The second Ludger’s casual words left his mouth, the pirates’ hesitation shattered.

  Every weapon on deck snapped upward like a synchronized mechanical trap. Runic rifles hummed with rising heat. Caster gauntlets flared. Even a few oversized cannons were being swiveled in panic.

  They didn’t bother with a countdown. The nearest pirate roared, “FIRE!”— and the deck erupted.

  A blinding volley tore toward Ludger. Mana bolts streaked through the air like white-hot arrows, each shot sharp enough to punch holes through iron.

  Ludger didn’t even think, his body moved on instinct. He bent his knees, launched upward, and twisted into a tight midair spin. Rifles cracked and exploded beneath him as the volley tore through the space his chest had been occupying a heartbeat earlier. The blasts detonated against the mast behind him, sending splinters of metal and wood flying across the ship. He came down lightly behind a pirate who was still trying to reload.

  “Bad spot to stand.”

  Ludger slammed his palm into the man’s back. The impact went off like a miniature shockwave. The man screamed as he was blasted forward, spinning helplessly, limbs flailing, before crashing directly into three other pirates. All four tumbled together in a heap of groans and weapon clatter.

  Ludger straightened, turning as the next wave of attackers hesitated just long enough for him to get a clear look at them. That hesitation didn’t last. Rifles were raised again.

  But before they could fire, he noticed something odd, the humans holding firearms were retreating, panic splattered across their faces. But a different cluster of fighters moved forward with a measured, predatory calm.

  Claws extended from leather bracers. Short, curved knives gleamed in the dry air under the mana shield. Muscles bulged under soaked shirts and fur. Eyes narrowed with sharp, animal intelligence.

  They were beastmen. Real ones. Not half-breeds. The kind that fought like predators instead of soldiers.And they were coordinated. Annoyingly coordinated. Ludger’s expression tightened.

  So the underworld guild managed to recruit beastmen mercs… Great.

  Before he could even finish the thought, more rifle shots rang out. Mana bolts tore toward him as a few humans fired in blind panic. Ludger lifted his arms and crossed them, the forearm guards ringing like hammered steel as the projectiles slammed into them. His stance didn’t shift even a fraction. Each impact made the guards vibrate, and then he angled his wrists. Not to block. Not to absorb. But to redirect.

  The mana blasts bounced cleanly off his guards, their trajectories snapping back toward the shooters like ricocheting bullets.

  PING—TCHK—BOOM!

  One rifle exploded in its wielder’s hands. Another pirate collapsed, clutching his shoulder. A third crashed backward over a crate, legs flailing in the air.

  The humans scattered. But the beastmen didn’t even blink.

  One cracked his knuckles slowly, claws sliding out with a soft metallic scrape. Another tightened his grip on twin knives, shifting his weight like a trained martial artist. A wolf-type bared his fangs, dropping to a low stance with fluid, dangerous grace.

  They were circling him now. Not charging. Not flinching. Just closing in like a pack. Ludger exhaled, shoulders lowering slightly in annoyance.

  “So that’s how it is…”

  The circling stopped. The beastmen lunged. The instant their muscles tensed, Ludger’s mana surged.

  Water Overdrive: ON.

  A cool, electric clarity washed through his nerves. His joints loosened without losing strength, his balance sharpened into something almost unfair. The world didn’t slow down, his perception simply stopped wasting time. Every shift of weight, every twitch of a wrist, every flick of a tail painted clear trajectories in his mind.

  The first beastman reached him in a single bound.

  A tiger-type, claws flashing like curved meat hooks, came down with a diagonal slash meant to tear Ludger from shoulder to hip. Ludger stepped in, not back.

  His body slipped under the strike with water-smooth precision. No wasted motion, no panic dodge. Just a clean, liquid like flow beneath lethal steel. He felt the wind of the claws brush his hair as he pivoted hard, his footwork skimming the deck like he was skating on a thin film of water.

  The tiger’s eyes widened, too slow. Ludger’s knee came up like a rising piston.

  BOOM—

  The impact detonated against the beastman’s ribs, folding him around the strike. The tiger-type’s roar cut off into a wet cough as his body launched sideways, smashing into the wolf-type on Ludger’s left. Both skidded across the deck, fur and limbs tangling.

  But the others were already on him.

  A panther-type blurred forward, fast enough to leave afterimages. Twin knives hummed with mana as he crossed his arms in an X before swinging downward for a throat-opening scissor cut.

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  Ludger tilted his head and let the blades pass a bare inch from his cheek. Water Overdrive didn’t just make him move better. It made him inefficient to hit.

  Before the panther could recoil, Ludger grabbed the man’s wrist. His grip didn’t tighten, he guided. A smooth turn, a subtle twist of hips, a pull that used the beastman’s own momentum, and suddenly the panther was flying. Not thrown. Redirected.

  The cat-type slammed shoulder-first into a boar-type who had been charging from the right. The boar grunted as they both toppled. Knives clattered. Someone’s tusks hit the deck with a hollow knock.

  Another beastman roared behind Ludger. He didn’t turn. He just leaned sideways at an angle no human spine should bend. A massive arm swept where his skull had been, slicing empty air. Ludger’s feet flowed between the attacker’s stance, sliding around his leg like water circling a stone. He rose behind the bear-type’s guard.

  “Bad angle.”

  Ludger planted his palm between the bear’s shoulder blades and pulsed a controlled burst of compressed mana.

  THOOM—

  The bear was launched like a living battering ram.

