Chapter 476

Harold scratched the back of his head, breaking the moment.

“Well,” he said, glancing toward the outer streets, “I’ll miss drinking with the northerners every day instead of every week.”

Selene didn’t even look at him. She elbowed him hard in the side.

“You pass out halfway through,” she said flatly. “That barely counts as drinking.”

Harold grunted, rubbing his ribs. “That’s called pacing.”

“That’s called unconsciousness,” Selene shot back.

Ludger watched the exchange, then spoke.

“This isn’t a goodbye,” he said. “You’re not being exiled.”

They all looked at him.

“I’ll send recruits soon,” Ludger continued, tone dry. “They’ll work under you. Help with logistics. Exploration. Paperwork.”

He paused.

“And you can dump all the unpleasant work on them.”

Silence.

Four identical frowns turned his way.

Selene stared at him. “Did you just volunteer your trainees?”

“They need experience,” Ludger replied calmly.

Cor huffed. Aleia shook her head. Harold squinted at him.

“That,” Harold said slowly, “is the most terrifying thing you’ve said all day.”

Ludger’s mouth twitched, just barely.

“Don’t worry,” he added. “I’m training them properly.”

They glanced past him, back at the yard, where the trainees were still drilling under his watchful eye, movements tight, discipline intact.

Selene crossed her arms. “You say that,” she muttered, “but you’re smiling like this is a punishment.”

“I’m not smiling,” Ludger said.

She pointed at his face. “That.”

He turned back toward the yard without responding.

Behind him, the four exchanged looks, equal parts concern and amusement, before following their assigned path.

As they left, Ludger raised his voice.

“Weekly reports,” he called. “And don’t break the dungeon.”

Cor laughed. Aleia waved once. Harold groaned.

Selene just grinned.

Ludger returned his focus to the trainees.

Back to work,

he thought.

Some habits, at least, weren’t changing anytime soon.

After another long day drilling the trainees until their stances stopped collapsing and their swings stopped wasting motion, Ludger finally dismissed them.

Sweaty, bruised, but grinning.

He watched them disperse for a moment, correcting each other even as they walked, then turned toward the guild hall.

The building stood solid and familiar, stone walls reinforced with careful earthwork, banners hanging still in the late air. It felt permanent in a way few things did lately.

Inside, the hall was quiet. Ludger’s steps slowed as he approached the inner wall. The plates were there.

Neatly aligned. Polished. Names engraved deep enough that time wouldn’t erase them easily.

Golden plates.

Harold.

Aleia.

Selene.

Cor.

Ludger stopped in front of them.

They had already departed. New paths, new duties. Not gone, never truly gone, but no longer here in the way they used to be. He knew he’d see them again. Missions crossed. Politics tangled. The world was too small for capable people to stay apart forever.

Still. His chest tightened, just a little. Selene’s name caught his eye first.

She had been the one to put him on his back over and over without ever making him feel small about it. The basics, how to punch without breaking his wrist, how to kick without losing balance, how to move his hips instead of muscling everything. She’d laughed when he got it wrong and hit him harder when he got it right.

Cor’s plate was next. Gruff. patient. Relentless.

He’d taught Ludger how to sit still inside his own mana. How not to fight it. How to

listen

to it instead of forcing it to behave. Sage skills, control, restraint, the unglamorous foundations that kept power from tearing its owner apart.

Harold. Sparring partner. Again and again and again.

No lectures. No philosophy. Just steel, timing, and the quiet understanding that improvement came from being beaten properly. Ludger hadn’t learned techniques from Harold so much as rhythm, and the value of showing up every time.

Aleia’s name lingered last. He hadn’t learned much archery from her. Not really. His path didn’t bend that way.

But the advice… Positioning. Awareness. Patience. When to act and when to wait. How to read people as carefully as terrain. Words offered casually, but never lightly.

Ludger reached out and rested his fingers briefly against the wall beneath the plates.

Just for a moment.

Then he pulled his hand back.

Sentiment was fine. Lingering wasn’t.

He turned away from the wall, already thinking about what needed to be built next, what still needed to be taught, carrying their lessons forward the only way that mattered. By using them.

Ludger paused in the quiet of the hall and finally pulled his attention inward.

It had been a while since he’d last checked.

He hadn’t been chasing levels. Hadn’t been grinding skills for the sake of numbers. Most days were spent on fundamentals, geomancy control refined through repetition, the Guildmaster job skills constantly.

Still. The progress was impossible to miss.

Lines of information unfolded in his mind, steady and precise. Values higher than he remembered. Skills sitting closer to thresholds. Jobs deeper into their tiers, solid instead of tentative.

Name: Ludger

Level: 109 (2,450 / 10,800)

Current Job: Cook (Lv 35 – 620 / 3,500)

Current Class: Geomancer (Lv 129 – 1,300 / 12,900)

Health: 3.360 / 3.360

Mana: 21.330 / 21.330

Stamina: 5.050 / 5.050

Strength: 608

Dexterity: 800

Intelligence: 1704

Vitality: 336

Wisdom: 2133

Endurance: 505

Luck: 343

Classes & Skills

Magic Knight Lv. 4

(+7 DEX, +7 INT, +7 WIS / level)

Skills: Summon Magic Swords Lv. 9]

Guild Master – Lv. 30 (All Parameters + 3 per level.)

