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

Chapter 607

Herack drove in with a shoulder and a short-range cut meant to break posture rather than slice flesh. Ludger raised his guard… and got hit with pressure like a moving boulder.

The clash forced Ludger back a full step. Snow sprayed. His boots carved a trench.

Herack followed with a knee to the thigh, dense, brutal, then a hook of the sword that tried to wrench Ludger’s guard open through sheer mass. Ludger grunted, pivoted, and used his whole body to redirect, but the ground beneath him trembled from the compressed force. He could feel the difference immediately:

Wind wanted to steal time.

Earth wanted to steal space.

Herack didn’t let him breathe long enough to categorize more. The heavy earth-pressure melted into something slick.

Herack’s aura became fluid, spreading along his limbs with a strange cohesion, like water clinging to stone. The mana didn’t flare outward; it wrapped tighter, reducing friction, making joints glide too smoothly.

WATER OVERDRIVE.

Herack slid in with a low, almost lazy step, and then his blade whipped through a tight curve that shouldn’t have been possible at that angle. The strike changed direction mid-swing like the sword was swimming through the air.

Ludger blocked high… The blade rolled under his guard.

Too smooth. Ludger’s eyes widened. He yanked his elbow down just in time, bracer catching the flat of the sword with a ringing impact. The shock traveled up his arm like a cold wave.

Herack’s other blade snapped toward Ludger’s ribs from the opposite side, flowing through the gap created by Ludger’s adjustment. Ludger shifted his hips, took the hit on his side guard, and got shoved sideways a half-step, boots skidding on packed snow.

Herack’s Water Overdrive didn’t hit like a hammer. It guided, dragging Ludger’s guard out of position, making every block feel like it landed a fraction wrong.

And then, without warning, the water slickness evaporated.

Heat slammed down.

The aura around Herack flared into FLAME OVERDRIVE again, violent, eager, and his next movement exploded forward like a spark hitting oil.

Herack’s blades came down in a double strike, crossed angles, timed so that if Ludger blocked one cleanly, the other would bite. Ludger’s Overdrive surged.

He caught the first on his forearm guard, sparks bursting bright enough to paint his face orange for a heartbeat.

The second he caught with his other bracer, barely, metal screeching as mana-coated steel ground against reinforced plate. The flame-pressure drove him down and back. His boots slid.

A crack popped beneath his heel as the frozen earth yielded.

Herack leaned in, grin vicious, and shoved with the grind—trying to turn defense into collapse again.

Ludger’s shoulders tightened. His jaw clenched. He felt the old urge, use earth magic, spike the ground, pin a foot, make space, cheat. He didn’t. He forced himself to solve it with body and aura.

He rotated his wrists, changed the angle, and let Herack’s push carry past the line of his center instead of straight through it. The moment the pressure slipped, Ludger stepped sideways, finally breaking the static posture he’d held earlier, and the shove became momentum that didn’t land clean.

Herack’s grin widened like he approved.

Then he changed again, so fast Ludger almost missed the transition.

Wind.

A flicker. A whisper. The aura curled sharp, turning Herack’s next exchange into a storm of cuts, short, efficient, aimed at joints, wrists, throat lines. Not to kill, yet, but to overwhelm the brain’s ability to choose.

Ludger retreated for the first time in the fight. Not out of fear. Out of necessity.

He backed across the ring, boots sliding, absorbing impacts in a rapid sequence, block, block, check, deflect, arms and legs moving like a machine being pushed to higher RPM.

Herack slipped in and out like a ghost, Wind Overdrive stealing angles.

Ludger got clipped on the shoulder guard, clang, then forced to duck a follow-up that would’ve opened his cheek.

He pivoted, but Herack was already there with Earth Overdrive again, heavy, driving a kick into Ludger’s hip that shoved him sideways.

Ludger staggered, caught his balance, and felt the ring boundary near his heel. Too close.

Herack flowed into Water Overdrive, slick and controlling, and used a blade hook to pull Ludger’s bracer off-line while stepping around his guard like he was walking around furniture.

Ludger’s spine prickled.

He threw a short punch, not to hurt, but to create space, his fist slamming into Herack’s chest.

Herack barely moved. Water aura absorbed and slid, turning the impact into a ripple.

Then Herack snapped to Flame again and punished the opening with a downward cut that hit Ludger’s bracer hard enough to make his elbow go numb.

Sparks flew.

Ludger got shoved backward another step.

The crowd noise became a distant blur. All Ludger could hear was steel, breath, and the constant, ugly truth of pressure. Herack was cycling elements like tools on a belt, each one designed to attack a different part of defense.

Wind stole reaction time and angles. Earth stole footing and posture. Water granted fluidity and decreased the chances for counters. Flame stole stamina with raw, grinding power.

And Ludger, despite getting driven around the ring, despite his boots carving grooves in the snow, despite the constant impacts rattling his bones, was still reacting fast enough to not break.

He was learning the rhythm of the switches. Feeling the tell in the aura. Catching the half-beat where Herack’s style changed and turning it into just enough defense to survive the next wave.

Herack drove him into the ring’s edge with an Earth-heavy shoulder and a flame-coated slash that screamed against his guard. Ludger’s heel hit the stake line.

No room left.

Herack’s eyes gleamed as he shifted to Wind, ready to cut through the last fraction.

Ludger’s breath went steady. His Overdrive tightened. And for the first time in the exchange, his hands didn’t just block. They started to answer.

Herack’s aura shifted again, Ludger felt the wind-tight coil forming, felt the angle of the next cut before the blade even moved.