  He slammed into the two beastmen trying to stand, bowling them over like wooden pins. One flipped over another, tail spinning wildly. Another went airborne entirely, legs kicking as he was carried off his feet and deposited gracelessly into a crate that gave a pitiful crack under the force.

  Their snarls and curses overlapped into a chaotic mess. Ludger didn’t smile. But there was a faint tightening at the corner of his mouth, annoyance turning into something coldly focused.

  More pawsteps thundered behind him, three sets this time. He pivoted.

  Water Overdrive made the movement so smooth it looked fake. He slid under the first punch, let the second swipe whistle past his ear, and caught the third beastman’s wrist,

  Then he pulled. All three attackers overcommitted. All three stumbled forward. And Ludger moved like a conductor orchestrating their collision. A light tap on one shoulder. A push to another elbow. A redirected step from the third. It was almost gentle.

  CRASH—

  The three beastmen smashed into each other headfirst, limbs tangling, claws accidentally slicing fur instead of human flesh. They collapsed as a snarling, dizzy pile, groaning and cursing one another.

  Ludger rolled his shoulders once, resetting his stance. Beastmen surrounded him still, but now uneven, shaken, furious. Their discipline fractured. Water Overdrive thrummed through his veins, begging for more motion, more flow, more efficiency. Ludger’s gaze sharpened.

  “Alright,” he said, voice calm amid the chaos.

  “Round two.”

  And this time, he moved first. The hum of Water Overdrive snapped off like someone cutting a wire. Ludger exhaled once, short, controlled, and his mana shifted. The blue glow evaporated.

  A heavier color rose from his skin, thick and earthen, like molten soil lit from inside.

  Earth Overdrive: anchored.

  The air around him compressed. The deck groaned. His boots hit the planks with a weight that didn’t belong to a twelve-year-old, or even a human.

  CRACK—CRACK—CRACK.

  Every step fractured the reinforced wood. Splinters shot outward in jagged lines, the ship protesting under the density radiating from his mana. The beastmen froze for half a heartbeat, pupils shrinking. Instinct screamed at them, this thing is not prey.

  Before they even processed that thought…

  BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

  Three explosive cannonballs slammed into the mana barrier around the flagship. The barrier flared yellow-white, rippling like struck glass. The entire structure shuddered violently. Crates toppled. Pirates stumbled. Beastmen flailed for balance as the deck bounced beneath them. But Ludger? He didn’t move an inch.

  Earth Overdrive rooted him like a pillar in the middle of a hurricane. His center of gravity turned immovable, every muscle fixed, every tendon locked by stone-like mana.

  The nearest beastman, a horned bull-type, charged out of desperation rather than strategy. Ludger met him halfway. He didn’t wind up. Didn’t scream. Didn’t posture. He simply leaned forward and punched. The impact collapsed the bull’s chest inward like someone had smashed a barrel with a sledgehammer.

  THOOM—

  The beastman lifted off his feet and flew backward in a crooked arc, ribs folding like broken metal before he crashed into the railing hard enough to fracture it.

  Another beastman roared behind Ludger, a lion-type, Raukor’s kin, broad-shouldered and faster than the others, fangs bared. Too late.

  Ludger pivoted on one heel, Earth Overdrive reinforcing the motion until the turn hit with the force of a falling meteor. His leg snapped out in a brutal, whip-fast crescent. His heel struck the beastman’s skull.

  CRACK—

  Not the deck this time. The beastman’s head snapped sideways with a sharp, wet sound, his body following a heartbeat later. He spun midair before crashing into two human pirates, knocking all three into a heap of limbs and weapons. For an instant, the deck froze.

  The beastmen stared. Some in shock, some in dawning fear. These weren’t human-level blows. These were Raukor-level impacts, the kind only true earth-aspected warriors could produce.He should’ve held back. They were technically Raukor’s people.

  Beastmen. Blacksmiths. Warriors from the same race as the man who taught him how to breathe fire into metal. But right now?

  Right now they were pirates. Right now they were attacking the Lionsguard’s allies. Right now they stood between him and the survival of people who trusted him. Ludger’s expression went cold, emotionless, carved from stone.

  “They chose the wrong side,” he muttered.

  And with Earth Overdrive grinding cracks beneath every step, he charged forward again, sealing their fates with each impact.

  Ludger paused for half a breath, eyes narrowing past the chaos of the current deck.

  Through the rolling smoke and flickering stormlight, several enemy ships in the distance were burning, their hulls cracked, masts split, mana sails flickering like dying embers. The mana shields around them had collapsed entirely, leaving them vulnerable to the Ironhand Guild’s counterfire.

  Maurien’s wind pressure sweeping across the decks. Kaela’s saboteur precision carving through runic conduits. Renvar’s chaotic acrobatics slashing anchor chains and shield pylons.

  They were doing their jobs. Good. That meant Ludger needed to do his.

  Rathen would never fire on the flagship again unless the mana barrier dropped. The Ironhand commander wasn’t reckless, he wouldn’t risk friendly casualties. Which meant this ship needed its mana cores shattered, and the deck needed to be opened so Ludger could reach the conduits feeding the barrier.

  He shifted his footing, Earth Overdrive crackling beneath him.

  Just one strike. One heavy downward punch through the floorboards.

  Then he could tear out the cores with a—

  “—!”

  A flicker in the air above him triggered every survival instinct. Ludger’s arms snapped up just in time.

  CLANG—BOOOOM!