"You will not survive the backlash..." Pride said as he stood on the other side of the arena, even with all his gusto and bravado, his arrogance and power. Ludwig could only think of one thing.

He dodged.

"Then so be it," Ludwig howled as he stomped forward, electric and wrathful energy zapping in the air as he swung Nightbreaker sideways. He was aiming to eradicate anything that stood between him and pride completely.

The mace howled as it let loose a powerful world-severing wave of red aura. The wave washed over the stone, the glass, and the treasures, melting them, breaking them and rupturing them all as the wave moved.

"I denounce your power, for it is unworthy of someone such as you!" Pride raised his hand to block. And the world felt like it was about to break from the pressure and the change in the air.

"DENOUNCE SHIT, MOTHERFUCKER!" Ludwig, for the first time in this battle, didn’t wait for Pride to activate any random abilities he had.

After all, he remembered one thing clearly from having tried to inspect Pride on his sixth or seventh death.

[Pride Cannot be Inspected]

He was too damn proud to even be pried upon and inspected. So all his abilities were things Ludwig would have to simply understand by dying to him.

The collision between Nightbreaker and Pride’s raised palm did not produce an explosion in the conventional sense. There was no burst of fire or expanding shockwave. Instead, the world itself seemed to compress inward for a brief, nauseating moment, as though the arena had been caught between two opposing absolutes trying to overwrite one another.

The pressure became unbearable.

Ludwig’s armored boots were forced backward across the marble as Nightbreaker trembled violently in his hands, Noctivex grinding against itself as it anchored his enlarged body in place. His arms screamed in protest. Fresh cracks formed beneath his feet, branching outward like veins through the polished white stone.

Then the pressure released.

The resulting force rippled outward in a circular blast, uprooting mountains of gold and treasure and sending shattered glass, broken obsidian, and fragments of marble scattering across the amphitheater.

Ludwig lowered Nightbreaker slightly, his breathing needlessly heavy beneath the warped metallic helm.

At first, nothing appeared different.

Pride still stood where he had before, posture unchanged, palm still raised, expression still composed with that same infuriating certainty that made it seem as though the entire exchange had been beneath his notice.

Ludwig narrowed his eyes beneath the warped metallic visor of Noctivex. At first, nothing about Pride appeared different. He still stood exactly where he had before, posture immaculate, expression untouched by strain or exertion, his raised palm held with the same unbearable certainty that made it seem as though the clash had been beneath acknowledgment. Yet something had changed. The difference was so minor that under any other circumstance, Ludwig would have dismissed it entirely, but after dying to this bastard dozens of times, he had long since learned to stop looking for obvious answers.

There, running across the center of Pride’s palm, was a thin, lighter color of a golden line.

It was barely even a wound. More like the idea of one. A shallow mark that did not bleed, did not hinder movement, and under normal conditions would have been so meaningless it wouldn’t deserve notice.

But that was exactly why Ludwig stared at it so intensely.

This was Pride. The same entity who stood naked as if armor itself were an insult, who carried his own skin as a declaration that nothing in existence was worthy of leaving so much as a blemish upon him.

And yet Ludwig had marked him.

A grin slowly spread beneath the monstrous helm.

"You got cut," Ludwig said, his voice grinding out through layers of living metal.

Pride lowered his hand in one smooth motion, every movement as deliberate and controlled as before. However, Ludwig caught it immediately. It was not the motion itself that stood out, but the timing. The hand had lowered a fraction too slowly, delayed by such a microscopic amount that no ordinary fighter would have ever registered it. But Ludwig was no longer fighting this thing like an ordinary opponent. He had died to Pride enough times to memorize the cadence of his existence. He knew the rhythm of his stillness. He knew the exact mechanical precision with which Pride moved, spoke, and reacted.

That motion had been late.

"You are mistaken," Pride replied.

Ludwig’s grin widened.

That response came too quickly.

"Pride needs not lie," Ludwig grinned even wider, and even the metal making his helmet warped to shape the wide grin.

Not in speed, but in intention.

Pride had not stated a truth. He had corrected Ludwig.

The distinction was small, but Ludwig immediately felt something click into place in his mind. Up until now, everything Pride had said had been framed as fact. Immutable, unquestionable declarations spoken with the detached certainty of natural law. He had never justified himself. Never clarified. Never corrected. He simply existed, and the world was expected to arrange itself accordingly.

But this was different.

This was a response.

Ludwig rested Nightbreaker against his shoulder and laughed, low and amused, despite the agony wracking his body. Cracks spread across Noctivex where the previous clash had overloaded its structure, and fresh pain pulsed through his reinforced arms as the living metal drove needles of black steel deeper into fractured bone to maintain stability.

"No," Ludwig said, adjusting his grip. "I don’t think I am."

He did not fully understand what was happening yet. He still had no real grasp over the mechanics of Pride’s authority or the exact nature of whatever absurd laws this bastard was enforcing. But Ludwig did not need complete understanding. Not yet. He only needed information, and for the first time since entering this palace, Pride had finally given him some.

A mark. A delayed motion. A correction where none should have existed. Tiny things on their own, perhaps meaningless, but together they painted a picture Ludwig could no longer ignore.

Pride had changed.

Pride’s golden eyes narrowed by an almost imperceptible margin. It was such a small shift that Ludwig almost doubted he had seen it at all, but the confirmation came a moment later.

"This changes nothing, You are still weak." Pride said.

Ludwig barked out a laugh so loud it echoed throughout the fractured amphitheater.

That was the second mistake.

"WEAK! HOW INTERESTING! I WAS NOT EVEN WORTH MEASUREING BEFORE! WEAK IS GROWTH!" Ludwig howled the words.

