Its foot hit an egg cradle ridge and it had to adjust, eyes flicking down for a fraction of a second.
Ludger saw it. He didn’t smile. He simply hit harder.
A bracer-covered straight punch slamd into the sword again, pushing it down and across. The ice on the blade thickened, spreading in branching patterns like veins of winter. The sword’s ring changed, less clean, more muted, like the tal was being choked.
The ant king’s patience finally showed cracks.
Its mandibles twitched not like a smile this ti, but like a snarl suppressed. Its faceted eyes narrowed into slits of black glass. Its stance grew tighter, the relaxed looseness disappearing in favor of tension that hadn’t been there before.
Annoyance. Real annoyance. Because Ludger wasn’t playing the role the king had assigned him. He wasn’t kneeling. He wasn’t dying quickly. He was forcing the “inevitable ruler” to step backward in its own breeding chamber.
The ant king tried to break the pressure with speed.
It snapped a fast slash, too fast for a human eye, aid not at Ludger’s bracers but at his midsection, where the coat parted and armor was lighter. Ludger didn’t retreat.
He dropped.
His center of gravity sank, the blade passing over him by a hair, and he drove an uppercut into the king’s sword arm.
Bracer t chitin. The arm jerked. The sword angle wobbled. Ice crawled up the blade and kissed the king’s wrist plating. For the first ti, the ant king made a sound, low, irritated, almost like a hiss forced through mandibles.
It yanked its arm back, shaking the sword once as if trying to fling frost off.
The frost didn’t fling. It clung. Ludger stepped forward, relentless. He wasn’t just pushing the king physically. He was pushing it ntally, pushing it into that narrow place where arrogance beca anger. And anger made mistakes.
The king’s voice sharpened, losing that lazy certainty. “You persist.”
Ludger didn’t answer. He drove another punch into the blade, forcing it to et cold again, forcing the king’s feet to slide back.
The ant king’s eyes flicked to the egg rows, to space, to options. Its mandibles tightened.
The chamber’s humid air crackled with Ludger’s mana, frost glittering in every breath.
And the ant king’s expression, if you could call it that, finally shifted from amused superiority to sothing uglier.
Annoyed. Offended.
As if reality itself had broken etiquette by allowing a thirteen-year-old human to bully a “king” in his own hive.
Ludger kept advancing, red skin taut, bracers humming with cold. He could feel it now. He’d found the crack. All he had to do was keep pressing until the arrogance split and the monster inside showed its real teeth.
The ant king finally tried to end the pattern.
It stopped giving ground and pushed back, a sudden surge of strength through its stance, sword and shoulder driving forward like it ant to shove Ludger out of its space and reassert the range where steel ruled.
For most fighters, that would’ve worked. For Ludger, it was a gift.
Because in that push, right in the mont the king shifted its weight forward and committed, its guard opened for the smallest fraction of a second.
A gap. A real one. Ludger’s eyes sharpened. Overdrive flared.
He fed more mana into it than he’d allowed himself since the fight started, and his body answered imdiately, muscles tightening harder, movent snapping cleaner, the air around him vibrating like a struck wire.
His foot hit the ground and the floor groaned. Then he stepped into the king’s push instead of away from it. He slipped past the sword line and drove a kick straight into the ant king’s stomach, right into the center mass where humanoid balance lived and insect plates overlapped.
The impact was monstrous. It wasn’t just a hit. It was an eruption of force delivered through a perfectly aligned fra, amplified by Overdrive, tid to the exact mont the king’s weight couldn’t retreat.
The egg chamber shuddered. A shockwave rippled through the humid air and rattled nearby eggs in their cradles. The ant king’s body folded around Ludger’s boot for a heartbeat… Then it launched backward like it had been struck by a siege engine.
It flew. Not stumbled. Not slid. Flew across the chamber, chitin plates scraping the air, sword arm flailing for purchase as it tried to twist and recover mid-flight. It didn’t get the chance.
It smashed into the far wall with a heavy, wet CRACK, resin ribs vibrating as the impact ran through the structure. Dust and grit burst outward in a thick cloud, falling in slow drifts over the eggs like dirty snow.
Silence followed for a fraction of a second. Ludger lowered his leg and stood still, chest rising in controlled breaths, bracers humming with cold. He watched the dust. Listened beneath it. Felt the vibrations through the floor. The ant king was still moving. Not panicked. Not broken. Just… recalculating.
Ludger’s mouth tightened into a frown. He could tell it imdiately. That kick hadn’t been the end. It hadn’t even been the turning point. It was just the mont the fight stopped being a demonstration and started becoming real. Ludger’s aura pulsed red in the dust-filled air.
“This is just the beginning,” he muttered, and took a step forward, ready for whatever the “king” decided to beco next.
The wall didn’t just take the impact.
It failed.
