Three days passed in a strange rhythm of battle? Boredom, fishing, and terror.
Every morning, the sun rose over calm waters. Every hour, Ludger hauled absurd sea beasts on deck. Every night, the crew ate like kings while questioning reality.
Even the prisoners began watching him fish like monks observing a ritual. A few beastn asked permission to try. They lasted ten minutes before swearing off the ocean for life.
Ludger, anwhile, evolved.
He didn’t just fish, he optimized. Mana flow adjusted. Line frequency tuned. Bullet depth calibrated.
He refined his thod until stunning prey beca second nature. Until hauling ten-ter octopus monsters was considered “moderate difficulty.” Until he no longer needed stone blocks, just timing and clean mana shots.
New Skills Acquired:
[Enhanced Lure Lv. 1]
Infuses fishing line or bait with mana to attract aquatic creatures. Stronger mana attracts larger or more aggressive prey. Efficiency scales with Dexterity and mp consumption.
[Resilient Line Handling Lv. 1]
Reduces strain on line and rod when hauling heavy prey. Decreases break chance.
Allows controlled tension release and pull-in timing.
Ludger sat near the bow that third evening, gaze on the sunset-red water. His rod lay beside him, line coiled neatly, the deck around him stacked with salted fish and monster at drying on racks.
Kaela dangled her legs off the railing. “So, fisherman Ludger. Satisfied yet?”
Ludger nodded once.
“Progress achieved.”
Maurien smirked. “aning?”
Ludger opened his status window ntally. Two new skills. Full understanding of mana-infused bait. Deep-water prey no longer a gamble.
He closed it again.
“aning I can do sothing else,” he said.
Renvar, eating grilled octopus, froze. “We suffered three days for that sentence?”
Ludger shrugged. “The results matter, not the thod.”
Kaela laughed. Maurien shook his head in acceptance. Even Vorak, the chained beastman, let out a low huff that might have been amusent.
Na: Ludger
Level: 96 (2,450 / 9,600)
Current Job: Cook (Lv 35 – 620 / 3,500)
Current Class: Geomancer (Lv 113 – 1,300 / 11,300)
Health: 3.360 / 3.360
Mana: 17.300 / 17.300
Stamina: 4.150 / 4.150
Strength: 453
Dexterity: 575
Intelligence: 1219
Vitality: 336
Wisdom: 1713
Endurance: 415
Luck: 253
Classes & Skills
Wind Enchanter Lv. 11 ( 3 DEX, 3 INT, 3 WIS)
Skills: Wind Wall Lv. 11
Wind Step Lv 11
Wind Blade Lv 11
Sculptor Lv 13 ( 5 DEX, 5 LUK)
Skills: Sculptor’s Touch (Lv.11)
Sculptor’s Skill (Lv.13)
Sculptor’s Speed (Lv.10)
Runic Mage Lv 05 ( 5 INT, 5 WIS, 5 DEX)
Skills: Wordweave Lv.01
Rune Echo Lv.01
Bandit Lv. 1 ( 4 DEX, LUK)
Skills: [Pickpocket Lv. 1]
Sword Dancer Lv. 1 ( 3 DEX, 3 STR, 3 END)
Skills: [Unknown Stance Lv. 1]
Fisherman Lv. 11 ( 3 LUK, 3 VIT)
Skills: [Basic Hooking Lv. 1]
[Enhanced Lure Lv. 1]
[Resilient Line Handling Lv. 1]
He was progressing. But not like before. Not like the explosive leaps when he first unlocked Geomancer or Sage classes and gained multiple skills in a single surge. Not like when Runic Mage opened half a dozen paths at once. Now the system felt heavier, resistant, like it demanded deeper mastery before granting more shortcuts.
Part of it was deliberate. Ludger was spreading himself wide, every new class, every unfamiliar skill, every alternate technique. He wanted to collect them like tools in a kit, each one useful in a different mont, each one a solution waiting for the correct battlefield.
Growth through breadth instead of depth. It was costing him efficiency. If he focused purely on Geomancer and combat, he could’ve been terrifying by now. If he trained Teacher alone, he might reach a world-class support threshold in months. If he devoted everything to swordsmanship or runes, he’d achieve sharper mastery faster. But Ludger wasn’t building a narrow blade.
He was building a weapon wheel. A library of functions. A path that could adapt to any problem or enemy. Fishing taught him sothing important, maybe critical.
With mana manipulation, he could cheat reality. Not in a broken way, but through loopholes the system didn’t forbid. He attracted bigger fish by mana infusion. He stunned them with mana bullets. He earned XP faster by bending rules rather than breaking them.
That was why, for days, Ludger used every free stat point on one thing: Wisdom. Not Strength. Not Dexterity. Not Endurance. Wisdom enhanced mana pool, control, efficiency. Mana efficiency ant longer fights. Longer fights ant survival. And future runes, future overdrives, future teaching boosts, all scaled with it. But trade-offs were real. Without raw strength increases, his physical side lagged behind. His muscles didn’t scale as fast as his magic. His bones could break in a clash of pure power.
Vorak proved that brutally. Ludger replayed that fight in mory, the shock through his forearms, the damage past armor, the strain in joints each ti he blocked the runic nunchaku. His body had held out, but only barely. If he had pushed physical stats harder, if he had trained brute force instead of runes and crafting and fishing…
He wouldn’t have felt pain for days afterward. He exhaled quietly, watching sea spray catch orange sunlight. This path was slower. More complex. More dangerous. But it was his.
A path of multi-class growth, loophole exploitation, system chanics bending under strategy instead of raw talent. A path built on the idea that one day, knowledge and technique would let him defeat enemies far stronger than him in stat alone.
He wasn’t a giant. He wasn’t a berserker. He was a magical engineer of progression. And every new class, every minor skill, every clever trick… Was another blade in his unseen arsenal.