Pride’s face almost, almost contorted.

Ludwig understood enough by now to recognize a pattern. Pride only spoke when asserting absolutes or dismissing Ludwig’s existence as something beneath relevance. He did not reassure. He did not deny. He did not bother correcting meaningless things.

But saying that he was weak was different.

Yet now he was doing exactly that.

That meant Ludwig had touched something.

Ludwig had not touched Pride physically in any meaningful way. The scratch was irrelevant. But conceptually? That was another matter entirely.

He pointed Nightbreaker directly at Pride, the massive crystalline spikes along its head still glowing with residual wrathful energy.

"You said it changes nothing? I disagree. No, actually," Ludwig said, lowering his stance as electricity snapped violently around his enlarged frame, "it changes quite a bit."

The marble beneath his feet cracked from the pressure of his footing as he leaned forward, preparing another charge.

"Because now I know one thing."

Wrath surged harder through Noctivex, causing the red crystalline protrusions along his armor to glow brighter.

"You can be moved," Ludwig said, his grin widening beneath layers of warped metal. "And more importantly..."He tapped Nightbreaker once against the fractured marble."I finally exist enough for you, to be measured."

For the first time since Ludwig had stepped into this domain, the arena became truly silent. Not the stagnant stillness of a dead palace or the oppressive quiet of buried treasure, but something else entirely. A pause had entered the room.

It was small, brief, and so subtle Ludwig might have dismissed it under any other circumstance, but after so many deaths he could no longer mistake what he was seeing.

The pause was real.

But real.

Ludwig felt it as clearly as any attack.

Pride was thinking.

The realization made Ludwig’s grin stretch even wider beneath the helm.

"Well, well..." he muttered, tightening his grip around Nightbreaker as he felt fresh power gather through his limbs. "Looks like perfection ain’t all that perfect after all."

Then Ludwig stomped forward again, launching himself into another attack.

Ludwig’s enlarged frame tore across the fractured marble like a siege engine unchained, every step rupturing the already damaged arena floor beneath his weight. Nightbreaker dragged behind him for only a moment before he swung it upward in a brutal arc, wrathful energy howling through the crystalline protrusions coating its massive head. The air itself seemed to scream as the weapon carved through it, red aura splitting outward like a blade trying to sever the arena in half.

Pride did not meet the attack immediately.

That alone made Ludwig’s grin widen.

Before, Pride would have already known the correct response. There would have been no delay, no thought, no need to process what stood before him. But now, Ludwig saw it clearly. Pride’s golden eyes tracked the incoming strike not with detached indifference, but with calculation. Not fear. Not yet. But something dangerously close to evaluation.

That was enough.

Nightbreaker came crashing downward, and this time Pride moved first.

Not a graceful dodge, not the effortless shift of an untouchable existence refusing contact, but an actual repositioning. His body twisted sharply to the side as the mace crashed into the marble where he had stood, detonating the impact point into a crater of shattered white stone and erupting crimson crystal spikes violently upward.

The palace shook.

Fragments of obsidian mirrors rained from above as the golden dome groaned beneath the force of the impact.

Ludwig barked out a laugh so loud it echoed through the chamber.

"There you go!" he roared, ripping Nightbreaker free from the crater as molten red light pulsed harder through the seams of Noctivex. "Move again! Come on, show me some more of that perfection!"

Pride landed several meters away, feet skimming across the marble before stopping in one precise motion. For the first time since Ludwig had entered this domain, the golden being’s posture no longer resembled a monument.

It resembled a combatant.

Subtle differences. Slightly lowered center of gravity. Shoulders adjusted by mere degrees. Weight redistributed toward the back leg.

Tiny adjustments in posture. A slight shift in weight distribution. The angle of Pride’s shoulders no longer carried the same effortless stillness it had before, as if his body had begun accounting for something that did not exist a moment ago. Nothing about it was dramatic, nothing about it would have mattered in isolation, and yet Ludwig had spent enough deaths staring at this being to recognize when a pattern was no longer absolute.

He could see it now, not as a theory or deduction, but as something physically expressed through motion. Pride was no longer simply existing within the arena. He was responding to it.

And that was wrong.

Not in the sense of weakness, but in the sense of deviation.

Ludwig felt the grin beneath his helm stretch wider as he slowly rolled Nightbreaker back into a ready position. His grip tightened unconsciously as fresh cracks in Noctivex continued to repair themselves with grinding, painful precision, the living metal reacting to his rising momentum like something eager to continue existing through violence.

Pride’s gaze flickered, just once, toward his own hand again.

The same palm that had been flawless.

The same palm that had never required inspection.

The same palm that now carried a mark too small to matter and too present to ignore.

Ludwig noticed the direction of that gaze immediately.

His laugh came out low at first, almost disbelieving, before growing sharper as he leaned forward slightly.

"So that’s what it is," he muttered, voice distorted through the layered metal of Noctivex. "You don’t like it when something stays on you."

Pride did not answer immediately.

That delay was itself an answer.

The air between them tightened again, but it was no longer the oppressive weight of absolute authority pressing down on something insignificant. It had become something more unstable. A space where decisions were being made instead of truths being enforced.

Pride finally spoke, though his voice lacked the same effortless finality it once carried.

"You interpret without understanding."

Ludwig tilted his head slightly, as if amused by the accusation rather than threatened by it. His stance shifted forward by a fraction, Nightbreaker rising off his shoulder as molten red aura began to gather along its surface again, reacting instinctively to his intent.

"Yeah," Ludwig replied simply. "That’s kind of the point."

And then he moved again.