"What a stupid choice!"
Facing Bristle as it barreled toward her, Raelna instantly drew her True Ice greatsword—but the first thing to hit her wasn't Bristle's enormous tusks.
It was the massive chunk of True Ice at the end of Sejuani's chain, glowing blue in the night—Sejuani treating that "unmeltable, unbreakable" True Ice like a flail head and swinging it with vicious momentum.
Sejuani and Bristle moved like one. Even astride a gigantic drüvask war-boar, Sejuani never looked clumsy—if anything, she was frighteningly agile.
Bristle, too, had mobility that didn't match its size. If you looked at it like a slow, heavy tank and assumed it could only charge straight ahead, you'd be the one paying for that mistake.
"Frostguard—whether something's stupid isn't for you to decide." Sejuani raised her fur-armored arm and cracked her chain with force. The True Ice weight slammed into Raelna's lifted greatsword.
True Ice collided with True Ice.
Raelna's body was launched backward. Even in heavy armor, even built tall and thick, she was sent flying several meters through the air—yet she still managed to stabilize before her boots fully planted.
And in the same breath, Sejuani and Bristle were already on top of her again.
"ROAR!"
Bristle bellowed, dropped its massive head, and drove its tusks into the frozen ground—ripping a long groove through the tundra—then snapped its head up in a violent surge, tusks already aligned to impale Raelna.
Raelna narrowed her eyes beneath her helm, twisted her body midair, and stabbed downward with her heavy sword toward Bristle's skull.
Bristle didn't dodge.
Raelna didn't, either.
As the Frostguard's commander, she'd long since offered everything she had to Lissandra. Her own safety meant nothing. She was going to trade her life for Bristle's if she had to.
But…
If Raelna was only looking at Bristle, then wasn't she forgetting something?
A sharp crack of air—
Sejuani's chain-flail smashed in from the side, knocking Raelna's downward thrust off course. Between Sejuani's brute strength and Raelna's carelessness in focusing only on Bristle, the side strike nearly ripped the True Ice greatsword out of Raelna's hands. The weapon almost flew from her grip.
"NOT… FAIR!"
A roar exploded across the tundra as Trundle swung his enormous True Ice weapon and brought it down toward Bristle and Sejuani.
Even Sejuani felt a chill when she saw that club. She truly didn't know where this troll had found a piece of True Ice that huge. She yanked at the reins, ready to force Bristle back and dodge the incoming smash.
But just as Sejuani tried to move Bristle, she looked up—and her eyes flashed with surprise.
Someone had Flashed into the space in front of her.
That ice pillar wasn't just wide—the length alone was enough to cover two of him.
And he still stepped in to face it head-on.
"Troll," Logan said evenly, "your opponent is me."
Logan sprang up, wind wrapping around both hands, and then he drove his palms into the falling pillar.
"BUG!"
Trundle saw Logan appear and let out a mocking screech. If the "bug" tried to dodge, Trundle might've been annoyed—small targets were hard to smash cleanly.
But the bug actually jumped out to catch his attack?
Ha.
Trundle's strength was monstrous, and with that weapon, one blow could crush far more than a human—Trundle was sure even a mammoth couldn't endure it.
The club slammed down, kicking up a blizzard of powdery ice and triggering startled shouts from every side.
Donna's face tightened. She was about to speak—then she noticed Jinx behind her wasn't tense at all.
Donna couldn't help blurting, "Y-you're not nervous?"
Donna knew Logan was strong—he'd pinned Vanna down, after all—but being strong didn't mean you could tank anything. And that troll was over four meters tall. The troll's strength was greater than a drüvask war-boar's!
But Jinx answered without thinking, "Nervous? About what?"
Worried about Logan?
Did Logan even need worrying about?
Two years ago, a monster crawled out of the depths of Zaun—nearly a hundred meters tall, burning all over—and Logan still handled it.
Was four meters supposed to be impressive?
Honestly, if she'd brought Fishbones, Jinxie felt like she could've dealt with this thing herself. Vander was famous for being impossible to put down, and even he got uneasy when Fishbones came out.
Donna was about to ask again, but from the swirling snow and shattered ice a voice drifted over.
"Yeah—cold as hell. But if that's all you've got, Trundle… you're really disappointing."
