Chapter 372: Honour And Dignity Can Kiss My Ass!
Every head lifted, hope a fragile flame in their eyes.
"New rules." He announced, pointing a blade-tip at his own chest. "I go on the defensive. I won’t attack. Not once. I’ll stand right here."
He stamped a foot for emphasis, nearly tripping over his own sword-arms.
"And I’ll defend with everything I have. Your goal isn’t to disarm me. It’s to land a hit. A single scratch on my skin, a tear in my clothes, a nick on my hair—heck, if you’re feeling ambitious, go for a limb or my head—" A collective gasp. "—and it’s your win. All of you. Bet over!"
The younger knights erupted in excited chatter.
"We can do that! We can definitely do that!"
"He can’t attack back! We just have to get through!"
"We have forty swords! One of us has to get lucky!"
"Surround him! Overwhelm him!"
But the older knights and Sigrid, however, exchanged uneasy glances.
This felt like charity, and it grated against their honor. Sigrid stepped forward, her voice stiff.
"Hero, this...this puts you at an even more severe disadvantage. A victory under such terms would be hollow. We cannot accept—"
"With the way you’re protesting, Commander." Luca interrupted, his smile turning into a teasing grin, "It’s almost as if you want me to win. As if you’re secretly looking forward to giving me a ride."
Sigrid’s face flamed crimson. "That is not—!"
"Take the offer, Sigrid." He said, his tone dropping to a more serious, almost kind note. "Think of your knights. Do you want them to have to live with the sight of their proud commander being led around like a common pack animal?"
"Spare them that. Spare yourself that. Fight me under these terms, and win with your skill."
Sigrid’s cheeks flamed. The horrified, pitying looks from her subordinates flashed in her mind.
The shame of that public display would crush her authority forever. She swallowed her pride, the action physically painful.
"Thank you for the...opportunity, Hero." She forced out, bowing her head stiffly.
Then she looked up, and the fire of a last-stand defender burned in her eyes.
"But understand, I will not hold back. I will use this chance to defeat you!"
A ragged cheer went up from the brigade.
"You can do it, Commander!"
"For our honor!"
"Just one hit! Find the opening!"
Poppy, now reinvigorated, clapped her hands.
"Since he’s handicapped himself, I suppose I don’t need him completely undressed. I’ll simply ride him with his clothes still on." She declared, already savoring an imagined victory.
After all, Sigrid only needed to land a single hit. And Luca wasn’t even fighting back, merely defending, rooted to one spot as promised.
Victory seemed all but guaranteed!
Sigrid herself shared this confidence. Even having witnessed Luca’s overwhelming skill firsthand, she reasoned that a man purely on the defensive, fighting for his own safety rather than dominance, would eventually crack under sustained pressure.
With that conviction fueling her, she attacked.
Her first strike came in low, aimed at his side—parried instantly.
TING!
She followed immediately with a second strike from a different angle, deflected just as easily.
TONG!
Steel rang against steel in rapid succession—clang, clang, clang, clang—as she cycled through angle after angle, striking from the waist, then the shoulder, then thrusting directly toward his chest in a motion meant to test his reflexes to their absolute limit.
Every single strike, Luca parried with what looked like effortless precision, his form perfect, his positioning unshakeable.
"Is this everything you have, Commander?" He asked lightly. "I honestly expected more."
The remark only fueled her determination further.
She pressed harder, drawing on every technique in her arsenal, adjusting her stance, varying her angles, searching desperately for any crack in his defense.
Sweat poured down her face, her arms ached from the repeated impacts traveling up through her blade, and still—nothing.
Not a single opening presented itself.
The other centaurs watched with growing despair.
Even now with every advantage in their favor, their commander was losing.
But just as Sigrid felt herself on the verge of breaking, Thea’s voice rang out across the field.
"Sigrid! Don’t forget—you can move. Use your positioning to your advantage!"
The reminder struck her like a spark. Luca had promised to remain rooted to his exact starting spot for the entire exchange.
If she forced him to compensate for his own movement while defending, perhaps she could finally create the opening she needed.
Determination lighting her eyes, she began advancing—forcing him to either retreat or overextend to maintain his defense.
But as she gathered her muscles to surge ahead, a primal alarm screamed through her entire being.
Every instinct, every cell honed by a thousand battles, shrieked in unison: DON’T.
It was the same feeling as stepping onto brittle ice, or sensing an arrow in the shadows a moment before it’s loosed.
It was the absolute certainty of instant, catastrophic failure!
With a gasp, Sigrid aborted her lunge and scrambled backward several paces, putting distance between them as if he were a live volcano. She stood there, chest heaving, her face pale with not just exertion, but with terror.
The centaurs stared, baffled. "Commander? Why did you retreat?"
"You had him! He would have had to move!"
Thea’s brow was furrowed in deep concern. "Sigrid?"
Sigrid’s voice, when it came, was hollow with shock.
