Chapter 397

If someone targeted the Lionsguard… Then Ludger would erase them. Politics wasn’t his battlefield. Fear wasn’t his language. Results were. But he didn’t say any of that aloud.

He only nodded one last time, offering Rathen the calm acceptance he expected to see.

“Understood,” Ludger said quietly.

And in the silence that followed, his resolve crystallized into something sharp and lethal:

If others couldn’t move freely, he would move alone. If allies couldn’t risk their names, he would risk his. Lionsguard hadn’t that kind of reputation to protect. But they had enemies to bury.

The tension on the deck began to thin after Ludger’s quiet nod. Rathen barked new orders to his underlings, Maurien drifted off toward the starboard railing to survey the distant smoke plumes, and Renvar, true to form, started loudly complaining about his bruised ribs.

Kaela, however, lingered near Ludger, hands resting casually behind her head, eyes glimmering with that dangerous brand of amusement she always wore whenever she thought she could get away with teasing someone.

“Well,” she said loudly, making sure Rathen could still hear her as he walked away, “if we want to keep Ludger from going full bloodhound and hunting down pirates across international borders, we should probably appease him.”

Maurien snorted without turning around. Renvar coughed nervously. Ludger didn’t react, eyes still focused on his slowly healing hands.

Kaela continued with unbothered enthusiasm.

“I’m thinking we just give him this ship,” she declared. “Seems fair, right? Kid takes down a berserk beastman giant, breaks a flagship, secures the surrender of half a pirate fleet, he deserves a toy.”

Renvar made a strangled noise that might have been agreement or fear.

Kaela walked in a slow circle around Ludger, flicking her finger against his shoulder. “We could even rename it. Something poetic. Something powerful.” She spread her arms wide, grinning. “Like: Kaela, the Sea Princess.”

Ludger blinked once. Rathen tripped on a splintered plank but pretended he didn’t. Maurien rolled his eyes with the force of a small wind spell.

Kaela tapped her chin thoughtfully. “No? Too modest? Alright, how about The Rogue Maiden of the East Sea? Or maybe Kaela’s Divine Tidebreaker?”

She snapped her fingers dramatically.

“Ooooh! The Stormborn Queen! That one sounds regal.”

Renvar leaned toward Maurien. “Do you think she’s serious?”

Maurien muttered back, “She’s always serious until she isn’t.”

Satisfied with the chaos she’d caused, Kaela stretched and waved as she started walking toward one of the boarding planks. “Anyway, someone better keep an eye on him. If Ludger gets bored, he might start sinking ships for fun.”

Ludger remained silent.

But he didn’t deny it.

One by one, the others scattered, Maurien to coordinate wind-assisted towing, Rathen to file his battered sanity into the nearest paperwork stack, Renvar to brag loudly about “helping”, while Kaela kept tossing out ridiculous ship names over her shoulder.

The deck finally quieted, leaving Ludger alone with the bound pirates, the ruined cabin, and the slowly setting sun.

The battle was over.

But the war wasn’t even close.

Repairing the flagship turned out to be an exercise in patience, sweat, and stubbornness. Even with Maurien’s wind manipulation, Kaela’s precision hands, and a rotating crew of Ironhand craftsmen, the ship was too foreign—its hull reinforced with unfamiliar alloys, its mana channels woven with Velis-style engineering, its cabin structure designed for a much heavier frame than local vessels used. Every plank replaced required recalculating balance. Every beam restored demanded reattunement to the core housing.

It took a week.

Seven long days of working under the southern sun, cleaning saltwater residue, reattaching mana conduits, and rebuilding the captain’s cabin from little more than splinters. Rathen insisted on doing it properly, if the Lionsguard was going to take the ship, it needed to function, not fall apart halfway to the nearest port.

And, true to his word, he gave the ship to the Lionsguard.

Kaela nearly jumped at the chance to name it, but Rathen cut her off immediately.

“Absolutely not,” he said flatly. “Anything you pick should be banned by maritime law.”

Kaela protested loudly, waving a scroll of her top twenty choices. Titles like

Kaela the Untouchable

,

Kaela’s Heavenly Grace

,

The Eternal Sea Princess

, and the humble

Kaela’s Sexy Ship

. Rathen confiscated the list before she reached number nine.