The spot where the ant king hit blew outward in a violent bloom, resin ribs snapping, packed earth and hardened secretion erupting like a ruptured dam. A concussive thump rolled through the egg chamber and a spray of debris burst into the air: jagged chitin fragnts, chunks of resin-black wall, shattered bits of embedded brick, and dust thick enough to turn the far end of the room into a storm.
Pieces clattered across the floor and skidded between the egg rows. One chunk slamd into an egg cradle and bounced off with a wet thud, leaving a sar of gri. Dust rained down in lazy curtains, sparkling faintly where Ludger’s cold still clung to the air.
For a heartbeat, there was nothing but swirling grit. Then sothing moved inside it, smooth, deliberate.
The ant king stepped out of the cloud as if it were walking through a doorway.
Its chitin plates were scuffed. A few resin flecks clung to its shoulder ridge. The silver sword was still in its hand, the last traces of frost cracking and shedding in brittle flakes as it rolled its wrist.
Its face, if you could call it that, had changed. No curiosity. No amused certainty. Just irritation sharpened into a clean edge.
Annoyed. Offended. As if being thrown like a rag doll was less painful than it was disrespectful. It stared at Ludger, antennae stiff, mandibles tight.
“How dare you kick ?” it demanded.
Ludger blinked once. Then, deadpan, he lifted a hand slightly like he was addressing a noble in a court he didn’t respect.
“Sorry,” he said. “My bad.”
The ant king’s eyes narrowed.
Ludger continued, voice perfectly polite in the most insulting way possible.
“Which kind of attack are you more comfortable receiving?” he asked. “Forgive my lack of manners.”
He tilted his head a fraction, red aura still humming around him like heat off a forge.
“I don’t do well with authority.”
For a mont the ant king just stared, as if trying to decide whether this was a strange human ritual or a provocation it was supposed to punish. Then its aura flared.
Not the raw, vibrating pressure Ludger carried, different. Sharper. Denser. It rolled off the king in a pulse that made the dust in the air shift and swirl outward like sothing had exhaled.
The resin walls creaked faintly. Eggs trembled in their cradles.
The ant king’s mandibles opened just enough to show the hooked edges, and the annoyance in its posture beca sothing hotter. Not impatience. Fury held under control. Because Ludger’s mocking words hadn’t just insulted it. They’d denied it the one thing it believed was inevitable. Respect.
The ant king’s answer wasn’t a speech. It was a choice. It lifted its free hand again, palm open like before. The air blinked.
A second silver sword appeared above its hand, sa cold sheen, sa perfect line, falling as if gravity had been waiting for permission. The king caught it cleanly, no fumbling, and for a heartbeat the two blades flashed in the humid air.
Then it crossed them in front of its chest. An X of silver and threat. Ludger’s eyes narrowed.
“A dual wielder,” he muttered, half amused, half annoyed. “Of course you are.”
That would be irritating. Two blades ant fewer safe angles. More pressure. Less room to bully its guard with brute tempo. Still. Manageable. Or so he thought.
The ant king didn’t charge. It lowered its stance. Slowly. Deliberately.
And the way it moved wasn’t the smooth preparation of a swordsman settling into balance. It looked like effort, real effort. Its chitin plates shifted with tight clicks. The muscles beneath the armor bunched. Its abdon-like mantle flexed closer to its spine. Antennae stiffened.
The air around it thickened as if mana pressure was being compressed inward. Ludger watched the posture and, because he was Ludger, his mouth moved before his brain finished checking for consequences.
He laughed. A short, sharp sound in the egg chamber.
“What’s that?” he called. “Are you going to take a dump right here?”
The ant king didn’t answer. It strained harder. Ludger’s grin was still there for the first half-second, Then he saw the plates on the king’s sides separate. Not like armor loosening. Like a seam opening.
Sothing pushed outward under chitin. Ludger’s eyes widened. His grin died.
Two new arms tore free from the king’s flanks, unfolding in wet, controlled motion, jointed, plated, and wrong. They didn’t burst out like a mutation gone wild. They erged like a chanism revealing its hidden parts, shoulders rolling into place as if they’d always been there, just… tucked away.
Ludger’s stomach dipped. And before he could even fully adjust, the air blinked twice more. Two more silver swords appeared. One above each newly revealed hand. They dropped. Caught. Perfectly.
Now the ant king stood with four arms, each one holding a silver blade. A humanoid ant turned into a nightmare of symtry. Four swords. Four edges.
The crossed blades in front lowered slightly as the king settled into a wider stance, stable, balanced, ready, and the whole scene shifted from “fight” to “execution attempt.”
Ludger stared for a fraction too long. Because he’d wasted a fraction too long. Because he’d joked instead of striking. Because he was still human, and humans sotis ran their mouths when the world should’ve punched.
He exhaled, flat and irritated at himself.
“ and my big mouth…” Ludger muttered.
Then he raised his bracer-covered fists again, aura humming, eyes hardening. Annoying was one thing. This? This was going to be work.
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