"It’s no use." She looked at Luca, who hadn’t even shifted his weight. "The moment I took that step forward...I would have lost. He was waiting for it. He was always waiting."
She understood now with clarity. Every attack she’d thrown, every fancy maneuver, he had allowed.
He had been playing defense on his terms, letting her exhaust herself against an impenetrable wall.
But the moment she tried to change the rules, to truly threaten him, the game would end—instantly, and in his favor.
Realising this, a deep, collective shudder ran through the centaurs.
One of the veterans muttered, "What kind of monster have we summoned?"
Another shook her head in disbelief. "Even stripped of his powers, he’s making the Commander retreat in fear. I’ve never.seen that look on Commander Sigrid’s face before."
"To think he could make a mighty centaur warrior back away...it shows just how terrifying the Hero truly is."
The excitement that had burned so brightly moments before had been extinguished, replaced by deep, reverent shock.
They stared at Luca with new eyes that finally understood what they were facing.
Even defending. Even refusing to move from a single spot. The Hero was still a force beyond their comprehension.
Luca, for his part, regarded Sigrid with genuine admiration.
Had she taken that step forward, he would have ended the match immediately.
But she’d sensed the danger before it fully materialized and pulled back in time.
That kind of awareness couldn’t simply be taught; it had to be earned through experience and honed through countless hours of dedication.
—
But just as despair threatened to become permanent, a new voice, brimming with mischievous energy, rang out.
"Why is everyone standing around like we’ve already lost!?"
All eyes turned to Poppy. She was standing on Thea’s back, hands on her hips, a sly, almost impish smile on her face as she looked at Luca.
"I’ll admit it." She declared, as if bestowing a great honor. "This human is more formidable than I thought. But..." Her smile widened into something distinctly villainous. "Did all of you forget one tiny, little detail?"
She swept her gaze across her knights.
"How many of us are there compared to him?"
Confusion, then comprehension, until finally scandalized shock rippled through the brigade.
Poppy spelled it out with gleeful relish.
"He said any one of us could challenge him. But he didn’t say we had to do it one at a time. What if we...didn’t give him a break? What if we came at him, again and again and again, until his mortal arms are too tired to lift those silly swords?"
She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper that carried across the silent glade.
"We basically have to wear him down. Like wolves with a bear."
The older centaurs looked physically pained. "My lady! That’s...That’s not dueling! That’s mobbing!"
"It’s without honor!"
"Our ancestors would weep!"
Poppy rolled her eyes with an exasperated huff.
"Honor? Dignity? You knights and your big, fluffy words! All I see is my First Knight about to suffer the biggest humiliation of her life because you’re worried about looking pretty while you lose!"
She drew herself up, adopting her most regal, commanding tone.
"Therefore, I order it! As your queen, I command every single one of you to put your dignity in a box and gang up on him. Fight him in turns, in pairs, in groups—I don’t care! Exhaust him!"
"Beat him down until he can’t stand!"
A chorus of groans and face-palms met her orders.
Thea looked like she wanted to sink into the earth.
Sigrid covered her eyes, her knightly soul weeping.
Her queen was advocating for the most crass, dishonorable tactics imaginable!
Luca, however, threw back his head and laughed, a genuine sound of amusement.
"The Queen of Purity, everyone!" He chuckled, wiping a non-existent tear from his eye. "Scheming and plotting like a bandit king. I love it!"
Poppy flushed crimson but held her ground.
"You’re the one who accepted these terms, human! You said ’any one of us’ could come. I’m just...interpreting the rules to protect my knight!"
Her voice trembled slightly, but her resolve held firm.
"Everything I am doing right now is to protect my knights from being humiliated by you. That is my only concern. My only priority."
She took a deep breath. "And if protecting them costs me my title as the Queen of Purity...if it means history remembers me as shameless and scheming and utterly without honor..."
She met his eyes without flinching.
"Then so be it! I will protect my knights no matter what! Even if it means dragging my own name through the mud!"
A shift rippled through the centaurs. The shame was still there, yes—but now it mingled with something else. Something warmer.
Their queen was humiliating herself for them. She was throwing away her own reputation, her own legacy, everything she was known for—all to save Sigrid from disgrace.
Beneath the silly exterior, their queen possessed a core of absolute loyalty.
Luca also observed her with genuine appreciation.
She was going to extraordinary lengths to protect her knight. And despite her claims of having no values, he suspected she had absorbed more of those knightly virtues than she realized.
Her innocence was real, which meant scheming didn’t come naturally to her at all. She was forcing herself into this role out of sheer desperation.
It was, he had to admit, rather endearing.
He chuckled, and when he spoke again, there was no trace of resentment in his tone—only acknowledgment.
"Just as I said before." He told them all. "You’re welcome to ambush me as much as you’d like. Come at me together, come at me in waves, however you please. It changes nothing."
His tone carried a confident, almost arrogant edge.
"So bring it on! We’ll see, in the end, who’s left standing."