The beastman roared in frustration, spinning his massive three-section nunchaku back into a whirlwind of motion. The chains shrieked, segments whipping toward Ludger with killing intent. This strike wasn’t meant to test him, it was meant to crush him outright. The berserker draught coursing through the beastman’s veins had erased any remaining restraint.

  But Ludger didn’t raise his forearm guards this time. He raised his hands. Open palms. Bare skin.

  An insane choice on any battlefield, but especially against a drug-boosted beastman wielding runic weapons designed to bypass armor. The crowd of pirates who had managed to stay conscious stared wide-eyed as Ludger stepped in, not away, intercepting the vicious flurry with his palms.

  The first strike hit,

  THOOM—!

  but instead of snapping his fingers or shattering his wrists, the force bled outward in a strange ripple, dispersing through his hand instead of breaking it. The second strike came instantly,

  CLACK—BWHAM—!

  yet Ludger caught it on the heel of his palm, and again the bst of power spread sideways like water hitting a stone. A third and fourth strike followed, each with enough force to break bone. Ludger took them all. Not easily. Not painlessly. But deliberately.

  The beastman didn’t notice the truth, he was too far gone, too consumed by the berserker draught and his own fury to use the senses the beastmen were famous for. He didn’t register the faint brownish-gold glow forming on Ludger’s palm with each impact. He didn’t notice the way Ludger’s stance sank, grounding deeper each time. He didn’t pay attention to the sigil pulsing quietly under Ludger’s skin.

  A heaviness rune. Not on the enemy this time, but on Ludger’s palm.

  Every time the nunchaku collided with Ludger’s hand, a hidden burst of weight surged into the weapon, increasing the load carried by the beastman’s wrists, forcing his own strength to fight itself. Ludger was using the rune not to shield himself, but to equalize their power, distributing the enemy’s strength through a rune-assisted network of angles, stance, and Earth Overdrive.

  And in doing so, he was erasing the difference between their raw physical abilities. The beastman snarled louder with each blocked strike, teeth grinding in fury. His muscles bulged, veins pulsing beneath reddened skin as he poured more power into each blow. Yet Ludger still absorbed them, redirecting the pressure, using the heaviness rune to throw off the beastman’s rhythm.

  Every csh made the berserker falter a little more. Every impact chipped away at his confidence. Every blocked attack spoke a simple message: You’re not overpowering him.

  The beastman howled, smming downward with a strike meant to pulverize Ludger’s skull. Ludger caught it between both palms, sliding one hand down the chain, the rune pulsing again as he grounded the force, splintering the deck beneath him instead of his bones.

  But even then, Ludger felt the toll.

  His palms were burning, skinned, bruised, maybe cracked. The rune throbbed, draining mana with every activation. His fingers vibrated numb. His wrists felt close to giving out from the accumuted shock. This was not sustainable.

  Not with Rage Flow ravaging his stamina. Not with Earth Overdrive still active. Not with the beastman hitting like a siege weapon fueled by drugs.

  Ludger grit his teeth behind a closed mouth, keeping the pain sealed inside. He pushed the rune one more time, redirecting another crushing strike and watching the beastman stumble with irritation.

  He could feel it. He was close to the limit.

  “Can’t use this forever…” Ludger murmured under his breath, keeping his voice low so the beastman wouldn’t hear. “Hands won’t st… and mana’s bleeding away.”

  He needed to switch tactics. Soon. Very soon.

  The beastman reared back with a guttural roar, weapon spinning for another barrage, and Ludger tightened his stance, ready to change the tempo before his hands shattered entirely.

  The exchange dragged on long enough that even Rage Flow couldn’t fully blunt the pain. Every time Ludger’s palm met the crushing arc of the beastman’s runic nunchaku, another jolt ripped through his hands and into his forearms. At first it was only heat, skin splitting along the creases of his palms, tiny cuts beginning to open from the sheer friction and pressure. But as the cshes continued, as the heaviness rune fought to equalize the force, the damage compounded.

  Blood began to drip from Ludger’s hands. Thin streams at first. Then thicker droplets that spttered against the cracked deck with every impact.

  His palms were bruised to the bone, torn in pces where the pressure had burst skin. His fingers trembled, their nerves overloaded. His wrists felt like overworked hinges ready to crack. The pain was sharp, raw, immediate, but Ludger kept his expression ft, breathing steady through clenched teeth. The beastman might have reduced other fighters to pulp by now, but Ludger refused to break first.

  And the beastman… was finally paying the price.

  Little by little, the enemy’s attacks shifted. His movements, once sharp, explosive, and murderous, began to lose their edge. The berserker draught might have fueled his muscles, but it wasn’t meant for prolonged, repeated, perfectly matched collisions. The drug burned hot and fast, brutality over endurance, and everything about this brawl demanded durability he simply couldn’t sustain.

  His swings grew a hair slower. His recovery steps dragged longer. His bance, once fwless, began to slip.

  The veins bulging beneath his red skin pulsed unevenly. His breath came in loud, ragged bursts, steam erupting from his mouth with every exhale. His eyes flickered, the red tint shaking violently in their sockets as the strain finally caught up with him. Then the weapon itself began to fail.

  The runic nunchaku, hammered metal, reinforced wood, and mana-conductive chains, had been absorbing far too much shock. Ludger’s heaviness rune had been doubling, tripling the load on the beastman’s wrists and weapon with every strike. The enemy hadn’t noticed, too blinded by fury and desperation to see the cracks forming. But the weapon had.

