Chapter 568

Harkun kept the mana sheath around his claws for a few breaths, then let it fade. The “extra length” vanished like mist, leaving only his normal hands and a faint aftertaste of sharpness in the air.

He looked at Ludger, expression unreadable.

“That is an art of the beastmen,” Harkun said. “Impossible to teach others.”

Ludger crossed his arms. And waited. No argument. No persuasion. Just the quiet pressure of someone who didn’t accept lazy answers.

Harkun stared back. Seconds passed.

The wind moved over the hills. Somewhere far off, Lionfang’s noise carried faintly. Sivra stood rigid, like she’d decided this was more dangerous than sparring. Ragan looked mildly entertained, as if he’d seen this exact kind of stubborn collision before.

Ludger didn’t blink. Because “no” was sometimes real. And sometimes it was just a shortcut people used to avoid explaining things. Ignoring it would be a waste of time.

And Ludger didn’t waste time. Harkun’s ears twitched. He exhaled, slow. Then he sighed.

“Fine,” Harkun said, like he was giving in to a persistent ache rather than a person.

He lifted a hand, palm up, and flexed his fingers once.

“Beastmen have instincts,” he began. “Sharper than humans. Smell. Hearing. Balance. Threat sense. The feeling of where something is about to move.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly, focused. Harkun continued, voice steady.

“We can expand those instincts through mana,” he said. “Not like a spell. Like… feeding a sense until it becomes stronger than the body.”

He tapped his temple once, then his chest.

“It starts here,” Harkun said. “A certainty. A direction. A pressure.”

Then he turned his hand slightly, showing the line of his fingers.

“And with enough control,” he added, “we can assume those instincts in physical form. In fact, doing this is the highest level of improving our instincts with mana.”

Sivra’s eyes flicked to his hand. Ragan’s posture shifted, attentive now.

Harkun’s mana rose again, thin and precise, wrapping his claws in that translucent extension.

“This,” he said, “is not ‘growing claws.’ It is giving my killing instinct a shape.”

Ludger stared at the shimmering edge.

“So it’s intent,” Ludger said. “Expressed through mana.”

Harkun nodded once. “Yes.”

“And it’s tied to your senses,” Ludger continued. “Not your muscles.”

“Both,” Harkun corrected. “But the base is instinct. The body follows.”

Ludger’s expression stayed calm, but his mind was already working.

If instinct could be shaped into a physical edge… then a bracer didn’t need to carve runes into cloth or metal to create a “blade.” It could amplify a natural pathway, enhance perception, sharpen reaction, push mana into a controlled sheath.

A safer concept than Rage Flow. Still dangerous. But cleaner. Ludger looked up at Harkun.

“Show me the failure point,” he said. “When does it collapse? What does it cost? What happens if you push too hard.”

Harkun’s eyes narrowed. “Why.”

Ludger didn’t flinch.

“Because,” he said evenly, “if it’s mana pretending to be a weapon, then it has rules.”

He held Harkun’s gaze.

“And if it has rules,” Ludger finished, “then it can be understood.”

Harkun stared for a long moment. Then he snorted quietly, half irritation, half reluctant respect. Harkun sighed again and raised his hands.

“Watch,” he said.

Ludger watched Harkun’s mana sheath settle and fade a few times, eyes tracking the edges like he was measuring a blade. Then he spoke.

“More demonstrations,” Ludger said. “And other applications.”

Harkun’s expression tightened.

He sighed, again, like the sound itself was part of the technique at this point.

“You are relentless,” he muttered.

“Yes,” Ludger replied.

Ragan’s mouth twitched. Sivra stayed silent, but her ears flicked like she was trying not to laugh. Harkun raised his hands.

Mana pooled over his fingers, thin, controlled,

sharp

. The “claws” reappeared, but this time they didn’t just extend. They curved, the sheath bending into a hooked shape like a talon designed to catch and tear rather than simply slice.

Harkun made a short swipe through the air.

The curve changed mid-motion, subtle, like the mana edge was alive and reacting to the direction of force. It wasn’t a rigid weapon. It was intent shaped into form and corrected by instinct.

“Extension and curvature,” Harkun said, voice flat. “For different targets. Straight for piercing gaps. Curved for catching armor seams.”

He flexed his fingers, and the mana claws shortened and lengthened smoothly, as if the blade’s length was just another muscle.

Then he shifted focus. He brought his hand up near his face and drew mana inward, not to the claws but to himself. He touched two fingers lightly to the bridge of his nose.

Mana settled over it like a thin veil.

“Smell,” Harkun said. “You can push it.”

He moved to his eyes next, mana tightening at his brow, around the sockets, not blinding light, but a sharpening pressure. His gaze turned unnervingly precise.

“Sight.”

Then his ears, mana threaded along the outer edge, down the jaw, into the skull like a tuning fork.

“Hearing.”

For a moment, he stood still, and the whole hill felt like it had gotten quieter, like even the wind didn’t want to interfere with what he was doing. Then he snapped his attention outward, away from Ludger and the sparring hollow, as if he’d just heard something far off.

Sivra’s posture shifted instinctively as well. Harkun let the enhancements fade and looked back at Ludger.

“Applications,” he said. “Tracking. Ambush detection. Predicting movement. Close combat.”

Ludger nodded once.

