GBP Chapter 647
Chapter 647
The ant king’s voice was quiet now, less amused. “You adapt fast.”
Ludger didn’t answer.
He only breathed once more, slow, deliberate, and let the focus sharpen until the world narrowed to a single line between him and the thing that thought it owned everything.
Then he moved, ready to play the card the king hadn’t seen yet.
Ludger opened his hands in front of him. Not fists. Open palms, fingers spread like he was about to catch something invisible.
Then he slid his right hand to the side, slow and deliberate, as if he were drawing a line across the air.
The ant king reacted instantly.
All four swords shifted, crossing and layering into a dense guard aimed at Ludger’s right side. Blades angled to intercept a projectile, to deflect a rush, to cut through whatever “hidden card” was about to appear.
Nothing came. No spear of earth. No bolt of mana. No sudden dash. Ludger just… held the stance.
Still. Quiet. His breathing even. His eyes locked on the king like he was timing a heartbeat. A second passed. Then another.
The ant king’s antennae twitched, confused… and Ludger’s right hand began to shake.
Small at first. Almost nothing. Then harder.
The skin on his fingers deepened from flushed red to something hotter, angry, saturated, like heat had pooled under the surface. Veins rose dark along the back of his hand. The bracer runes near his wrist pulsed in a tight rhythm.
The air around his right hand began to vibrate. Not like frost. Not like mana pressure. Like heat distortion. Like the space itself was being squeezed, molecules rattling in place. Humidity around his palm thickened, shimmering as if the chamber had developed a miniature sun and didn’t know what to do with it.
The ant king finally understood. It wasn’t a feint. It was a charge. It lowered its stance and charged.
Four swords came forward like an execution line, the king’s legs driving it down the narrow lane between eggs. Resin splashed under its feet. Blades angled to cut Ludger apart before whatever he was building could finish.
Halfway there… Ludger’s right hand snapped forward.
His palm faced the king like a stop sign. And the world in front of it detonated.
A heat wave, dense and violent, launched out from his hand, not as a ball, not as a cone, but as a palm-shaped path that expanded as it traveled. The air turned white-hot in that shape, as if Ludger had stamped his handprint into reality and shoved it forward.
The humid chamber flashed with steam. Egg shells shimmered as moisture burst off their surfaces. The shock hit the ant king like a moving wall.
It crossed swords instinctively, four blades forming a layered barrier, and the heat wave slammed into them with a roaring hiss. Metal screamed. Frost remnants on the silver blades vanished instantly, replaced by sizzling vapor.
The king still got pushed. Feet skidding.
Body driven backward in a long scrape, armor plates rattling as it fought the force with raw strength and perfect stance. The heat wave didn’t “hit” once, it pressed, continuous for a heartbeat longer than comfort allowed, forcing the ant king to endure or be thrown.
When the pressure finally released, the king’s boots dug grooves into the slick floor.
It stopped. It stood there, swords still raised … and steam began to pour off its body.
Not a little. A lot.
White vapor rolling from chitin plates and between armor seams, curling up around its head and antennae like it had stepped out of boiling water. The air around it shimmered, heat trapped in its shell and bleeding out in angry breaths.
Its faceted eyes narrowed into black slits. Annoyance sharpened into something uglier. Ludger didn’t give it time to process. He was already moving his left hand. Open palm. Fingers spread.
Sliding it to the side the same way. Charging the next blow. The ant king’s mandibles snapped, and a curse hissed out, rough and venomous, too human to belong to an insect.
“Insufferable… little pest!”
Steam still rolled off its armor as it lifted all four swords again, shifting its stance to lunge. Because now it knew. Ludger wasn’t trying to out-block four blades. He was trying to erase the space the blades needed to exist.
Ludger’s left hand trembled as the heat gathered.
The skin deepened to a darker red, veins standing out like wires under tension. The humid air around his palm thickened, shimmered, then began to hiss faintly as moisture boiled off invisible pressure.
The ant king tried to surge forward again—four swords raised, steam still bleeding from its armor—
Ludger snapped his palm out.
Another handprint of heat slammed down the lane.
The egg chamber flashed with white vapor. The wave wasn’t fire you could see. It was pressure you could feel, a wall of superheated air shaped by his palm, expanding as it traveled like an invisible stamp being pressed into the world.
The ant king crossed its blades.
Metal rang.
Steam exploded.
It slid backward again, boots carving ugly lines through resin slick, shoulders braced, mandibles tight with controlled irritation.
Ludger didn’t wait.
His right hand was already charging while the left finished releasing, open palm to the side, a half-second of tremor, then.
Palm.
Heat wave.
Palm.
Heat wave.
Palm.
Heat wave.
He didn’t throw them like spells.
He struck with them, each release timed to his breathing, to the king’s stance shifts, to the moment it tried to reclaim ground. The waves came in a rhythm that felt like a boxer’s combination: left-right, right-left, each one forcing a block, each one stealing steps.
