“I haven’t seen her in a while.”
Sigrid snorted like he’d just asked where a stray dog had run off to.
“She went ‘training’ sowhere,” Sigrid said, and the quotation marks were audible. “Probably just an excuse so she doesn’t get scolded for her laziness.”
Ludger’s fingers paused for half a heartbeat.
“Training?” he repeated, and this ti he looked up. “Where?”
Sigrid’s expression twisted with irritation. “Further north.”
Ludger blinked once. He’d assud the northerners endured the cold the way everyone endured bad weather: grit your teeth, complain, keep moving.
But Freyra… It sounded like she liked it. She wasn’t just tolerating the bite of ice, she was walking toward it on purpose.
“Further north,” Ludger echoed, eyes narrowing slightly. “So she enjoys freezing.”
Sigrid’s mouth curled. “She enjoys being away from .”
That at least made sense. Then Sigrid added, as if spitting out sothing bitter, “She’s probably learning from so other fool how to use her head for attacks instead of thinking.”
Ludger stared at her.
“…Use her head for attacks,” he repeated.
Sigrid made a stabbing motion with her fingers toward her forehead. “She’s always had a thick skull. So idiot will tell her that ans it’s a weapon.”
Ludger’s eyes narrowed into a squint, not from annoyance this ti, curiosity.
Because that phrasing sounded like more than a mother’s insult.
It sounded like training language.
Like a technique. A style. A job. A class. Sothing that translated personality into combat. And that made a small, dangerous thought crawl into his mind.
A master.
Not necessarily a grandmaster with a tower and a secret scroll. But soone with a thod. Soone who’d unlocked a weird job or class in the northern tribes and built a fighting style around it.
Soone Freyra would run to the mont she wanted to prove she could grow without Sigrid breathing down her neck. Ludger’s hand resud its movent, but slower now, mind working.
If there was an unknown class or job out there, that was… valuable. Potentially priceless. It also felt too convenient. And Ludger hated convenient.
He’d learned early that “convenient” usually ant “bait.”
He glanced at Sigrid again. “Who is she training with?”
Sigrid shrugged like it didn’t matter. “So tribe. So fool. If it teaches her to stop swinging first and thinking later, I don’t care.”
Ludger’s eyes narrowed.
A part of him wanted to chase it imdiately, because if there was even a chance of a new job path hidden in the northern tribes, that was exactly the kind of leverage he’d been thinking about.
Another part of him kept its teeth clenched.
Too convenient. Too clean.
“Maybe,” Ludger murmured, more to himself than Sigrid. “Or maybe she’s just running away.”
Sigrid’s grin was sharp. “That too.”
Ludger returned to the stone pieces, but his mind stayed pointed north. If there really was so secret master of an unknown class or job out there… it could change things.
It could give him an answer to Option B.
It could give him sothing the Empire couldn’t demand because they didn’t even know it existed.
But it could also be nothing. A rumor. A childish rebellion dressed up as “training.”
Or a trap.
Ludger’s expression stayed calm, but the skepticism settled in deep. He didn’t trust convenient. Not when the world had just reminded him how much it liked putting collars on people who built too well.
Sigrid stayed quiet for a long mont after his question, eyes still lingering on the spot where he’d pulled her spell out of the air like it had been waiting for him.
Then she exhaled through her nose.
“I had heard you learn fast,” she said, voice rough. “But I didn’t think it would be this fast.”
Ludger didn’t look up from the golem joint he was smoothing. He just answered with the mild tone he used when sothing didn’t surprise him… even when it did.
“Is that so?”
Sigrid’s gaze narrowed, not amused, not offended—calculating. She rubbed her chin with two fingers, thinking. It looked like the first ti she’d treated him less like a clever child and more like a weapon you could point in a direction.
Then she spoke.
“You should head north and train as well.”
Ludger’s hand froze for half a heartbeat.
He looked up. “No.”
Sigrid’s eyebrow twitched.
“I don’t have ti for a training montage,” Ludger added, as if that settled the matter.
Sigrid stared at him. “A… what?”
“A montage,” Ludger repeated, deadpan. “Where I go sowhere remote, suffer for a week, co back stronger with dramatic music.”
Sigrid’s expression didn’t move. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Ludger nodded, accepting that as reasonable.
Sigrid continued anyway, as if his refusal had been filed under temporary obstacle.
“I’m serious,” she said. “There are old northerners with unusual arts. Things they do that don’t fit your ordinary magic. They have a hard ti passing it down.”
Ludger’s eyes sharpened. “Why?”
Sigrid’s mouth twisted. “Because most northerners are terrible at magic.”
That was blunt enough to sting. It was also true enough that nobody argued.
Ludger stared at her for a second, then, because he couldn’t help himself, he said, “Northerners can cast spells pretty well.”
Sigrid’s eyebrow rose, unimpressed.
Ludger’s lips twitched. “Spells like punch and kick.”
A couple of northerners nearby made choking noises, half laugh, half cough, as if unsure whether laughing would earn them extra laps in the tank. Sigrid didn’t laugh at all. Her stare cut straight through the joke and pinned Ludger like a spear.