Logan's voice.
And when the icy haze cleared, Donna saw Logan standing where he'd been—
And the massive troll had been flipped onto the ground, sitting there with his club in hand, staring like his brain had shorted out.
Trundle sat stunned, his huge backside sunk into the tundra.
Nearby, a dark figure streaked past.
Raelna clutched her chest, staring at Trundle with shock.
This was a joke, right?
A human and a troll contesting strength—and the human won?
In the Freljord, ever since the yetis vanished from the world, trolls were the closest thing to pure muscle monsters—on the same tier as behemoths.
And now this monster had lost a strength contest?
Raelna couldn't believe what she was seeing. The sight was so absurd it even made her forget the pain in her chest and belly.
Her armor was heavy, yes—crafted for her personally by Lissandra herself. Bristle's tusks hadn't pierced the plating.
But armor could stop sharp edges. It couldn't erase impact.
Bristle's charging force had still slammed Raelna's insides hard enough that blood rose in her throat.
Yet seeing Trundle get thrown down made Raelna swallow that blood back on instinct.
"This… isn't possible!"
Trundle was just as stunned.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go.
Wasn't he supposed to crush this human into paste?
What even happened just now?
For one instant, Trundle felt a massive counter-impact—and then he saw the sky.
He surged to his feet, finally snapping out of it, and roared at Logan with a face full of disbelief.
"What… TRICK… DID YOU USE?!"
"Trick?" Logan shook out his hands. For a moment his palms were tinted a deep blue from the cold—but as he flexed and flicked his fingers, the color faded and his usual pale skin returned.
The stinging pain in his hands ebbed away. He glanced at Trundle's True Ice weapon and smiled.
"If you want to call it a trick, sure. Call it whatever you like."
Then Logan reached his right hand out to the side.
A blade formed in his grasp—condensed from clear wind.
He snapped the sword once, and a wind edge sliced into the ground.
"Again, Trundle."
Sword raised, Logan smiled and rushed him.
Off in the distance, Winter's Claw warriors had already started charging toward the tundra's center the moment Sejuani attacked.
The Frostguard in the forest did the same.
But both sides—midway—stopped.
Everyone just stared, dumbstruck, at the human and the troll who'd been thrown onto his back.
Because of their Iceborn blood, Freljordians saw farther and heard clearer than ordinary people.
So they all saw what happened.
"By the gods… did that human flip a troll?"
"No way—did I just see that? That outlander's got that kind of strength…?"
"Babb—hey, Babb, didn't you say you could snap that kid's neck with one hand? Said he was a skinny runt? Well? You still standing by that?"
"…Get the hell out of here."
"Why are you all staring?!"
Winter's Claw warriors snapped back to motion and rushed in again.
Then they formed up behind Donna—facing the Frostguard who'd also arrived—both sides locked in a tense standoff.
Strangely, neither side surged forward.
Not because they didn't want to—
Because almost no one there, besides Udyr, could actually take part in this fight.
Not Sejuani versus Raelna.
Not the outlander versus the troll.
That troll's size alone screamed it wasn't ordinary, and the massive True Ice weapon confirmed it. Once Winter's Claw got close, they realized the truth:
That troll was probably the Troll King.
So now the scene in front of them was…
An outlander—someone Freljordians usually looked down on—trading blows with the Troll King.
The fighting in the center had reached a boiling point, split into two battlefields:
Sejuani versus Raelna.
And the outlander versus the troll.
"You've gotta be kidding…"
"Is he a shaman?"
"A shaman? Have you ever seen a shaman fight like that?"
"The troll's losing ground!"
Compared to Sejuani's fight with Raelna, Winter's Claw warriors were clearly more fixated on Logan versus Trundle.
Not because they didn't care about their war-mother—
The shock just hit differently.
A man not even two meters tall throwing hands with a four-meter monster that looked like a walking hill—of course people watched that.
And besides, Winter's Claw trusted Sejuani. They believed she wouldn't lose to a Frostguard commander.
Sejuani didn't become war-mother because of inherited glory. Winter's Claw's size today existed because of Sejuani herself—she took the tribe from the previous war-mother and spent years forging it into the second-largest tribe in the Freljord through sheer brains and brute force.