Another burst. Another switch. Another attempt to steal the half-second.

Herack leaned forward… and Ludger did something that made the entire arena collectively inhale. He opened his guard.

He moved his arms to the sides with his palms open. For a heartbeat it looked like surrender.

Then his arms moved further backward, elbows drawing behind his ribs like he was pulling invisible cords. His stance sank lower. His spine aligned. His breath went deep, one inhale that didn’t just fill lungs, but filled intent.

He used everything he had. Overdrive tightened around his frame, locking joints and tendons into a reinforced lattice.

Rage Flow surged, not wild, not sloppy, but compressed, focused, caged and then fed into narrow channels. And Vitality Well, that new reservoir Valk had carved into his discipline, opened like a valve.

Stamina poured out under control, not as panic, but as fuel shaped by technique. Ludger rode the edge of what he could safely draw, the limit line where your body started taking debt it couldn’t repay.

His arms snapped forward. Palms out. Not a punch. Not a block. A release. The air in front of him shuddered.

A blast of heat erupted from his hands like a breath from a furnace, an expanding wave that didn’t need flame to be violent. The snow closest to him vaporized into a white spray, not melting so much as being ripped into the air by the sudden pressure and warmth.

Herack’s eyes went wide. For the first time, the lazy predator mask cracked completely.

“What—”

The heat wave hit him mid-step. It wasn’t a clean shove.

It was a wall of force, hot and brutal, slamming into his chest and aura and blades at once. His elemental Overdrive flickered as it tried to adapt, and then it got overwhelmed by sheer output.

Herack’s feet left the ground.

He flew backward like he’d been kicked by a siege beast, cloak snapping, swords flaring as he tried to brace with crossed blades… but there was nothing to brace against.

He sailed across the arena in a long arc, skimming over churned snow and scattered weapons, pushed back dozens of meters until he slammed past the stake line and landed outside the ring in a heavy roll that carved a trench in the snow.

The crowd didn’t escape either.

The heat wave expanded outward in a wide cone, blasting into the packed ring of spectators. Northerners staggered as if hit by a sudden storm. Some were thrown onto their backs. Others slammed into each other, knocked off balance by the pressure. Torches bent sharply, flames snapping sideways.

Snow for a hundred meters peeled away in a ripping gust, white powder and crust lifted, shoved, and scattered like the ground had been swept clean by an invisible hand.

For a moment all you could see was swirling frost and startled bodies and the echo of a roar that hadn’t come from the crowd.

It had come from the air itself. Then the wind settled. The snow fell back down in slow drifts. People blinked. Coughed. Stared. And when they opened their eyes fully again, they saw it:

Ludger standing in the arena’s center, arms lowered, breath steadying, posture still locked in that reinforced calm.

And Herack… Out of the ring. Past the line. On his back in the snow, one sword still in hand, staring up at the sky like it had personally betrayed him. Silence stretched, thick and stunned.

Then someone murmured it, like they were afraid saying it louder would make the world argue.

“The match…”

Another voice, louder. Certain.

“It’s over.”

Ludger exhaled slowly, the last of that heat leaving his lungs like a controlled release. The match was over.

And the north, every eye, every breath, every instinct, was suddenly looking at the “imperial boy” like he’d just done something nobody here knew was possible.

Herack lay there for a moment, chest rising and falling, snow clinging to his cloak and hair like the north had decided to decorate him for losing.

Then he let out a long, theatrical sigh.

“Ahhh…”

And after that, he laughed.

Not a bitter laugh. Not a forced one. A full, loud laugh that rolled out of him like thunder, making a few nearby northerners flinch and then grin in relief when they realized he wasn’t furious.

Herack sat up, rubbing at his jaw as if he’d taken a punch there instead of a heat wave to the pride.

“That,” he said, voice carrying even from the ground, “was one hell of a match.”

He looked back toward the ring, eyes bright now, awake in a way he hadn’t been all day.

“I planned to just scare you a few times,” Herack admitted, sounding almost amused at himself. “Make you feel the gap. Let you sweat. See if you’d break or learn.”

His grin sharpened.

“But you’re good enough that I had to get serious… just a bit… to actually enjoy it.”

A few murmurs rippled through the crowd. Some of them sounded offended. Most sounded impressed. Herack pushed himself to his feet like gravity was optional, shook snow off his shoulders, and held both swords loosely at his sides. Then he lifted his chin toward Ludger.

“Let’s do this again,” he said, eyes gleaming. “Without the ring to limit the fun.”

Ludger felt the edge of laughter in his own chest, dry, quiet satisfaction.

He smiled. Not wide like Freyra’s. Not hungry like Herack’s.

“Later,” Ludger said.

Herack blinked, surprised. “Later?”

Ludger nodded once, calm as ever. “You can come challenge me as many times as you want in Lionfang.”

Herack’s brows lifted. “Bold.”

“Practical,” Ludger corrected.

He glanced at the crowd, at the settlement, at the wards, at the “old goat” who wasn’t a hermit but a gate to something bigger. Then he looked back at Herack.

“I got what I came for,” Ludger said simply.

Herack studied him for a beat, then smiled again, slower this time, like he respected the answer.

“Fine,” Herack said. “Lionfang.”

Ludger turned away from the ring, already thinking about roads, leverage, and what he’d just stolen from a man who thought he was the one doing the teaching.

Behind him, Herack’s laughter rumbled once more. pleased, promising.

And Freyra, still sitting in the snow with a bruised grin, looked like she’d just found her next obsession.

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