Ludger looked lighter when he returned ho.
Not in the obvious way, he still walked like a soldier who expected the floor to betray him, still scanned corners out of habit, still carried that quiet intensity that made normal people straighten up without knowing why.
But the tightness was gone. The constant edge. The invisible pressure that sat on his shoulders whenever Torvares’ na ca up.
Elaine noticed it the mont he stepped through the door. Arslan did too, even if he pretended he didn’t. Parents learned to read their children the way veterans read weather, small shifts that ant storms were coming or passing.
They didn’t ask right away. They just assud. They knew where he’d gone. So they assud it went well. And Ludger… Ludger felt lighter for a simpler reason. He didn’t have to grind his teeth anymore.
He didn’t have to feel that automatic irritation whenever his thoughts brushed against anything connected to Torvares, Torvares’ supply orders, Torvares’ political maneuvers, even the sound of that na in soone else’s mouth.
It wasn’t forgiveness. Not fully. But the knot had loosened. The thorn had stopped twisting every ti he moved. He could think about the future without losing energy to resentnt first. That mattered.
It was efficient. And for Ludger, efficiency was comfort. He dropped his coat on a chair, hung his scarf properly for once, and let himself breathe like he didn’t have to keep the whole town balanced in his head every second. He hoped the old man wouldn’t do anything like that again. Acting behind his back. Dropping secrets into his lap like they were favors. Turning Lionsguard into a hiding place without consent.
He hoped. But he also knew Torvares wasn’t stupid. Not politically. Not personally. Not after a conversation like the one they’d just had. It was hard to imagine Torvares doing anything close to that much trouble again, not when he’d finally seen what it cost, not just in strategy, but in the people it pulled into the ss.
Ludger didn’t smile. But he felt… clear. Like a window wiped clean after months of dust. And that, in its own quiet way, was a kind of victory.
The next day, Ludger decided to finish so work on the underground library.
Not because he was bored, Lionfang didn’t allow boredom, but because he finally had the ntal space to choose what problem to tackle first. Refugees were running on rails now. The wine business had routines. Torvares had been… handled.
That left the thing Ludger actually cared about: getting stronger in ways that didn’t require another disaster as motivation. His Teacher job was improving faster than he expected.
Every ti he explained sothing and watched it click in soone else’s head, every ti a recruit corrected their stance, every ti a mage stopped wasting mana, every ti a labor crew learned to do the sa task twice as fast, he felt that subtle system pull. The little invisible reward. The sense that his “instruction” wasn’t just leadership anymore, it was a chanic.
Teacher Lv 65 ( 3 INT, 3 DEX / level)
Skills: [Dissection of Knowledge Lv.26]
[Student Insight Lv.50]
[Guiding Words Lv.60]
[Teacher Focus Lv 60]
[Student Understanding Lv 33]
[Practical Demonstration Lv 31]
[Teacher’s Support Lv 11]
[Shared Knowledge Lv 11]
[Foundational Growth Lv.11]
Knowledge Calibration Lv.11]
[Corrective Pressure Lv.21]
[Lesson Structuring Lv.20] — Auto-builds a clean progression path (warm-up → core concept → reps → stress test → cooldown). Reduces wasted ti and prevents “learning gaps.”
[Error Tagging Lv.1] — Marks a student’s recurring mistakes like visible tags (timing late, hips open, mana leakage). You can correct the root pattern instead of chasing symptoms.
[Retention Drill Lv.1] — Turns a lesson into a short repeatable drill that “locks” it into muscle mory; improves long-term recall and keeps skills from degrading under pressure.
But improvent wasn’t the sa as mastery. And Ludger wanted mastery. Fast. Because Teacher wasn’t a flashy class that won duels. It was different than that. It made everyone around him better.
And if he could accelerate that… Lionsguard wouldn’t just survive. It would snowball. So he’d made a plan. Manuals.
Not a single book, not so generic “how to be useful” nonsense. A series of manuals, tight, efficient guides that people could follow without him standing over their shoulders.
The underground library was a controlled place. A place where knowledge wasn’t lost in tavern gossip or forgotten after a week of hard work. With more manuals, the faster Teacher mastery would work. That was the theory, at least. And the theory made sense.
He was already mapping it out in his head as he walked: different levels, simple diagrams, drill routines, mana expenditure notes, common mistakes, safety warnings.
He figured he should make one for each elental Overdrive. Earth was obvious, he’d basically been writing that book with his life.
But if he wanted the guild to scale, he couldn’t let everything funnel through him. He needed water, wind, fire, everything the recruits and allies could offer. One manual per elent. Standardized. Repeatable. Hard to misunderstand. He was halfway down the street when the plan collided with reality.
A boy was waiting outside ho like he’d been planted there.
Young. Apprentice age. Work-worn clothes with the faint soot-sll that ant forge or workshop. He stood stiffly, like he’d been practicing what to say and hadn’t liked any version of it.
Ludger slowed. The kid swallowed when he saw him approach. Ludger didn’t bother with greetings.
“What is it?” he asked.
The apprentice straightened, as if the question had physically yanked him upright.
