novelraw Chapter 455
Chapter 455
Across the arena, the whip-user stopped mid-motion.
The lightning ring above him destabilized for a fraction of a second, arcs faltering as his attention snapped fully onto Ludger. His whips slackened just enough to betray the shift in focus. Cold eyes widened, not in fear, but in recalculation.
This wasn’t part of the plan. Ludger rolled one wrist, testing the balance of the blade. Then the other. The swords moved as naturally as extensions of his arms, mana responding instantly to intention, edge alignment adjusting with micro-corrections no normal forge could achieve.
He didn’t smile. He didn’t pose.
He simply stood there, twin blue blades humming softly in his hands, blood dried on his shoulder, eyes calm and curious, like someone who had just learned a new tool and wanted to see how well it worked. And for the first time since the match began, the opponent hesitated.
An idea slipped into Ludger’s mind—sharp, sudden, and interesting enough that his lips curled on their own.
It was the kind of smile people didn’t like.
The kind that made instincts itch.
For just a heartbeat, that familiar, unnerving smirk crossed his face, the one he usually kept buried under calm discipline and dry humor. The audience caught it, just barely, and a ripple of unease passed through the stands. A few people shifted in their seats. Someone laughed nervously. Someone else whispered a prayer.
For a split second, more than one spectator wondered if Ludger had been possessed by something unpleasant. Then he checked himself.
The smile faded. His expression smoothed back into focus, intent settling cleanly behind his eyes. He wasn’t here to terrify the city, just to make a point.
Ludger lifted one of the crystalline magic swords and pointed it straight toward the sky.
The moment the blade aligned upward, his mana surged. Not violently. Not explosively. It expanded.
A wide, controlled bloom of power radiated outward from his body, rolling across the arena floor like an invisible tide. The air thickened. Light bent slightly. Even the crackling lightning above the opponent faltered, its rhythm disrupted by the sudden presence of overwhelming structure. Then the swords appeared.
One after another, blue mana blades manifested in the air around Ludger, dozens of them, forming in perfect symmetry. They hovered at varying heights and angles, points angled outward, edges humming with contained force. Each sword looked identical to the ones in his hands: crystalline, dense, stable, and very real.
They didn’t spin wildly. They didn’t drift. They waited.
Suspended in a silent ring around him, like a disciplined formation frozen mid-charge. The arena went dead quiet as people realized what they were looking at. Ludger lowered the raised blade slightly and spoke, voice carrying clearly across the stunned crowd.
“Behold,” he said evenly, “my Gate of Lionsguard.”
The words settled heavy. It wasn’t just a spell. It wasn’t just a technique. It was a statement.
At the entrance of the waiting chamber, half-hidden behind the stone archway that led back into the arena corridors, Rufas stood frozen. Dumbfounded didn’t even begin to cover it.
Only minutes ago, minutes, he had explained principles. Angles. Control. Weapon-space management. He’d demonstrated the theory once, briefly, assuming it would take months, maybe years, for anyone without formal weapon training to internalize it. Ludger had even joked about it then.
Now he pulled it off.
Not only had Ludger learned it in a handful of minutes, he had adapted it, twisted it into something uniquely his own. With that absurd mana pool, with that terrifying control, he wasn’t limited to one weapon. He wasn’t even limited to two.
He had made a formation. Rufas swallowed. That wasn’t learning fast. That was rewriting expectations. Out in the arena, Ludger didn’t hesitate. He brought the sword in his right hand down in a clean, decisive arc. The air answered.
Every floating mana blade reacted instantly, snapping forward like disciplined soldiers responding to a command. They didn’t scatter or spiral wildly. They advanced, each blade choosing a trajectory, spacing itself so they wouldn’t collide, angling to overwhelm rather than overwhelm blindly.
The whip-user reacted on pure instinct.
Both whips exploded into motion, lightning screaming as he spun them into a frantic defensive storm. Leather cracked, metal rang, electricity tore through the air as he parried blade after blade, sparks detonating with every impact. His movements were precise, practiced, desperate. But there were too many.
He could block one. Then two. Then three. Not ten. Not twenty. The formation collapsed inward.
Mana swords punched through his defenses, piercing into limbs at controlled angles. One stabbed cleanly through his thigh. Another ripped into his upper arm. A third drove into his shoulder, pinning muscle without shattering bone. Blood sprayed, dark and hot, as the man staggered, whips faltering under the sudden weight of pain.
Yet none struck his neck. None pierced his heart. None severed his spine. Ludger had aimed around the vitals.
From the stands, the audience screamed, some in awe, some in horror, as the unknown fighter was riddled with glowing blue blades, forced to his knees under the sheer volume of controlled violence.
Ludger felt a familiar irritation tighten his jaw. Holding back always did this. Slowed things. Complicated things.
If this were a labyrinth, if there were no spectators, no politics, no children watching from the stands, this would already be over. But this was the capital. And that meant restraint.
So he let the swords hang there, pinning, disabling, ending the fight without ending the man. It couldn’t be helped.
