Drarc’s laughter died. Not gradually. One moment the sound was still rolling through the ruined street, full of cruel amusement, and the next it stopped as if something had reached into the night and strangled it.
The atmosphere had changed. He felt it immediately.
The air itself had grown heavier, denser, charged with the kind of pressure that only came when Ludger had done something again. Something irritating. Something dangerous. Something that would no doubt make this fight even more troublesome than it already was.
Drarc’s eyes narrowed as he stared into the settling dust. He could tell the brat had changed something. He just had no idea what. Then the dust rippled.
Before he could move, before he could even fully track the shift, Ludger was suddenly right in front of him.
The appearance was so abrupt it looked wrong, like space itself had folded and spat him out at point-blank range. The air around Ludger distorted in faint waves, bending slightly from the sheer density of mana gathered around his body. A green aura covered him from head to toe, flowing over his frame in layered currents that looked calmer than the red fury underneath them.
Because the red was still there.
Still worse than before.
His whole body looked more swollen, the muscles packed tighter beneath his skin as if Rage Flow had climbed another step into dangerous territory. The redness had deepened too, crawling across him with ugly intensity, making him look less like a human using power and more like something forcing too much through flesh that was never meant to bear it.
Drarc didn’t hesitate.
His claws shot forward in one savage motion, aiming to pierce Ludger clean through before the brat could show what trick he had just pulled.
He never got the chance. Ludger’s fist slammed into his face. There was no grand windup. No wasted movement. Just a single punch driven straight into the guardian’s skull with enough force to make the world crack around them.
The impact distorted the air again, a violent burst of compressed power exploding outward from Ludger’s knuckles the instant they connected. Drarc’s head snapped to the side, the scales across his face and jaw grinding under the hit, and then the rest of his massive body followed.
He flew. Not stumbled. Not slid. Flew.
The giant guardian shot backward like he had been struck by siege artillery, his huge scaled body tearing across the ruined street and smashing back toward the castle in a straight line of devastation. Stone exploded where he hit. Walls burst apart. Half-broken structures collapsed all over again as his body ripped through them, vanishing into the distance beneath a storm of debris and shattered masonry.
The sound of the impact rolled back through the capital a breath later. Ludger remained where he was, fist still extended for half a second, green aura flowing over his battered body while the red beneath it made him look increasingly monstrous.
Then he lowered his hand slowly. His expression hadn’t changed at all. Rubble shifted. Then exploded outward.
Drarc rose from the wreckage in a violent surge of movement, chunks of stone and broken timber sliding off his scaled body as he forced himself upright. Dust rolled off the dark metallic plates covering him in waves, and fragments of shattered wall cracked under the weight of his claws as he planted them into the ground. The ruined section of the castle around him groaned again, weakened supports finally giving up as more debris collapsed from above.
For a moment, he just stood there, breath heavy, head lowered.
Then he lifted one forelimb and looked at himself.
One of the scales near the side of his face, close to the upper jawline where the silver-black plating thickened the most, had a dent in it.
Not a scratch. Not a superficial mark. A deep dent.
The metallic scale had been driven inward just enough to be undeniable, the damage catching the moonlight in a warped line that should not have existed at all.
Drarc stared at it. That had never happened before. Not against men. Not against mages. Not against warriors who covered their fists in flashy power and called it strength. No human should have been strong enough to do that.
His eyes lifted.
Far in the distance, through the ruined line of collapsed walls and broken streets, he could see Ludger standing there.
Watching him. Not panting. Not shaking. Not looking particularly impressed with what he had just done. Just watching, like denting the scale of a labyrinth guardian was something too minor to deserve emotion.
Then Ludger moved.
One step. That was all. And a full kilometer disappeared. Drarc’s eyes widened. The brat didn’t blur under mana.
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There was no flash of elemental buildup, no obvious spell formation, no visible burst of Wind Step, no twisted air-lines of movement magic guiding the motion.
He just… crossed the distance. Through sheer physical force. Ludger had used nothing but his body.
No magic. Only raw strength. Drarc felt a cold pulse of disbelief crawl through his chest. Was he holding back that much until now? That didn’t make sense. Not even slightly.
The amount of force required to move like that without direct magic should have torn a normal human body apart. Even most monsters would have needed some kind of support. Yet Ludger had done it like his flesh had simply decided to stop respecting the limits that should have bound it.
And the truth was exactly that. Ludger had chosen. He had decided that Drarc was the most dangerous enemy in the capital and needed to die first.
That made everything else secondary. The pain later. The damage later. The cost later. All of it could wait. Because right now, he needed to make sure every real threat in the capital stayed there.