Instead, he and Ludger settled on something practical, nothing flashy, nothing political, just an inconspicuous name that wouldn’t attract unwanted eyes. Meanwhile, most of the other pirate vessels were sunk after stripping them for parts. Only a few lighter ones were saved for Ironhand use, small cutters and a transport barge.

While the ship was being rebuilt, the group had no choice but to remain by the port and guard it. Piracy in the region didn’t halt just because one flagship fell. Scouts reported distant sails. Some criminal elements lurked offshore, waiting to see if this victory meant weakness or opportunity. So Ludger, Maurien, Kaela, and Renvar stayed on constant watch, shifting roles between construction assistance and security.

Ludger tolerated it. At first.

The enforced stillness was suffocating. After days of surviving a berserker-draught-fueled beastman, after tearing through pirates, after destroying a flagship’s core with his own foot, the sudden lack of action gnawed at him like an itch beneath his skin. Training helped, he managed to [Wordweave] a few experimental runes, pushing the limits of spell compression, recoil diffusion, and elemental blending. He improved his tracing speed. He tested new compound glyphs.

But training alone wasn’t enough.

He meditated, sculpted small stone pieces as practice, and refined his mana flow, yet the routine felt hollow, aimless. He was a Lionsguard vice guildmaster, not a dockside ornament. His mind drifted back to the pirates. To the underworld. To the ones pulling strings from afar.

That itch returned stronger each day. By the fifth afternoon, Ludger found himself staring at the horizon, jaw tightening. He needed something else. A real challenge. A real mission. Something to stop his brain from circling the same unfinished hunting instinct. Kaela noticed first.

“You’re brooding,” she said, draping herself across a crate like a smug cat. “Dangerously brooding. That means trouble.”

Maurien nodded in agreement. “He does get that look before doing something insane.”

Renvar backed away three steps. “Should we… prepare for something?”

Ludger didn’t answer.

But the boredom in his chest was turning sharp, focused, exactly the feeling he got right before choosing his next hunt.

By the sixth morning of waiting, Ludger finally broke the silence. He sat atop a newly fixed section of railing, legs dangling over the edge, eyes fixed on Renvar, who was stretching on the deck like a circus performer warming up.

“Renvar,” Ludger said suddenly. “Who taught you how to fight?”

Renvar blinked, mid–backbend. “Huh? Oh.” He popped upright, scratching the back of his head with a sheepish grin. “No one. I’m self-taught.”

Ludger raised an eyebrow.

Renvar grinned wider, clearly proud of the fact. “Really. I was a troublemaker as a kid. A small troublemaker.” He held up two fingers an inch apart for emphasis. “Short, skinny, annoying, pretty much the perfect target. Bigger kids loved kicking me around. So I improvised.”

He flipped smoothly onto his hands, balancing upside down with barely any effort. “If I couldn’t overpower them, I outmaneuvered them. Agility, flexibility, trick angles. I kicked a guy in the chin once from behind a fence.”

Maurien, nearby, snorted. “That actually explains a lot.”

Ludger nodded thoughtfully. It made sense, Renvar’s wind affinity enhanced his movement, but the foundation was physical. Improvised. Instinct-built. Adaptable.

“So,” Ludger said, watching Renvar roll back onto his feet with a flourish, “what would you say are the basics of your fighting style?”

Renvar blinked. “Basics?”

“Yes,” Ludger said. “Teach me.”

Renvar stared at him like he’d just been handed a priceless treasure by accident. Then his eyebrows dropped and he pressed a hand dramatically over his heart.

“I’m offended,” he declared.

Ludger blinked. “Why?”

Renvar threw his arms up. “You want to learn my fighting style because you’re bored.” He gestured wildly at Ludger. “And it’s not even a fighting style! It’s improvisation! I jump, I flip, I kick people where it hurts, I run in circles until they get dizzy, it’s not some ancient monastery art!”

Kaela, sitting on a barrel polishing her daggers, snorted. “Actually that sounds like a monastery art. A bad one.”

Renvar continued, indignant. “Besides! Your fighting style is all,” He flexed his muscles, puffing out his chest. “Heavy. Solid. Boulder-esque. You tank blows from berserkers and punch through buildings. I dodge angry drunks and trip them down stairs.”

