Ask what the strongest class was in the Silver Era, and you’re lighting a fuse.

Mage, assassin, knight, warrior, cleric are big umbrellas, splitting like river deltas into endless sub-classes.

There’s no “strongest,” only “fits this battlefield like rain fits soil.”

Look at Heroes. Pistol in one hand, sword in the other, light armor or bare skin, moving like wind over grass. That loadout bends to most fights, covers close and mid range. It’s versatility, not “Sword Saints are unbeatable” or “gunplay rules the world.”

In massed war or a city’s last stand, the artificer is the fire in the hearth, guarded first. On open fields, a knight who can scatter a thousand like a storm-tossed rider is the lead.

But if you press further and ask for a man’s romance, the strongest in a one-on-one duel?

Press harder, and limit it to the strongest in melee?

Most people will grumble like thunder under a lid, then curl a lip and say:

Pugilist.

Yes, the branch under warrior, the pugilist.

Barehanded, they trade blood with foes wrapped in iron like winter trees in ice.

They trust nothing more than the body they’ve tempered like steel in a forge.

They need little gear, a sheath of leather like a second skin.

They’re the bravest to charge, and the easiest to die, like sparks in dry grass.

They’re pugilists, lovely madmen who prove they exist with the currency of life.

When the barbed rhinobeetle lunged, Nivifar skipped sideways like a sparrow, slipped past the sharpest spine, then changed lines and crashed into the thicket of thorns.

She punched without fear, like a hammer falling from a cliff.

Krak. A spiderweb crack spread across the beetle’s shell like frost racing a window.

—Nivifar used the recoil to spring away, then turned on landing, running to flank for the next strike—

—so that’s what we all thought would happen.

Gloria is a peak-level pugilist, the crest of a wave. We’ve fought beside her long enough to know how Her Highness tends to move. Different classes, same warrior’s instincts; we read the field like reading sky-signs.

But Nivifar didn’t move as we pictured. Compared to the princess’s by-the-book rhythm, she was fiercer, and she gambled her life like a candle in a gale.

No ducking out, no long retreats. A tight shift of the torso, another punch, and the shallow crack deepened like a fault line waking.

The rhinobeetle felt the enemy clinging close. It whipped its head to flick her away on those spines, then meant to pounce and tear—many mercs died exactly like leaves under a scythe.

Its spines weren’t just needles. Some were edges, sharper than sword or saw, like sickles grown from chitin.

Nivifar didn’t back off before those blades that sang like cold rain.

She jumped. Her upper body folded like a snapped reed, dropping under a sweeping spine. Her arm traced along a bladed thorn’s path, and in the air she drove an elbow down like a diving hawk.

Her left hand caught a spine. Her whole body coiled tight, used the monster’s shake like a river’s pull, twisted, and slammed a spinning kick.

Nivifar leapt and danced inside the knife-wind, walking a steel tightrope where one wrong step meant a fall into night.

“Should we help her? Barbed rhinobeetles have hard shells, heavy power, and a garden of spikes. That’s rough on a pugilist. So, as a Hero, I should go,” Stini muttered, blade whispering free as she stepped.

I pressed a hand to her shoulder, heat first in my chest, then words. “What are you planning to do?”

“Save her.”

Trust a Hero who fights by feel. Stini’s instincts tugged her toward that girl like a magnet toward north.

Normally, she’d still help, but she’d honor others’ choices until death got too close. Then she’d toss out something like, “No choice, that one still owes me money,” or, “Wasting a life is a shame,” and cut in like lightning.

This time, for reasons she couldn’t name, she was too urgent, like a drum beating too fast.

For me, who knows Nivifar, their meeting is too soon, like spring frost on early buds.

Forget it. Even if I dodged Nivifar, Stini would drift over like a moth to flame.

“She doesn’t need you. You told me this: there’s no reason to save someone bent on dying.” I warned her with the cool edge of her own creed.

“But…” Her brows knit, a small storm gathering.

“You’re too anxious this time. It’s fine. You don’t need to save her. Watch. Heroes aren’t the only brave ones under heaven.”

I signaled for Stini to breathe and watch the fight like watching a tide turn.

Attack. Attack. Attack.

One punch. One punch. One punch. A drumbeat in a thunderhead.

No room for the enemy to escape, no room for herself to back out. Nivifar’s fighting left no shore behind her, only sea.

Win, or die inside the other’s storm. That was her edge, honed like a butcher’s blade.

Outside magic with its wild side-effects, warriors deal three kinds of hurt.

Thrusting, bludgeoning, and slashing, like spear, hammer, and blade.

Pugilists lack weapons. They can’t buy safe distance. They can’t parry steel on steel. So they guard in other ways, like reeds that bend but don’t break.

Against thrusts, they slip like fish through reeds.

