Ludwig exploded forward again, but this time there was a difference in his movements. The floor beneath his armored boots cracked from the first step.

Until now, every attack had been straightforward in purpose, overwhelming force meant to test how much Wrath Pride could reject before something finally gave.

Heavy blow after heavy blow, pressure stacked upon pressure, all of it thrown at Pride’s perfect little world in the hope that something would reveal a weakness. But now Ludwig had information.

A dodge. A hesitation. A reaction Pride probably wished had never happened. To Ludwig, that single movement was worth more than all the shattered gold and broken mirrors littering the hall.

Nightbreaker rose high above his head in a crushing overhead arc, wrathful energy building along the crystalline edges until the air distorted from heat and pressure. The mace had become absurdly huge in this form, a brutal pentagonal mass of blackened metal and blood-red crystal, large enough that any sane warrior would have needed a crane and a priest on standby just to lift it.

Ludwig swung it anyway. His armored back twisted, shoulder plates grinding together, while Noctivex reinforced every joint in his arms with hateful efficiency.

Then Ludwig abruptly stopped.

The motion cut off halfway through its descent, not smoothly or elegantly, but with a violent correction that made his entire body shudder inside the armor.

The momentum tried to drag him forward and punish him for changing his mind mid-swing. Noctivex reacted instantly, metal needles tightening through muscle and bone, locking joints and dragging the weapon away from its committed path.

Wrath discharged unevenly from the mace, splitting outward into jagged red streaks as Ludwig twisted sideways and drove his armored shoulder forward instead. It was a terrible decision.

The change was so abrupt and inefficient that he nearly destabilized himself, one boot slipping over fractured marble, sparks screaming from the contact as his mass dragged sideways.

His spine twisted wrong for a fraction of a second, and the armor forced him back into alignment with a sharp internal snap that sent pain crawling up behind his eyes. If he had tried this in a normal body, he probably would have folded himself in half and died out of sheer embarrassment.

Thankfully, dignity had already left the arena several deaths ago.

But Pride had already positioned himself for the first strike. Ludwig saw it clearly through the red-tinted slits of his helm.

The angle of his raised palm, the placement of his back foot, the slight tension through his frame, all of it had been aligned to receive or redirect the overhead blow.

Pride’s power was monstrous, but his reactions followed expectation. He didn’t simply respond to the present.

He prepared for the future he believed should happen.

By the time Pride recognized the attack had changed, Ludwig was already in his space. The golden light around Pride sharpened as if the world itself had realized it was too late to object.

Ludwig lowered his shoulder and drove forward with every bit of weight Noctivex could anchor behind him. He didn’t aim for elegance. He aimed for contact.

The impact ruptured the marble beneath them. Ludwig’s armored shoulder slammed into Pride’s torso, sending the golden being skidding backward across the arena floor.

Pride’s heels carved two long trenches through fractured stone before he regained balance several meters away. Dust rose between them in a pale cloud, mixed with glittering fragments from broken tiles and the remnants of the hall’s endlessly pompous decoration.

For a moment, Ludwig simply stared. Pride was still standing. Of course he was. His torso had not caved in. His bones, if he had anything as normal as bones, had not shattered. His golden surface remained painfully pristine, because apparently even being hit by a walking fortress wasn’t enough to make him look untidy.

But he had moved. Not by choice wrapped in style. Not by authority. He had been struck and pushed back.

Then Ludwig laughed.

The sound came out of his helm as a deep metallic rumble, rolling through the hall and catching against the broken mirrors like thunder trapped in a furnace.

The hit had almost certainly done no meaningful damage.

Pride still looked immaculate, untouched in every way that mattered.

But the attack had connected, and that alone was enough. It meant Pride’s prediction had been wrong. It meant the pattern could be broken.

Ludwig rolled his shoulder once, metal grinding over metal as Noctivex repaired the strain he had just inflicted on himself. The shoulder plate shifted, opened by a hair, then clamped down again with a painful click. Red light pulsed between the seams of his armor. The pain remained, but it was useful pain now, the kind that told him the move had cost something and therefore could be measured.

"You committed," Ludwig said, his grin widening beneath the warped helm.

Pride remained silent.

He stood several meters away, trenches carved behind his heels, golden eyes fixed on Ludwig with a stillness that had changed flavor.

