All Jobs and Classes! I Just Wanted One Skill, Not Them All!

Chapter 646

The ant king moved. Not a sprint. A launch.

Its four arms flared outward as it charged, blades catching the chamber’s damp light in quick, cold flashes. The floor under its feet didn’t just crack, it skipped, resin film tearing as if the king’s weight and speed were too rude to respect friction.

Ludger met it head-on.

He didn’t have space to run in an egg field. He didn’t have room to circle. Rows of barrel-sized eggs boxed the lane into a narrow corridor, forcing the fight into close quarters where every inch mattered.

The first sword came down from above, straight, brutal, meant to split his skull.

Ludger raised both bracers and caught it.

Metal rang. His forearms jolted. Before he could breathe, a second blade came in from the right, angled toward his ribs. He twisted, bracer snapping out to deflect…

A third blade cut across low, aiming for his thighs.

Ludger hopped, barely clearing it, boots skidding on slick resin… and the fourth sword stabbed in, thrusting toward his throat like the king had been waiting for the hop.

Ludger jerked his head aside. The tip kissed his skin. A thin line of red opened across his neck. He felt warm blood run down into his collar. He had no time to react.

The king was already inside his rhythm, the four blades working like a machine: one to pin his guard high, one to cut his side, one to take his legs, one to threaten his head. There was no pause. No reset.

Only a constant, rotating storm of steel.

Ludger’s bracers flashed as they met blades again and again, sharp chimes and harsher clangs echoing in the chamber. Every block rattled his bones. Every deflection dragged frost across silver edges, but the cold couldn’t spread fast enough to keep up with the tempo.

A sword slid past his left bracer and kissed his shoulder. Cloth tore. Skin split. Blood beaded, then smeared as he twisted away.

Another blade skimmed across his forearm, just a brush, but it left three parallel scratches that opened instantly, red against the flushed skin. His sleeve shredded into ribbons.

He ducked under a cross-cut, felt wind from the blade rip past his scalp, and the edge still caught hair, snipping strands that drifted down onto the slick floor.

He drove a punch at the king’s chest, bracer runes pulsing… A blade slapped it aside. Not blocked. Redirected. His fist punched empty air while a sword came for his ribs from the opposite side. He twisted, too late.

The tip traced along his flank, shallow but long, a burning line under torn fabric. Ludger’s coat split open at the seam.

Another strike followed immediately, low and vicious. He tried to step back, but the eggs crowded him. His heel clipped a resin ridge and his balance faltered for a heartbeat… That heartbeat cost him. Steel flashed.

A shallow cut opened on his thigh, just above the knee. Not deep, just enough to sting, just enough to remind him that the king didn’t need a perfect hit. It only needed many.

Ludger shoved off the ridge, braced with one hand against an egg cradle to keep from slipping, and the damp shell squished slightly under his palm, pulsing faintly.

He didn’t look at it. He couldn’t. Four swords came again. High. Low. Side. Thrust. He blocked the first. Deflected the second. Half-dodged the third. The fourth slipped through.

A line appeared across his ribs, shallow and fast, his undershirt tearing like paper. His breath hitched, not from pain, but from the sheer effort of staying intact.

By the time he forced himself into a cleaner stance, his clothes were ruined, sleeves shredded, coat cut open, fabric hanging in strips. His skin was striped with thin red scratches, each one bleeding lightly, each one proof of how close the blades were getting. Only his scarf was fine because he was paying extra attention to avoid damaging it.

The ant king pressed harder, relentless, four arms moving with inhuman coordination. Ludger’s boots squealed as he skidded sideways to avoid a thrust, bracers clashing with two blades at once… and a third sword clipped his cheek.

A thin cut opened across his face. Blood warmed his jawline. He blinked once, eyes narrowing through the sting, watching silver flash in the humid air. The king didn’t stop. It didn’t need to. It was carving him down by inches, forcing him to spend everything just to keep standing in the lane between the eggs. And Ludger, red aura roaring, bracers humming, teeth clenched, was suddenly doing the one thing he hated most. Reacting.

The next exchange was worse. The ant king didn’t just keep the tempo, it layered it.

Two swords came high in alternating chops, not meant to kill, meant to pin Ludger’s guard up and narrow his vision. Ludger caught the first on his bracers, the impact ringing through his bones. He shifted to catch the second… and a third blade slid in low, a sweeping cut meant to take his ankles out from under him while he was busy upstairs.

Ludger jumped again, forced into the air whether he wanted it or not. The fourth sword stabbed up into the space where his stomach would be when he landed.

He twisted midair, muscles screaming under Overdrive, and the thrust grazed his side instead of gutting him. Cloth tore. Skin opened. The sting was sharp and fast, a warning light flashing in his nerves.