Stayed focused on him. Stayed too busy fighting him to chase Luna, Viola, Torvares, or Silva. So he had pushed Rage Flow higher.
Not once. Not twice. Three times. Rage Flow ×3.
A level that turned his already stressed body into something dangerously close to self-destruction. The green aura flowing over him was the only reason his flesh hadn’t already started ripping itself apart in earnest, healing and reinforcement struggling to keep pace with the abuse. His muscles had swollen further, skin redder and tighter than before, veins standing out across his arms and neck while the air around him trembled faintly from the pressure leaking off his frame.
It was not sustainable. It was not smart. It was not something he could keep using without paying for it later. But later did not matter yet. Drarc barely had time to process that before Ludger was in front of him again. Close enough now that the guardian could see the details clearly.
The redness in the skin. The swelling in the muscle. The green aura trying to hold the body together. And the eyes. Flat. Cold.
Resolved in the kind of way that meant the brat had already accepted the consequences and no longer cared.
That, more than the dented scale, unsettled Drarc for a fraction of a second.
Because there was a difference between fighting someone strong… and fighting someone who had already decided his own body was expendable as long as the enemy died first.
Drarc moved first. This time, there was no testing. No probing strike. No arrogance in the motion. Just killing intent.
The massive beast lunged forward, both forelimbs sweeping in a brutal crossing arc meant to tear Ludger apart in a single exchange. The claws screamed through the air, each one carrying enough force to split buildings cleanly in half.
Ludger didn’t block. He slipped. A half-step to the side, barely enough to let the claws pass his chest by inches. The wind pressure alone tore fabric and scraped skin, but he was already moving before the attack finished.
His fist drove forward. It slammed into the joint where Drarc’s forelimb met the shoulder.
Crack.
A scale dented inward.
Drarc flinched. Not much. But enough. Ludger was already gone from that position.
The beast’s tail came whipping around from behind, a massive arc of plated metal aimed to crush everything in its path. Ludger dropped low, the tail passing over his head close enough to tug at his hair, then he stepped in again.
A rising elbow. It crashed into the underside of Drarc’s jaw.
Another crack. Another dent.
This time the guardian’s head jerked upward, the impact forcing a low, distorted growl out of its throat.
Drarc retaliated instantly. A downward slam of both claws.
The ground exploded where Ludger had been standing a heartbeat earlier, stone erupting upward in jagged spikes from the sheer force. Ludger had already moved—Wind Step carrying him to the side in a short burst, reappearing near the beast’s flank.
He didn’t hesitate. A kick to the ribs.
The scales held… the force behind the strike drove a shallow dent into them anyway, the impact rippling through the armored body beneath.
Drarc’s entire side shifted slightly from it. That shouldn’t have happened. The beast twisted violently, jaws snapping toward Ludger in a sudden bite. Rows of metallic fangs closed where his head had been, the air cracking from the pressure alone.
Ludger ducked inside the motion. Too close for the jaws to track properly. His fists moved in a brutal sequence. One to the throat. One to the chest. One to the same dented scale near the jaw. Each strike landed with surgical precision. Each one carried the full weight of Rage Flow ×3 behind it.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
The third hit deepened the dent enough that Drarc’s head snapped sideways again, a clear reaction this time, pain.
Real pain. Drarc roared.
The sound blasted outward, rattling nearby buildings as the beast lashed out with both claws in a frenzy of sweeping strikes. This time there was no clean rhythm, just raw speed and overwhelming coverage, aiming to shred everything within reach.
Ludger moved through it.
He slipped under one claw, twisted past another, stepped into the narrow spaces between attacks that shouldn’t have existed at that speed. Each movement was precise, minimal, wasting nothing as he threaded himself through a storm of killing blows.
And every time he cleared one… He hit back. A straight punch into the forelimb joint. A hook into the lower ribs. A palm strike into the base of the neck.
A kick to the rear leg. Each counter landed exactly where it mattered. Each one left another dent.
Another crack.
Another flinch.
Drarc’s movements began to change. Subtly.
The confidence in the swings shifted into something sharper. More cautious. Because the difference had become undeniable. Before… Ludger’s attacks had been annoying. Now… They hurt.
Drarc lunged again, trying to pin him with sheer size, claws stabbing downward in a rapid sequence meant to corner him against the broken street.
Ludger let himself be pushed back. One step. Two. Three. Until the fourth claw came down… And he stepped inside it.
His fist drove upward again. This time into the already damaged section of scale along Drarc’s face. The impact sounded different.
Heavier. Sharper.
The dent deepened violently, the metallic plate warping further under the concentrated strike. Drarc’s head snapped back again, a clear break in his rhythm now.
A real flinch.
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