"Get up immediately!"
Lucas, who had currently buried his face deep under a goose-down pillow, violently flinched at the sharp, shrieking cry and jumped up, throwing his head back.
Aggressively rubbing the heavy sleep from his eyes, he saw his constantly annoying little sister standing exactly by his bed like an incredibly furious sentry.
Lucas violently clutched his temples, which were throbbing with a deeply dull, rhythmic pain, and muttered with intense annoyance.
"What in the world is this...?
How many damn times do I have to explicitly tell you—do not break into my private bedroom without my permission!"
"There is absolutely no time for aristocratic decency right now!" Raina shrieked, violently shaking him by the shoulder.
"Get up!
This is a massive emergency!"
She screamed so loudly that Lucas's left ear actually rang.
Lucas aggressively waved her away and squeezed his violently throbbing temples with his fingers.
Even before the dawn had fully broken, he had spent the entire morning aggressively galloping through the hunting grounds with his peers from the vanguard, and then he had sat in a local tavern where he had drank an incredibly fair amount of heavy Eastern ale.
His head was actively cracking exactly as if it were being repeatedly struck by a blacksmith’s hammer, and now this dramatic teenager was back with her endless hysterics.
He narrowed his amber eyes and stared gloomily at his sister.
"What exactly is it this time?
Did the Zram nomads breach the walls of Raedgo Castle?"
"Why do not you stop talking absolute nonsense and stand up right now?!" Raina stamped her leather boots against the floorboards and roughly pulled on his arm.
"Everything is incredibly serious!
The 'Southern Black Bear' just formally challenged our brother to a blood duel!"
The heavy alcoholic sleep left Lucas entirely, instantly.
He stared at his sister in absolute, paralyzed shock.
"Who exactly is going to fight with whom?!"
"Are you deaf?!" Raina angrily threw his hand away and marched violently toward the door.
"I am telling you, our brother is going to fight Lord Gutvan to the death!"
Lucas stared after her in total confusion for a couple of highly frantic seconds, and then violently jumped out of bed.
He grabbed a loose linen tunic that had been hastily thrown on a chair, pulled it directly over his naked torso, and ran out into the corridor.
Dozens of terrified Eastern servants with brass lanterns were frantically scurrying along the dark corridor, hurrying in all directions.
Looking around in absolute bewilderment, Lucas caught up with Raina, who was already frantically descending the grand marble stairs two steps at a time.
"Are you actually serious?!" Lucas demanded.
"Our older brother genuinely agreed to a formal blood duel?!"
"Yes!
I am telling you—it is completely serious!" Raina snapped without slowing her frantic pace.
Lucas frowned deeply.
He knew perfectly well that highly important provincial Lords were visiting Raedgo Castle today.
But he absolutely could not understand why the brilliant, highly disciplined Heir of the Siekan family was suddenly preparing to fight to the death with one of the single most influential, powerful Lords in the entire southeast.
Wincing violently from his headache, Lucas muttered, "And why exactly did they suddenly decide to cross live blades in the middle of the night?"
"Because of *her*!"
Lucas's jaw dropped.
"Wait...
do you mean...
the Second Princess?"
"Who else?!" Raina shrieked, violently clasping her hands together and almost rolling her eyes into the back of her head.
"Because of her toxic mouth, a massive quarrel violently broke out between our brother and that massive 'Black Bear,' and now a blood duel is happening in the courtyard!"
She crossed the main hall in no time and ran outside into the freezing night, not letting up her rant for a single second.
"I explicitly told you so!
I formally warned you that imperial witch would only cause massive political trouble for our family!"
Lucas rolled his eyes, quickly buttoning his open tunic as he ran behind her.
To be perfectly honest, his sister had absolutely not predicted a violent, screaming madwoman aggressively throwing glass bottles of wine and physical slaps at heavily armored knights; Raina had predicted a highly cunning, deeply subtle imperial intriguer pretending to be an innocent lamb.
But Raina was definitely absolutely not mistaken about one thing—that imperial woman really was a massive, highly explosive problem.
*Be that as it may, the terrifying fact remains that the blood troubles have already violently begun.*
Lucas frantically ruffled his messy dark hair and, violently quickening his pace, crossed the wide fortress courtyard.
In front of the stone stairs leading down to the massive sandy training ground, hundreds of terrified people were already actively crowding together with blazing torches and oil lamps in their hands.
Lucas aggressively made his way through the thick crowd to the absolute edge of the arena, where the formal witnesses to the duel had gathered—the senior Eastern nobles and the heavily armed elite guards of the vanguard.
Seeing a highly familiar face in the crowd, Lucas immediately headed toward him.
"Tayrone!"
The Barakan knight, who was actively talking with his tense subordinates, turned around.