Skills: Morale Lv. 25

Shared Insight

Lv. 25

Collective Cognition

:

Lv. 25

Enduring Line

Lv. 25

Shared Vitality

Lv. 25

Fortunate Momentum

Lv. 25

Not explosive growth. Stable growth. The kind that didn’t collapse under pressure.

“Good,” he murmured quietly.

But the word didn’t bring satisfaction. Only confirmation. Because Ludger remembered the capital.

Remembered rare skills that bent rules instead of following them. Remembered fighters who didn’t rely on fancy magic or skills but on combinations, skills layered together in ways that turned small advantages into overwhelming ones.

He’d fought them. Some of them had nearly killed him.

I can’t afford to boast,

he thought.

His focus shifted down the list. And stopped.

Magic Knight.

He lingered there longer than he meant to.

The class sat ready, developed enough to matter, neglected enough to feel almost accusing. A bridge between magic and martial force. Between positioning and power. Between individual combat and formation fighting.

“…Right,” Ludger muttered.

He exhaled slowly.

Geomancy was control. Guildmaster was structure. But Magic Knight was an application, the kind that decided battles when everything else went wrong. He straightened.

Not just for me.

The thought clicked into place naturally.

The recruits. Not the trainees, the ones still testing whether they belonged here at all. But the recruits who had already committed. Who carried the guild’s name and would one day hold its lines.

Teaching them Magic Knight fundamentals wouldn’t just make them stronger. It would give them a shared language, timing, spacing, mana reinforcement, coordinated pushes. The kind of training that turned individuals into a unit that didn’t break.

Ludger let the interface fade. Decision made.

“Looks like tomorrow’s schedule just changed,” he said quietly.

And for the first time that day, he allowed himself a thin, satisfied smirk.

Later that night, Ludger finally had a moment to himself.

Dinner had been loud and warm and exhausting in a way that had nothing to do with training. Afterward, the twins had decided he was a mountain that needed to be conquered. They’d thrown themselves at him again and again, tiny bodies fueled by endless energy, until their tackles slowed, turned clumsy, and finally ended with both of them sprawled on his chest, fast asleep.

He’d carried them back to bed without waking them.

Now his room was quiet.

Ludger sat cross-legged on the floor, a thin notebook open in front of him. The pages were already filled with tight, precise handwriting, diagrams, short notes, arrows connecting ideas that only made sense to him.

Above him, several magic swords floated in slow, controlled orbits.

They were translucent constructs of condensed mana, edges sharp enough to hum faintly as they cut through the air. Each one was slightly different, length, balance, density, small adjustments he’d been testing over and over.

Summoning Magic Swords

Skill Level: 9

Class: Magic Knight Lv 4

Not high enough. He knew it the moment he tried to rationalize the technique.

Ludger wrote another line, paused, then crossed half of it out.

The theory was solid. Channeling mana externally, shaping it into a stable weapon, maintaining cohesion under stress, reinforcing strikes at the moment of impact, it all worked.

But it worked

because it was him

.

Because his mana pool was deep enough that the constant drain barely registered. Because his control was precise enough to prevent collapse. Because he could afford inefficiency and still come out ahead.

Most people couldn’t. He leaned back slightly, eyes tracking the slow rotation of the swords.

“Too expensive,” he muttered.

Each construct demanded a steady flow of mana just to exist. Add movement, acceleration, reinforcement, and the cost spiked hard. For someone with average reserves, it would be unsustainable in real combat, maybe a few minutes before exhaustion, maybe less.

He tapped the pen against the paper.

If I teach this as-is, I’ll just burn them out.

That wasn’t training. That was sabotage. His gaze sharpened as he rewound the process in his mind, not the end result, but the steps that mattered. What

had

to be there, and what he was brute-forcing simply because he could.

The answer came slowly. They didn’t need full constructs. They didn’t need persistence. They needed

moments

.

Short-lived blades. Partial reinforcement. Mana pushed into shape only at the instant of a strike, then released. No hovering weapons draining reserves, just flashes of structure layered onto existing movements.

Ludger’s eyes flicked to one of the swords.

With a thought, he cut the flow.

The construct destabilized instantly, collapsing into harmless motes of light.

“…Yeah,” he murmured.

That was it.

Teach timing before endurance. Shape before sustain. Let them borrow the

idea

of a magic sword without paying the full price. He wrote faster now, notes tightening, diagrams growing cleaner.

Magic Knight training — Recruit Tier

– No sustained summons

– Emphasize momentary manifestation

– Mana spike only at contact

– Weapon enhancement first, projection later

Above him, the remaining swords continued to float, silent witnesses to his thoughts. They were proof of what was possible. But Ludger wasn’t interested in showing off what

he

could do. He was interested in figuring out how to make others dangerous without killing them in the process.

[Magic Knight class reached level 05]

[New skill Unlocked: Summon Magic Spear.]

Ludger smiled, his variety increased just a bit.

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