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

Chapter 604

Ludger didn’t let her have it for free.

He matched pressure. Matched angle. Matched pace. He made her feel what she was doing. Freyra snapped a kick. Ludger snapped the same kick. Their shins met again, harder this time, the collision so dense the air seemed to compress and rebound.

KRAK.

The arena floor shivered. Packed snow jumped in little bursts around their feet, shaking loose like startled dust. Somewhere in the crowd, someone yelled in delighted horror. Freyra didn’t slow.

She couldn’t. Rage Flow demanded momentum, and with Overdrive layered on top, it demanded commitment. If she hesitated now, the power would eat her from the inside out, strain, misalignment, damage.

So Ludger did what Valk had taught him to do with uncontrolled force.

He gave it structure. Freyra threw a straight punch, Ludger met it.

A backfist, Ludger met it.

A low kick, Ludger met it.

Their exchanges became a mirror held too close to a flame: fast, bright, and increasingly violent. Each collision was a note in a growing rhythm.

CRACK. THUD. CRACK.

Fists meeting fists. Forearms smashing forearms. Shins colliding with shins.

The sound stopped being a series of impacts and started becoming a continuous, brutal drumbeat that made the arena feel smaller, like the world was leaning in just to watch.

Ludger’s boots dug into the snow and held. Freyra’s feet carved trenches.

They both stayed upright, but the ground beneath them began to tremble with every exchange, tiny vibrations traveling outward through packed snow and frozen earth, rattling stakes, making loose gear at the edge of the ring shift and clink.

Freyra’s aura thickened, red steam whipping off her shoulders. Ludger’s was quieter, contained heat, controlled output, but every time he matched her, the invisible reinforcement of Overdrive flared in precise bursts, saving joints, saving tendons, saving bone.

Still, pain found ways through. A knuckle collision landed slightly wrong.

SNAP.

Not a shattering break, just the sharp, ugly crack of something small giving way under too much force. Freyra’s fingers twitched. Her punch didn’t stop. Ludger felt a sting bloom across his own hand a heartbeat later, like someone had driven a nail into his index knuckle.

Neither of them acknowledged it. Freyra drove a shin into his shin again, desperate to overwhelm. Ludger met it and felt the dull, sick shock ring through his leg.

KRAK.

A sharper crack this time, bone stressed hard enough to complain. Freyra hissed through her teeth, breath steaming red. Ludger’s eyes narrowed.

He stepped closer, tightening the space, removing her ability to swing with wild range, forcing her to fight clean. Forcing her to align, or suffer. Freyra responded by punching like she meant to punch through him.

Ludger punched back, same line, same timing, meeting her fist in the middle again and again, until the collisions became sparks in the air.

CRACK—CRACK—CRACK.

Their bodies didn’t look like they were “blocking” anymore. They looked like they were forging each other. Hammer. Anvil. Hammer.

And with every mirrored exchange, Ludger wasn’t just resisting her. He was teaching her focus the only way a northerner ever truly learned it: By making the cost immediate.

By making the feedback undeniable. By letting her feel the difference between power and control in her own bones.

Freyra’s breath came ragged. Her aura flickered. Overdrive surged too hard, then dipped, then surged again, still not smooth.

He’d let her fall. But he wouldn’t let her break herself on the way down.

The crowd was roaring now, voices bouncing off the palisade, stamping feet shaking snow off the stakes, because they weren’t watching a fight anymore.

They were watching two people try to prove which one of them could turn pain into discipline faster. And somewhere above, on the wooden platform, the so-called master leaned forward like he’d finally found the only thing worth staying awake for.

Freyra’s body held together right up until it didn’t.

For a few more exchanges she kept forcing the stack, Rage Flow roaring, Overdrive snapping, trying to drag more power out of herself than her control could safely support. Each collision with Ludger’s mirrored strikes shook the arena, each impact sending little bursts of snow hopping around their feet like the ground was trying to flinch away.

Then something ran dry.

Ludger couldn’t tell if it was mana or stamina. Rage Flow drank from stamina like a starving animal, and her Overdrive drained from mana even faster. Whatever the fuel was, it didn’t fade politely.

It emptied.

Freyra threw one more punch, but the alignment wasn’t there. Her shoulder lagged. Her hip didn’t follow through. The red haze around her stuttered like a flame catching on wet wood. Her eyes went wide.

Not fear, surprise. The sudden realization that her body hadn’t obeyed the command. Her next step stumbled. Just a half-step, but it was enough. Enough for gravity to remember she wasn’t invincible.

Freyra pitched forward.

Her hands tried to catch her, but her arms didn’t respond fast enough. She hit the packed snow face-first with a dull thump, sliding a short distance before stopping. Silence slammed into the arena again, harder this time, because everyone was waiting to see if she’d bounce back up on pure stubbornness.

She didn’t. Her aura faded in thin wisps. Rage Flow collapsed inward, leaving only the cold and her heavy breathing.

