Claim The Fallen 5: Wolf & Crown

Carter lost the final.

Second place at the Colosseum, as a Rank C nobody, against the strongest fighter on the continent. He'd have settled for that. Then the S-rank he beat in the semifinals walked into his infirmary room and asked to join his party.

Parties cap at eight. Carter has eight. Isabella knows a workaround, and it comes with paperwork, a promotion exam, and a duke who has never once asked before volunteering Carter for something. This time it's Dalheim: a border city under siege, sixty thousand people, two weeks of food, and an enemy commander not even the champion can beat one-on-one.

Carter's skill takes what he kills. It has never been handed a battlefield before.

After the war, there's a mountain with something old and dying inside it and a dungeon nobody has ever set foot in. Then a neighboring kingdom falls to a rumor in four days, and the war stops being about borders.

Carter died in a prison parking lot. He's been getting stronger ever since—strong enough that when Valdris sent the duke its list of demands, there were only two. The second one is Carter.