. Arguments broke out over who had slipped, who had stepped out, who had cheated, and whether biting technically counted if it happened by accident.
It did not help that to northerners, “accident” covered a very wide range of suspicious behavior.
By the time Ludger arrived each week, the atmosphere was already boiling. Fighters would be bruised before they ever reached him.
The crowd would be hungry for blood.
And the selected challengers, those who had clawed their way through their own people for the privilege, would step into the ring with enough aggression and humiliation-driven determination to make the whole thing worth it.
It was efficient. Ridiculous. Very northern. And it worked.
Ludger stood near the edge of the makeshift ring one such day, arms folded as he watched two large men hammer each other with forearms and shoulder checks in a semifinal that had long since stopped resembling anything civilized.
One of them charged too hard.
The other pivoted, slammed an elbow into his neck, and then finished the exchange with a knee to the stomach.
The crowd roared.
The loser stumbled back, coughing, then raised both hands and shouted something about fighting again later once his ribs stopped trying to stab him from the inside.
Ludger gave a faint nod. The quality had improved. Not dramatically. But enough.
Their footwork was cleaner than it had been when this started. Their pacing was better too. Less wasted aggression. More intent behind the violence. Even the ones who had no real chance against him were sharpening themselves just from trying to survive each other first.
That alone made the entire thing worthwhile.
And for Ludger personally, it had become one of the better parts of the week.
The Berserker class benefited the most, obviously. Fighting northerners over and over was practically a direct offering to that class. Their instincts, pressure, brutality, and refusal to yield all fed into it cleanly. But Monk gained from it too. Repetition. Timing. Endurance under strain. Maintaining form when tired. Finding the most efficient movement possible when the body was no longer interested in cooperating.
It was crude training.
Which was exactly why it was useful.
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