So no one questioned her strength.
On the battlefield—
Logan unleashed his Wind Technique swordsmanship.
Gales carved lines across Trundle's body, leaving slash after slash.
Each wound was easily over ten centimeters long—gashes that would be horrifying on a human, yet looked small on Trundle's massive frame.
But what mattered was this:
Logan could carve dozens of those wounds in the span of a breath.
Trundle had turned into a walking red giant, blood streaming down his body. If trolls didn't have such absurd recovery, it'd be hard to say whether he'd already be critically wounded.
Logan had also gotten a real taste of how vicious True Ice was. It wasn't something anything but the Iceborn should touch.
Even with elements in his hands, even with control, the moment Logan made contact with True Ice he still suffered frostbite. Not the exaggerated "touch it and become an ice statue" kind of rumor—but prolonged contact would stiffen his body all the same.
True Ice was one of Anivia's treasures to the Freljord.
Something forged by a demigod was, of course, extraordinary.
So Logan stopped underestimating his opponent. He chose to fight Trundle with the Wind Technique.
And against a big, dumb mountain like this, it really was effective.
Speed was the core of the style—but that didn't mean it lacked lethality. Wind could be quiet… or it could become a raging storm.
And right now, Trundle was trapped in a storm.
Wind blades tore new wounds into him again and again. With Logan's agility, Trundle looked clumsy and slow. He roared and swung his massive True Ice pillar wildly, ferocious enough to shatter stone—
But he couldn't hit Logan.
Snow fell. Logan moved like drifting air.
Trundle kept backing up.
"NOT FAIR! NOT FAIR!"
Trundle bellowed, shaking loose bursts of snow.
Logan stopped and looked at him like he was hearing a bad joke.
"Not fair?"
Trundle was drenched in blood. He stared at Logan, fear flickering in his eyes—then forced out a screeching demand.
"Not… fair. You not real warrior! Real warrior… drop weapon!"
Logan stared at him, even more amused.
He didn't know much about troll culture. There was no reason for him to. It wasn't like Trundle was handsome, or famous.
Even in the Rift, Trundle was a niche champion.
But seeing him now… Trundle was crafty.
People said trolls were stupid, single-celled, brainless. Trundle clearly wasn't.
Listen to him—he kept taking damage, kept failing to hit Logan, so he screamed "unfair" and told Logan to drop his weapon.
But when Trundle was swinging that massive True Ice club earlier, did he say anything about fairness then?
Still, after a shake of the head and a small laugh—
Logan dispersed the wind sword in his hand.
He beckoned at Trundle. "Sure. You want fair? I'll give you fair."
Trundle's huge eyes lit up.
He threw his True Ice weapon aside, too.
"You… DEAD!"
With a roar, he dropped low, drove onto all fours, and charged Logan like an avalanche.
Sejuani's fight had also reached a fever pitch. She didn't have time to pay attention to Logan.
But the surrounding Winter's Claw warriors all thought Logan's choice was insane.
Why would he throw away his weapon?
Then they froze.
Because as the troll thundered in, the outlander didn't take a single step back.
They couldn't see the wildfire in Logan's expression.
Ever since he returned from the Spirit Blossom, Logan had been stuck in an awkward place.
He'd become stronger—
And lost the ability to find opponents who could truly match him.
He hadn't had a serious, all-out fight in a long time.
Before, Vander could still serve as a worthy opponent. But after Logan returned from the Spirit Blossom, Vander had fallen far behind.
Around the Twin Cities, it was always the same:
Either someone was too strong—
Or too weak.
But now Trundle…
Trundle was just right.
And if it came down to raw strength?
Ha.
Logan had never lost.
"Let's trade punches, Trundle!"
Logan threw his arms wide and laughed like he'd been starving for this.
Trundle's massive fist came swinging in, wind howling around it. One fist was bigger than Logan's entire head.
Logan answered with a punch of his own.
BOOM!
Two completely mismatched fists collided—
And the outlander didn't go flying.
Winter's Claw only saw Logan step forward into the troll's space.
No magic.
No technique.
No retreat.
Just the most primal kind of slaughter—
Fist to flesh.
The last kind of fight you can't fake.
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