The copy, for the first ti had his brows knit together, he realized he was the pri target for the enraged colossal Ludwig. And that enraged beast was not going to let go of prey once it caught it.
The air around them had already turned heavy with heat and dust, and the rooftop beneath their boots trembled every ti the giant shifted its weight. Even from this distance, Ludwig could hear it, the grind of crystal against stone, the wet pull of muscle being forced into shapes it was never ant to hold.
Especially after the copy struck away the incoming blow. The giant’s claws were cut and his palm was wounded. It wasn’t a deep injury by any sane standard, Wrath didn’t care about "deep", but it was an insult made physical. Red blood sprayed in a harsh arc and stead where it hit the ruined street below, and for a fraction of a second the giant froze as if it had to re-learn the concept of being resisted.
Ludwig, the real one, no longer beca the target, after all, Ludwig was only defending, though he did enrage the creature; he never injured it, and the copy had done so. Ludwig stood back with Durandal angled and ready, letting his breath settle into sothing asured, but his eyes stayed sharp. He’d learned that this floor punished hesitation and rewarded patience in ways that felt backwards. The beast didn’t care who started it. It cared who hurt it.
The wrathful Ludwig’s sight turned completely, and they focused on the copy as their battle continued. The giant’s head snapped with a violent precision that didn’t match its bulk, and its remaining eye locked onto the copy like a hook finding flesh.
The world seed to narrow around that gaze. Dust stopped drifting. Even the loose pebbles on the rooftop felt like they held their breath. The copy shifted his stance without conscious flourish, feet planting in a line that gave him angles, not pride.
The fight could be described in one word.
Chaos.
It wasn’t sothing that could easily be analyzed, after all, there were two completely different personalities fighting. One who brought down its palms and claws with might strong enough to crater streets, and other used finess and minimal power to parry and retaliate. The giant moved like a collapsing building that decided it could hunt, each swing a demolition, each stomp a localized earthquake. The copy moved like a blade being drawn and returned and drawn again, never lingering, never wasting. His parries weren’t "blocks." They were tiny redirections that stole montum and returned it to the world as misalignnt and pain.
At first, the winner was obvious, the copy, though smaller, less powerful was easily able to intercept, interrupt, counter, and riposte against the creature. The damage piling on the Wrathful Death grew faster than it could even care to generate. He stepped inside the reach of claws that could have folded him in half, turned his shoulders the width of a coin, and answered with cuts that weren’t ant to "kill", just to peel away function. He clipped tendons. He cracked joints. He carved through crystal growth at its weakest seams, where rage had forced it to sprout too fast and too brittle.
Missing fingers, claws, a horn chipped and an eye gouged out. Each loss ca with a roar that shook the air and sent shockwaves through shattered windows that didn’t exist anymore. The horn snapped with a sound like splitting bone; the eye went with a wet rupture that made Ludwig’s own eyelid twitch in sympathy despite himself. The giant flailed harder, and the city paid for it, walls exploding outward, a street splitting, a fountain being turned into flying gravel.
Anyone would think the copy was winning. That was not what Ludwig thought as he watched, the two of them had one small thing that made them different. Ludwig’s gaze wasn’t fixed on the damage. Damage was a lie on this floor, everything here was either invincible or temporary or both. He watched the copy’s shoulders. He watched his breathing. He watched the way the copy’s steps began to shave a fraction of distance less cleanly each exchange.
’Stamina,’ Ludwig muttered. The word wasn’t dramatic. It was arithtic.
After all, the copy was not ’Ludwig’ fully. He was a human version of him, a mortal version. A version that wasn’t undead. That ant sweat. Micro-tremors. The inevitable burn in muscle that didn’t regenerate just because you wanted it to. Ludwig could see the copy’s forearm tighten a beat too late on one parry, the slight hitch in his heel when he pivoted. He could see effort accumulating the way blood accumulates in a cut that keeps reopening.
The Wrathful Death could ignore exhaustion completely as it fueled its body with wrath, while the copy couldn’t go beyond its limitations. Skill and courage all had a ceiling they couldn’t surpass. Absolute destruction simply blew apart that ceiling. The giant didn’t "rest." It didn’t even know what rest was. It simply kept pushing. Even when it lost pieces of itself, it replaced them by breaking itself further, turning pain into fuel, turning damage into permission.
And so, Ludwig hesitated, for the first ti. Not because he suddenly grew soft, but because the math beca ugly. If he stepped in, he risked becoming the pause the copy needed. If he didn’t, he risked losing the only thing keeping the beast occupied.
Because if this keeps up, the Wrathful Death will win.
Especially after the loud grunt that echoed from ahead of him. It wasn’t even a scream. It was the sound of breath being punched out of a body that hadn’t expected to be punished that hard. The copy staggered, and the giant’s claw ca down like a falling gate,
The copy lost an arm. Not cleanly. Not rcifully. One mont it was there, the next it was gone, torn away at the shoulder with a spray of blood that splashed across the rooftop and stead in the heat of the aura saturating everything. The severed limb hit stone and bounced like a thrown club, fingers twitching once as if mory lingered.
He turned his face to Ludwig and muttered, without an ounce of disgrace or anger, "You’ll die to it, faster than I." The calmness of it was almost worse than fear. It wasn’t begging. It wasn’t bargaining. It was simply statent, this is your problem next.
There was no other aning to those words but one.
If Ludwig didn’t help, the Wrathful Death was going to kill the copy and then kill Ludwig afterward.
"I’ll take those chances," Ludwig however didn’t care. His voice didn’t rise. His posture didn’t soften. He didn’t step forward. He didn’t step back. He stayed where he was, blade ready, mind colder than the dust in his lungs. Because he knew what the copy was and what the copy wanted: not survival, but control.
He knew himself well enough to know a trap when he sees it. The copy was clearly in the disadvantage, but adding Ludwig to the mix, it could hide, relax, take a break and probably even heal itself. And maybe even backstab Ludwig. Ludwig had seen that kind of tactic a thousand tis, soone wounded using "teamwork" as cover to reset the tempo. A blade doesn’t need strength to betray you. It only needs an opening.
As long as Ludwig didn’t join the fray, the Wrathful Death will win. That was the price. Let the giant finish its al. Let the copy be removed from the board.
"You have no pride?" The copy said. The words ca sharp, and for the first ti his calm cracked into sothing that sounded almost offended, like Ludwig refusing to save him was a personal insult instead of a tactical choice.
Ludwig smiled, "Finally, you say it. Finally you reveal your allegiance." The smile wasn’t friendly. It was recognition. Pride wasn’t in the horns or the aura or the violence. Pride was in the assumption that Ludwig would move to preserve "himself," even when it endangered him.
The copy backed away, "What do you an?" he snapped at Ludwig while a claw threatened to crush him to bits. With his remaining arm, he parried, but the claw still grazed his right arm, making it also almost useless. The graze was enough to rip through muscle and leave the arm hanging wrong, as if the limb had been demoted from "weapon" to "burden." Blood ran down his side in fast sheets now, slicking his stance, and his footing began to slide in his own ss.
"You think I’m an idiot? You think I don’t realize the purpose of this trial?" Ludwig snorted, "It was never just about this... who is who, bullshit. It was always about pride, is that not the task, tower?" Ludwig looked up at the dark skies and asked the tower itself. He didn’t ask because he expected an answer.
The city around them was a broken stage. The sky was a ceiling that pretended to be infinite. And sowhere behind that illusion, the Tower listened.
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