Chapter 369: Defeat After Defeat
Everyone had thought the duel would be over in seconds. And it was.
But the result was the complete opposite of what they had imagined. Sigrid had lost—not through injury, not through exhaustion, but through the most fundamental disgrace a knight could suffer.
She had lost her weapon!
A knight’s blade was her life. Her soul. Every centaur learned this from the moment they could stand. They gripped their swords with the same tenacity they gripped their own existence.
Even the greenest amateur understood: you never let go.
The moment the sword leaves your hand, your life leaves with it.
And Commander Sigrid, the strongest among them had committed this most amateur of mistakes.
Poppy tugged on Thea’s hair. "Thea! What happened? Why did Sigrid’s sword fly away?"
"I...I don’t know, my Lady. But...it looks like Sigrid doesn’t know either."
And it was true.
Sigrid stood motionless, gazing down at her empty hands as though they belonged to someone else.
Her fingers flexed once, twice—testing, disbelieving.
Then she turned slowly toward her sword, still quivering in the earth where it had landed, and the expression on her face was that of a woman trapped in a dream she couldn’t wake from.
She had no idea what had happened.
The moment their blades had met, she had felt something inexplicable.
A weakness. A sudden, inexplicable weakness in her hands, as though the sword she had wielded her entire life had become foreign to her grip.
The force behind Luca’s strike—it hadn’t felt overpowering, not exactly.
It had felt precise. Like a key sliding into a lock she didn’t know existed, turning it, and watching her defenses fall apart from the inside.
She couldn’t hold it. She simply couldn’t.
"Don’t go easy on him, Commander!" A voice called out from the crowd. "It’s alright to go all out! Stop pitying him!"
"Give him no room to exploit! Finish it properly this time!"
Even as the words reached her, Sigrid felt a bitter twist in her chest.
They thought she was showing mercy. They thought she had made a mistake because she was holding back.
Only she knew the truth: she hadn’t gone all out, no—but she had gone hard enough. Hard enough to teach any mortal a lesson in the weight of their world. She hadn’t been playing.
And still. Her sword had been torn from her hands.
She turned slowly back to Luca, who looked as casual as if he’d just finished a morning stretch.
"Pick up your sword." He said cooly. "Let’s go again."
Frustration burned through her veins, but she said nothing. She simply walked to where her blade waited, offered it an almost apologetic glance—as though she had betrayed it rather than the other way around—and pulled it from the earth. She returned to her position, squaring her stance.
Luca gestured lazily. "You can start again. I’ll make my move after."
The casual dismissal ignited something fierce in her chest. She had made a mistake once. She would never make it again. Never!
So under the watchful eyes of everyone gathered, she raised her sword high and brought it down at a completely different angle—an angle designed to make whatever trick Luca had used before utterly useless.
Her muscles sang with purpose. Her form was flawless.
Luca glanced at her approach. Once. Just once.
Then he swung his blade to meet hers.
CLANG!
She felt it again! Different this time—he had struck her sword at an entirely different point, a completely different angle.
And the moment their weapons connected, she felt the force surge through her grip like water through cracks in a dam.
The weakness returned, deeper now, as though he had found some perfect stress point she hadn’t even known existed in her own technique.
Her sword went spinning through the air, arcing over the field before embedding itself on the opposite side.
The shock that followed was even louder than before.
"AGAIN? HE DID IT AGAIN?"
"HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? WHAT IS HAPPENING?"
"SIGRID! I TOLD YOU TO STOP HOLDING BACK! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS OVER AND OVER?"
"SIGRID, STOP FOOLING AROUND! STOP LETTING HIM WIN!"
Thea leaned forward, whispering under her breath.
"Something is horribly wrong. There’s no way Sigrid would make the same mistake twice! Not her."
Sigrid felt her entire world crumbling around her ears.
Losing once was a disgrace. Losing twice in the exact same manner was an absolute ruin of her pride.
She had spent years lecturing young centaurs and novice knights about structural integrity and grip control, telling them that a mistake was a lesson, but repeating it was treason to their training.
And here she was, standing disarmed like a child.
"Come on." Luca said, his voice entirely devoid of malice, which somehow made it ten times worse. "Take as many chances as you need. Pick it up."