Tayrone had clearly also jumped out of bed straight from his sleep—a light linen cloak was hastily thrown directly over his heavily scarred, naked torso.
Tayrone looked at Lucas, then at the frantic Raina, and sighed incredibly heavily.
"Walking around a formal blood duel at a time like this without any physical protection is pure recklessness, Second Young Master."
"Stop the useless moralizing!" Lucas snapped.
"What the hell is going on?!"
"I just arrived down here myself, so I do not formally know the exact political details," Tayrone shrugged entirely casually.
"But one thing is highly glaringly clear: our future Duke turned out to be much, much more militant and aggressively fiercely protective than anyone originally thought."
Tayrone nodded toward the far edge of the vast, sand-filled horse arena.
There, sitting silently in the flickering shadow of the torches on top of a massive, heavily armored gray stallion, Barkas waited.
He was dressed entirely in pitch-black plate armor, looking exactly like an executioner forged directly from pure darkness.
Lucas stared at him in absolute silence.
Compared to the incredibly bulky, massive figures of the other Eastern fighters, his brother looked exactly like an impeccable, flawlessly lethal statue carved by the hand of a master sculptor.
His body, although massive in its own right, was highly distinguished by terrifying grace and absolute, lethal precision.
But his opponent...
Lord Alec Gutvan was absolutely not a man; he was an incarnate, terrifying beast.
Lucas turned his amber gaze to the opposite side of the arena and swallowed incredibly hard.
The physical height of the giant warlord was close to seven feet tall, and his sheer weight was easily over four hundred pounds of pure, heavily corded muscle.
If you also actively took into account the incredibly thick, custom-forged steel plate armor he was wearing, Gutvan was a completely living, breathing mountain of lethal iron.
The massive man brought out a warhorse directly to the middle of the arena to match himself—a terrifying, monstrously powerful black beast.
The violent light of the massive bonfires picked out the frightening, highly intimidating details of Gutvan's appearance from the darkness.
Highly amazed, deeply terrified exclamations, aggressively mixed with reverent, terrified whispers, swept through the massive rows of Eastern spectators.
"This is completely insane," Lucas whispered in horror.
Soon, four heavily muscled Eastern soldiers actively strained to carry Gutvan's weapon onto the sand—a terrifyingly massive, incredibly thick steel halberd that looked more like a solid piece of an iron bridge than a usable weapon.
Gutvan violently snatched the monstrous weapon directly from their hands and easily, effortlessly threw it high above his head with a single hand.
The entire arena violently roared in approval.
Raina, turning completely pale with sheer terror, violently grabbed Tayrone by his cloak.
"Why exactly are you just standing there?!
Stop them immediately!"
"We have been actively trying to stop it from the very beginning," Tayrone said calmly.
"But as you can clearly see, it is entirely useless." He waved his hand in Barkas's direction.
Following Tayrone's gaze, Lucas immediately noticed a highly tiny, incredibly fragile figure standing directly beside Barkas's massive warhorse, who was aggressively, heatedly shouting something directly up at his brother.
The woman was absolutely furious, and judging entirely by her highly aggressive, completely unhinged intonation, she was violently scolding the Commander of the Roem Knights exactly as if he were a complete idiot.
Lucas's intense curiosity violently overpowered his fear, and he crept closer—and then almost became entirely deaf from her ringing, shrieking voice.
"Are you completely crazy?!" Thalia screamed at the top of her lungs, waving her small hands frantically.
"Or are you just a suicidal idiot?!
You absolutely should not fight with a massive monster like that in single combat!
You should formally press him with your absolute political power!
Do you have absolutely no brains at all?!"
Lucas actually loudly whistled in pure shock.
He had absolutely never thought that besides Raina, there was another woman in the entire world who could ever dare to use such highly foul, incredibly aggressive language directly in his terrifying brother’s face.
Lucas stole a highly nervous glance at Barkas.
His brother, acting exactly as if absolutely nothing had happened, was simply, highly calmly checking the leather straps on his horse's harness.
Thalia angrily hit Barkas directly on his armored shin with her small, fragile fist.
"You probably slept completely through your imperial arithmetic lessons!" Thalia shrieked.
"Look at him!
He is literally three times heavier than you!
Do you not even intellectually know that physical force is directly proportional to mass?!"
"Bring me my helmet," Barkas responded entirely calmly to his squire, completely without deigning to look down at her.
The violently angry imperial woman aggressively rolled up the silk sleeves of her cloak—it was glaringly obvious that she was actively preparing to try and physically slap him in the face again.
Daren Dru Siekan desperately tried to physically stop her in an absolute panic.
"Your Grace, I formally beg you, there is absolutely no need to worry like this!
This kind of combat is highly common among our Eastern warriors!
