All Jobs and Classes! I Just Wanted One Skill, Not Them All!

Chapter 601

Ludger’s eyes flicked to her. “Why.”

“That would make it more interesting,” Freyra replied far too quickly.

Suspicious. He studied her. Freyra stared right back, all sharp confidence and barely-contained eagerness, like she was waiting for him to say no so she could mock him for the next month.

“The tournament’s soon,” she added. “They’re already setting up. You can feel it when it’s about to start. Everyone gets restless.”

Ludger did feel it now that she mentioned it, the subtle shift in movement. People drifting toward a central area. Guards repositioning. The way the air in a place like this changed when violence became scheduled entertainment.

It was a huge waste of time, on paper. He’d come here to learn a secret art, not to stand in a line like a recruit waiting for a turn to impress an instructor who couldn’t be bothered to teach properly.

But… the quickest way through a gate was usually to break it. And the quickest way through a tournament was to win it. All Ludger had to do was kick some asses. He exhaled once.

“Fine,” he said.

Freyra’s grin widened immediately, bright and sharp and a little too satisfied.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. “You’re happy about that.”

“Me? No.” Freyra tried to look innocent and failed on every level. “I just think it’ll be fun.”

“Uh-huh.”

Freyra stood up in one smooth motion, cracking her neck like she was about to walk into a feast. “Good. Come on.”

Ludger didn’t move yet. “Why do I feel like you have a grudge?”

Freyra looked over her shoulder, grin still there. “Maybe I do.”

Ludger stared at her for a beat. Then he adjusted his backpack strap and followed. If the final master wanted a show, they were going to get one. And if Freyra wanted to watch him get punched…

Well. She might be disappointed.

One hour later, Ludger stood in the middle of a large arena surrounded by northerners.

He stared at the packed snow beneath his boots, listened to the roar of voices layered over the constant wind, and let out a slow sigh. He should have known. Of course it would turn out like this.

A “tournament,” to the northerners, wasn’t a neat bracket with rules and polite pauses. It wasn’t a measured duel with a judge and a clean winner. It was an all-out war.

Dozens of competitors were spread across the arena, men, women, and a few older teenagers, each of them rolling shoulders, testing grips, tightening straps. Some held axes. Some held clubs. Some carried nothing but their hands and the confidence that their hands were enough.

And at the edge of the arena, behind a rough ring of stakes and packed bodies, the crowd pressed in like a living wall. They weren’t cheering yet. They were watching. Measuring. Judging.

Ludger’s eyes lifted and swept the circle, taking in the way the northerners stood, heavy boots, thick furs, belts layered with knives and charms, braided hair and hard faces. Even their casual postures had that predator patience, like they were waiting for the first scream to start the music.

Then their attention sharpened. Because of him. He could feel it.

The staring wasn’t subtle. It was the kind of stare you gave a strange animal that had wandered into your campfire light. Ludger wasn’t dressed like them, no thick furs, no bone charms, no belt full of iron. His clothes were practical south-border gear, high quality and clean, with just enough stitching to make anyone who knew look twice.

And he didn’t look like one of them either. He wasn’t broad the same way. He didn’t carry his weight the same way. His face didn’t have the same hard northern lines carved by wind and rough years.

To them, he looked like something that had walked out of a different world. A boy. A foreigner. Ludger resisted the urge to sigh a third time just on principle.

Beside him, Freyra bounced once on the balls of her feet like she was warming up for a dance. Her grin was wide enough to be rude.

“This is perfect,” she said, eyes glittering as she looked around at the competitors like she was picking meals. “See? I told you it would be interesting.”

Ludger didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes on the crowd. In the arena. On the subtle shifts of movement as competitors started angling for better positions.

“It’s a battle royale,” he muttered.

Freyra laughed. “It is an all out war.”

Ludger’s gaze slid to the far side where a few fighters had already started drifting together, forming loose clusters. That was the first real tactic, numbers.

The second tactic would be betrayal. The third would be whoever stayed standing when the snow turned red. Freyra leaned close, voice low enough that only he could hear it over the rumble of the crowd.

“We focus on the others for now,” she said. “Let them thin the herd. Then, when it’s just us left…” Her grin sharpened. “We duke it out.”

Ludger’s eyes flicked to her. Freyra’s expression was all teeth and satisfaction, like she’d been waiting to say those words since the day she’d first decided he was worth punching. Ludger sighed again, long and resigned, like the north itself had reached into his life and rearranged it purely for amusement.

“This is why your mother sent me here,” he muttered. “To learn the northerners way.”

Freyra snorted. “You’re going to learn violence.”

Ludger’s mouth flattened, his mind already shifting into that cold tactical space where he catalogued threats and angles and the distance to the nearest cluster of fighters. He looked at Freyra again.

“If you try to jump me early,” he said, “I’m going to drop you in the snow and let the others dogpile you.”

Freyra’s grin widened even more.

“See?” she said, pleased. “You’re already more fun than before.”