Ludger stood over her for a moment, chest rising evenly, eyes scanning for movement from the crowd as much as from Freyra. Then he let out a slow breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

A sigh, quiet, relieved.

He hadn’t suffered all that much damage. Bruised knuckles, aching shins, that deep, dull soreness that came from meeting power head-on. But he was intact.

He could’ve ended it earlier if he’d wanted. He could’ve pulled Earth Overdrive into the mix, layered reinforcement over bone and muscle, turned his body into something closer to a moving wall. Increased attack, increased defense, made every collision one-sided.

There was no point. Not here. Not with an audience full of northerners who respected suffering more than spectacle, and a “master” watching from above, measuring more than wins.

And not with Freyra.

Ludger looked down at her, face in the snow, shoulders still rising and falling, and felt an odd mix of annoyance and satisfaction.

Not using magic directly against a northerner was, honestly, infuriating. Like fighting with one hand tied behind your back because someone might judge you for having two.

But it had done what he wanted. It had forced Freyra to confront the difference between raw output and control. It had forced her to hit a wall and learn what walls felt like.

Good. Now you’ll have a reason to get better.

Then he straightened, eyes lifting toward the wooden platform, toward the yawning giant who hadn’t yawned in a while.

If the master was worth anything, he’d seen the same thing Ludger had. This hadn’t been a victory. It had been an invitation.

Freyra twitched.

Then she jerked like a stubborn animal refusing to stay down, palms digging into the snow. Her shoulders shook as she tried to push herself up, hair half-frozen against her cheek.

“I—” she rasped, breath scraping. “I can… keep… fighting.”

Her voice was thick with cold and pride, the kind that didn’t care what her body was saying as long as her ego still had air. Ludger didn’t let her finish. He stepped in, grabbed a fistful of fur at the back of her cloak, and hauled.

Freyra’s hands clawed at the snow for purchase, but her arms didn’t have the coordination yet. Her legs tried to find the ground and failed. She made a sound somewhere between a growl and an offended shout.

“Hey—!”

Ludger dragged her anyway.

No finesse. No ceremony. Just practical force, like removing a hazard before it bites someone. He pulled her across the packed snow, over the stake line, and out of the ring before she could stagger back upright and throw herself into another exchange with an empty tank.

The crowd reacted with a mix of laughter and jeers and approving noise, northerners loved stubbornness, but they respected someone who knew when to stop a fight before it turned into a funeral.

Freyra kept trying to twist around and bite his hand like a wolf in a trap. Ludger’s grip didn’t change.

“Stop,” he said flatly. “You’re done.”

“I’m not—” she spat, then coughed, then tried again, “I’m not done!”

“You are,” Ludger replied, still dragging. “Your body already decided for you.”

Freyra’s glare could’ve melted iron. Then the cold and gravity and exhaustion finally caught up and she went limp enough for him to set her down outside the ring without her face-planting again.

Ludger stepped back, breathing steady, and looked up at the platform for half a heartbeat, just enough to register that the so-called master was still watching.

Then he looked back down at Freyra. She lay there for a moment, chest rising hard, eyes squeezed shut like she was trying to bully oxygen into being more cooperative.

The arena noise shifted back into its normal restless roar, people tending bruises, arguing about who got thrown the farthest, laughing like pain was entertainment. But a lot of eyes still kept flicking toward Freyra and Ludger, waiting for the aftermath.

Eventually Freyra sat up with a violent motion, as if sitting was an act of revenge. She wiped snow off her face with the back of her sleeve and blinked hard like the world was insulting her by existing.

Then she clicked her tongue.

“Tch.”

Ludger didn’t say anything. He just stood there, hands relaxed, expression neutral. Freyra looked up at him, eyes still bright with rage—less power now, more pure stubborn.

“I almost got you,” she said.

Ludger raised an eyebrow a fraction.

Freyra jabbed a finger toward his face like she was accusing him of cheating. “If I’d gotten a chance to use a headbutt, you’d be down instead of me.”

Ludger stared at her for a beat.

Then, very calmly, he said, “If you’d tried to headbutt me while you were stacking Rage Flow and Overdrive like an idiot, you would’ve knocked yourself out and saved me the trouble.”

Freyra’s eyes widened. Then she grinned, wide and feral, like that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her.

“Next time,” she promised.

Ludger sighed, long-suffering.

“Next time,” he agreed, because with Freyra there was always a next time.

Clap.

Clap. Clap.

The sound cut through the arena noise like a knife through cloth—slow, deliberate, and somehow louder than shouting. Conversations stuttered and died. The injured stopped wrapping bandages. Even the fighters who’d been laughing a moment ago straightened like someone had tugged an invisible leash.

Everyone turned.

Ludger turned with them.

The dual-wielder was coming down from the wooden platform.

Up close, he looked even bigger than he had at a distance, not just tall, but dense, built like the kind of man who didn’t run because nothing ever survived long enough to require it. He walked with lazy confidence, hands loose at his sides, shoulders relaxed… and yet the crowd parted in front of him as if their bodies understood something their pride refused to admit.

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