Nobody ever actually goes too far..."
"Who the hell cares about this suicidal idiot?!" Thalia shrieked, roughly and violently shaking off the veteran's hand.
"I am worried about myself!
Am I going to become a highly pathetic, politically vulnerable widow immediately after my own wedding?!
My entire political life is actively at stake here, by the way!"
Daren backed away, entirely amazed and deeply confused by her intensely selfish, highly unhinged anger.
Barkas, acting exactly as if he had not heard a single word of her frantic, deeply endearing panic, simply pulled on his heavy black steel helmet and easily jumped up into the saddle.
"Give me my spear."
The terrified Eastern squire immediately handed him a massive, highly lethal glaive with a razor-sharp, crescent-shaped blade made of pure silver metal.
Barkas confidently grabbed the thick oak shaft and, completely without waiting for anyone else to say anything, spurred his massive horse directly toward the center of the arena.
Thalia violently rushed onto the sand right after him.
Lucas, who had been standing frozen on the absolute edge, didn’t even realize exactly how his own body moved.
He violently rushed after her onto the sand and aggressively grabbed her fragile hand to stop her from getting trampled.
In immediate response, Thalia whipped her head around and gave the teenager a completely icy, absolutely terrifyingly lethal look.
Lucas completely froze in his tracks.
Absolutely all of his thoughts violently disappeared.
Only this strange, frighteningly beautiful mask of pure, unadulterated anger remained in his mind—and suddenly, a highly piercing trumpet call violently echoed over the entire arena.
Lucas yanked Thalia back off the sand and raised his head.
Gutvan actively circled the perimeter of the arena, violently swinging his giant, lethal halberd through the air with a single hand.
Each massive swing made a highly terrifying sound, exactly like a bullwhip being violently lashed through the air.
Standing safely behind the wooden barrier, Lucas physically felt the tiny woman beside him begin to violently tremble—almost entirely losing the physical strength to stand.
But there was absolutely no time to physically take care of her anymore.
Gutvan, acting exactly as if he were deliberately demonstrating his terrifying physical power to the crowd, violently turned his massive horse and spurred it into a full, lethal gallop.
Gutvan violently rushed directly at Barkas exactly like a massive, enraged bull charging at a fragile deer.
A collective cry of absolute horror violently rang out from the massive crowd.
It genuinely looked exactly like a highly lethal, unstoppable waterfall of pure steel violently falling directly onto a significantly thinner figure.
Lucas violently clenched his fists in absolute terror—he was entirely certain that there would be absolutely nothing left of his older brother but crushed bone and blood.
But exactly what Lucas saw next completely broke his mind.
The incredibly huge, monstrous blade of Gutvan's halberd came crashing down.
Barkas moved his glaive.
The halberd violently flew completely to the side, exactly as if it had harmlessly bounced off a highly flexible blade of grass—a parry so incredibly light and terrifyingly swift it looked exactly like the flap of a bird's wing.
Lucas's amber eyes violently widened in absolute shock.
The terrifying, supernatural miracle absolutely didn't end there.
Barkas violently hit his horse with his steel spurs—and crashed directly into the massive warlord.
Gutvan's incredibly massive body violently rolled backward in the saddle, acting exactly as if he had just violently crashed into a solid brick wall.
Barkas instantly took advantage of the lethal stagger.
His silver spear flashed exactly like lightning in the firelight and plunged violently, directly into Gutvan's chest, brutally piercing entirely through the thick, custom-forged steel cuirass.
Everything happened in an absolute, blinding fraction of a second.
Barkas, completely without releasing his grip on his spear, spurred his horse violently forward.
And as the heavy oak shaft of the spear violently went up into the air, Gutvan's four-hundred-pound body took off directly behind it, violently lifted entirely out of the saddle and into the empty air exactly like a weightless, pathetic rag doll.
The entire massive crowd violently gasped in absolute, horrified disbelief.
Barkas easily circled the arena on his horse, casually holding the four-hundred-pound man in the air with a single arm on the end of his spear.
Then, with an absolutely terrifying display of monstrous, supernatural physical strength, Barkas violently slammed the spear and the massive body directly into the hard ground.
*CRUNCH!*
The giant collapsed, and a highly dull, sickeningly loud thud violently echoed across the entire sandy site.
There was absolute, terrifying silence in the Great Arena.
Every single Eastern warrior stood there, completely paralyzed, entirely unable to intellectually process the sheer, terrifying physical strength of what had just happened.
Barkas calmly drove his warhorse up to the lifeless, bleeding body, smoothly dismounted, tore off his heavy black helmet, and with an entirely calm, deeply unbothered face, threw a single, lethal order toward the terrified audience.
"Call the priest.
Let the Lord have a proper burial."