“That’s enough,” he said.

Harkun blinked, then stared like he couldn’t believe the conversation had ended without more demands. Ragan looked mildly disappointed. Sivra looked relieved. Harkun, however, didn’t stop.

He apparently decided that if he’d already wasted time, he might as well waste it efficiently.

“Don’t overfeed the senses,” Harkun added, tone annoyed. “If you push the smell too hard you drown in it. If you push hearing too hard you hear everything and understand nothing. Sight, same. It is not power. It is clarity.”

He lifted his hand again, showing the empty space where the mana claws had been.

“And the claws,” he continued, “If you try to shape them with emotion, they wobble. You shape with certainty. You hold with breath.”

He looked at Ludger like he expected him to argue.

Ludger didn’t. Because he wasn’t listening like a student. He was listening like a master.

And while Harkun talked, something clicked inside Ludger’s system view, quiet at first, then undeniable. A sensation like a locked door giving way.

[Class Unlocked: Reinforcer + 05 Dex, +05 Int, +05 Wis per level.]

And with it—

[Skill Unlocked: Magic Enhancement Lv 01]

The ability to channel mana into a target, body, sense, tool, edge, and amplify its function temporarily.A controlled reinforcement.

Ludger didn’t move. Didn’t smile. But his mind sharpened.

So that’s what it is.

Not “beastman-only magic.”

A way to turn mana into enhancement without engraving anything into metal or cloth. Harkun finished his final “waste-of-time” tip with a tired exhale.

“…And don’t let the mana sheath linger too long after striking,” he said. “It attracts attention. It bleeds your presence into the air.”

Ludger gave a simple nod.

“Understood.”

Harkun stared at him, suspicious now, like he could feel that something had shifted even if he didn’t know what.

“You learn too fast,” Harkun said. Ludger’s eyes stayed calm. Harkun sighed again, long-suffering. And Ludger, internally, was already seeing it what he could do with this.

A new product line. A new lever. And this time, it started with something as simple as breathing and certainty, not anger.

Ludger didn’t waste time celebrating the unlock. He tested it.

Right there, in the hollow behind the hills, with three beastmen watching him like they were trying to decide whether he was annoying or dangerous.

He lifted his hand and pulled earth up from the ground in a clean spike.

Stone and compacted soil flowed together, tightening into a spear shaft with a smooth grip and a sharp, dense tip, his usual work, fast and efficient.

An earth spear. He rotated it once in his palm, feeling the balance.

Then he pushed mana into it, not into the earth itself, not shaping it further, but

reinforcing

it.

Magic Enhancement. The effect was immediate.

Mana wrapped around the spear tip like a thin sheath, and the point grew, not physically expanding the earth, but extending its effective edge. The tip looked longer, sharper, more defined, as if the air itself had been pressed into a blade-shaped outline over the stone.

A spear-point with a mana extension. Sivra’s ears flicked back. Ragan’s eyes narrowed. Harkun frowned. They all recognized it.

They also recognized how fast he’d done it.

Harkun spoke first, voice flat. “You… just learned that.”

Ludger didn’t answer. He tightened the enhancement slightly, pushing the mana edge wider and denser, and the spear tip responded, clean, obedient,

too

clean for a first attempt.

Ragan’s mouth twisted. “We know how to do that.”

“Yes,” Ludger said finally. “I noticed.”

Sivra’s gaze stayed sharp. “It took us time to learn.”

Ludger’s eyes half-lidded, focus turned inward for a moment. Because the truth was uglier than it looked. He wasn’t doing it because he’d mastered it. He was doing it because he had enough raw advantages to force it.

High intelligence meant he could

force the mana to obey

, how the mana needed to wrap, how it had to hold tension without wobbling. A large mana pool meant he could pour power into a technique that should’ve buckled under an inexperienced hand.

He was essentially brute-forcing refinement. Doing something beyond his current skill level by dragging his body along behind his mind. And his body was starting to complain.

A thin heat began to build under his skin, not on the surface, deeper, along the internal pathways where mana flowed and where it wasn’t supposed to

burn

.

His mana circuits warmed like overheated metal. Not enough to injure him yet. Enough to warn him.

Enough to say:

You’re pushing too hard.

Ludger kept his expression neutral anyway, because he wasn’t going to give the beastmen the satisfaction of seeing strain or anyone else for that matter.

He held the spear steady. The mana edge hummed faintly.

Harkun watched him for a long beat, then said, slow and suspicious, “That’s reckless.”

Ludger’s mouth twitched, almost a smile.

“I am aware,” he replied.

Sivra’s eyes narrowed. “You’re heating yourself.”

Ludger didn’t deny it. He simply eased the flow a fraction.

The mana sheath thinned, the spear tip shrinking back to a more stable size.

The heat in his circuits didn’t vanish, but it stopped climbing.

Ragan snorted. “Humans are strange.”

Ludger looked at the reinforced spear point one last time, committing the sensation to memory, how the enhancement felt when it held, how it threatened to slip when he pushed too far.

Then he let the mana go completely. The glow faded. The spear returned to normal.

And the heat in his mana channels lingered like an afterburn. Ludger exhaled slowly through his nose.

He’d proven the concept.

Now he just had to learn it the correct way, before his own mana cooked him from the inside trying to keep up with his ambition.

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