Chapter 735
Overpowering it would’ve been easy. Ludger could already feel that.
If he wanted, he could keep stepping forward and keep punching until something important inside the guardian stopped working. He could end it with pure pressure, the same way you ended a brawl with someone who didn’t understand what it meant to lose space.
But that would teach the new members nothing. They’d just see “Ludger wins because Ludger is Ludger.”
A myth. A spectacle. Not a lesson. So he forced himself to step back. Not retreat, reframe. He loosened his stance, widened his focus, and let the guardian breathe just enough to try again.
The reptilian guardian hissed, anger finally leaking through its disciplined calm. It reset its grip on the coral spear and snapped the weapon back into a proper line, shoulders lowering, feet spreading into a stance that was built for thrusting and punishing anyone who got close.
It came again. A sharp jab toward his face. Ludger tilted his head and let it pass, the coral tip skimming through mist. He didn’t chase the miss. He waited for the recovery.
The moment the guardian’s wrists turned to pull the spear back, Ludger stepped half a pace in and tapped two knuckles into the creature’s forearm, right where tendon met scale plate.
Not a big hit. A safe hit. A hit that didn’t overextend him, didn’t put his balance at risk on slick stone. A hit that made the guardian’s grip twitch. The guardian’s eyes narrowed.
It adjusted instantly, turning the next thrust into a feint, tip flashing high, then snapping low for his abdomen.
Ludger’s hips shifted. His foot slid back, just enough to let the spear bite empty air. He didn’t jump. Didn’t waste motion.
And as soon as the point missed, he answered with a palm strike into the guardian’s ribs, under the edge of a plate where scales overlapped.
The impact landed with a dull crack. The guardian’s torso flinched. Not much. But enough. It pulled back and rotated, trying to use the spear shaft as a sweeping bar to create distance. Ludger didn’t meet the sweep with strength.
He stepped with it, slipping inside the arc, keeping his center low. His hand brushed the shaft, redirecting, not stopping, so the coral head cut past him instead of catching his chest. Then he countered immediately. A short punch to the inside of the guardian’s elbow. A nasty spot. A hinge. A place even armor couldn’t fully protect.
The guardian’s arm jerked, momentarily weakened. Its spear line wobbled. Ludger was already gone, gliding out of range before the guardian could correct with raw strength.
The recruits watching from behind shifted, attention tightening. This wasn’t “punch until it dies.” This was control. Harold’s mouth twitched into a grudging grin. Cor’s eyes narrowed with approval.
The guardian lunged again, frustrated now. It tried to impale his head the same way, direct, brutal, efficient, then followed with a second thrust, faster, pushing Ludger toward the nearest pool where footing would be uncertain.
Ludger let it herd him… half a step. Then he pivoted. The spear tip pierced mist where his face had been, and Ludger answered with a knuckle strike into the guardian’s thigh, just above the knee joint.
It wasn’t a dramatic hit. But it was placed perfectly. The guardian’s leg stuttered. Its stance shifted unevenly as it tried to compensate. That was the point. Damage didn’t need to be loud to be fatal. The guardian recovered, trying to reset its base. Ludger didn’t allow it.
The next time the spear came, Ludger sidestepped, let the thrust pass, and tapped the opposite thigh, same location, same joint region, forcing asymmetry. Then he slipped out of range again before the guardian could retaliate with a close-range shove.
Safe hits. No overreaching. No wild swings. Nothing that gave the guardian a clean counter. Just controlled, surgical violence. The guardian’s breathing grew harsher. Its frills twitched more often now, irritation leaking through discipline. It tried to change tempo, shorter thrusts, faster recoveries, a sudden aggressive step forward meant to body-check Ludger and regain space.
Ludger saw it coming. He retreated one step, just one, baiting the body-check.
When the guardian surged forward, Ludger slid aside and struck the rib plate again, this time with a palm heel that drove the force inward instead of across. The guardian’s torso buckled slightly, a sharp exhale forced out.
Then Ludger was gone again, feet finding dry stone, leaving the guardian in the center with nothing but slick ground and growing discomfort.
The creature tried a wide, diagonal thrust meant to cut off angles. Ludger ducked under the line, but not deeply, just enough. He answered with a short punch into the bicep. Then the forearm.
Then a quick tap to the wrist, each one placed to dull strength, to weaken grip, to slow recovery. The spear’s movements became less crisp.
The thrusts still came, but the tip began to wobble at the end of extension. The guardian’s shoulders started doing more work to compensate, muscles tightening, wasting energy.
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Ludger watched all of it, calm. He was counting. Not hits. Failures. Every time the guardian’s foot slipped half an inch. Every time its knee resisted bending cleanly. Every time its grip adjusted because the forearm didn’t like being struck there anymore.
The recruits could see it too now, the gradual decay. Not a sudden collapse. A controlled dismantling. The guardian attacked again, anger pushing it into a longer lunge.
Ludger stepped aside and let the spear overcommit by a hair.
Then he struck the shoulder joint, harder this time, but still safe, driving a shock through the arm that made the creature’s spear line dip.
