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

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Hans twisted away.

Too fast.

His second whip came upward like a burning serpent, not to lash at range but to intercept the angle of Ludger’s arm. It collided with Ludger’s bracer in another explosive crack, fire bursting outward and briefly illuminating both of them in violent orange and white.

Then they were moving again.

Ludger pressed in at high speed, feet cutting across the grove in short, brutal bursts while Wind Overdrive kept launching him from angle to angle. He attacked like a storm trying to become a knife, straight punches, elbow feints, low kicks, sudden shifts of position that should have let him break through the pyromancer’s guard.

Hans somehow kept up. Not perfectly. But enough.

He blocked Ludger’s charges and attacks with terrifying timing, his burning whips no longer looking like ranged weapons at all. In Hans’s hands they became something between blades, chains, and explosive limbs. He wrapped one around his own side to deflect a body blow, snapped the other across Ludger’s path to stop a step-in strike, then reversed both in a crossed burst of fire that forced Ludger to twist away before the explosive tips could detonate in his face.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. This bastard was good. Too good.

He was using those whips at close range with the instincts of a veteran melee fighter, not a mage hiding behind spellcraft. Every charge Ludger made met either a burning interception or a split-second body adjustment that spoiled the clean angle of attack just enough. And every time the weapons collided with Ludger’s bracers or forearm guards, the impact exploded into fire and force, turning even blocked exchanges into violent bursts of light.

The dark grove flashed over and over. Orange fire. White sparks. Blue wind. Pale lightning.

Their blows illuminated the trees in fragmented bursts, turning trunks and branches into stuttering black silhouettes around them. One second Ludger was hammering forward with a frost-coated fist, the next Hans’s flaming whip struck across it and erupted in a blast that lit both their faces like figures in a furnace. Then Ludger pivoted low, drove a kick toward Hans’s knee, and Hans answered by slamming a whip downward to intercept, fire exploding against earth and sending dirt and embers spraying upward.

Ludger blocked another lash with both forearms crossed, skidding half a step back as the blast pressure rattled his bones. Hans laughed and came in instead of retreating. That was the part Ludger hated most.

The lunatic didn’t create distance to cast like a sane mage. He used the explosions to step closer, to force uglier exchanges, to drown the fight in heat and pressure where his whips could keep punishing every movement.

One whip snapped toward Ludger’s temple.

He ducked under it and drove a punch toward Hans’s liver.

Hans twisted, catching most of the strike on flame-wrapped mana reinforced over his side, then answered with a backhand whip arc from the opposite arm. Ludger raised a bracer, took the blow on metal, and the resulting explosion lit the grove so brightly for an instant that both their shadows jumped across the trees like monsters.

Then Ludger vanished again. Wind Overdrive threw him behind Hans in a burst of speed, lightning snarling around his shoulders as he came in with a palm strike aimed for the spine.

Hans half-turned at the last instant.

One burning whip coiled inward, absorbing part of the impact and exploding against Ludger’s guard at near point-blank range. The blast shoved both of them apart by a step, but neither lost their footing.

For a heartbeat, they stood in the same patch of torn earth, both framed by steam, sparks, and drifting embers. Hans grinning like a lunatic.

Ludger staring at him like he was calculating how many times a skull needed to be broken before the face stopped making that expression.

Then they crashed together again. Ludger burst forward again, wind screaming around his legs. Hans didn’t retreat. His right wrist snapped.

The flaming whip tore sideways across the space between them, not aimed at Ludger’s chest this time, but low, cutting across the line of his approach like a burning gate slamming shut. Ludger shortened his step at the last possible instant, planted one foot, and twisted his hips. The whip passed in front of him close enough for the heat to scrape his coat, and the tip detonated a heartbeat later with a roar that blasted dirt and glowing splinters of bark across the grove.

Ludger used that blast. He drove through the smoke instead of away from it, his left arm raised, frozen bracer forward, right fist already chambered.

Hans’s left hand moved.

The second whip coiled inward and struck down like a viper. It crashed against Ludger’s forearm guard with a burst of fire so bright the trees flashed orange. The impact knocked Ludger’s arm off line and spoiled the punch before it could land.

Hans stepped in on that same beat. Not back. In.

His shoulder rolled, his wand hand tucked near his ribs while the burning whip in his other hand snapped short and brutal across Ludger’s thigh. Ludger turned enough that the lash hit the side of his leg instead of the knee, but the explosion still burst against him hard enough to shove him half a step sideways.

He caught himself instantly. His heel bit into the earth. Wind Overdrive howled.

He vanished low and left, reappearing beside Hans with a short elbow aimed for the jaw.

Hans bent backward just enough for the strike to miss by inches.