He was already prepared for another round. Eager, even. As if humiliating her was something he could do all day without breaking a sweat.
Something inside Sigrid snapped.
She stormed to her fallen blade, snatched it from the earth, and didn’t even bother to return to her starting position.
She simply turned, raised her sword with every ounce of strength in her body, and brought it crashing down toward Luca’s head.
No ceremony. No warning. Just pure, desperate fury.
CLANG!
Once again, their blades met. Once again, he struck at an angle she couldn’t comprehend.
Once again, that terrible weakness flooded through her hands, begging her fingers to release.
But this time, she refused!
She held on. She poured every scrap of willpower into her grip, clenching so hard she felt her bones grinding against each other beneath the skin.
The pain was sharp and immediate, but she didn’t care.
She would not let go again!
She would rather shatter every bone in her hands than suffer that humiliation a third time.
For one glorious moment, she thought she had succeeded. The sword remained in her grip.
She felt a surge of triumph—
And then she looked down.
Luca’s other blade was already resting against her belly. A hair’s breadth from her skin. One push, and he would carve through her guts like parchment.
He had done it deliberately.
While all her focus poured into her grip, his second blade had slipped into position at a fatal point without her even noticing.
"Just...what is going on?"
"Once is okay. Twice is pushing it. But losing for the third time? That’s just ridiculous!"
While everyone else was wondering if they were dreaming, Luca looked up into her trembling eyes and gave a small, wry smirk.
"Want to try again?"
Sigrid’s eyes blazed at the taunt and she decided to go all out!
What followed was not a duel; it was a systematic execution of a knight’s pride.
Sigrid reset. She swung.
Clang!
Luca tapped her blade at a bizarre, angle; her grip loosened, and his point settled against her collarbone.
She reset. She thrust.
Clang!
Her weapon vibrated so violently her wrist went numb, and his edge was at her kidney.
Her throat this time. Her ribs. Her flank. Her shoulder. Again and again. Over and over.
The crowd no longer shouted in anger. They no longer cried out for Sigrid to stop holding back.
They simply watched in stunned, creeping dismay.
"What the hell is happening?" Someone whispered. "What is he doing?"
"Sigrid is losing. Again and again. And in seconds each time."
An older veteran spoke, her voice hollow.
"Look at her. She’s doing everything she can just to hold onto that sword. She has no time to attack. No time to defend. She can barely even breathe between his strikes."
"Has he put her under some kind of spell?" Another asked. "Is this even a sword fight?"
Because it wasn’t. Not like any they had ever seen.
Even the briefest duels usually lasted several exchanges—the flash of parries, the spray of sparks, the dance of attack and counterattack.
But this was ending with a single parry each time. Over in an instant. If some random amateur had lost in such a fashion, it would have been embarrassing but understandable.
But this was Sigrid!
The strongest of them all. The commander who had never been defeated.
How was it possible that she, of all centaurs, was being dismantled like a novice on her first day of training?!
The younger warriors kept asking what was happening, demanding explanations no one could give.
The older ones had no answers. They simply watched in silence as Sigrid slowly crumbled before their eyes.
With every exchange, her spirit dimmed.
Her energy fractured.
Her confidence eroded like sand against the tide.
Until finally—
Clang!
Luca’s blade crashed against hers with enough force to send it spinning away for the third time.
And before the sword could even strike the ground, the tip of his other blade was already resting against the soft hollow of Sigrid’s throat.
She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. The cold steel pressed against the point where her pulse hammered beneath the skin, where even a shallow thrust would end everything.
Silence swallowed the arena whole.
"...How?"
Sigrid’s voice came out a ragged whisper.
"How is it possible, Hero? How do you keep making me feel so...weak?"
Her hands trembled at her sides—empty hands, disgraced hands.
"Every time my sword leaves my grip, it stops feeling like my own. I know I’m holding it with everything I have. I know I am. So why..."
Her voice cracked. "Why can’t I fight back?"
No one in the crowd made a sound. Every knight leaned forward, straining to hear.
Even Poppy was perfectly still, her usual playfulness vanished, replaced by something far more serious.
Because everyone understood that the answer Luca was about to give was worth more than any sword manual, passed down through generations.
Whatever secret he had uncovered—it was something none of them had ever imagined possible.