  A fissure split along the length of one of the wooden segments with a sharp crack. Then another. The next csh shattered a rune-inscribed shard from the joint, sending it flying off like a jagged bullet. It sliced through the air and buried itself in the beastman’s shoulder. He grunted, just a hint of pain, but it was enough for Ludger to notice.

  Another strike. Another shockwave. Another fragment tore loose, spinning across the deck and embedding into the beastman’s thigh.

  The enemy didn’t even realize he’d been injured. He was too busy snarling, too busy forcing his broken breath into another roar. But the bleeding punctures began to show. The nunchaku’s colpse turned the fragments into shrapnel that sprayed into his own hardened skin.

  The staff was dying. Its runic array flickered with every swing. Cracks ran along its length like a spiderweb about to split.

  The beastman staggered back one step, then another, footing growing unstable as the berserker draught’s toll, the internal strain, and the failing weapon all crashed into his system at once. His eyes trembled, the red glow bleeding into a sickly pulsing pink.

  Ludger’s own hands were ruined, bleeding, shaking, likely fractured in pces, But the enemy was losing ground, strength, and speed. The enemy took another heavy swing, slower than any before, the chain rattling with a broken, desperate ctter.

  And Ludger knew: The end of this exchange was approaching.

  The ship shuddered violently as another explosion smmed into the mana barrier above them. This time, the impact wasn’t distant or muted, it resonated through the hull like a gong struck underwater. The barrier flickered, ripples of fractured light spreading across its curved surface. Ludger didn’t need to look up to understand what it meant.

  Rathen had finished the other ships.

  Without the fgship giving them support, the smaller vessels must have colpsed one by one. No coordinated return fire. The pirates stood no chance against Maurien’s wind pressure, Kae’s precision sabotage, and Renvar’s maniac destruction. Half an hour was more than generous, Rathen must have been waiting for this final moment.

  “Good,” Ludger muttered, flexing his bloodied fingers. “Time to end this.”

  He let his arms fall open, dropping his guard completely. His hands were ruined, skin split, palms raw and glistening with blood. Anyone else would’ve seen that as surrender. The beastman certainly did.

  Ludger tilted his head slightly, irritation written in the slight downward twitch of his mouth. “I’ll give you one chance,” he said, voice steady despite the storm and the ringing deck. “Try to win. This is getting boring.”

  The beastman’s entire body jerked with fury. His lips curled back, exposing bloodstained fangs. Rage pulsed through him like a second heartbeat, veins bulging beneath reddened skin. The berserker draught amplified everything, anger, desperation, pain, turning him into a snarling mound of murderous energy.

  He bared his teeth, bit into his own lip until blood ran down his chin, then charged. His footsteps hammered the deck like falling boulders. CRASH—CRASH—CRASH— Each stride deeper than the st, splintering the pnks completely. He swung the damaged nunchaku downward with both hands, aiming to crush Ludger’s skull in a single final blow.

  The attack descended like a guillotine.

  And at the very st instant, Ludger moved. Not backward. Not sideways. Forward.

  His hands snapped up, palms open.

  THOOOM—!

  He caught the descending weapon dead-on, fingers cmping around the cracked segments and the chain with brutal precision. Pain tore through his ruined hands, skin peeling further, blood spraying in a small arc, but he didn’t let go.

  The beastman tried to jerk the weapon back, expecting to rip it free like he had against every other opponent in his life. He couldn’t. Ludger held firm.

  Earth Overdrive grounded him, Rage Flow fueled him, and the heaviness rune pulsed once, adding a surge of weight that locked the weapon in pce like it had fused to Ludger’s grip.

  The beastman’s eyes widened. Muscles bulged. He grunted, straining to pull his weapon free.

  Ludger was counting on that. He didn’t hesitate. He retracted one knee, coiled like a loaded spring, and then drove both feet upward in a brutal double stomp straight into the beastman’s face.

  CRACK—!

  Bone snapped. Blood and spit exploded outward. The beastman’s head snapped backward violently, his massive frame stumbling like a drunken giant. Before he could regain bance, Ludger moved.

  He surged in close, pushed off the ground with both feet, and spun. Once. Twice. A third time, feet cutting through the air like bded meteors. Rage Flow sharpened every rotation, Earth Overdrive put impossibly dense force into the final strike. His heel crashed into the beastman’s ribs.

  KAA-THOOOOOM!

  The impact was catastrophic. The beastman didn’t just fall, he flew. His body shot across the deck, smashing through the railing and smming into the captain’s cabin with enough force to annihite the entire structure.

  Wood exploded outward. Beams snapped like twigs. The entire cabin colpsed under the weight of the impact. Something else colpsed too.

  The mana barrier’s glow, visible through the storm and smoke, flickered violently, then shattered in a cascade of gss-like fragments. The ship’s main mana conduit had been hidden inside the captain’s cabin.

  And Ludger’s kick had crushed it. The protective shield around the fgship vanished completely in a burst of dissolving mana light. The battlefield went silent for half a second as wind howled through the open sky. Then Ludger straightened, lowering his bruised arms, eyes locked on the smoking ruin where the beastman had disappeared.

  “One left,” he muttered.

  “Time to finish this properly.”

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