The chamber made it worse.
Egg rows narrowed the lane into a corridor. Resin pillars and cradles boxed the angles. The ceiling pressed heat and steam back down, turning the air into a wet, boiling haze. Every time Ludger fired, vapor surged outward, curling around eggs and support ribs, obscuring sight and making the whole room feel like a furnace breathing in bursts.
The ant king could have dodged.
Ludger could see it, could sense the potential angles through Seismic Sense, the micro-adjustments in the king’s hips and feet when it considered stepping off the lane. The creature was fast enough, balanced enough, skilled enough to weave between the palm-shaped paths if it fully committed to avoidance.
But it didn’t. Because dodging wasn’t just movement. Dodging was acknowledgement. Dodging meant admitting that a “lesser creature” had attacks worthy of respect. And the ant king’s pride was heavy enough to be a weapon against itself.
So it kept blocking.
It insisted on meeting the heat waves head-on, swords raised like a crown of silver defiance. Four blades crossed, layered, angled to split the pressure, always trying to turn defense into forward momentum.
It would brace—
HISS—
take the wave—
steam burst from its armor seams… then try to drive through the aftershock with a lunge. It never worked. Every time it stepped forward, Ludger was already charging the next strike.
The king would commit to movement… Ludger’s palm would snap out.
and the lane would fill with another expanding handprint of force that hit the crossed swords and shoved the king back as if the room itself had decided it didn’t get to advance.
Step forward. Forced back. Step forward. Forced back. Again and again.
The silver swords grew hotter. Their sheen dulled under constant thermal shock. Steam rolled off them in angry sheets, and the king’s grip tightened to the point its plated fingers creaked.
Its armor looked like it had been dragged through a kiln, wet shine turning to matte in places, resin flecks softening and rehardening, edges sizzling each time a wave hit and moisture boiled.
Still it kept coming. Not successfully. But stubbornly. As if it could bully physics into submission with arrogance.
Ludger’s stance stayed low, rooted, palms moving like a craftsman working a forge, charge, release, charge, release, each strike compact and brutal, each one stealing space and time from a four-armed monster that should have owned him in close combat.
The ant king’s mandibles clicked in a pattern that sounded like teeth grinding. Its eyes narrowed to black slits through the haze. It cursed again, voice strained now, not with exhaustion but with frustration at the indignity of being held.
Because that’s what Ludger was doing. Not winning yet. Not finished yet.
Just holding the king in place with repeated palm strikes, turning the egg chamber’s narrow lanes into a cage made of heat and timing, until pride finally cracked, or something inside the “king” decided it was done being embarrassed.
After a while, the rhythm started to cost him.
Not mana first, body first.
Ludger’s shoulders burned like someone had poured hot sand into the joints. His forearms trembled between palm strikes, the bracers feeling heavier with every pulse. His breathing turned rough, dragged through clenched teeth. Heat waves kept leaving his hands in palm-shaped blasts, but the micro-delays between charge and release grew longer.
Sweat ran down his temples, cut through the blood on his cheek, and dripped off his chin in thick drops.
They hit the floor with soft taps, darkened by iron taste and grit, mixing into small, smeared spots on the resin-slick ground.
His shirt hung in shredded strips, soaked. Cuts stung under salt and heat. The red flush of his transformed skin didn’t hide fatigue anymore, it made it look worse, like his whole body was overheating.
He’d thrown everything physical into this, Overdrive assisting, barbarian actives stacked, stamina driving muscle beyond what it should endure. Enough power that every launch had made the egg chamber tremble, enough repeated force that the entire castle felt like it had been rattled from the inside.
And still… The ant king stood. Steam curled off its armor in lazy ribbons now instead of violent bursts. Its stance wasn’t as loose as before. One of its swords dipped slightly between blocks. Its antennae moved slower.
It was tired. A little. But there was a difference between being tired and being close to falling. The difference was in the eyes. The king’s eyes still had depth left. Reserve. It straightened, four swords angled outward, and its voice drifted through the humid haze like a hand on a throat.
“Is that all?”
Ludger didn’t answer right away. He inhaled. Deep. Slow. He forced air into his lungs like he was refilling a tank, then held it for a heartbeat and let it out under control, pushing the shaking out of his hands by sheer will.
He collected himself. Not magically. Not perfectly. Just enough. His eyes sharpened again, focus compressing into that narrow line that meant he’d stopped reacting and started choosing. Then he looked at the ant king and spoke in a voice that sounded calm only because he refused to let it sound like anything else.
“I’ve got a few more ideas,” Ludger said.
His mouth twitched, dry humor cutting through blood and sweat.
“If you’re willing to be my target practice.”
The ant king’s mandibles tightened. Ludger’s gaze didn’t move.
“Hard moments,” he continued, “really do make you improve faster.”
He raised his hands again, open palms, bracers humming faintly, and even exhausted, the air around him seemed to listen.
Because if raw power hadn’t been enough…
Then it was time to get creative.
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