“M-Master Raukor,” the boy said quickly. “He wants to talk to you.”
Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly. Raukor didn’t “want to talk” unless sothing was either valuable or dangerous. Or both.
“When?” Ludger asked.
The boy hesitated, then blurted, “Now. He said, he said it’s important.”
Ludger stared at him for a beat, weighing the library against whatever Raukor had uncovered. Then he turned his body smoothly, already changing direction.
“Lead,” he said.
The apprentice exhaled like he’d been holding his breath since dawn, and hurried off, while Ludger followed, mind already shifting gears, wondering what kind of trouble the forge-brained analyzer had found this ti.
Ludger followed the apprentice through the busy spine of Lionfang until the air changed.
Smoke. Hot tal. Oil. The steady, familiar hamr rhythm that made even anxious thoughts fall into line.
The forge was alive, workstations crowded, apprentices moving like ants with purpose, bellows breathing, sparks dancing in brief violent flashes. At the center of it all sat Raukor like a boulder that had decided it was going to learn tallurgy.
The lion beastman was waiting for him. Not pacing. Not fidgeting. Just standing there with his arms folded, tail still, eyes fixed on a table where two silver swords lay side by side.
They looked almost out of place in the forge’s gri. Too clean. Too sharp. Too wrong.
The tal didn’t reflect light like steel. It caught it and held it for a mont, as if the surface didn’t know how to let go. Even resting, they felt… eager. Like a weapon that rembered violence.
Ludger stepped up to the table, gaze flicking across the blades the way he assessed everything: weight, balance, risk. He looked up at Raukor.
“Learn anything new?”
Raukor grunted. It was the sa as a nod. Then he finally spoke, voice rough, blunt, and unpolished like the forge itself.
“No enchantnts,” he said. “No runes. No embedded arrays. No hidden script.”
Ludger’s brow furrowed slightly. That was… odd. Too clean for sothing that had been summoned.
Raukor tapped one of the blades with a thick finger. The sound rang crisp and bright.
“But,” Raukor continued, “they’re very mana-conductive.”
Ludger nodded slowly, the pieces shifting.
“That makes sense,” he said. “Their previous owner almost chopped to pieces from a distance.”
Raukor’s ears twitched. Ludger’s eyes went a little colder as the mory surfaced, the corridor, the four blades, the pressure, the impossible reach.
“With a mana beam,” Ludger added, “in the shape of an X.”
Raukor made a sound that might’ve been agreent, but his expression didn’t change. He wasn’t interested in the story. He was interested in the implication.
“That isn’t the important part,” Raukor said.
Ludger’s gaze sharpened. “Then what is?”
Raukor leaned forward slightly, massive hands resting on the table near the swords, careful not to touch their edges. His claws flexed once, then settled.
“What it ans,” Raukor said, “is that the tal exists sowhere.”
Ludger’s eyes narrowed. Raukor’s gaze locked onto him.
“Not as a summoned trick,” the lion beastman continued. “Not as a one-off artifact. This is material. Real. Consistent.”
He paused, then delivered the conclusion like a hamr strike.
“You probably can find the sa tal on the other side of the ant labyrinth.”
The forge noise seed to fade for a second. Ludger held still, mind instantly shifting to maps, gates, depths, and what “other side” really ant in labyrinth terms. Raukor didn’t stop.
“Like you were getting magic water from the other side of the runic golems labyrinth,” he said, voice steady. “Sa pattern.”
Ludger’s jaw tightened. Because that… fit too well. Labyrinths weren’t just death traps. They were pipelines. Pockets of reality connected to sothing else, resources bleeding through like a wound that never sealed.
Magic water on one side. Alien tal on another. And ants… an entire swarm city, organized, intelligent, with a “king” that shouldn’t have existed at all. Ludger stared at the silver swords again.
They weren’t trophies anymore. They were pointers. A signpost that said:
There’s more behind the door.
Ludger stared at the blades for another heartbeat, letting the idea settle. Alien tal.
A resource that could change everything, armor that didn’t fatigue, weapons that carried mana like veins carried blood, tools that made rune work less like carving stone and more like writing on paper.
He wanted it. Badly. Which was exactly why he couldn’t touch it. Ludger looked up at Raukor, expression flat.
“I want that tal,” he said.
Raukor’s ears perked slightly, a faint spark of approval in his eyes. Ludger killed it with his next sentence.
“But I’m not giving the Empire an excuse to aim for my neck.”
The words ca out matter-of-fact, like he was reciting a rule of physics. He gestured vaguely, as if pointing through stone and distance toward Rokram and the sealed ruin beneath it.
“The labyrinth is sealed,” Ludger added. “By capital mages loyal to the regent.”
His mouth twisted.
“I can’t go there.”
Raukor’s jaw flexed. His whiskers bristled. He looked away with a low, irritated rumble in his throat—like the idea offended him on a personal level.
Good.
Ludger understood that feeling. The frustration of being forced to wait while soone else held the keys.
“So your desire to use alien tal for forging,” Ludger said, tone dry, “is out of the question for now.”
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