He landed wrong, one foot half on resin, half on a broken brick, and the slick surface tried to betray him. Ludger slapped a hand to the ground, Seismic Sense screaming, and shoved a thin ridge of stone up under his heel just long enough to regain purchase.

He used that ridge like a spring.

He lunged forward and drove a punch at the king’s jaw ridge, bracer runes pulsing, frost gathering… A blade met it. Then another.

The king crossed two swords in front of the punch, catching the bracer between them like tongs. For a fraction of a second Ludger’s arm was trapped.

The ant king’s other two blades came in like scissors, one for his ribs, one for his throat.

Ludger ripped his arm free with brute force, twisting his torso, bracers scraping steel. The rib cut kissed fabric and left a shallow line. The throat cut shaved air and still nicked the edge of his collarbone.

His breathing turned harsher. Sweat mixed with blood, hot against his red-flushed skin. He tried to reset his stance. He tried to widen his base.

The eggs narrowed him. The slick floor punished every imperfect step. The king exploited it with merciless precision, steering him like prey.

A sudden burst of footwork, too clean, too fast, put the ant king on Ludger’s blind side. Ludger pivoted late and caught a blade on his bracer with a shriek of metal.

The impact drove him sideways. He skidded, boots squealing. Another sword clipped his shoulder on the way past and tore more cloth free, leaving a fresh scratch that bled instantly.

Ludger’s jaw tightened until his teeth hurt. He forced himself forward again, refusing to be herded, bracers up, aura roaring. The ant king’s four arms rose.

For a heartbeat, all four blades hovered in different angles, high, mid, low, thrust, like the king was presenting a geometry problem made of steel.

Then they swung. All four at once. Not a flurry. A coordinated collapse. Two blades slammed down toward his shoulders. One cut across his midsection. One stabbed straight for his face. Ludger crossed his forearms and braced, bracers catching the heaviest pair—

CLANG—

The shock rattled his skeleton. He turned his hips, trying to roll with the force, trying to deflect the horizontal cut— The blade still kissed his ribs, shallow but burning, tearing fabric as it went. He jerked his head aside from the thrust—

The point grazed his cheekbone again, opening the earlier cut wider. And then the force of it all hit at once. The king wasn’t just swinging. It was pushing. Four swords driving forward like a wall of silver, turning Ludger’s block into a lever against his own body.

His boots slid. The resin floor offered no grip. His back slammed into a pillar ridge… Then the king’s pressure surged one more time and Ludger was thrown.

He collided with the chamber wall hard enough to knock dust loose from resin ribs above. The impact stole air from his lungs. Something in his chest throbbed in protest. He bounced, half-stumbled, and caught himself on one knee.

He was up immediately. No hesitation. No drama. He forced his feet under him and raised his bracers again, eyes locked on the ant king through strands of hair stuck to his forehead with sweat and blood.

But when he swallowed, his mouth tasted metallic. Blood. Not from a scratch. From inside.

His tongue found the copper tang and his stomach sank a fraction, cold and clear. This wasn’t going well for him. Ludger steadied his breathing in the wet heat and let the pain file itself away into the part of his brain that handled “later.”

He didn’t need to count the cuts to understand the equation. Two arms. Four swords. He could keep playing defense and he’d lose by a thousand paper cuts, except the paper was steel and the cuts were starting to reach bone. He exhaled slowly, tasting blood again, and forced himself to accept the obvious.

I can’t block four arms with only two.

And no, he wasn’t planning to grow two more just to make the math prettier. So he changed the math. Ludger lowered his stance.

Not just “bend the knees.”

He sank. Center of gravity dropping until his feet felt welded to the slick floor. His shoulders relaxed. His hands came down slightly, bracers angled, not in a high guard, but in a position built for exploding forward.

He took a deep breath. In. Hold. Out.

The chamber’s humid air pulled into his lungs and came out colder, fogging faintly in front of his face as the frost around his bracers tightened again. Mana gathered without flaring, dense, controlled, packed into his frame like a spring being compressed.

The red aura didn’t grow louder. It grew heavier. Like gravity had decided to lean closer. His eyes sharpened. Focus intensified until the egg rows, the resin ribs, the broken debris, all of it stopped being “environment” and became a map of angles, distances, and openings. Seismic Sense synchronized with his heartbeat. Every movement in the room became a signal.

The ant king felt it. Its antennae snapped forward, then back. Its stance shifted, subtle but immediate. The earlier irritation didn’t vanish, but it was now braided with caution.

All four swords rose higher. Not attacking. Guarding. The king’s posture tightened into something defensive for the first time, blades forming a layered canopy of steel between them.

It could tell.

Whatever Ludger had been doing so far, brute pressure, frost on contact, raw Overdrive, wasn’t the full deck.

There were hidden cards still tucked under the table… And underestimating a human who could shake the chamber with his fists had just become… foolish.

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