Ludger stared blankly. “…And?”

“And!” Renvar pointed at him. “You’re a boulder, Ludger. A strong boulder, a terrifying boulder, a twelve-year-old tactical earthquake, but still a boulder! My style is more… wind. Whimsy. Acrobatics. Handsome chaos.”

Maurien muttered, “He lost me at ‘handsome.’”

Ludger crossed his arms. “Teach me.”

Renvar deflated instantly, collapsing like a puppet whose strings were cut. “Fine, but only because you said it with the same tone you use when you decide to kill a criminal syndicate.”

Kaela leaned back, grinning. “This is going to be good.”

Renvar sighed deeply, straightened, and clapped his hands once. “Alright, Boulder Boy. First lesson of Acrobatics Combat…”

He pointed to Ludger’s feet.

“…you’re going to hate this.”

Ludger nodded with perfect seriousness.

“Good,” he said. “Then it’ll be useful.”

Ludger expected the training to begin with footwork drills. Maybe balance tests. Maybe a few examples of how Renvar avoided getting turned into paste by larger opponents.

Instead, Renvar picked up his sword. Ludger blinked.

Kaela laughed under her breath. Maurien raised one eyebrow. Even the Ironhand workers paused to watch.

Renvar held the blade like an extension of his arm, letting it tilt lazily before snapping it upright with a crisp flick. “You want acrobatics?” he said, smirking. “Fine. But you’re not just learning how to dodge.”

He tapped the flat of the sword against his shoulder.

“You’re learning how to fight while moving. That’s the part you’re missing.”

He didn’t give Ludger time to ask questions. Renvar moved.

He kicked off the ground into a rolling dive, popped up into a half-twist, vanished around Ludger’s blind spot, then burst upward in a spiraling backflip slash. His feet barely touched the deck as he flowed into another flip, this time over a rope line, landing sideways on the railing like gravity wasn’t real.

He leapt again, spinning midair, sword trailing arcs of light. His blade cut invisible patterns with each movement—dancing across angles no textbook or academy manual would ever teach.

“It’s not a style,” Renvar called mid-flip, somersaulting under a clothesline and landing on one hand. “It’s improvisation. The whole point is,” he sprang up, twisting into another air slash, “you do whatever the hell keeps you alive…”

He dropped low and swept the sword behind him before springing upward into a corkscrew slash:

“…As long as you’re fast enough to pull it off.”

He landed on the mast sideways, ran three steps up it, then launched himself back onto the deck in a spinning dive that somehow didn’t cut his own feet off.

Ludger watched quietly, feeling the shift in Renvar’s mana. Fluid. Unpredictable. Dangerous. A fighting style built on instinct and motion.

His mana adapted. His legs loosened. His shoulders relaxed. His weight shifted not downward into the ground… but outward into flow.

The world hummed. And the system responded. A soft chime echoed in the back of Ludger’s mind, sharp and cold like a blade sliding free of its sheath.

[New Class Unlocked: Sword Dancer Lv. 1]

Bonus per Level:

+3 DEX, +3 STR, +3 END

Skill Acquired:

[Unknown Stance Lv. 1]

An instinct-driven stance with shifting rhythm and unpredictable movement. Temporarily increases agility, reflexes, and the effectiveness of improvised attacks. Effect is stronger when the user is mid-motion. Cost: 05 stamina and 01 mana per second.

For a moment, Ludger stood perfectly still as the new flow wove through him. His posture shifted, lighter, looser, weight distributed in ways he’d never used before. His center of gravity wasn’t fixed like a boulder. It was dynamic, sliding deliberately between potential movements.

Renvar landed in front of him with a grin. “So? What do you think? Bet you got some—”

He froze when he saw Ludger’s stance. Not heavy. Not grounded. Not rigid.

Something else entirely. Something unpredictable.

Renvar’s grin vanished.

“…Okay, I didn’t teach you that.”

Ludger lowered his head slightly, eyes sharpening with a new rhythm.

“You did,” he said.

“You just didn’t realize it.”

Kaela cackled. Maurien smirked.

Renvar groaned. “I regret everything.”

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