The rhinobeetle’s charge was a ram, but it became Nivifar’s opening. She kept sliding past the killing spines, pressed in, and struck like a heartbeat.

Against bludgeons, they use borrowed power, catch and dissolve the force like water cupping a falling stone.

A blunt spine swept across. Nivifar braced her forearm, feet carving shallow lines in the dirt, bled the momentum, then hooked the spine and hammered away.

But slashes are worst for a pugilist. They bite deeper than bludgeons and find flesh easier than thrusts, like rain finding cracks.

So a pugilist’s leather must be etched with wards against magic, and tough against a slicing edge, like hide thickened by winter.

Even heavy armor can be split by a true blade. Leather won’t shrug that off. So they learn to shed force.

It’s the first lesson at the gate, and the last drill before sunset, day after day.

No matter how quick, some cuts can’t be dodged. Several bladed spines swept in. In midair, Nivifar couldn’t evade, so—

She slowed her body like falling ash and met the spines at a tilt. The edge didn’t bite through. It skated along her leather, a hungry mouth denied.

Even then, in that narrow death, Nivifar was thinking of the next strike, not the scar.

Guard, hard block, shedding force—vital to a pugilist. Yet in Nivifar’s eyes, they come after offense, like clouds after thunder.

She didn’t loose ugly roars. She struck in silence, face still as winter water, and her demon-god poise was more savage than the monster’s fury.

No circling, no sly games. She stood square before her foe like a mountain. If there was a gap, she poured in a rainstorm of blows.

When attacks came, she slipped by a finger’s width, then kept hitting in a space the size of a coin.

Nivifar is a true bruiser, a cliff-face with fists.

—And she was drawing closer to the stubborn girl I remember, step by step.

The rhinobeetle’s spines began to shatter, one, then two, then a hail of broken thorns like teeth on the ground.

Soon, except for the horn, almost every spine on its face was snapped by Nivifar’s storm.

The fight was nearing its dusk.

She had landed hundreds of punches. The steady rain finally soaked through. The flow tilted in Nivifar’s favor like a slope found underfoot.

The monster still swung with power, but its first-day ferocity had thinned, like a fire running out of wood.

Nivifar, with fewer spines to fence her and more windows to strike, didn’t rush. She showed the terror of a pugilist slowly, meticulously, like a craftsman carving jade.

Pugilists deal bludgeoning. And bludgeons have a gift we all know—their force penetrates, like a bell-note through armor.

A hammer breaks a knight inside his tin and makes his bones ring. This beetle was demon-muscled, not bound by common sense, but it couldn’t stand endless rain.

Its shell was also close to rubble. The rhinobeetle’s thin cunning knew dusk was coming. After a heavy punch to the headplate, it fought wilder, like a cornered boar.

Nivifar never expects a fight to end easy, like a gambler never expects a sure thing. I felt a ripple of mana with her punches, a small tide under the surf.

Mid-tier magic: Focused Strike.

Each hit marks a point. Hit the mark again, and damage stacks like weights on a scale.

The spell isn’t high. For legendary strength, it’s common. In a pugilist’s fast hands, it’s gold.

On the right of the beetle’s crown, the stacks reached thirty-seven. The next blow would be five times heavier, a falling boulder made denser.

It was time. We all felt that thought like a shared breath.

The rhinobeetle tried one last lift of its horn to fling Nivifar. She slipped past like a shadow, stepped in, and threw the final punch.

The step boomed. It felt like an earthquake above magnitude eight, mountains lowering like a held breath.

It was an illusion. Nothing broke. No crevasse opened. Leaves only skittered in a gust like startled birds.

It was just us recognizing the shape of her movement. Just us assuming such a shape carried such weight. Just the message leaking from something that can’t be named.

Not explained by any Divine Being. Not by magic. Not by any first principle at the root.

It belongs only to humans, the frailest of the Primordial Nine Races.

Martial Stance, First Form—

Tread Down a Thousand Mountains.

We shouldn’t call Nivifar a pugilist. We should call her a martial artist.

When she stamped, the earth didn’t shatter. Only a few leaves lifted and drifted like boats.

Then the punch.

What was that? What was that ruinous power, that sky-splitting wave?

As the peak of warriors, Andor Mephy couldn’t understand. As the holder of the Authority “Shadow,” the Demon King Andor couldn’t either. Stini, who dabbles in stances, might have glimpsed a thread.

Martial Stances weren’t made by the Creator. They’re born of mortals alone, a resolve only the weak can forge, like fire from two sticks.

So I don’t understand. It’s fine. I only need to know it, too, is a way to fight.

The beetle’s shell, which even Stini’s Holy Sword struggled to breach, split like it was smitten by a Divine Being’s hammer, the faceplate crushed to powder.