Ludger turned away, eyes scanning for the first incoming charge, and muttered under his breath:

“I hate this place.”

The arena noise didn’t fade gradually.

It died.

One moment the crowd was a wall of voices and boot-stomps and hungry laughter, and the next it was like someone had clamped a hand around the throat of the entire settlement.

Silence rolled through the ring. Competitors shifted. Northerners leaned forward. Even the wind seemed to hesitate. Everyone began looking in the same direction. Ludger’s eyes followed the turn, slow and careful, until he saw what had stolen the attention.

A huge northerner was climbing the steps to a wooden platform that had been hammered together above the arena’s edge. The structure was crude, thick beams, rough planks, iron nails, but it sat solid, built for weight and built to last. Torches burned at the corners, their flames bending away from the cold.

The man on the stairs looked like he didn’t care about any of it.

He yawned wide, jaw cracking, like he’d just woken up from an inconvenient nap. Long hair hung loose around his shoulders. His cloak was thrown on wrong, one side slipping off like he hadn’t bothered to fix it. He moved with lazy confidence, the kind that didn’t come from arrogance.

It came from certainty. He reached the platform, scratched at his cheek, and leaned his forearms on the railing like he was settling in to watch children fight over toys. He looked unguarded. Too unguarded.

Ludger’s frown deepened by a fraction. Something was off about him. Not his size, northerners came in sizes that made walls look negotiable. Not even the casual posture. Plenty of strong people were lazy when they didn’t need to prove anything. It was the way the air seemed to… recognize him.

The crowd wasn’t silent because they were afraid he’d punish them for noise. They were silent because they were waiting for a signal, the way predators waited for the pack leader to move.

Ludger’s gaze dropped to the man’s waist. Two curved thick short swords rested there, paired, matched, worn smooth at the grips. The kind of blades you didn’t carry unless you used them often enough that they felt like extensions of your wrists.

And the scabbards weren’t the sort that clattered when you walked. They sat close, tight to the hips, built for speed. Built for drawing without thought. Ludger’s instincts pricked.

That’s not a showman.

The huge northerner swept his eyes across the arena once, taking in every competitor, every stance, every ounce of tension. His gaze passed over Ludger for half a heartbeat, no expression, no surprise, then moved on like Ludger was already categorized.

Freyra, beside him, went very still. That alone told Ludger more than the swords did. The man yawned again, even wider this time, like the entire event was an inconvenience he’d been forced to attend. Then he spoke, voice carrying effortlessly over the arena without a shout.

“Begin.”

Hell broke loose.

The moment the word Begin left the giant’s mouth, the arena detonated into motion, boots digging into snow, fists swinging, bodies crashing together in a messy wave of violence. The crowd roared back to life, sound slamming into Ludger’s ears like a physical thing.

Northerners didn’t ease into fights.

They arrived.

A knot of competitors charged immediately, not bothering to test opponents first. They went straight for the easiest-looking target. Which, apparently, was the thirteen-year-old who didn’t wear furs and didn’t look like he belonged.

Ludger watched them come. Three. Then five. Then more, feeding into the same instinct: remove the outsider, then handle the rest. He didn’t step back. He didn’t raise his hands. He didn’t even change his expression. He just let out a quiet breath, slow in, slow out, and flipped the switches he’d learned to keep buried until the moment mattered.

Overdrive ignited along his muscles in a clean, controlled burst. A sharp edge of enhancement that made his body feel lighter and heavier at the same time. Then Rage Flow stirred.

Not the old, sloppy version that flooded his head and made him reckless. This was the version Valk had beaten into shape, anger held behind bars, power released through narrow gaps. Heat threaded through his limbs.

The first man reached him with a swinging fist the size of a ham.

Ludger didn’t block.

He pivoted half a step and snapped a kick into the attacker’s knee from the side, fast, precise, cruelly efficient. The man’s leg buckled like it had been unplugged, and the follow-up was already there.

Ludger’s heel drove into the man’s chest. The northerner launched backward, boots leaving the ground, eyes wide in surprise rather than pain.

He sailed past the ring of stakes and slammed into the snow outside the arena with a muffled whumph.

The crowd howled.

Two more came in at once, trying to grab him, trying to dogpile him, trusting weight and numbers like they always did.

Ludger exhaled and moved like he was bored.

A short step. A hip turn. His foot flashed out, one kick to the first man’s ribs, not hard enough to break, hard enough to remove breath and structure.

The second got a boot to the sternum.

Both of them flew, tumbling over each other like sacks of meat, and skidded beyond the ring.

A fourth competitor tried to rush from behind, smart enough to avoid his front, dumb enough to assume Ludger didn’t know. Ludger’s heel snapped backward without him even looking, catching the man in the stomach. The attacker folded and went airborne, rolling out of the arena in a humiliating arc. 

For a heartbeat, nobody else stepped close. Not because they were scared. Because they were recalculating.

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