Chapter 736
Then Harold showed a sequence meant to bury Ludger under pressure.
Sword snapped out in a fast diagonal cut.
Ludger blocked with his forearm and palm, redirecting the blade rather than stopping it dead.
The shield immediately followed, bam, a short bash aimed at Ludger’s ribs.
Ludger shifted his hips and caught it with a braced elbow, but the weight behind it hit like a moving wall. His whole frame jolted. Not pain, impact. The kind that told your bones to remember gravity existed.
Harold didn’t pause. Sword cut again from the opposite angle, faster.
Ludger raised his guard, deflecting, but the strike still rattled him, steel and muscle and leverage, all stacked behind the blow.
Then another shield bash. Then a quick sword tap to force Ludger’s guard high. Then the shield drove forward again, this time aimed at the shoulder. Ludger blocked, feet sliding half an inch on slick stone despite his stance.
His body rattled under the weight of it. Each impact shook through his arms into his chest, into his spine. It wasn’t that Harold was faster than him.
It was that Harold was heavier in motion, every strike carried the kind of momentum that punished you for being anything less than perfectly rooted.
Harold kept talking while he attacked, like the lecture was part of the assault.
“You can be strong,” he said between blows, sword snapping out and returning, “you can be clever…”
Shield bam.
“... but if you gas out…”
Sword slash.
“... you die.”
Shield bash.
Ludger blocked, redirected, absorbed, his hands moving cleanly, but the constant pressure started to stack. Not wounds…fatigue. The tiny drains of stabilizing his core, resisting impact, keeping his footing.
Harold’s barrage didn’t end. It became a lesson written in steel and weight. And Ludger realized, very quickly, what Harold meant.
Stamina wasn’t just “can you run.”
It was “can you keep making correct decisions while your body begged you to stop.”
Harold didn’t slow down.
The barrage kept coming, cut, bash, cut, bash, each strike flowing into the next like a grinding machine that existed purely to test how long the person in front of it could stay upright.
Ludger kept blocking.
At first he handled it the way he handled everything else, with precision. Redirect the sword, absorb the shield with structure, move half a step when needed, conserve energy.
But Harold wasn’t trying to beat him with technique.
He was trying to wear him down.
Every shield impact carried weight. Every sword strike forced Ludger’s arms to take the shock, to stabilize, to answer again and again. It was simple. Brutal. And very clear.
There wasn’t much secret there. Stamina. That was the whole philosophy. You outlasted the other person. Ludger exhaled slowly and made a small adjustment.
Instead of just blocking the strikes, he began to put more of his body behind the counters. When he pushed the sword away, he rotated his hips slightly, letting his core take the load instead of only his arms. When the shield slammed forward, he stepped into it instead of absorbing it flat, letting his weight redirect the force back into Harold.
Not big movements. Small ones. But each one transferred more pressure back into Harold’s structure. They clashed again. Sword strike. Ludger deflected with a sharper motion, shoulder and torso turning behind the movement.
Shield bash.
He met it with his forearm and stepped forward half a pace, letting the contact push through his body and into the ground instead of rattling him backward.
Then Harold attacked again. And again. And Ludger kept answering, now using his whole frame instead of isolated blocks. Something shifted. The familiar pressure gathered behind his eyes. A cold, clean notification sliding into place like a puzzle piece finally locking.
[Class Unlocked: Warrior + 04 STR, + 04 END]
[Skill Acquired: Vigor Lv.1]
Ludger blinked once. The effect was subtle but immediate. His breathing steadied faster. The fatigue building in his arms and shoulders eased just slightly, as if the body itself had learned a better way to distribute effort.
Vigor- passively increases endurance by five points per level.
Just the ability to keep going longer than the other guy. Ludger nodded faintly to himself.
That fits.
Harold didn’t notice the system alert, of course. He just grinned wider as he kept swinging.
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“Good!” Harold barked between strikes. “Now you’re actually fighting back!”
Sword cut. Shield smash. Ludger absorbed it, redirected, answered with a quick body tap that made Harold grunt approvingly. Selene leaned against a stone ridge nearby, arms crossed, watching like she was enjoying a street performance.
“Look at that,” she said lazily. “The kid’s learning to be boring.”
Cor snorted. “That’s called surviving.”
Harold kept hammering away, relentless. Ludger kept answering. Even though the class had unlocked, he didn’t stop. Didn’t walk away. He kept sparring. Because unlocking a class was one thing. Learning how to use it properly was something else entirely.
The sparring dragged on longer than anyone expected.
Steel rang against steel. Shield thudded into forearms. Boots scraped for footing on slick rock as Harold kept up the relentless tempo he had started with.
But the rhythm slowly changed.
At first Harold had been the storm, an endless barrage of sword strikes and shield bashes designed to grind Ludger down through sheer pressure.
Now the pressure was still there… but it wasn’t building the way Harold expected. Ludger kept answering. His breathing stayed steady. His stance stayed firm. And every block was just a little cleaner than the last.