“That is why they can’t learn,” she said flatly. “Too much pride. Too much thinking that fists solve everything.”
Ludger’s smile vanished as quickly as it appeared. He returned to the golem part, but his mind had already latched onto what she’d said.
Old northerners. Unusual arts. Hard to pass down. Because the students couldn’t grasp magic well enough to carry the technique.
That wasn’t a “training montage.”
That was a resource. A living library that might die without an heir.
And now Ludger had to decide whether he could afford not to go north, when the answer to the Regent might be waiting in the hands of soone the Empire didn’t even know existed.
Ludger went back to shaping stone, but his hands were on autopilot now. His mind was north.
Could I afford to do that now?
The question tasted bitter because the honest answer was no.
Not with the Regent circling. Not with an observer arriving soon. Not with the underwater labyrinth looming like a mouth waiting to swallow half the northerners and spit back bones. Not with Lionfang expanding so fast it creaked.
He couldn’t just disappear for a week to “train.”
Not when every day he wasn’t present beca an opportunity for soone else to push a lever. And yet… Sigrid’s words wouldn’t leave his head.
Old northerners with unusual arts. Techniques that didn’t fit the Empire’s books.
Skills that were hard to pass down because the people around them didn’t have the talent for magic, aning the knowledge didn’t spread, didn’t consolidate, didn’t evolve.
It died.
Ludger hated that kind of waste. He hated it because he understood it.
A trick, an art, a way of fighting or shaping mana, gone forever because the only person who could do it got old, got tired, got eaten by sothing bigger, and no one else could recreate the feeling from scratch.
He stared at the golem’s joint ring and saw the sa truth in stone: structures only survived if soone maintained them. Knowledge wasn’t different. And the idea felt too good to be true. Convenient. Perfect timing. Almost like bait. If he chased it, he might walk into a trap, or waste precious days for nothing more than another northern story and a bruise to his pride.
But if he didn’t chase it…
If he took his ti, if he waited until the Regent’s offer was resolved and the runic golem labyrinth mission was complete and the town was stable…
Those old northerners might be gone. Their arts might go with them. And then he’d be left with regret and an empty space where an answer could’ve been. Ludger’s fingers tightened slightly on the stone.
Bad choice either way. And in bad choices, the least damaging option was usually the one that created more future options. That was what he’d always believed.
He exhaled slowly and let the thought turn in his head until it clicked into a different shape. Maybe that was why he had the System. Not just to make him stronger. Not just to hand him levels and skills like candy. But to preserve.
To take sothing fragile, an art held by one dying person in so cold northern tribe, and turn it into sothing clean and transferable. A skill prompt. A class unlock. A thod that could be written down in a manual without losing its core.
Because once the System stamped it into him, it wasn’t just his anymore. It beca sothing he could teach. Sothing he could demonstrate once and have soone else replicate, not through luck, but through a clear path. A structured progression.
A way to keep knowledge from dying with its owner. Ludger stared at his hands, at the faint dust under his nails, at the scars that ca from building too hard and fighting too young.
Maybe that was the point. The world was full of broken lines: cultures that couldn’t share, people who couldn’t teach, arts that couldn’t survive contact with ti.
And if Ludger could take the “unusual arts” of the north and turn them into sothing stable, sothing that could be passed down easily, then he wasn’t just stealing power. He was saving it. He was doing what the Empire would never do: preserving what didn’t fit their structure.
That thought settled in his chest with an uncomfortable sense of purpose. Not noble purpose. Practical purpose. If he didn’t act, those skills would die.
If he did act, he might gain sothing that changed everything, sothing the Regent couldn’t demand, because the Regent didn’t even know what to ask for.
Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly. Then he resud working on the golem with a steadier hand, as if the decision hadn’t been made yet, but the direction had.
North wasn’t just an option anymore. It was a responsibility. Because if the world insisted on losing its best tricks to ti… Then maybe Ludger’s job was to make sure it didn’t get the chance.
Ludger stopped shaping stone.
Not dramatically. Not with an announcent.
He just… paused, then set his palm on the platform like he was putting a lid on the thought before it escaped.
“I’ll head north,” he said.
Sigrid’s eyes flicked to him, alert. “Hmph.”
Ludger turned his head slightly. “Where do I find them?”
“And how do I convince them?” he added, because experience had taught him that “stubborn” didn’t an “needs a polite request.” It ant price.
Sigrid scratched at her chin and started talking imdiately, like she’d been waiting for him to stop pretending he didn’t want to go.
“First,” she said, pointing with two fingers toward the sky as if she could indicate direction through the clouds, “you go beyond the second river fork. Not the wide one. The narrow one that looks like it’s dying.”
Ludger stared at her.
Sigrid continued. “Then you follow the ridge line until you see the split boulder that looks like a bear’s tooth. Past that is a valley with hot steam vents—slls like rotten eggs. There’s a camp there sotis. Sotis not.”
Ludger blinked once. “That’s not a place. That’s a scavenger hunt.”
Sigrid snorted. “That’s the north.”
She kept listing more, faster…
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