That silence no longer carried the same passive superiority as before. Something about it had become narrower, tighter, occupied by active consideration rather than detached certainty.

There was no sneer, no immediate correction, no proud little proclamation about how meaningless the hit had been. He was thinking. Actually thinking. Which meant Ludwig had forced him to spend attention on something other than looking magnificent and being insufferable.

Ludwig tightened his grip around Nightbreaker as understanding settled into place. Pride had defended against expected force.

He had failed to adjust quickly enough when the pattern broke. That didn’t mean he was slow.

Calling Pride slow would be a good way to die stupidly.

It meant something narrower, stranger, and far more useful.

"You’re unable to improvise," Ludwig said.

Ludwig understood a small but dangerous fact. That Pride’s flaw was not weakness in the ordinary sense. It was rigidity.

His authority, his personality, even his battle logic all seemed built around the assumption that reality should arrange itself beneath him in proper order.

He could dominate, reject, command, and counter what he understood. But when an action was inefficient, irrational, or beneath the dignity of battle, there was a delay. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Small, yes. But Ludwig had already learned that small things killed people all the time.

Pride had begun organizing the battlefield in his mind.

Ludwig barked out another laugh. "Oh, I get it now," he said, leveling Nightbreaker toward him. "You actually hate it when things stop making sense."

Pride’s golden eyes narrowed. A small reaction. Still a reaction. After being murdered enough times, one either became observant or became a very repetitive corpse.

The narrowing of those eyes told Ludwig that the words had landed somewhere Pride didn’t like.

And Ludwig was beginning to enjoy himself far more than he probably should have.

Still, after being crushed under Pride’s certainty again and again, forcing confusion into that perfect face was almost intoxicating.

Petty? Absolutely. Useful? Also yes.

"Then how about this?"

Ludwig stomped his foot down, and the floor rumbled. The stomp carried enough force to send cracks outward, dust jumping from the seams of the marble.

It looked like the beginning of another brute-force attack, another attempt to shake the arena apart or force Pride to respond to weight and impact.

Pride did not flinch. His posture remained untouched, chin slightly lifted, body still arranged in that irritatingly perfect line that suggested gravity was something he tolerated out of politeness.

Ludwig threw his mace forward.

The massive weapon left his hand with a roaring spin, its pentagonal head cutting through the air like a chunk of collapsing tower hurled by a madman.

No sane warrior would ever throw away his weapon.

Pride held his palm forward to intercept the incoming weapon. Golden light gathered around Pride’s hand as the enormous mace barreled toward him.

But just as his hand was raised to block, Ludwig muttered, "Return."

Nightbreaker stopped in midair. The halt was so abrupt the air screamed around it, then the weapon reversed direction with a violent pull, dragging a spiral of red energy in its wake as it snapped back toward Ludwig’s waiting hand.

The gesture seemed meaningless, foolish even, without a goal or purpose. That was what anyone would think.

But Pride’s palm remained raised for the fraction of a second where the weapon should have struck him, and that fraction was enough.

His framework had been offered an attack and then denied it. Ludwig did not need damage from the throw. He needed interruption. He needed Pride to look at the wrong thing and commit to the wrong answer.

In Ludwig’s other hand, something had been churning while the mace covered Pride’s face. His left gauntlet closed around a tiny knot of mana, the kind of weak spell-form that felt ridiculous inside a body wrapped in Wrath and living metal.

He formed it low, close to his side, hiding it behind the returning path of Nightbreaker. The energy flickered weakly against the overwhelming red aura around him, almost pathetic by comparison.

That was the point.

It wasn’t grand. It wasn’t powerful. It was a simple first-circle fire spell, a little flame that had no place in this domain of battle. In any serious duel, using it here would have been laughable. Against Pride, it should have been less than laughable.

And Ludwig flicked it toward Pride’s face like one would flick a booger out of their nose.

The tiny spell shot forward in a sloppy arc, passing through the space Nightbreaker had just vacated. It did not roar. It did not distort the air. It did not carry enough power to make even the cracked marble nervous.

It simply crossed the distance and splashed against Pride’s face.

The flame evaporated almost immediately, leaving nothing behind but the fact that it had touched him. That, Ludwig suspected, was exactly the part Pride would hate.

Ludwig grinned. "Didn’t see that one coming, did you?"