The new Vigor skill quietly did its work. The small shocks that once rattled through Ludger’s shoulders now dissipated faster. The constant tension in his arms didn’t build the same way. His recovery between impacts became smoother.
Harold noticed. And because Harold was Harold… he pushed harder.
The sword swings grew heavier. The shield bashes more aggressive. He stepped forward with more commitment, trying to overwhelm Ludger’s guard and finally slip something through.
Clang.
Thud.
Clang.
But every time he thought he had the opening, Ludger’s stance shifted just enough to ruin it.
Then, after one particularly heavy exchange, something slipped.
Harold drove forward with another shield bash… and the shield simply fell from his arm.
It clattered across the wet stone and spun twice before coming to rest near one of the shallow pools. The chamber went quiet.
Harold stood there for a moment, chest rising and falling as he caught his breath. Sweat clung to his temples and the edges of his beard. He clicked his tongue in annoyance.
“…Damn.”
He rolled his shoulder once and shook out his sword arm.
“I got too worked up,” he admitted.
He glanced at the dropped shield like it had betrayed him.
“Started trying too hard.”
Ludger relaxed his stance, lowering his guard. Harold exhaled slowly and shook his head.
“…I’m indeed weaker than you.”
Aleia raised an eyebrow from where she stood watching.
“And you’re only realizing that now?” she asked calmly.
Selene burst into a grin.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “You can blame your age.”
Harold snorted.
“My age?” he repeated.
He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist.
“I’m in my early thirties.”
Selene shrugged innocently. “Exactly. Ancient. Basically a fossil.”
Cor let out a dry grunt that might have been amusement. Harold ignored them and looked back at Ludger.
“Tell me something,” he said.
Ludger tilted his head slightly.
“Was fighting me harder than fighting Arslan?”
Ludger considered the question for a moment. Then he shrugged.
“It’s been almost five years since I sparred with my father. You saw that spar in our old backyard.”
Harold froze.
“…Five?”
Ludger nodded. Harold ran a hand down his face.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
He looked down at the fallen shield again and then back at Ludger.
“Arslan is trying to keep his dignity while I’m out here failing to land even a single hit.”
Selene laughed loudly.
“Oh that’s cruel,” she said. “You should’ve lied.”
Cor picked up the shield and tossed it back to Harold.
“Next time,” Cor said dryly, “try not to start a stamina lesson by exhausting yourself first.”
Harold caught the shield and grunted.
“…Yeah.”
But despite the complaint, there was a small grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. Because losing like that still meant something useful had happened. And everyone in the chamber had learned something today. The work took longer than the fight.
Guardian scales weren’t like the thin plates the smaller reptilians carried. These were thick, layered, and fused deeper into the muscle beneath. The recruits had to work carefully, sliding knives under the edges, prying gently so the plates came free without cracking.
Cor supervised the process like a grumpy instructor.
“Don’t rush,” he muttered more than once. “You crack it, you ruin it.”
Harold helped with the heavier pieces, levering the larger plates free while explaining where the best armor segments usually formed, along the chest, the shoulder ridge, and the spine. Aleia quietly sorted the scales into piles based on quality, thickness, and shape.
By the time they finished, the recruits looked both exhausted and proud. They had good reason to be. Guardian scales were valuable. Not just in coin, but in what they could become.
When the last plate was cleaned and wrapped in cloth, the group began the trip back toward Lionfang. The climb out of the labyrinth always felt different than the descent. Lighter.
The mist faded behind them. The humid heat thinned into normal air. The carved scale walls gave way to the rough, broken stone of the upper section until finally daylight filtered through the entrance ravine.
The recruits breathed easier the moment the sky appeared again. For Ludger, the walk back was quiet. He carried the bundle of guardian scales himself.
They were heavier than they looked, dense plates with a faint sheen that caught the light like polished emerald stone. When he ran his fingers across the ridges, he could feel the natural structure that had made them so difficult to break.
High quality. Exactly what he needed. He kept them. No one questioned it. Not Harold, not Cor, not Aleia. Everyone in the group understood that Ludger had earned the right to decide where those materials would go.
As they approached the city gates, Ludger’s thoughts had already shifted to his other project.
The suit.
Julia was still working on the first version based on Linne and Dalan’s schematics, the strange runic gear that had once helped him infiltrate Verk’s manor. The design had looked ridiculous even to him. Like something a circus performer might wear if the circus specialized in espionage.
But the idea behind it was solid. Runic channels. Mana conductivity. Layered materials designed to amplify control rather than simply protect. The guardian scales might fit perfectly. Maybe along the chest. Maybe the shoulders. Maybe integrated into the gauntlets where impacts happened most often.
He’d have to experiment. And that was the important part. This was only the first version. Ludger had never believed in perfect designs on the first attempt. Field experience always revealed flaws. Movement restrictions. Mana flow inefficiencies. Weak points that didn’t exist on paper.
So he would improve it. Again. And again. Every mission would add something. Every fight would teach him something new. Ideas would come. Materials would change. And the suit would evolve alongside him.