Still… Ludger’s eyes stayed cold as the dust settled, mana humming softly around him.
The whip-user tried to move.
It was instinct more than thought, his legs jerking backward, arms tensing as his hands reached for the blue blades impaled through muscle and flesh. His fingers closed around one of the crystalline hilts, teeth grinding as he tried to wrench it free.
He took one step. Then his strength failed him.
His legs buckled, knees giving out as pain and blood loss finally caught up. His body tipped forward, momentum carrying him down, and he hit the sand face-first with a dull, final thud.
For a split second, gravity threatened to do what Ludger had deliberately avoided.
Before the embedded swords could be driven deeper by the fall, before they could turn disabling wounds into fatal ones, Ludger snapped his fingers. The mana blades dissolved instantly.
Blue light scattered like mist, fading harmlessly into the air as the constructs unraveled. The opponent lay still, limbs splayed, breath shallow but present. Unconscious. Alive. Silence gripped the arena.
Then the referee rushed forward, boots kicking up sand as he checked the fallen fighter. A quick pulse check. A glance at the wounds. A sharp nod.
He straightened and raised his arm.
“The match is over!”
The crowd exploded. The narrator’s voice burst forth, nearly tripping over itself with excitement as it filled the arena.
“UNBELIEVABLE! ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE!”
Cheers thundered from every corner. People stood, shouted, slammed fists against railings. Even hardened adventurers stared in disbelief at the scene carved into the sand.
“Holland the UNKNOWN WHIP-USER HAS FALLEN, AND LUDGER STANDS VICTORIOUS ONCE AGAIN!”
The narrator barely paused for breath.
“FIRST SPEED! THEN DEFENSE! AND NOW, A DISPLAY OF CONTROL AND POWER THE LIKES OF WHICH THIS ARENA HAS NEVER SEEN!”
Ludger stood at the center of it all, mana fading, swords gone, blood dried on his shoulder. He didn’t raise his arms. Didn’t bow.
He only looked down at the unconscious man once more, confirming the fight was truly over, before lifting his gaze to the roaring stands.
Another opponent defeated. Another message delivered, but the contest was far from finished.
While the crowd buzzed with overlapping voices, replaying every strike, every sword, every impossible moment, and the whip-user was carefully carried off the arena floor, Ludger finally let his focus dip inward.
The noise faded to background static as he checked his status. Not the whole thing. Just one section.
Class: Magic Knight. (+7 DEX, +7 INT, +7 WIS / level)
Information scrolled through his awareness, lines of text organizing themselves with mechanical clarity. The swords. The formation. The stance that wasn’t really a stance at all. A new notification surfaced.
[New Skill Acquired: Summon Magic Swords Lv. 1]
Description:
Condenses and stabilizes mana into solid, wieldable sword constructs. Unlike projectile-based mana swords, these constructs possess sustained form, balance, and structural integrity, allowing them to be held, parried, or deployed autonomously. The number of swords that can be maintained simultaneously scales with mana capacity, control, and concentration. Cost: 02 mana per sword per second
Ludger nodded at the information without changing his expression. He glanced back at the fading imprint where the swords had hovered moments earlier.
That explains why it felt natural, he thought. Not forced. Not borrowed.
The crowd roared again as the narrator finished hyping the match, but Ludger barely heard it. His mind was already adjusting parameters, imagining how the skill would evolve with higher levels, better formations, tighter control.
One sword was a weapon. Two were pressure. Many were a battlefield. And this was only level one. Ludger exhaled slowly, shoulders relaxing as mana circulation stabilized.
Good, he thought. That’ll be useful.
Ludger let the last traces of mana fade and simply crossed his arms. He stood there in the middle of the arena, posture relaxed, weight evenly distributed, like he was waiting for a late appointment rather than having just dismantled an assassin-tier fighter in front of the capital.
The sand around him was still scorched. Blood still stained the ground. People were still shouting his name. He didn’t react to any of it. He just waited for the next opponent.
Up in the stands, Viola had both fists clenched tight against the railing. Her shoulders trembled, not with fear, but with barely contained excitement. A wide grin split her face, sharp and proud and just a little feral.
He did it again, she thought.
Something insane. Something unfair. Something that made no sense at all.
She replayed the moment in her head, magic swords, formations, control so clean it bordered on art. And then realization hit her, hard enough to make her grind her teeth.
He knew that technique.
Not vaguely. Not theoretically. He knew it. And he never taught her. Her grip tightened.
That little… She inhaled, then exhaled sharply through her nose. Complaints bubbled up instinctively, already forming words she planned to throw at him the moment they were alone. Accusations. Demands to be taught… But underneath it all… beneath the irritation, the jealousy, the wounded pride… there was something warmer. Pride. Pure, unfiltered pride.
That was her little brother. The kid who kept stepping forward while the world scrambled to keep up. The idiot who learned new techniques mid-fight and then acted like it was nothing.
Viola straightened slightly, fists still clenched, grin never fading.
I’ll make him teach me, she decided.
And when she did, she’d make sure he regretted holding out on her.
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