Ludger adjusted his gloves, flexing fingers still stiff from the Vorak fight. He would catch up physically. He would strengthen his body when ti allowed. But for now?
Wisdom first. Mana next. Efficiency always. Because one day, he wouldn't just fight pirates. He’d fight the hands pulling their strings.
The fourth afternoon brought a change in the horizon, no longer endless water, but a jagged wall of dark silhouettes rising from the horizon like the spine of a sleeping giant. Mountains, sharp and proud, their peaks dusted white even under sumr sun. Clouds curled around them like slow-moving serpents.
Kaela leaned on the railing, arm outstretched as she pointed.
“There.” Her voice carried over the wind. “The mountain range. That’s the border between the Empire and the Velis League.” She glanced sideways with a grin. “Linne and Dalan could get their hands on these runic toys earlier.”
Ludger followed Kaela’s finger with his gaze, mind weighing routes and risks. He rubbed his chin, expression thoughtful behind half-lidded eyes. Coria was tempting. A safe harbor. A place to replenish supplies and let their artifacts get studied sooner. He could even drop off part of the prisoners there under Imperial supervision.
But then he imagined the ship anchored for days. A target. Visible. Vulnerable.
And beyond those mountains lay Velis waters, where underworld agents might be listening, where fanatics or informants could easily spot the stolen flagship. Where a week-long stop might give enemies plenty of ti to gather numbers and retaliate.
He lowered his hand.
“We don’t stop,” Ludger decided quietly.
Kaela raised a brow. “No?”
“I’ll give Linne and Dalan the runic pieces after we reach Primal Groves waters,” Ludger said, voice firm. “The flagships too recognizable, waiting in foreign seas is asking to get burned.”
Maurien stepped beside them, wind stirring his hair like a restless spirit. “Your reasoning?” he asked, not doubting, simply verifying.
Ludger’s eyes stayed on the distant range.
“If we dock, we lose days,” he said. “If we lose days, word might spread. Enemies regroup. Ambush us. Or worse, warn the underworld guild we’re coming.” His fingers tapped the railing lightly. “Speed is our advantage. Surprise is our blade.”
Rathen, listening nearby, slowly nodded as the logic settled.
Kaela smiled. “You’re thinking like a pirate.”
“No,” Ludger corrected flatly. “Like soone who doesn’t want to be ambushed by pirates.”
Maurien’s lips curved. “Fair distinction.”
The mountains lood closer, carved like ancient teeth against the sky. And under that shadow, the ship sailed on, not toward safety, but deeper into uncertainty.
Every hour they stayed at sea was a gamble. Every choice is a step onto soone else’s board. But moving fast? Keeping montum? Striking before the enemy prepared? That was Ludger’s ga. A ga built not on caution…but on initiative.
The voyage stretched forward in long gray-blue horizons. To most aboard, the next three days dragged like a calm siege. Prisoners slept or stared at the sea with empty eyes. Sailors maintained sails and repaired planks out of habit. Renvar complained of boredom at least twice per hour, Kaela threatened to throw him to sharks once per hour, and Maurien ditated as if holding the entire world on one calm exhale.
But for Ludger, the days passed fast, a blink of routine broken only by opportunity. He sought out the Ironhand engineers.
Rathen’s n weren’t mages or adventurers they were craftsn built on sweat, callouses, and problem-solving. They handled cranes, pulleys, cannons, gears, ballast systems. They were used to building under pressure and repairing ships mid-battle with nothing but grit and curses.
Ludger shadowed them. He asked questions. He morized asurents. He studied levers, tension systems, mana-rotors, scale-gears, ball bearings cut from monster bone. And the workers found themselves teaching a mind that devoured chanical logic like bread.
By the second day, Ludger understood the difference between steam-coil propulsion and mana-repeater engines. By the third, he was sketching chanisms faster than most sailors could draw rope knots.
[New Job Unlocked: Engineer Lv. 1]
Bonus per Level: 3 INT, 3 WIS
Skill Acquired:[Simple chanism Assembly Lv. 1]
Allows creation and repair of basic chanical systems. Efficiency scales with Intelligence and material quality.
Ludger didn’t stop there. He took scrap wood, bronze nails, and summoned small chunks of earth, condensed like clay. Using mana as a tether, he shaped gears, joints, and a small rotor core. The sailors watched with raised brows, whispering bets on whether it would explode or walk.
Ludger assembled the crude chanism into a squat, toy-sized earth golem with jointed limbs, lattice gears inside its torso. He flicked mana through it like a puppeteer’s string. It moved.
Clumsy. Slow. Barely able to waddle six steps before falling flat with a thud. But it moved. The system rewarded the creation.
[Simple chanism Assembly: 100 XP]
Ludger rotated the broken toy in his hand, examining its flaws, the balance off-center, gear ratio inefficient, core conductor weak. Fixable. Upgradeable. Expandable.
He couldn’t help imagining: If he unlocked a Golemmancer or Automaton Crafter job…
He could double skill growth. Engineer XP Golemancer XP = exponential progress.
Combat puppets. Runic automatons. Siege constructs. Multi-class synergy. He turned the toy over once more, lips twitching in the faint hint of a smile.
Every day, every lesson, every tiny chanism, another seed. Kaela walked by, glanced at the waddling rock-thing, and blinked.
“…Did you just make a baby golem?”
Ludger nodded.
Renvar poked the golem, yelped when it fell on his foot, and scread betrayal. And Ludger only sat back, mana humming through the ship like threads in a loom. Ti was slow for everyone else. But for him? It was efficient. Productive. Full of quiet growth. And as the ship sailed toward the Primal Groves, Ludger kept building his arsenal of skills… One class at a ti.
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