One whip curled over his shoulder and whipped down behind him blindly. Ludger ducked under it and drove a kick toward Hans’s supporting ankle.

Hans hopped over the sweep. Not high. Not flashy. Just enough.

The moment his foot touched down again, both whips were already moving, one crossing high, one low, their burning lengths cutting two separate lines through the dark. Ludger folded into himself, shoulders turning, knees bending, body slipping between them with barely enough room. The upper lash exploded behind his head and washed him in heat. The lower blast hit the ground near his boot and jolted his balance.

Hans was waiting for that.

He stepped through the smoke with his grin stretched wide and brought the iron butt of his wand toward Ludger’s temple like a dagger strike.

Ludger caught the wrist. Their arms locked for an instant. Hans’s grin twitched wider.

The whip wrapped around Ludger’s trapped forearm and exploded. The blast tore them apart.

Ludger slid backward through torn dirt, boots carving two deep lines into the grove floor. Frost hissed from his bracer as it ate part of the heat. Before he had fully stopped moving, Hans’s right arm lashed again.

The whip came from above this time. A burning line dropping straight for Ludger’s face.

Ludger raised both arms in a crossed block and took the strike on metal. Fire burst over him in a shower of sparks. He drove forward through it anyway, breaking through the blast cloud with a straight punch aimed for Hans’s throat.

Hans turned his chin and let the fist slam into the side of his collarbone instead. The hit landed hard enough to buckle his stance. But one of the whips was already moving again.

Not from distance. From under Ludger’s arm.

It snapped upward between them, striking his ribs and detonating at point-blank range.

The force didn’t break Ludger’s guard, but it blew him off the angle he had finally won. He had to step out or eat the second lash coming right behind it.

He stepped. Hans took that space back immediately.

He advanced with the same maddening rhythm, burning whips circling him in tight, efficient arcs. No wasted motion. No wild swings. Every lash was placed where Ludger wanted to be a moment later. High line. Low line. Center. Entry denial. Exit punishment.

Ludger changed pace.

Instead of bursting straight in, he feinted right, cut left, then used Wind Step to lunge in from a shallow diagonal. His fist shot toward Hans’s liver while his other hand reached to catch one of the whips near the handle.

Hans’s body turned with the strike. The punch clipped his side, enough to make his coat snap from the impact, but not enough to sink deep.

Then the whip Ludger had reached for bucked like a living thing.

Hans rotated his wrist and the burning length looped back over itself, twisting out of Ludger’s grasp before he could seize it. The second whip cracked across Ludger’s shoulder guard an instant later and burst, showering both men in sparks.

Ludger drove a knee upward. Hans met it with his thigh and gave ground for the first time in several exchanges, but only a step. Only enough to reset. Ludger chased.

He blurred forward, lightning jumping around his arms, and hammered a three-strike sequence toward Hans’s centerline, left straight, right palm, left elbow. Hans stopped the straight with a whip laid across it like a burning bar. The right palm crashed into his forearm instead of his chest. He turned under the elbow and answered with a whip crack so tight and sudden it sounded like a bone snapping.

Ludger leaned back. The burning tip passed just short of his nose. Then exploded.

Heat slapped across his face. The edge of the blast stung his cheek and eyelid hard enough to make his vision flicker for half a heartbeat.

That was all Hans needed.

He stepped inside Ludger’s reach with a grin full of teeth and dragged the second whip across the ground in a rising diagonal. Fire and dirt came up together. Ludger jumped the sweep, but the explosion at the tip still caught his boot in midair and ruined the landing.

He hit the ground awkwardly, one hand touching dirt for balance. Hans struck immediately. One whip came down for the back of his neck. The other angled for where his ribs would be if he rolled.

Ludger slammed both palms into the ground and kicked off with raw force, launching himself sideways through a spray of soil. The first whip cratered the spot where his shoulders had been. The second burst close enough to graze his flank with heat.

He landed in a crouch. Hans was already there.

The pyromancer’s movements were not as fast as Ludger’s burst speed, but his timing kept dragging the fight back into his hands. He never tried to outrun Ludger. He just kept putting fire exactly where Ludger needed open space.

A whip snapped for Ludger’s knee. He checked it with his shin guard.

Explosion. Another slashed toward his head. He turned with it, letting it scrape his bracer instead of landing clean.

Explosion.

Hans’s wand darted in between those two beats, stabbing for Ludger’s throat. Ludger parried the wrist outward and finally got close enough to drive a shoulder into Hans’s chest. The impact moved him.

Not much.

But enough to make Hans’s heels dig into the earth. Ludger saw it and committed.

His right fist drew back, frost thickening over the bracer, body tightening for a crushing shot at the jaw… and the whip handle smashed into his forearm from below.

Not the lash. The handle. A veteran’s trick.