For the first time, the guardian’s stance looked uncertain. Not broken. But compromised. Its fighting ability was being crippled piece by piece. And Ludger hadn’t used Overdrive. Hadn’t used Rage Flow. Hadn’t even chased a finishing blow.
He was teaching them what victory actually looked like in a labyrinth: Not bravado. Not strength. A series of small, safe decisions that piled up until the enemy couldn’t fight the way it needed to.
Harold’s voice rumbled quietly behind the recruits.
“Watch,” he said. “This is how you kill something bigger than you without dying first.”
And Ludger kept moving, slip, evade, counter, until the guardian’s spear stopped being a threat and started being a heavy piece of coral in the hands of something that was running out of answers.
The guardian’s spear dipped again. Not much, just a fraction. But Ludger saw the fracture in its rhythm the way he saw cracks in stone.
Its legs weren’t responding cleanly anymore. One knee lagged. The hip joint on the opposite side was compensating. The forearm had taken too many safe hits; the grip wasn’t firm, the recovery wasn’t crisp.
It was still dangerous. But it was no longer in control. Ludger exhaled once, centered his weight, and stepped into the space the guardian couldn’t protect anymore.
The reptilian hissed and jabbed, one last sharp thrust meant to reclaim distance.
Ludger moved just enough to make the spear miss by a hair, then drove his hand into the shaft with a downward press, pinning it to the stone for a heartbeat.
Not with strength. With timing. That heartbeat was all he needed. He slid forward, planted his lead foot, rotated his hips, and delivered a single palm strike to the guardian’s chest.
Plain. Direct. No flourish.
It hit right where the layered scales overlapped and rigidity turned into weakness, where the armor was thick but the structure beneath had already been softened by the earlier body shots.
The impact sounded like wet stone breaking.
The guardian’s torso caved inward a fraction, breath exploding out of it in a strangled, silent burst. Its eyes went wide, not with fear, but with sudden, impossible realization. Then its legs buckled.
The creature rolled across the slick stone, spear clattering, body turning over once… twice… and finally coming to rest with its back half in a shallow pool. It didn’t move. Not a twitch. Not a final shudder.
Its chest had been smashed in. The fight had ended not with spectacle, but with the simple certainty of something vital being broken. For a second, the chamber held its breath. Then the recruits erupted. Not loud cheering, too disciplined for that, but the excited, disbelieving noise of people who’d just watched something real.
Eyes bright. Shoulders straight. A few grinning despite themselves. They weren’t hearing rumors anymore. They weren’t imagining the vice guildmaster as a story. They’d seen it.
Strength, yes, but more than that: skill. Control. The kind of calm violence that made a guardian look like an obstacle someone stepped over.
Selene strolled up, rolling her shoulders as if she’d been mildly inconvenienced by having to watch instead of fight.
She looked at the dead guardian, snorted, and said, “I could’ve soloed it too.”
Harold’s mouth twitched like he wanted to argue and also didn’t want to dignify it. Cor didn’t even look impressed.
“Perhaps,” Cor said, voice rough, “but it is better if you don’t try when we aren’t around.”
Selene’s grin sharpened. “Oh? Worried I’ll die?”
Cor finally glanced at her, eyes flat.
“Worried you’ll make it look easy while covered in blood,” he said, “and then some idiot will try to copy you.”
The recruits, still buzzing, suddenly looked a bit more serious.
Selene opened her mouth, probably to protest that she was a responsible role model. Then she remembered who she was and laughed instead.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll only solo guardians when there’s an audience and someone to drag me out if it goes wrong.”
Cor grunted. “That’s still not comforting.”
Ludger didn’t join the banter. He just watched the dead guardian for a moment longer, confirming the lack of movement, the collapsed chest, the finality. Then he turned slightly toward the recruits.
“Scales,” he said, tone flat.
The word snapped them back into purpose. Excitement turned into action. Because in Lionsguard, even legends were measured in what you could harvest afterward.
Harold watched the recruits start circling the dead guardian with knives out, hands already getting steadier as the work began. The chamber filled with practical sounds, steel scraping scale, low voices calling out “clean cut,” “don’t crack that one,” “watch the plate ridge.”
He glanced back at Ludger.
“While they work,” Harold said, “we can spar a bit.”
Selene’s grin sharpened like she’d been waiting for this. Cor just looked tired in advance.
Harold rolled his shoulders once, then nodded at Ludger. “I’ll teach you the best tricks for a warrior.”
Ludger didn’t hesitate. He’d come here to steal competence, and Harold was offering it straight.
He nodded. “Alright.”
He stepped to a clearer patch of stone away from the pools, feet finding grip, posture relaxing into readiness. No Overdrive. No Rage Flow. No show.
Just a stance, balanced, compact, hands up.
Harold picked up his sword and shield like he’d been waiting for someone to give him permission to be himself again. The shield came up first, angled properly. The sword settled behind it, point alive.
Harold’s eyes gleamed.
“Lesson one,” he said, voice cheerful in the way only a veteran could be cheerful before violence.
Ludger didn’t move, just watched. Harold lifted a finger.
“First, you need stamina.”
He lifted a second finger.
“Second, you need stamina.”
A third finger.
“And thirdly…” Harold’s grin widened. “You need more stamina.”